carolyn kellogg

Shortly after beginning my graduate career at Pitt, the place where Michael Chabon was an English major undergrad, I was an extra in the film version of his book Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I was in the crowd in the punk club scene.

If you’ve read Mysteries of Pittsburgh and have a photographic memory, you’ll be saying, Erm, what punk club scene? And you’d be right. There isn’t one in the book, but there is one in the nipped and tucked screen version from Rawson Marshall Thurber. The man behind Dodgeball.

The book, set in Pittsburgh, is about recent college-grad Art who’s forestalling getting on with his life. He becomes friends with the elegant, Gatsby-like Arthur; begins dating Phlox, a quirky thrift store gal with a romantic streak; and hangs out with wealthy, preppy Jane and her Brando-ish, Id-man Cleveland. Phlox and Arthur are the two emotional poles in Art’s life, and he can’t float between them forever. Arthur is so important to the story that his excision from the film version makes me awfully skeptical.

But I’m also curious, curious, curious, and the film is finally playing now at Sundance. So I have gathered these early reviews of the movie The Mysteries of Pittsburgh from the people who got passes, waited in line (mostly bearded, carrying blackberries, according to MTV movies) and stayed for the duration.

IndieWIRE: beautiful, lacking narrative heft.
Hollywood Reporter: “reverential and smart.”
MTV: Rawson Marshall Thurber’s (do you really need all three names, dude?) direction is ham fisted.
LA Times blog The Envelope: “rooted” performances make this, in one executive’s words, “a real director’s movie.”
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Pittsburgh looks stunning.”
After Elton: Quite a lot of the queer removed … as for the mystery, it’s a snoozer.
Cinematical: Dodgeball is a much better film than this one.

Nevertheless, I won’t be boycotting.