A casting company involved in making The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is holding an open casting call for Friday, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

Nancy Mosser Casting wants people ages 6 to 75, and specifically is looking for “college-age students for a punk club scene and patrons for an upscale restaurant and hotel scene,” the paper said. People should dress in 1980s clothing and should reference munkeysocks.tripod.com for ’80s trends.

The film will shoot from Sept. 5 to Oct. 20 in Pittsburgh.

Jon Foster has been cast as Art Bechstein, the lead role in the film adaptation of Mysteries of Pittsburgh.

Foster (The Door in the Floor) will star along side Peter Sarsgaard, Sienna Miller and Mena Suvari, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Friday. The movie, directed by Rawson Thurber (Dodgeball) is set start filming in Pittsburgh after Labor Day.

Previously, Max Minghella (Art School Confidential) had been linked to Foster’s role, but had to turn the part down because filming conflicted with his college studies.

The film’s casting agency, Belajac Casting, is looking for “a very overweight actress, 20 to 25 years old, and a man in his 20s or 30s with a Mohawk haircut,” the paper reported.

Remember how two weeks ago a Pittsburgh city councilman said the director of the Pittsburgh Film Office didn’t want Mysteries of Pittsburgh? Well now an independent producer on work on the film is speaking out, and the city film chief, Dawn Keezer, is responding.

In an interview with The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, producer Todd Eckert said that when he moved to Pittsburgh five years ago, he was surprised when Keezer complained about Pittsburgh.

“She maligned Pittsburgh,” Mr. Eckert said. “She told me it was a backward, hick town. If she’s not successful in getting something, she falls back on blaming the city, saying it is a backward, cronyistic place.”

Keezer denies the accusation.

“Those who know me know the word ‘hick’ is not in my vernacular,” she said.

“Who is Todd Eckert?” she asked. “Did you ask him what he’s done? He’ll tell you he’s made a movie in Germany. But who is he?”

Eckert shrugged off her criticism. “She can get nasty rather quickly,” he said. “She is very high school. If you criticize her, she immediately gets personal.”

A Pittsburgh city councilman is calling for the city to fire its top film official for, among other things, allegedly trying to talk producers on The Mysteries of Pittsburgh out of filming in the city, The Pittsburgh Business Times reported Tuesday.

Doug Shields, a member of the city council, wrote to the board chairman of the Pittsburgh Film Office, calling for the organization’s board to fire its executive director, Dawn Keezer, and for all the board members to resign. The film office had given the OK to Keezer working out of Los Angeles instead of Pittsburgh, which Shields said was an outrage.

“I’m not mincing words on this,” said Shields. “I’m not putting up with public dollars being shipped out to California so she can live the good life.”

Shields also accused Keezer of trying to convince film producers for two films, including the Michael Chabon novel adaptation, out of filming in the city.

Producers on The Mysteries of Pittsburgh had considered filming somewhere else, but ultimately decided to stay in Pittsburgh.

Contrary to previous reports, Max Minghella will not star as the lead in the screen adaptation of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Hollywood Reporter reported Thursday.

Sources told Hollywood Reporter that the Art School Confidential star will not be able to star in the film because the production dates conflict with his fall semester schedule at Columbia University.

Sienna Miller is in final negotiations and Peter Sarsgaard is in talks to star in the film.

Note: An earlier version of this story, based on another version of the Hollywood Reporter article, stated that Ayelet Waldman, Michael Chabon’s wife, had been tapped as a producer for the film. This was an error, however. She did, according to Chabon, try about ten years ago to find financing with two producer freinds for a script written by Jeff Blitz (Spellbound). However, as Chabon notes, “This production has nothing to do with that one.”

This site regrets the error.