MASTER AND COMMANDER - by Stuart McGurk
Like all superstars, Brad Pitt has taken his hits: from the press,
from the studios and, while making his latest film, Fury, even
fellow actors took a swing. In this exclusive and candid interview,
Hollywood's strong, silent type breaks cover to talk family life
past and present, the perils of living in a tank for four months and
the power of the word 'no'
Story by Stuart McGurk. Photography by John Balsom. Styling by Julie
Ragiola
Brad Pitt is clear about the film that affected him the most. He was
13, living in Springfield, Missouri, which he'll later freely
describe as "Hillbilly country". He remembers his childhood fondly,
but it was notable for its sterness. His parents were strict
Baptists - he remembers days sitting in church dreaming of letting
loose a yelp to break the suffocating solemnity. He remembers
imagining himself suddenly standing up in front of everyone and
screaming, "It was me! It was me! It was me!"
Needless to say, he never did. The film he went to see was R-rated,
"and cinemas were very strict back then". So, ever the innovator, he
bought a ticket for a PG, acted like he needed to go to the loo,
then, when the ticket guy turned his back, snuch in.
The film would never quite be regarded as a cinematic masterpiece -
this isn't that story - but what struck him was the life it
portrayed.
It was Saturday Night Fever, and he was mesmerised. Look at this
family, he thought - a big, boisterous, gregarious New York brood,
forever hitting each other and yelling the house down. Chaos, sure,
but what fun chaos. Ferocious, you bet, but what vital ferocity. And
more, what love. What heart-on-sleeve love they all had for each
other.
Partly, it was so different from what he knew - "I was taught from
one book [the bible] and one book only," he's said. "It didn't sit
right." - but also, he knew, all the way back then, it was the life
he wanted for himself. A big family. Semi-chaos. And the kind of
outsize love that often comes with bruises.
Years ago, when he was still single, Pitt used to have a recurring
dream that someone else was forever using his toothbrush. He thinks,
he's said, it wasn't that complicated: it was a dream about fame. He
had a few of those. Fame didn't always sit right with him in the
early years.
Now, he tells me, most of his dreams are about fatherhood - and his
fears regarding the rambunctious brood he has with Angelina Jolie,
from twins Knox and Vivienne (both six) to adopted son Maddoc (12),
six kids in all, a "cacophony" when they're all at home, and one he
misses dearly when he's away.
"Yeah," he says, simply "It's always about the safely of my kids."
For his latest film, Fury - in which Pitt plays the leader of a
weary tank crew at the end of the Second World War, who find
themselves, over 24 hours, forced into one last battle - it was
especially tough. Pitt was shooting in the UK, Jolie was in
Australia about to direct Unbroken (about former Olympic trach star
Louis Zamperini and the two-and-a-half years he spent in a Japanese
prisoner of war camp) and they couldn't get together.
"We always hopscotch, but this was the first time we couldn't make
it work. Angie had to start her film in Australia, and I was
starting here in England, so the kids would come back and forth.
Some would be there, and some would be with me. And we'd be flying
back to see each other, for, you know, just a day - 24 hours R&R. We
really felt it."
They began writing each other letters, "because, you know, that was
the way to communicate, and because w were on different time zones,
on the opposite ends of the world, those letters turned into a
beautiful way to communicate - to be more open, in some ways, than
ever before."
But still, he felt it keenly. To be deprived, for months on end, of
that loving chaos he had built for himself; the life he had always
wanted, ever since sneaking into that cinema 37 years before.
The day before GQ meets Pitt, it is announced that he and Jolie,
after an engagement that lasted nine years - and a decade to the day
since they met on Mr and Mrs Smith - finally married, in a private
ceremony at the Chateau Miraval in the village of Correns, in the
south of France. All their children were in attendance.
"I wouldn't say [marriage is] just a title," he says. "There's more
to it than that."
