It’s his birthday today.
Turns out I haven’t written that much about Brad Pitt, and this needs to be rectified. I’ve got THOUGHTS on the man, and I have from the jump when he first got my attention, in Thelma and Louise, Kalifornia and A River Runs Through It. My friends and I had impassioned discussions about his performance in A River Runs Throught It, where he easily and effortlessly plays – basically – what is the “Robert Redford role”. It’s not easy to do what Brad Pitt does. Because he makes it look easy, he has been under-estimated, the classic situation for many of our biggest movie stars. It’s a continuously frustrating battle. People are like, “Wow, he’s GOOD.” Well, yeah. He was good in Thelma and Louise, not sure what’s so shocking.
He’s just getting more and more interesting, and his performance in Once Upon a Time… is one of those things that feels inevitable, necessary, but it took a Quentin Tarantino to dream it up and make it happen.
The main thing I have written about Brad Pitt is in the 2011 piece I wrote for Capital New York (now part of Politico) on Bennett Miller’s Moneyball, a movie I really love. And Pitt is great in it.
I just love that guy ! So underappreciated. He was simply shining in “Once Upon a Time”.
It was such a good performance. Old-school. And FUNNY.
That scene when he goes to the ranch … it’s perfection. I’ve seen it a couple of times, and just fall in love with it more every time – every cut, every change of POV, every ancillary shot … it’s just so well put together.
He seems so… competent and confident. There are terrible vibes going on during that scene but we know he got the situation under control. In fact they should have been scared of him.
Absolutely. You can see when Squeaky (an amazing Dakota Fanning) feels that vibe, and lets him in the house. She acts like she hasn’t lost ground – but she knows he won. She’s the Queen bee there, but he’s truly dangerous and she feels it. It’s not worth it to battle this guy.
Great scene.
I don’t know whether or not he’s a terrific guy. I don’t know him.
“Speaking naturally on camera” is not the only way to be considered a good actor. Dialogue isn’t his particular wheelhouse.
His performance in Once Upon a Time is already one of my all-time favorites. It’s so good that it wasn’t until the third time I saw the movie that I realized how good DiCaprio was. (The scene in his trailer after he flubbed his lines during the first bar scene of his Lancer episode suddenly startled me with how naked DiCaprio’s expression of shame and self-disgust was. Not many American male stars would be willing to go there, I don’t think.) Anyway, for many years I thought Pitt was only good at roles that required a loose, light, jazzy touch. Which I enjoyed a lot, and which is not at all easy to do on screen. But Once Upon a Time opened my eyes, or gave Pitt a chance to convey something that may have always been under the surface charm, or that perhaps is a tone age has added to his character, the way time adds resonance to a good wooden instrument. In Once Upon a Time, it was a palpable sense of danger fueled by a very still, determined rage – not explosive, but implacable, when it appears. In discussing the role, I think Pitt described this as “the monster,” always there and ready to appear. There was a sense of a master craftsman at work in those moments when it appeared, as in the scene with Bruce Lee, when he deliberately and methodically took apart a braggart, or in the climactic scene with the Manson people, where he did the same with awful people who wanted to hurt him and his friend. And when these moments passed, he once again was an amiable, loose and cool guy, who -standing shirtless on a roof, fixing a TV antenna, could give a small shrug and smile, as if to say, “Yeah, I deserved to get fired,” after remembering the Lee fight, or almost breezily say, “Away we go,” as the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance after he disposed of the Mansons. (Given the his age and the year in which the movie was set, I imagine the character in his youth served in Korea and was shaped by the violence he saw in the war. I also imagine him, through his association with Rick Dalton, almost inadvertently drifting into what would now be fondly remembered character roles in American New Wave films of the 1970s. It’s the mark of a great movie that you can’t stop imagining what the characters did before and after the events we witnessed on film.) Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying Once Upon a Time deepened Pitt’s on-screen persona and made me want to see a lot more of his work.
Bill – sorry it took me a while to get back to this. Year-end craziness.
This is wonderful commentary. I too loved Brad Pitt’s comment about the “monster” – there was something “sketchy” about the character – Kurt Russell sensed it! Kurt Russell’s wife (Zoe Bell) sensed it! And you can see how ferocious he is when threatened in that final conversation. He doesn’t kill. He over-kills. But he had moved past all that, at least before the hippies showed up, and found a crazy Zen place where … he kept his life very very narrow, not too much room to get out of line – he did the same things every day, on the regular, and so he couldn’t get into too much trouble. He KNOWS himself. I think it was in that wonderful filmed conversation between Pitt and Adam Sandler where Pitt said Cliff has “evolved past drama.” I think that was a wonderfully insightful way to put it.
// how naked DiCaprio’s expression of shame and self-disgust was. Not many American male stars would be willing to go there, I don’t think. //
I totally agree with this.
Also the scene where he flubs the lines … There was a great interview with DiCaprio on Yahoo Movies, of all things – the best I’ve seen with him. It was process-oriented – and that whole flubbing-the-lines thing was DiCaprio’s idea, believe it or not. He really pushed QT for it. Fascinating, because – unlike his character – DiCaprio has been very fortunate and found superstardom early. To show that he has an insight over how hard it is – how hard it is for other people – really speaks well of his eye, his perceptive, his empathy. He gets it.
