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.

It’s official! The Sundance Film Festival announced its 2008 lineup. And the film adaptation of Mysteries of Pittsburgh made the list. The festival is Jan. 17-27.

“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.”

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.

Sienna Miller apologized Friday for making disparaging comments about Pittsburgh in a Rolling Stone interview.

“Can you believe this is my life?” Miller says in the interview. “Will you pity me when you’re back in your funky New York apartment and I’m still in Pittsburgh? I need to get more glamorous films.”

In a statement issued by her publicist, Miller said her comments were taken out of context and that she was referring to how she had not had a chance fully explore the city due to the mostly night shooting schedule.

“What I have seen of it is beautiful. I came once before to visit The Andy Warhol Museum whilst researching a film and found both the city and its inhabitants warm and gracious,” she said.

Miller’s father, who lives about 85 miles north of Pittsburgh in Meadville, planned to show her around this weekend, she said.