Actor Joaquin Phoenix and filmmaker Gus Van Sant have reunited after 23 years for Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot. Based on quadriplegic cartoonist John Callahan’s memoir of the same name, Van Sant’s movie will be premiered at Sundance Film Festival on January 18. Phoenix and Sant last worked together in the media satire To Die For (1995).
Produced by Iconoclast and Anonymous Content and distributed by Amazon Studios, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot also stars Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara and Jack Black. The movie will be released on May 11.
A car accident leaves 21-year-old Callahan paralysed. He begins to doodle and draw as a means of coping. “Something really profound just happened to me, man,” Callahan (Phoenix) says in the teaser.
Callahan’s drawings appeared in New Yorker, Penthouse and Playboy. Often, his cartoons dealt in an irreverent manner with taboo subjects (people with disabilities and diseases, for instance). He died in 2010 at the age of 59.