// -standing shirtless on a roof, fixing a TV antenna, could give a small shrug and smile, as if to say, “Yeah, I deserved to get fired,” //
lol I loved that moment. He knows … he had that one coming.
// It’s the mark of a great movie that you can’t stop imagining what the characters did before and after the events we witnessed on film. //
I know! I’m sure you’ve heard that QT has written a novelization – coming out next summer. I’m really excited for it. Because you know he has more to say about that whole era.
I hadn’t heard about the novelization! I can’t wait to read that.”
Thanks for the kind words. I appreciate that.
I know, I can’t wait to read it. I know he had thought of doing it as a series – he has so much more to say about that period in show business.
Sheila
And By The Sea! And I’m still waiting for someone besides you Sheila to recognize that was a great movie! We just watched it again the other day! Great performances by those two, so revealing and so God damn funny too! (we go around the house saying, I’m blowing you a kiss! I’m blowing you one back!)
And Jolie wrote and directed it! I agree Brad Pitt makes it seem so easy. He’s not going, here I am doing this, isn’t this something? And that is not easy! A character actor in a leading man’s body too.
Regina – YES. By the Sea!! Time for a re-watch – I found the movie so intense, and was so INTO IT when it came out – I wanted to put some time between me and it. My response to it was so damn strong!
// A character actor in a leading man’s body too. //
Absolutely!
I know that reactions to Legends of the Fall tend to be mixed, but I love it, and the reason why I buy it is because I’m not sure any other actor could make Tristan believable as a character. I’m not sure how to describe Tristan–“lunatic” seems off somehow–but he’s a destructive and toxic force of nature who can only be that, without even meaning to, and yet he’s got this enormous gravitational pull that keeps people in his orbit so they can destroy themselves by virtue of being near him. Pitt makes Tristan into a guy whom I can totally believe people being THAT obsessed with, as opposed to me wondering, “Why don’t they all just tell this jerk to piss off and be done with him?”
I hope that makes sense….
Kelly – it makes perfect sense but I hadn’t thought of it in that way. I haven’t thought about that movie in a long time.
// he’s got this enormous gravitational pull that keeps people in his orbit so they can destroy themselves by virtue of being near him. //
It’s funny … that kind of describes what it means to be a movie star, too. That kind of charisma can be dangerous – for the person who has said charisma, and for the people in the orbit. It’s disorienting.
Pitt gets that. It’s knowledge that only a certain kind of person can have.
A year late here but I love that you brought up his charisma in Legends of the Fall Kelly, because it’s a side note in the scope of his career but it’s a Pitt Era that means a lot to me — I haven’t seen it in donkey’s but it was a favourite of my mum’s when it came out and we watched it over and again taped off the telly — I would have been 11, 12 — of all the movies she shared with me this was the first one where I realised she was a person who could have a crush, like I had a crush on River in Stand By Me. She loved his hair — she LOVED it! I think it is an abiding regret of her life that my dad could never grow such a mane!
// this was the first one where I realised she was a person who could have a crush //
that is so touching.
And he is so crush-able.
I came across an interview with him where he mentions how the poetry of a line from The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford stayed with him. And how he keeps a single line of dialogue in his mind to keep him centered on each character he plays.
https://youtu.be/moTWWKnxpm4
He seemed delighted by the question that prompted his response.
Oooh! Thank you for this – will watch immediately. I love process details like this.
“Oooh, Brad Pitt! I should comment about LEGENDS OF THE FALL…wait, better check if I already did….”
On to MONEYBALL, then. I love the movie too, despite some misgivings about the film’s portrayal of Billy Beane’s managerial style (Geez, Billy, did it ever occur to you to actually EXPLAIN your new way of thinking to your crusty old guard, instead of just walking into a meeting and rubbing their noses in it?), but it’s great to have a sports movie where the focus is not really on the field much at all. The scene where Pitt and Jonah Hill are playing phone-roulette with something like four other baseball execs in an effort to get the one guy they really want is somehow thrilling despite being…guys on the phone! And I like it when baseball movies get the yin-and-yang of baseball emotions right: they make the trade, they get their guy, Pitt is leaning back in his chair* looking satisfied, and Hill says, “Uhhh, we need a roster spot. Somebody has to go back to the minors.” Some people take MONEYBALL to task for not being accurate, but so what?
* That chair: I love details in movies. That chair creaks and squeaks in all the ways a well-used office chair should, and Pitt sits in it like a guy who has been sitting in the same chair for years. When you KNOW a chair you know how you can sit in it, how fast you can lean in it, you don’t even think about it. Pitt always seems like a guy who has really been working long hours in that office, with its Office Max furniture, for years.
And now I think I need to write about MONEYBALL on my own site. I’ll jot that down for next year….
Kelly – I would love to read you on Moneyball!!
and excellent call on the creaky chair – you are so right. Details like this really matter – even in a movie which basically takes place in a baseball stadium – could be really generic and unimaginative – but in Moneyball, it’s basically an OFFICE, where these people WORK. I love the way he throws his body around in that chair. That’s one of my favorite scenes.