BRAD PITT DISCUSSES HIS ROLE AS PRODUCER FOR A MIGHTY HEART - by Jan Stuart
When "A Mighty Heart" opens on June 22nd, it will mark Brad Pitt's sixth credit as a producer on a
feature-length film. Based on Mariane Pearl's account of the brutal Pakistan murder of her husband, Wall
Street Journal reporter/bureau chief Daniel Pearl, the much-anticipated drama stars Pitt's wife Anjelina
Jolie and Dan Futterman as the two married journalists.
Pitt, the 43-year-old star of this week's number one grosser, "Ocean's Thirteen," has already racked up a
fairly impressive producer's score card, with the Oscar-winning "The Departed" and Sundance Grand Jury
prize-winning doc "God Grew Tired of Us" under his belt. Pitt also had a hand in "Running with Scissors,"
which overcame dim notices to notch an Oscar nomination for Annette Bening, and Mike White's quirky indie
dramedy, "Year of the Dog," which opened in April to generally favorable reviews.
"What I appreciate the most is getting to be part of a project that normally we wouldn't be right for," said
Pitt before a gathering of press at last month's Cannes Film Festival, where the Michael Winterbottom film
premiered to acclaim. "I was very taken with Mariane's story the moment it first appeared on CNN. Through the
producting conduit, get to take part in these kind of films, see them to the end, find the right people, make
sure things stay on the rails. It's a really interesting side to filmmaking itself. You don't have to be in
front of the camera."
Pitt was emphatic in his choice of Winterbottom to helm the film. The eclectic British director is perhaps
best known for "Welcome to Sarajevo," "24 Hour Party People" and "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story."
But it was "The Road to Guantanamo," his dramatization of a trio of British Muslims who were held in
Guantanamo Bay prison for two years and then released without charged, that sealed the deal for "A Mighty
Heart."
"We felt he was the best storyteller for 'A Mighty Heart.' He's a citizen of the world, he's focused on these
issues. It was really going to achieve some kind of love story: it's done in flashbacks. To achieve that its
got to be successfully created in whiffs and smells and instances.
"The moments that he did that in 'Guantanamo' that really spoke to me was when he focused on the boys in
their normal habitas, their normal lives at a pizza parlor. We were able to understand who they were at home,
without ever having to play it out or make any kind of grand punctuation.
"Another thing I appreciate about Michael's films is, he follows a life. He doesn't create the life, or set
the life. It's a really raw approach to filmmaking that really applied itself to the journalistic nature of
this film."
In addition to "A Mighty Heart," the actor-slash-mogul has at least eight other producing projects currently
in various stages of genesis, including "Dirty Tricks," a Nixon administration drama that features Jim
Broadbent as President Nixon, Sharon Stone as Pat Nixon, Meryl Streep as Martha Mitchell and Pitt as White
House Counsel John Dean.