The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

For those who find it difficult to appreciate the adaptation format of film making from a famous novel, THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH as now released on DVD should help explain the naysayers' opinions. In a very valuable session of conversations among Michael Chabon and Rawson Marshall Thurber (screenwriter and director) and the producer and cast, the transition of this complex novel into a very altered story is comfortably explained and the person most happy with the result seems to be the originator - Michael Chabon!

That being said this film stands well on its own terms. June and July in hot Pittsburgh generate mysteries among a variety of people, especially the young college graduate Art Bechstein (Jon Foster) who while working in a bookstore wastes time with a fling with the supervisor Phlox (Mena Suvari) with disinterested post grad classes dealing with becoming a broker and having monthly dinners with his mobster father Joe Bechstein (Nick Nolte), until he encounters an odd couple: bisexual biker and thief Cleveland (Peter Sarsgaard) and his female consort, the violinist Jane Bellwether (Sienna Miller). The bizarre interactions among these characters drive Art to make many decisions and discoveries - including his falling in love with both Cleveland and Jane. The summer winds down with Art finally discovering his own identity despite the clouds of mystery that have surrounded his life. It is a piece of life as lived by disparate characters whose direction in life seems at odds with the natural flow of finding happiness and success. But then the question is asked - what is happiness and what is success if not survival?

For this viewer the explanation by the makers of this film was interesting enough to encourage a repeat watching of the movie. A good movie not a great movie, but it still tastes strongly of Michael Chabon's genius. It deserves more attention than the critics have given it.....Grady Harp

A friend of mine gave me this movie. A friend of mine is now in a hospital were a team of doctors are trying to surgically remove a DVD casing from his ***.

I got quit excited by the prospects of an other Michael Chabon movie. After all his novels have brought me much entertainment and previous screenplay adaptations were great, but boy, was I wrong.

First off the people that did the casting must have been asleep whilst doing so. I imagine the castings went something like this. "Tell me, do you like fish?" "Yes I enjoy fish very much." "Wonder full, you're hired. Have some money."

Than there is the script. I have read Chabon, who I hope went blind before he could see this piece of dong, and it has absolutely nothing to do with his novel. I'm not quit sure why it annoyed me like it did, but it might have something to do with the fact that listening to a speech impaired 90 year old drunk duck hunter with a right cranial lobe dysfunction would have been a treat in comparison to the one-liners these 2nd degree model massacre kids spat out.

This is an actual line from the movie; "If you tell me something that you've never said out loud to anyone before, than this moment becomes unique!" Unique? Does it? Does it really? Off course not you plank. Please pass me the Imodium. I'll have a whole ****ing strip.

The directing is... well. I've got nothing. Maybe Rawson Marshall Thurber just got word his grandmother exploded or something. Stick to directing comedies. No stick to directing commercials.

This movie is so horrible it left me banging my head against a wall so hard it brought me back to the stone age. I give it 2 stars because I don't wanna be the guy that watched a 1 star movie.

(2008) The Mysteries of Pittsburgh DRAMA

Co-written with the author Michael Chabon, and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber with Art Bechstein (Jon Foster) somewhat narrating his life beginning with having dinner with his gangster father, (Nick Nolte). Attempting to impress his father by getting through his studies, his personal life actually begins as soon as he is invited to a party and he becomes drawn to an inspired violinist, named Jane (Sienna Miller). Who she then draws Art into her personal life when she introduces him to her boyfriend, Cleveland (Peter Sarsgaard). It is during then Art experiences life and relationships. I did not think it was much of a movie.

I am quite a fan of novelist/screenwriter Michael Chabon. His novel "Wonder Boys" became a fantastic movie by Curtis Hanson. His masterful novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" won the Pulitzer Prize a few years back, and he had a hand in the script of "Spider Man 2", arguably the greatest comic book movie of all time.

Director Rawson Marshall Thurber has also directed wonderful comedic pieces, such as the gut-busting "Dodgeball" and the genius short film series "Terry Tate: Office Linebacker". And with a cast including Peter Saarsgard, Sienna Miller, Nick Nolte and Mena Suvari, this seems like a no-brainer.

It is. Literally.

Jon Foster stars as Art Bechstein, the son of a mobster (Nolte) who recently graduated with a degree in Economics. Jon is in a state of arrested development: he works a minimum wage job at Book Barn, has a vapid relationship with his girlfriend/boss, Phlox (Suvari), which amounts to little more than copious amounts of sex, with no plans other than to chip away at a career for which he has zero passion.

One night at a party, an ex-roommate introduces Jon to Jane (Miller), a beautiful, smart violinist. Later that night they go out for pie, and she asks Jon a question that begins to shake him from his catatonic state of existence, "I want you to tell me something that you have never told a single soul. If you do, it will make this night indelible." Jon then tells her a reoccurring dream of his in which he wanders about town looking at the faces of strangers passing him by, yet none of them look him in the eye. "I imagine it must be what death feels like," he says.

The next day Jane's wild boyfriend Cleveland (Saarsgard) kidnaps Jon from work and takes him out to a hulking abandoned steel mill, and soon Jon, Cleveland and Jane are spending every waking moment together going to punk rock concerts, doing drugs and drinking lots of alcohol. This doesn't sit well with Phlox, who pushes Jon for a more personal relationship, namely letting her meet his new friends and his father. The film then attempts to take us on Jon's journey as he shakes off the shackles imposed on him by his father, Phlox and his dead-end job as he finds freedom and expression through his relationships with Cleveland and Jane.

There is a problem having us follow Jon throughout the film: he's completely uninteresting. He has no ambitions, passions or goals. He walks through life like the invisible wraith he described to Jane the night they met. At the outset this isn't a problem. But he never gets any more interesting. He's a completely passive character. He simply follows along the bohemian Cleveland and Jane, but he never once gives us any inkling as to what he cares about or wants to to do with himself.

Consequently, the film and its supporting characters have nowhere to go and little to do other than party, have sex and get in arguments. In other words, much ado about nothing. What we have here is the shallow skin of a good movie without anything on the inside. Sweeping cinematography, ponderous voice-over with characters staring off into the distance, lots of sex scenes both straight and gay, big arguments, more angry sex, a chase scene and a tragic death... but it doesn't seem to matter. Ironically, at one point Jane, confused at a number of Jon's aimless actions, asks him, "What's going on, Jon? What is this all about?" Yes, Jon, do tell. We in the audience are dying to know, too.

The title "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" must refer to the characters themselves, because that's what they are. They are all facades, one-dimensional stand-ins for actual people. The film never lets us in. We never know what makes any of them tick. We see them do lots of things, but we don't know why. And the absence of "why" is one of the worst things a movie can have.

This film pretty much mirrors my own experiences in Pittsburgh prior to leaving and only returning years later to bury mom. At a party, Art meets the attractive Jane, whose boyfriend, Cleveland, is both friendly and strange. These two mess with Art's mental state. Although Jane doesn't mean to, but Cleveland is a twisted manipulator. The first little "joke" Cleveland plays on Art should have sent Art running as far from Cleveland as he could get. But Art is pathological pushover.

As with my own complications, the fractured relationship with the gangster father. Art's possessive girlfriend. Jane's ambivalence. Cleveland's weird manipulation and emotional, if not attempting a sexual menage a trois. Art, as I did, cannot see how Cleveland is using him to get out of a bad criminal situation - then the climactic ending arriving out of thin air involving Art as the summer ends as mine did on a very small world.