Product Description

The director of "The Usual Suspects" Bryan Singer's debut film. To all outward appearances, Brewster is an idyllic little town, until a mysterious, clean cut stranger named Pritcher arrives. Through a local public access program, he poses the question, "What's wrong with Brewster?" And as Pritcher probes callers, his question uncovers long simmering skeletons in the town closet which eventually explode into violence and tragedy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #192683 in DVD
• Released on: 1999-08-31
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 86 minutes

Amazon.com
"What's wrong with Brewster?" asks the smiling devil-behind-blue-eyes Whiley Pritcher (Ron Marquette), a well-mannered, clean-cut drifter who has his own public access talk show. Brewster is a rural community with a secret under its bland surface of rural small town normalcy (a less insidious but more enigmatic reflection of Blue Velvet), and Whiley becomes an instant celebrity as he stirs it up with gossip and name-calling. But that's not his goal--or at least it doesn't appear to be. But then Whiley is an enigma in every sense of the word, a walking stream of aphorisms masking something creepy under his false front. The first film by the director Brian Singer and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie shared the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance but received little attention until their second collaboration, The Usual Suspects, became a smash a few years later. While it's not as accomplished or clever as that hit, it shares the mysterious sense of purpose and eerie undercurrent of unease. Ron Marquette plays Whiley with pinched smugness, empty smiles, and calculated utterances, and Singer and McQuarrie leave his motivations and identity a complete mystery. That mystery makes Public Access both maddening and memorable. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Needs better treatment
The film deserves a better DVD package; this one offers a somewhat dark transfer and no extras at all and comes at a high price for such a no frills disc.

Quirky predecessor to "The Usual Suspects"
This is the first feature-length film the writer/director/music team who brought us the quirky and enjoyable "Usual Suspects." The opening shot of this film suggests the hero's (?) agenda is tied to paving the way for an electronics manufacturer. A stranger enters a seemingly small and reasonably happy town. He has a fair pocketfull of money and proceeds to buy time on the public access channel and produce his own show. He asks "What is wrong with Brewster?" Soon he is getting calls from the citizenry with minor complaints. Of course things begin to escelate and the complaints become larger and more pointed. Soon, the once contented town is not so content. Though it appears the stranger has a job to perform, certain of his actions make the viewer ask just what type of person is he and how does he feel about what he is doing. The director, Bryan Singer, pretty much leaves the viewer hanging at the end as he did in The Usual Suspects. You just aren't quite certain what has happened and you'll end up with too many points unanswered. Though not quite as much fun as its successor, it's still quite an impressive first outing. It is also rumoured that the lead, Ron Marquette suffered an emotional disorder that caused him an extreme amount of discomfort in viewing himself on the screen. He subsequently committed suicide after seeing himself in this film. (Boy did HE pick the wrong profession)