Yet what the gossip mags won't know - what the wedding cover story
of People couldn't guess at - is the seven months of torture he'd go
through making Fury before he got there. The boot camp that broke
him. The on-set fights he would have to split up. The days and
nights eating, shitting and sleeping in the tank for the sake of
authenticity. A director who made them literally fight each other,
who waged psychological war, who made them as close as brothers so
they could hurt each other as only brothers can. The small matter of
Shia LaBeouf pulling his own teeth out.
But also, the remarkable film they ended up making. And the genuine
bond that came from it.
Pitt both is and isn't the movie star you expect to meet.
His clothes, when GQ meets him, have that careful air of designer
scruffy, suggesting a studied rejection of all but the most
essential suit-and-tie occassions. Over a dark-grey V-neck tee, he
sports an open grey shirt, the undone cuffs of which spill out from
under his casual grey jacket, which, like most of his clothes, seems
transatlantically crumpled. The only concession to his A-lister
status: an orange trilby so bright it could land planes.
We meet in the rather unglamorous locale of the Tank Museum in
Dorset, sitting at a table in front of the Sherman tank used in
Fury. Just GQ, the biggest film star on the planet and 30 tonnes of
metal killing machine.
In person, Pitt is engaging, endlessly polite, but fidgety. As he
talks, his eyes sometimes dart around the hanger where we sit: but
when he listens the eye contact is direct - they widen and absorb,
both vulnerable and intrigued.
"There is almost a shyness to him," Fury director David Ayer tells
me over the phone. "He's a bit of a contradiction. He has a lot of
presence, and can be a very strong-willed individual, but there's a
quietness about him."
"Somebody in his position might cause people to be inhibited around
him," adds Bennett Miller, who directed him in 2011's Moneyball, for
which Pitt would receive his third Oscar nomination, "but actually
the opposite is true. He's very asy-going. You're your best self
around him."
Put another way: he may not have the patter of George Clooney - that
reservoir of easy, pre-spun charm - but, in many ways, it only makes
him more likable, because one thing is clear: Pitt is not putting on
an act for anyone.
Clooeny - a good close friend - recently called Pitt "unreachable"
in a ways that he himself is not. What does he think Clooney meant
by that?
"Huh." He thinks for a second. "Well, you know, George is extremely
accessible. He's one of our best representatives. He's funny as
shit. He's a joy to be around. I guess maybe I'm more of a miserable
bastard." He laughs. "I'm a bit of a loner, you know? I'm more quiet
by nature. And coming from, you know, hillbilly country, I'm
probably more reserved."
You can call it fame. Or power. But to Brad Pitt, it's "juice".
The phrase isn't an accident. Rather, it's what you get when you
squeeze your fame and power for al they're worth. Some film stars
use their fame to get bigger cheques. But the enduring appeal of
Pitt perhaps comes down to this: he uses his to make better films.
It's why he is, in many ways, an anomaly. He's unmistakably a
leading man, but look at his roles, and - he has the CV of a Philip
Seymour Hoffman-esque character actor.
The roster runs from cult classics (True Romance, Fight Club, Twelve
Monkeys) to indie triumphs (Snatch, Killing Them Softly); from
auteur passion projects (The Tree Of Life, Burn After Reading,
Inglourious Basterds) to Oscar-bait biopics (The Assassination of
Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Moneyball). It's a career -
taking in directors from Quentin Tarantino to Terrence Malick; David
Fincher to the Coen brothers - that defies, in many ways, the laws
of Hollywood gravity.
For Pitt, none of the typical "one-for-me, one-for-them" trade-off
between quieter, intelligent fare and multiplex pleasers, all
designed to maintain an A-list status. For Pitt, they're all for
him.
"I'm actually very snobbish about directors," he says. "I have to
say no all the time. No is the most powerful word in our business.
You've got to protect yourself."
But most importantly, he adds, "To leave home, it's got to be worth
leaving. It's got to be worth it."
Bennett Miller remembers meeting Pitt when they were discussing
Moneyball. It was a tough sell - a film about baseball sabermetrics
that had already fallen apart under a different director.
