A longtime green advocate, things got personal for Mark Ruffalo when hydraulic fracturing or “hydrofracturing” began to disrupt his hometown in upstate New York’s Sullivan County. Ruffalo educated himself on the complex practice and has been using his fame to call attention to this destructive method of natural gas extraction. The A-list activist, who recently founded Water Defense, even landed himself on a U.S. terror watch list for organizing screenings of a documentary about natural gas drilling.
Ruffalo, who recently dialogued with Deepak Chopra, specifically seeks to fight gas companies’ positive spin about the destructive practice. Last November, he hosted a fracking awareness forum at the University of Albany, where he challenged their claim that the extraction method would bring much-needed work to low-income communities. “You don’t put everyone else in jeopardy just because its going to bring jobs,” he said on the local news, “you don’t bring your daughter to the red light district because you’re having hard times.”

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Since then, he’s decided to mix it up and try anything. Anything being one of the biggest tentpoles of next year, Joss Whedon‘s “The Avengers” where he’ll play Bruce Banner and The Hulk alongside the all-star cast of Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson and many more.

But will he actually get to act alongside this cast or will he be in CGI-room far far away? That wouldn’t be what the actor would have signed up for and he told us in a recent interview that he’ll be alongside his cast the entire time. “No, no, no, I’ll be doing all the Bruce Banner stuff with the other actors. And when I turn into the Hulk, I’ll be doing all of that on set, in my suit. Not my Hulk suit but my little [mo-cap] reflector suit. And I’ll do all of that and then they’ll take that and do the motion capture.”

So what about those persisting rumors that The Hulk will be one of the antagonists in “The Avengers.” “I can’t tell you that man! Are you kidding me?” he said, looking around the room for imaginary snipers and cameras. “This whole place would turn into a SWAT team attack!” So note to all journos, secrecy on the super-hero team-up film will likely stay all locked up.

But there was one film project that Ruffalo was willing to confirm. We’d recently heard rumors about his participation in the Scott Rudin-produced erotic drama “Red Light Winter, a play by Adam Rapp (a writer for “The L Word” and “In Treatment”) about two thirty-something New Yorkers who go to Amsterdam to rekindle their friendship and get away from the serious dramas in their lives (break-ups and illnesses), but a run-in with a Red Light district prostitute, alters their lives forever. So when we posed the question to the actor, he said the project was definitely something he was eyeing.

“Yes. I want to do it,” he said. “They’re still putting that movie together, it’s based on a play, I think it was nominated for a Tony a couple of years ago, on Broadway. And it’s the story of a writer and his best friend, and a kind of crazy love triangle they get into.”

Even more rumors. We had been told that was Ruffalo was circling Academy Award-winning screenwriter Brian Helgeland‘s (”Mystic River” “L.A. Confidential”) fourth directorial effort “Sidney Grimes” opposite Sean Penn (he’s not confirmd and it’s likely just an early offer) in a crime thriller about an ex-con/former police detective just out of prison seeks who revenge on the partner who got him locked up. While the script made the Black List in 2010, Ruffalo did confirm that he was once in talks, though it sounds like the project no longer in the cards. “Unfortunately no, that [project] kind of fell apart,” was all he would allow. Damn, too bad. We’ve read that script and while it’s a bit of another re-run at Helgeland’s “Payback,” it is pretty lean and mean, and we’d love it to hit the screen in some shape or form.

And as for those rumors that Ruffalo was going to be in the reportedly star-studded cast of “Cogan’s Trade” alongside Brad Pitt? “No. Never. I wished I was!” he exclaimed. “But no.” Sometimes the rumors are just too good to be true (and for further example, half those rumored people like Sam Rockwell, Bill Murray, Zoe Saldana, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin aren’t in the film either).

Ruffalo’s directorial debut, “Sympathy For Delicious” hits theaters this Friday in limited release. More from our interview tomorrow.

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Interviews & Specials > Talk Shows & Other Interviews > The Talk – April 27 2011

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Interviews & Specials > Talk Shows & Other Interviews > Live with Regis and Kelly – April 25 2011

It’s a good thing he’s already signed on to do more acting work, because after sitting in the director’s chair, Ruffalo doesn’t want to get out of it again.

“After I was done, I was like, I’m not acting anymore. All I’m going to do now is direct,” he says enthusiastically. “This is my favorite thing in the world. When they kick someone’s ass, it’s the director’s ass usually, but you know, that’s okay. I don’t mind getting my ass kicked.”

