The Next Big Thing also features a NYC subway pickpocket, only this time there aren't any FBI agents or Cold War maguffins to be found.  Instead, we meet a resourceful grifter named Deech Scumble (Jamie Harris, Dinner Rush) who is conning fares by telling people he's collecting money to buy sandwiches for the homeless.  When he drops his Styrofoam cooler, which is supposed to be full of tuna, bologna and PB&J, the riders are shocked to see their wallets and other valuable personal effects spilling out onto the floor of the train.

Meanwhile, one of Scumble's marks, a man named Gus Bishop (Whit Stillman regular Chris Eigeman), hustles to make a meeting with an influential art gallery owner (Farley Granger).  Gus is a struggling artist who has been rejected by every other Manhattan gallery, and this attempt to have his work exhibited elicits the same results.  To make matters worse, Gus returns home to find his apartment has been burgled.  Then his girlfriend (Marin Hinkle) dumps him because the rest of her friends are married and buying homes in the Hamptons.

Though he doesn't know it, something exciting is about to happen to Gus's career.  When Scumble ransacked his apartment, he took one of Gus's paintings.  And when Scumble can't come up with rent money, he gives the painting to his landlord and makes up a heartbreaking story about the troubled artist.  Not only does the landlord bite, he sells it to a dealer, who talks it up to an influential collector, who in turn spends $10,000 on the piece.  Each time the painting changes hands, the fictional legend of the artist (Geoffrey Buonardi, to match Gus's initials in the bottom right corner) grows.

Before you know it, Geoffrey Buonardi becomes the toast of the New York art world, leading Scumble to contact Gus, explain the situation, and strike up a unique business arrangement in which he'll become the artist's manager so long as he keeps pumping out  paintings and stays completely anonymous (this is funny because Scumble knows nothing about art and thinks Picasso cut his ear off).  In a matter of days, Gus's paintings are fetching millions of dollars.

There are two women after the non-existent Geoffrey Buonardi, too – desperate art groupie Florence Rubin (Janet Zarish) and critic Kate Crowley (Connie Britton), who, along with every other art snob in the film, gushes over the Gus/Geoffrey pieces, saying ridiculous things like "He's way past all the post-modern rhetoric."  Even though nobody knows who this artist is, he lands in the spotlight of the important biennial show at the Whitley Museum (filling in for New York's Whitney).

If you haven't figured it out already, Thing is a satire of the art community.  Gus can't get anyone to look at his paintings because he's not oppressed or strung out - he's just a middle-class white guy from New Brunswick, New Jersey.  Similar situations have been explored recently in John Waters' much better Pecker, and there was even an interesting subplot in last season's Dark Angel.  Sadly, the send-up here is relatively weak.  I think the romantic comedy angle might have been better if it were downplayed in favor of more biting satire.  Then again, I'm not sure that would have done enough to fill out Thing's skeletal concept.

Thing was directed by P.J. Posner (executive producer of upcoming indie darling Secretary), who co-wrote and co-produced the film with his brother Joel.  Their film is kept afloat by an admirable performance from the very likeable Eigeman, who is probably best known to the masses as a teacher on Malcolm in the Middle.  Other roles are almost downright annoying, like Zarish's Florence Rubin and  a private eye (played by Ed's Mike Starr) in a very unnecessary subplot who gets wise to Scumble and Gus.

1:27 –

for language and some sexuality/nudity