Back in 1998, a child actor by the name of Joseph Cross appeared in three films that, to put it mildly, did nothing to make me a fan of his. He might very well have been a good kid to hang out with, but his performances in Desperate Measures, Jack Frost and M. Night Shyamalan’s Wide Awake were all designed to pull just a little too hard on the audience’s heartstrings, and I found them all off-putting to one degree or another.
In the near-decade since then, Cross has worked almost exclusively in TV. But two years ago he began to appear on the big screen again, with bit parts in films like Strangers with Candy (2005) and Flags of Our Fathers (2006), and a starring role in Running with Scissors (2006), where I thought he did pretty well. Not that I remember his performance vividly or anything; I just remember thinking he had grown into a decent actor.
And now he’s got a few more films on his roster. In my review of Wide Awake, which starred Cross as a kid who goes looking for God in all of the world’s religions, I suggested his name was “auspicious” for such a spiritually-themed movie, but that assessment may be doubly true for his next project. Reports Variety:
Joseph Cross, Heather Graham, Barbara Hershey and Tim Curry will star in the indie satire “Son of Mourning.” Yaniv Raz will direct from a screenplay he wrote.
Story, set amid an international climate crisis, centers on a dissatisfied ad copywriter (Cross) who returns home to a resort town in Florida to mediate his parents’ divorce. While there, he is mistaken for the Messiah and must decide whether to use his newfound celebrity to indulge his own selfish desires or to do some good in the world.
I can’t begin to imagine how such a character would be mistaken for the Messiah — and in his hometown, no less — but I’m curious to see what this film does with the concept.
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