Movie by Mt. Lebanon native to be shown at the Three Rivers Film Festval
Courtesy of Brian Silverman
Annie O’Donnell, Emma Basques and Brian Silverman star in “Two Lives in Pittsburgh.”
Courtesy of Brian Silverman
Annie O’Donnell and Emma Basques in “Two Lives in Pittsburgh.”
Courtesy of Brian Silverman
Brian Silverman, left, and Emma Basques in “Two Lives in Pittsburgh.”
Courtesy of Brian Silverman
Brian Silverman in “Two Lives in Pittsburgh,” which he also directed.
Courtesy of Brian Sllverman
Emma Basques in “Two Lives in Pittsburgh.”
There are plenty of actors who waited tables before they got their big break, including Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm and Jennifer Aniston.
The problem for Mt. Lebanon native Brian Silverman is that he wasn’t good at it.
“I was a bad waiter,” Silverman remarked, recalling his days when he worked at a long-gone Chi-Chi’s restaurant on Route 19.
Instead, the 55-year-old Silverman works as a special education teacher at a Los Angeles school, and has been building an acting career through appearances on television series like “NCIS: Los Angeles,” “Cold Case,” and “S.W.A.T.,” as well as West Coast stage work in productions of classics like “The Crucible” and “King Lear,” not to mention in independent films.
He made his first attempt at directing a feature film in June 2021, when he returned to the area. Over a three-week span, he produced “Two Lives in Pittsburgh” with several local crew members and actors from the region.
“From the start of working on it, I knew it was a Pittsburgh story,” Silverman said by phone during a break in his teaching day. “And it’s such a fantastic opportunity to be able to make a film that I wanted to make. … To me, there was no doubt that it had to be in Pittsburgh.”
“Two Lives in Pittsburgh” has already been shown at film festivals in Detroit, Colorado Springs, Colo., and Buffalo, N.Y. It will be making its regional debut during the Three Rivers Film Festival at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 9 and 10 at the Harris Theater in downtown Pittsburgh.
Executive produced by Stephen Chbosky, whose credits include the Pittsburgh-made “Perks of Being a Wallflower,” “Two Lives in Pittsburgh” is the story of a blue collar dad who is confronting an ill parent and a child with gender-identity issues. He points to movies like “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Little Miss Sunshine” as inspirations.
“I knew there was a role I wanted to do and a story I wanted to tell,” Silverman said. “And this is what came out of it.”
In a director’s statement, Silverman puts it this way: “This film doesn’t try to answer the societal questions and culture war issues regarding gender identity. Rather, this film offers an exploration of a more intimate question: How do imperfect people stumble through it when it’s part of their own lives?”
Silverman came to acting and directing in a roundabout way.
A 1986 graduate of Mt. Lebanon High School, he studied education at Clark University in Massachusetts. He traveled to Haiti and Guatemala as a member of the Peace Corps then received a degree in public policy from Harvard, where now-U.S. Sen. John Fetterman was a classmate.
Silverman has a couple of additional ideas up his sleeve for movies, including a movie like “Boyhood.” the 2014 drama that follows a boy as he grows, though this movie would center on the end of life. According to Silverman, “There’s something about older actors working, because often they don’t get to work.”
In the meantime, Silverman is enjoying the prospect of “Two Lives in Pittsburgh” being shown in the community where it was made.
“It’s so fulfilling to be able to come back to Pittsburgh and be able to show it,” he said. “It’s the kind of homecoming I want to be able to experience.”
Additional information on the Three Rivers Film Festival can be found at filmpittsburgh.org.