"I pitched him my version of the movie, and he just said, 'OK, let's
do that.' I remember saying, you know, it's not exactly a studio
treatment, and I know this thing had trouble before, so what makes
you think we can do this at a studio?"
Pitt's answer was simple. "because I'm here to protect the process.
Any time you run into any interference, I'll be here to make sure we
make the movie that we're talking about making."
"You can imagine," adds Miller, "somebody in that position abusing
that power, or being reckless, or being short-sghted about it. But
he was a protector. There is a real elegance to how he wields his
power."
It was a lesson the actor learnt early on. Pitt still remembers on
Legends of the Fall (1994) the producers cut his favourite scene, as
it was voted "most-hated" after a test-screening. He demanded to see
the marketing report, only to realise the scene was also the second
"most-liked".
"Guys," he said, "this is exactly why we're here. We want to evoke
emotion - not agreement."
For Se7en, his next film he finally had "juice", so requested two
conditions written into his contract - that the severed head stayed
in the box at the end, and that his character shot the killer; a
red-blooded crime of passion rather thn the heroism of restraint.
And he's been using his juice ever since.
"I safeguard a lot," he says. "Whether it's making sure The
Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford stays the
full title, or something more serious about the cut. With test
screenings, and scenes that are polarising or uncomfortable, you're
asking people to analyse as soon as the lights come on. It's
impossible! Impossible! I mean, it took me weeks to be able to tell
you why There Will Be Blood is one of the movies of the decade."
He even uses his juice for films he doesn't star in. His production
company, Plan B Entertainment, has a mandate to "get difficult
material that might not otherwise get made to the screen", and is
responsible for Oscar winners ranging from The Departed to 12 Years
A Slave (in which he had a bit part), along with the vast majority
of films in which he takes the lead. Just last month, Pitt won a
producing Emmy for TV movie The Normal Heart. Not that you'd know
it - he didn't set foot near the stage to collect the award.
When Pitt signed up to Fury, he knew what the was letting himself in
for. To be ble to fully embody the semi-broken men at the tail-end
of a long war, director David Ayer (Training Day, End of Watch)
planned to genuinely put them through hell. For starters, he sent
them to a boot camp, run by Navy Seals.
"They were succesful in getting every one of us to break down," says
Jon Bernthal, who plays the tank's loader. "To reach the limit,
physically and emotionally, where we wanted to quit. When you have a
group of people who have cracked psychologically, it's amazing where
you can go. They got us to do things that we can't talk about. And
I'm not sure I'm proud of some of those things."
Pitt, says Bernthal, threw himself in. "Look, he's Brad Pitt, he
doesn't have to do the shit we have to do. But the thing I'll take
away is that the colder it got, the wetter it got, the more
miserable it got, the happier he was. I mean, we were pissing and
shitting right in front of each other."
Next, Ayer made them fight each other.
"On the first day, I had to stap him [Pitt], and it was like, it's
Brad, so what do you do?" says Bernthal. Pitt ended up kicking him
in the nuts three times. "And so I had to tell him not to after the
third time. Then I have him one in the stomach, and he said it was
the hardest he'd ever been hit. But again: the fact he was willing
to jump in there speaks volumes."
Finally, Ayer made them live in the tank. To live, eat, and, well,
everything, in the tank. "I remember Brad said, this is going to
start smelling very bad in here very fast."
By the time they started shooting - after four long months of
preparation - Ayer had them where he wanted them. Which is to say,
broken. But, also, bonded - for better or worse, as a family.
They talked a lot, says Pitt, about their "tank family". And
everything - for btter and for worse - that comes with that.
"David had this sick idea," says Bernthal, "that the more we learnt
about each other, the more we could hurt each other. There would be
times where the camera would be on and he would just say [of another
cast member], 'Go after him.' And this was not to say, 'I f***ing
hate you', or something, but really go for the jugular, to point out
the things that only you know they're the most insecure about, that
hurts them the most."
