Guild Hall Benefit Has Mark Ruffalo Remembering Journalists as 'The First Superheroes'

Mark Ruffalo isn’t talking. In fact the entire cast of the Guild Hall stage reading of All The Presidents Men in East Hampton Monday night, August 25, is sworn to secrecy about who they’re playing. What he will say is how important the script from 1976 is in 2025. “Oh my God, looking now at the 200 journalists who’ve been killed in Gaza, the imprisonment of journalists around the world, last week ISIS, I mean globally journalism is under attack.”

The charity event with tickets starting at $1,000 is raising money for a Manhattan historical landmark known as the West Park Presbyterian Church on Amsterdam at 86th Street. Investors want to buy it and tear it down. Actors turned activists like Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin and Nathan Lane are bringing the cause to light. Even Andy Cohen is jumping in. And he’s not talking. That’s a first.

“Journalism is how we understand the truth and combat authoritarianism and protect democracy,” Ruffalo adds. The 1976 Oscar-winning film that starred Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford about the downfall of the Nixon administration changed the way he saw politics. “I was pretty young when I saw the film and I was completely bowled over by how that story unfolded. It was a job that was so exciting and for the right reasons. It was dangerous and it was complicated. And their integrity made that job so much more difficult.”

Will Hamptonite Carl Bernstein be there along with Bob Woodward? That he will wishfully talk about. “They’ve been invited. I hope they come. They were the first superheroes to me when I was watching it. If they show up I will be flipping out.” To the suggestion that it was one of the first ‘important’ movies for a whole generation, Ruffalo wholeheartedly agrees. “Yes, it was important and it was engaging. And you knew it was a true story. It was shocking.”

With an A-List cast, was there time for director John Benjamin Hickey to rehearse? “We’re going to rehearse that day. It’s going to be wild and wooly. We did another benefit reading of the script for Network and we did that in one day.” Ruffalo played the iconic Howard Beale, the role that won Peter Finch a posthumous Oscar. “When I said, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore,’ the audience was up on their feet screaming along with me.”

The effort to save the “last piece of Romanesque architecture in New York City” gets Ruffalo mad as hell during our conversation. “It has been a landmark for progressive and humanitarian causes. From the Civil Right movement to the end of nuclear weapons to gay marriage. It has cultural significance for people of all ages. We’ve raised over $3 million dollars. But they want to tear it down and build a 20 story piece of shit!”

It’s a big goal. They need $37 million dollars to buy it from the church. Ruffalo says developers all over the city are watching the project carefully, underscoring the need to save it.

So he won’t say what role he has Monday, but if he’d been age appropriate in 1976, which role would he want? With a laugh he admits “I would probably play Bernstein.”

Let’s see if he got the part 49 years later.

Learn more at guildhall.org