 Jeff Goldblum puts on a different face in his mockumentary Pittsburgh, about Jeff Goldblum. (Stan Behal/Sun Media)
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Pittsburgh, Jeff Goldblum's new DVD movie about Jeff Goldblum, careens crazily between truth and fiction.
Due for release today, it is a light-hearted mock- umentary that sets him up as a Hollywood celebrity. Then it makes fun of him for starring in the lead role of a potentially mediocre, regional stage revival of The Music Man in his hometown of Pittsburgh in 2005.
The 54-year-old Goldblum's then girlfriend-fiancee -- Winnipeg dancer-actress Catherine Wreford -- co-stars in the piece as herself, and as his on-stage partner in the real-life version of The Music Man. Part of the Pittsburgh plot concerns her attempts to get a visa for the U.S., and Goldblum's efforts to make sure it happens over the objections of his manager.
Goldblum and Wreford have since split up, amicably.
"Fleeting, fleeting, fleeting," Goldblum tells Sun Media, all dewy-eyed, of love relationships. "Like a soap bubble, as if it were a dream or a movie."
Yet Goldblum says nothing but good things about Wreford, who is 32 years younger: "She is spectacular!"
Sorting out reality from fiction is part of what he calls "the mystery" of the movie, Goldblum says. Throwing it out there is part of his pleasure in doing it and what he thinks will be your fun in watching it.
"I get a big kick out of this movie, I do!" Goldblum says of his collaboration with co-directors Chris Bradley and Kyle LaBrache, who are documentary filmmakers. "And people like it."
Goldblum, an ebullient fellow with an eccentric bent, says Pittsburgh fits somewhere into the modern "homemade" moviemaking niche occupied by filmmakers such as Christopher Guest, David Lynch or even the fellows who put together The Blair Witch Project. During the seven years of "cooking this up," old-timers such as George Burns and Jack Benny, influenced him, too, with their blend of reality and fiction.
On the serious side, there is a touch of John Cassavetes' classic Opening Night, in which Gena Rowlands teeters between a breakdown and a breakthrough.
"We didn't cure cancer with this," Goldblum says of Pittsburgh, "but we hit, at least to my satisfaction, a bull's-eye, and we skinned a cat that was just a little unique, a little particular."
His creepy kitty metaphor notwithstanding, Goldblum says the most important thing in Pittsburgh is tone. He did not want it to sound pompous.
"I didn't want, first of all, to puff myself up. It would be embarrassing if were making something that was finally, 'Aren't I great? Aren't I wonderful? Remember me?' "
At the same time, he did not want to be too self-revealing, "just for a little attention," by trying too hard. "Like pulling your pants down and revealing something that we really don't want to see."
In addition to cameos by Alanis Morissette and Craig Kilborn, the movie features appearances by Goldblum's close friends Ed Begley Jr. and Illeana Douglas, with Douglas bringing her then-boyfriend Moby into the action. Unlike some of the people of Pittsburgh, who participated without knowing they were in a full-blown film, Goldblum let Moby in on the conceit of the film.
"We told him exactly what we were doing. So I said, 'Whatever is fun for you and we all can use aspects of our real autobiography, but it will finally be disguised and nobody will ever know.' "
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