"It was," Pitt says, "very intense."
Later, I ask the 22-year-old Logan Lerman, who plays the green new
recruit the seasoned tank crew must swiftly train, about this
process.
"God," Lerman says softly. "I wish I could share some of the things
I regretfully said to these guys I respect... But it was some
f***ed-up shit."
Sometimes, Ayer would whisper something in someone's ear to set them
off. For Bernthal, who had recently left two young babies at home,
Ayer said something tragic had happened to them.
"I don't know if I should say this, but yeah, I had talked about
being away from my wife and kids. And in the first scene, David came
over and started whispering in my ear, saying something terrible had
happened... And, look, there's willingness on my part to go to this
place," But, he adds, "I don't look back on it as being fun. It was
not a fun movie to work on. It took an emotional toll on all of
us."
"I am ruthless as a director," says Ayer when I speak to him later.
"I will do whatever I think it necessary to get what I want. There
are hurt feelings and bruises sometimes. But I think a director's
mistake is to be passive and let the same thing unfold again and
again and afain."
He would even do it to Pitt.
"You know," says Pitt. "When the bell rings, we were in the ring.
And we wanted to be pushed off our balance in a way, so you're
constantly thinking of new scenarios to make it personal to
yourself."
What did he whisper in his ear? "Many things," he says. "But none I
would like to mention."
Even among this controlled madness, Shia LaBeouf, who plays the
tank's gunner, stood out alone. For starters, for authenticity's
sake, he decided to pull out a tooth.
"Well, I mean, he didn't do it himself," clarifies co-star Lerman.
"He did go to a dentist and asked them to pull his tooth out, but,
yeah, what an odd request..."
Then, dissatisfied with the cuts on his face by the make-up
department, LaBeouf again decided to take matters into his own
hands.
"We were in make-up," remembers Lerman, "and they were putting cuts
on Shia, and I said, 'Yeah, yeah, it looks good', and Shia was like
'No, it doesn't look real.' Then he walks out into the hallway, and
says, 'Hey man, wanna see something fun? Check this out...' And he
takes out a knife and cuts his face. And for the whole movie he kept
opening these cuts on his face. That's all real."
Didn't Lerman freak out? "No, I f***ing loved it!"
Then there was the matter of Shia not washing for the entire time.
"But the story being told in the press that there was any problem on
our part," says Bernthal, referencing a Daily Mail story that
suggested the rest of the cast forced him to move to a different
hotel due to the stench, "is completely false."
In fact, so committed was LaBeouf - and, it must be said, all the
cast praise him unreservedly - that not only did genuinely learn his
role as turret operator to expert levels, but operated it at all
times, even for long-shots.
"He really spent every moment on that set," says Lerma. "He's the
guy operating the turret in every shot, even when you don't need to
be in there as an actor. You know, you can have somebody else
inside! But he was there very day, for every shot."
LaBeouf was certainly committed, I later say to Pitt.
"Oh, I love this boy," he says. "He's one of the best actors I've
ever seen. He's full-on commitment, man. He's living it like no one
else, let me tell you. I've been fortunate to work with a lot of
great actors. He's one of the best I've seen."
Others, however, were not so enamoured. When I speak to Scott
Eastwood, the 28-year-old son of Clint, who has a minor role as a
soldier, he remembers LaBeouf as a "complete pain in the ass".
Indeed, they almost came to blows.
"I was in the middle of a scene with Brad Pitt, and I was chewing
tobacco," says Eastwood. "He didn't like what I was doing, so he
said I couldn't be spitting tobacco on his tank, and he told me to
clean it up. I pretty much told him to f*** off, and Brad had to
break it up."
When I later ask Pitt about this, he remembers it differently.
"Well," he says, "it requires a setup."
They were all sparring every day, says Pitt. They'd bonded by this
point - and not just with each other, but with the tank, too.
"And something happened - it becomes very personal. You know, that's
MY tank."
Pitt says he was actually the first to tell Eastwood not to spit
tobacco on the tank.
