Rawson Marshall Thurber, the director behind the up-coming screen adaptation of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, defended changes he made in the story in a new interview with The Advocate.

“My real goal was to make a film that felt like the novel did to me, and I think I’ve done that,” he said.

Thurber took significant liberties with the book, eliminating the character of Arthur, making Cleveland bisexual and romantically linked to the main character, Art, and cutting the role of Phlox to that of a minor character. Online, many fans of the book have bashed the changes, and anti-Mysteries MySpace pages are easy to find. But Thurber says he made the changes with Michael Chabon’s blessing.

“I knew what I wanted to do, and I told him, ‘I’ve got a pretty radical take on it, and if you’re at all interested, let me do a five-or six-page treatment. If you’re interested in that, let’s go do it, and if you’re not, please say so, and I’m a big fan and I can’t wait to read the next thing,'” Thurber said. “I wrote it up and sent if off, and I never thought he would say yes, actually, but then he read it and he sent me an e-mail back saying, ‘It’s great — let’s do it.'”

For more, check out the interview. Mysteries of Pittsburgh premiers at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 20.

“The Mysteries of Pittsburgh” film adaptation may screen at the Sundance Film Festival in January, actor Peter Sarsgaard told Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week.

“It’s the kind of movie that needs to go to a festival” to get exposure and a distribution backer, he said.

Sarsgaard said he hadn’t watched the final film yet. “I don’t like watching movies that I’m in without an audience,” he said. “They all seem bad if you watch them by yourself.”

The producer behind the film adaptation of Kavalier & Clay has told Michael Chabon that the movie “will all come back together again,” the author said Tuesday.

During an online chat hosted by The Washington Post, Chabon said the producers had green lighted the movie last summer, with Tobey Maguire and Natalie Portman set to star and Stephen Daldry set to direct.

“The production designer had taken his kids out of school in LA and was ready to move to London where the principal interiors were going to be shot,” Chabon said. “And then last fall it all fell apart. I’m not entirely sure why; I’m not privy to the inside information, but my sense is that the studio (Paramount) underwent one of those financial panics that studios are regularly prey to, and many plugs were pulled–including K&C’s.”

“Oh, well, that’s showbiz,” he added.

Nevertheless, Chabon said producer Scott Rudin “assures me that there is no reason to despair and that it will all come back together again.”

“I have no reason at all not to believe him,” he said.

During the chat, Chabon also hinted at what his next project might be.

“I would like to get a new novel going,” he said. “I would like it to be set in the present day and feel right now the urge to do something more mainstream than my recent work has been.”

He also said no new graphic novels starring the Escapist were lined up.

The film adaptation of Ayelet Waldman’s “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits” has gained a co-financier, Hollywood Reporter said Tuesday.

British-based Capitol Films will co-finance and take on worldwide sales duties for the Jennifer Lopez vehicle. Capitol headed to Cannes to find buyers for the picture.

Peter Naish, Capitol Films’ co-managing director, described Don Roos’ script as “the kind of feisty yet sexy role that could have been made for Jennifer.”

Uh oh. Looks like the film adaptation of Mysteries of Pittsburgh may, well, not be all that good, according to a review by Mark Cardwell posted at film ick.

“Basically, this script may well end up as a decent enough movie,” Cardwell writes. “At this point, with my ire up, I’m having problems telling. But that movie will only really take Chabon’s novel as a point of departure. As an exercise in adaptation, it strikes me as similarly irritating, baffling, as adapting The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by slashing out all the comic book stuff, and choosing to make it a war movie set in the Antarctic, or choosing to adapt Summerland by removing all the mythological references and making it into a movie about baseball.”

Head over to film ick for the rest of the review.