Several years ago, the filmmaker Austin Stark heard a story about a wealthy man in need of a liver transplant who bribed a hospital in the Northeast for an organ. “I couldn’t believe something like that could happen,” he said recently.
Not long after, Crystal City Entertainment told Mr. Stark they had optioned “The God Committee,” a 2006 play by Mark St. Germain, which it wanted him to adapt and direct. The play’s subject, coincidentally, was the moral, ethical, and emotional issues surrounding decisions about organ transplantation. “That was my jumping-off point. That news story just came rushing back to me, and I knew I had to do it.”
“The God Committee,” which Mr. Stark wrote, directed, and co-produced, will open tomorrow, theatrically and on demand, two weeks after its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Its opening scene sets the stage: After a young man riding a bicycle is hit by a car, we see him in a hospital on life support, where a doctor discovers from the victim’s driver’s license that he has agreed to be an organ donor. It is 2014.
At a New York City hospital, two heart surgeons, Andre Boxer (Kelsey Grammer) and Jordan Taylor (Julia Stiles), are among six members of a transplant committee that must decide which of three patients most deserves the life-saving heart we know is en route from Buffalo by helicopter.
While Mr. St. Germain’s play took place almost entirely in the hospital’s board room, Mr. Stark dramatically expanded it to include a story line set in the present day, when the consequences of the committee’s decision seven years before will ramify in unexpected ways.
In addition to Mr. Grammer and Ms. Stiles, who are lovers on the verge of a breakup as well as colleagues, other committee members include Janeane Garofalo as the chairwoman and Colman Domingo as a lawyer and priest. Dan Hedaya plays a wealthy patron of the hospital who wants the heart for his son, a drug addict supposedly in recovery.
The film moves between past and present, adding complexity with its moral dilemmas, and suspense in a race against time -- the recipient must be chosen and prepped for surgery before the heart arrives.
The Tribeca festival screening was outdoors, and “blazing hot,” according to Mr. Stark. The film was originally set to premiere at the festival in 2020, but the pandemic intervened. “So we were waiting a year, and it’s just really special, because this is a New York film, I was born and raised in New York, we shot in New York, and one of my first films premiered at Tribeca.”
Mr. Stark, whose previous feature, “The Runner,” was a political drama set in the aftermath of the BP oil spill in Louisiana, has a long connection to the South Fork. His family had a house in Westhampton when he was growing up, and he now has a residence in Bridgehampton. Moreover, his first film, a short titled “Wrong Number,” premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival in 2002.
Mr. Stark has noted that the worldwide organ shortage continues to impact families “from all walks of life. One of the main reasons I chose to make ‘The God Committee’ was to shed light on how serious this issue is. I hope my film will motivate more people to donate organs and save lives.”
