“If you think you can do it, you can do it; Anything is possible if you think it is.”

This advice serves as both a thesis statement for Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man and a last bit of desperate advice from a stage director trying to keep Jeff Goldlum from destroying said production in a quirky film called Pittsburgh (playing on Starz this month and out on DVD next month).

The film is of that confusing genre labeled “mockumentary” to which I never know how to respond. Unlike a true documentary, like Roger and Me, where you know that the crazy characters and situations you encounter are really crazy, and movies like Best in Show, which are so over the top that you know none of it is real, Pittsburgh combines fact and fiction in a way that left me feeling confused as to what it’s intended message really is and how I’m supposed to identify with the characters.

The premise is that Jeff Goldblum (playing himself) has fallen in love with a Canadian stage actress half his age, Catherine Wreford (playing herself). Against his manager’s strong advice, they decide to audition for Harold Hill and Marian the Librarian in the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera’s production of The Music Man in order to secure Catherine’s work visa. Along for the ride come Ed Begley, Jr. (playing himself) and Illeana Douglas (you get the picture).

The piece, for me, ultimately becomes an examination of how the Hollywood set tends to view live theatre with a sort of “wicked stepsister” mentality. There is a theme throughout of Mr. Goldblum’s manager leaving him unanswered messages regarding a four million dollar science fiction film deal that is going to fall through if he doesn’t wise up and pull himself out of this “silly and trivial” regional theatre project. In another section, Mr. Goldblum falls to a secondary slot on Late Night with Conan O’Brien because he only has this musical to promote and not a big movie.

His redemption comes when Goldblum realizes that he really doesn’t have the chops to pull off playing Harold Hill. Of course this doesn’t stop him from performing the role anyway…
In the beginning of the film he is somewhat aghast that he even has to audition for the role, and instead is waiting for them to start “kissing his ass.” By the final week of rehearsals, he is reduced to blubbering (in a very Jeff Goldblumian way) in a back alley about “there’s so much to think about and so much to remember and to know and new steps to do and blocking to do and props…” Golblum is not afraid to show that he doesn’t have a clue about musical theatre performing, as he keeps trying to instill his trademark quirky gesturing, and shrugging, and mugging, and faux naturalistic line delivery into the larger-than-life character of Hill. Meanwhile all around him are (seemingly) true theatre professionals trying their best to keep him from destroying the show. I gotta give him credit for his candor in that respect.

The scary thing, is that the part about him playing Harold Hill at the Pittsburg Civic Light Opera is on the “fact” side of the tally board rather than the “fiction.” side. He actually did the show in 2004. And the scarier thing is that film ends with him contemplating moving on to tackle another giant musical on Broadway (which, to my knowledge, never came to fruition). If you like the mockumentary genre, and are a Jeff Goldblum fan, I’d say this film might be worth a visit. His onstage performance is never so bad that I wanted to stop watching, but, there are much better real documentaries about the theatre (Moon Over Broadway, Show Business: The Road to Broadway) on which to spend your time.

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