Ruffalo’s first directing project was a personal one, given that it stars his longtime friend Christopher Thornton who also wrote the script. The two met 23 years ago in acting class. Six years later, Thornton was tragically paralyzed from the waist down from a climbing accident. You can see facts within the fiction of “Sympathy for Delicious” in which he plays a paralyzed man slash rocker, who embarks on faith healing in the hopes of walking again, which Ruffalo says that Thornton himself sought out at one time.

“He wanted to quit acting and I refused to let him,” Ruffalo says of the first months after Thornton’s injury. “He started to write and he came up with this crazy idea.”

Ten years later, both actors find themselves transformed — Thornton into a mainstream actor and Ruffalo a director

“I like working with all the different mediums and art forms — set design , musical elements, visual elements, costumes,” he explains “It’s really my own [version of] being a glutton. You either get to eat one piece of the pie or you get to devour the whole pie. And I like to eat the whole pie.”

The New Hulk

Ruffalo gave us the dirt on his new role playing The Hulk and seems to have a sense of humor about the revolving stream of Hulks over the years.

“I’m playing the great doctor Bruce Banner and I’m walking in the footsteps of a lot of great actors. We like to joke about it as our generation’s Hamlet. We’re all going to get a shot at it. Believe me, I won’t be the last one.”

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You may have heard that Mark Ruffalo visited our offices today! Well, while he was here, he revealed an interesting hobby: He and his friends like to sit around and come up with alternate porn titles for his films.

Of course, you can’t let a thing like that slide, so we asked him for some examples. Here they are!

»”Eternal Buttshine of the Spotless Grind”

»”The Last Asshole”

»”In the Butt” (Mark Ruffalo’s friends have particular tastes, evidently!)

»”13 Going on 30″ (No need to change!)

Not bad, not bad. But let’s see what ones Metro’s friends came up with:

»”Stripper Island”

»”Mate Night”

»”Where the Wild Girls Are”

»”13 Going Down on 30″

»”Eternal Sunshine of the Topless Grind”

»”Ride the Devil’s Width”

»”You Can Come on Me”

»”Ho-diac”

The verdict? We don’t want to brag, but we think our friends are funnier than Mark Ruffalo’s.

More:
• Metro’s favorite Mark Ruffalo moments
• Mark Ruffalo helps us celebrate National High Five Day!

Things Mark Ruffalo taught us about the environment: Fracking
When Mark Ruffalo visited us to guest-edit tomorrow’s Earth Day issue, we weren’t quite sure what to expect. As it turns out, he was incredibly dedicated to the task and educated on all New York’s major environmental issues. (Much more educated than many of us on the staff in fact, which was a little embarrassing!)

One issue Ruffalo stressed was the danger of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” a drilling process in which a combination of water, chemicals and sand is pumped into rock to release oil or natural gas trapped inside. The process has drawn fire from environmentalists, who warn that chemicals involved in the process can pollute drinking water.

It was a timely message, as just today one mining company suspended its “fracking” operations after an accident dumped thousands of gallons of “fracking fluid” into a local creek. As Reuters reports:

Chesapeake Energy suspended the use of a controversial natural-gas production technique in Pennsylvania on Thursday as it worked to contain a well blowout that spilled toxic fluid into a local waterway.

Chesapeake, one of the state’s biggest shale gas producers, will use a mix of plastic, ground-up tires and heavy mud to plug the well – an operation that echoes BP’s “top kill” effort to seal its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well last year.

The company said it still did not know the cause of the blowout a day and a half after it occurred.

The accident in northeastern Pennsylvania has stoked an already fierce debate in the United States over hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” — a process to release gas trapped in shale formations by blasting a mix of water, sand and chemicals into the rock.

Scary!

Like any good friend, Ruffalo was kind enough to forward us a video he thinks we should watch. Check it out:

“We have to get the script. We’ve been working on the script, which has been fun. I’ve lost 15 pounds. They don’t want me all ripped up, but they want me to be lean and mean. It’s about trying to get the psychology of somebody who knows, at any moment, they could literally tear the roof off of wherever they are and trying to bring something real to that and totally fantastic. I’ve been working with Joss Whedon on the script, with the rest of the cast, and we start rehearsals soon. Hopefully, we’ll have the mother of all comic book movies for you soon.”

Ruffalo then reveals that the film will star shooting in the first week of May. He is then asked about what it was like being the third actor to play The Hulk in the last ten years.

“Yeah, are you kidding me? I’ve got some big shoes to fill. I kind of look at it as my generation’s Hamlet. We’re all going to get a shot at it.”

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