"Yeah, that came from me. We were driving down the road, I'm in the
turret, Shia is at the other turret, and Scott is on the back,
spitting juice. And I'm starting to get pissed off, I'm starting to
get hot, because this is our home, he's disrespecting our home, you
know? So I said, in the scene with the cameras rolling, 'You're
going to clean that shit up.' Shia clocks it, and you have to
understand, we've been through severe boot camp already, we've been
through a lot in this tank. Shia saw it and felt the same - he's
disrespecting our home. So shia had the same reaction I did, and
started having some words." But it soon got out of hand, "then I
had to get in after the cameras were rolling, and explain it to
Scotty, you know..."
Put another way: he had to act dad and seperate the kids.
Besides, Pitt adds, "The funny thing is, when we got home at the
end of the day and read the script, it said Scotty's character is
'chewing tobacco and spitting it on the back of the tank'. He was
just doing as instruced in the script! So we were knobs in the
end..."
Extreme filming aside, says Pitt, the story of Fury is a simple
one.
It's one of an estblished family having to adapt to Logan Lerman's
new arrival. Or, as Pitt himself puts it, "It's raising a son.
Raising a son in one day. And that is very painful for a
father."
It is perhaps coincedence that Fury is about family. Look at Pitt's
recent films, and it's a recurring theme, from the authoritarian
father in The Tree Of Life, to the father just trying to save his
family in World War Z, to the father who, at the very end of
Moneyball, gives up the job of a lifetime in order to be closer to
his daughter. It's also, perhaps, no coincedence that he chose to go
to these extremes in Fury now, while he still can. After all, Pitt
is now 50. He's married. And, he says, he wants to enjoy his
children growing up. He is, he says, purposefully slowing down in
his acting career.
"Absolutely. I've been slowing down a while now. And slowly
transitioning to other things. And, truthfully, I do want to spend
more time with my kids before they're grown up and gone. So, yes,
absolutely."
He's considered TV - he was "in discussion", he says, for the second
series of True Detective, but it didn't go any further than that -
and he certainly wouldn't rule out a TV role in the future.
"They're doing great stuff on television. And we [Plan B] have a
few
television ideas ourselves. So, yes, I'd love to do one."
He's never been on Twitter, and now, he says, doesn't feel the
need.
"Listen, I see a benefit in it. You could, you know, combat the
misconceptions or the misquotes immediately. And if I'd have that
in my younger days, I'd have used it."
Why in his younger days?
"Because I felt quite used. and completely misunderstood, and
misread, and not given the benefit of the doubt. You know, I felt
that a lot in my first years. I would have brought some logic to the
table, and brought it immediately. But now, at this point, I don't
want to bother with it."
It is, he says, one of his worries about younger actors: the
pressure they face.
"I worry for the younger guys. There are so many demands on them
outside the craft. The business tends to suck 'em up, chew 'em up
very quickly and spit them out before they've even had time to hone
their craft. And they have a bigger challenge, for making a long-run
game out of this."
Again, this is Pitt as father-figure, worrying for the new
generation. And again, this is the guy who has a recurring dream,
which is almost always about the safety of his kids.
For now, there's a plane to catch. And, from there, to Angelina
and his joyously noisy rabble of kids. Back in 2011, lamenting the
time he has to spend away from his family, Pitt said of Jolie, "We
should be doing films together - that's what we should be doing. We
should be doing everything together, and then we could work less."
He's just about to start a film with his new wife on the Maltese
coast.
Called By The Sea, it is, he says, "something that doesn't normally
come our way - it's very interesting, an almost European-flavoured
film". And also, "It basically takes place in a hotel room and a
cafe."
He's finally put his plan into action.
"Yup. That's part of that plan."
I ask if he's happy. He thinks for a second.
"I've always believed happiness is overrated, you know? It's those
difficult times that inform the next wonderful time, and it's a
series of trade-offs, of events, of wins and losses."
Of the love that comes with bruises.