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Why would you boycott a film version of your favorite Michael Chabon book when you've been waiting for 20 years to see the love triangle between Art Bechstein, Arthur Lecomte, and Phlox Lombardi played out on the Big Screen?

Because, if you spend your precious time--not to mentioned your hard-earned $$--sitting through this so-called adaptation, you'll never actually get to see what you've been hoping to see.

All thanks to Rawson Marshall Thurber, better known as the writer/director of the Ben Stiller comedy, DODGEBALL!

It seems that Mr. Thurber felt it necesssary to CHANGE 85% of Michael Chabon's story--completely CUTTING the character of gay Arthur (the sole catalyst for EVERYTHING and EVERYONE Art meets during the last summer of his youth), reducing glamor girl Phlox to Art's "sometimes girlfriend," and making Cleveland his bisexual lover, along with Jane--who's barely even in the book!

Mr. Thurber has made claims that he first read the novel back in 1995 and "fell in love with it." (What took him so long to find it, I don't know... It was released in 1988.) He's also said he knew he HAD to be the one to make it into a movie. But the question long-time fans are asking is: "If RMT liked MOP so much, why CHANGE any of it?"

Among his reasons, Thurber states that MOP the novel is a four-pointed "love rhombus" which doesn't work for film. A triangle is much stronger, cinematically. Didn't he realize he ALREADY had a triangle in MOP with Art, Arthur, and Plox? There was no need to create one between Art, Cleveland, and Jane.

Which brings me to my next point: Rawson Marshall Thurber has said that in the novel, Art develops an attraction to Cleveland--which gave him the idea to make Cleveland bisexual. Which is totally ludicrous!

Yes, Art is attracted to Cleveland. He even loves him. But in no way is it SEXUAL! In fact, on p. 204 of the paperback, Art (via Chabon) says of his relationship with the biker: "The speed and the roar and the nothing that isolated us were more exciting, more true and intimate, than anything I ever felt that summer with either Phlox or Arthur; there was no shadow of sex to mar or deepen it. There were only laughing fear and my hands, like so, on his hips. We were FRIENDS." (caps mine)

Perhaps Rawson Marshall Thurber read a different version of MOP than the rest of us fans?

As a gay man, I know what it's like to have a platonic friendship with another man. As a straight man, I have a feeling Rawson Marshall Thurber does NOT--and therefore should never have been allowed to get his hands on this material.

The final question among Boycotters is: How could Michael Chabon allow ANY of this to happen to the story that first put him on the literary map? Only Michael Chabon knows the answer to this question.

--Frank Anthony Polito, aka "franQ"
MOP Film Boycott moderator and author of BAND FAGS! (Kensington Books, June 2008)

!!NEWS FLASH!!

Check out this video of MOP writer/director RMT explaining how he "connected with the feeling" of the novel... He should be an actor, he's almost believable!