The Blockbuster Artist: How Brad Pitt’s Refusal to Make Bad Movies Changed Movie Stardom

I first discovered Brad Pitt along with the rest of the world – leering at his tight blue jeaned butt with Geena Davis. Who would have predicted how he’d shake his money maker to help enable great cinema?

“Thelma & Louise,” Ridley Scott’s film of Callie Khouri’s ur-Girls Gone Wild tale, could not have plucked a more handsome specimen upon which to reverse the male gaze. Chiseled, rugged, with a crooked smile, sparkle in the eye and beautiful hair. Pitt’s character JD didn’t really have to act, he just had to turn everybody on. He succeeded.

Pitt was quick to gain magazine cover fame and he took to it well. In fact, a whole cottage industry exists writing (or, should I say, “writing”) about Jennifer Aniston in a post-Brad Pitt breakup context. It didn’t matter much to Pitt’s stardom that, by and large, most of his movies stunk, and acting was arguably not quite the most important part of his job description. (Indeed, James LeGros’ character Chad Palomino in the filmmaking satire “Living in Oblivion” is a none-too-subtle parody of Pitt.)

In 1995, though, he made two interesting choices. He appeared in David Fincher’s “Seven,” a pretty asinine thriller that somewhat redeems itself with a pronounced sense of style, and “Twelve Monkeys,” Terry Gilliam’s slick and entertainingly fatalistic sci-fi film. It was “Twelve Monkeys” that surprised people – in it, Brad Pitt actually did a character. He played an anarchic and psychotic eco-terrorist/spoiled rich kid and he took a lot of chances on the screen. I’ve actually watched the movie recently and, quite frankly, I think Pitt is the worst thing in it – partially that’s because everyone else is so good – but it was still a breakthrough for being taken somewhat seriously. 1995 was the year Pitt began to align himself with directors who could reasonably be called auteurs.

Time marched on and every forgettable “Sleepers” and “Meet Joe Black” was met with a “Snatch” or “Fight Club.” I wouldn’t exactly call these art films (no: “Fight Club” is not an art film, you’ll discover that when you aren’t 21 anymore) but they are films coming from directors with a distinct voice. Then came the “Ocean’s” films.

Steven Soderbergh, as we all know, is one of the finest filmmakers living, dead or yet unborn. The “Ocean’s” films are probably his least interesting, which is why they’ve made the most money and had the largest ephemeral cultural impact. Pitt’s involvement with the trilogy blessed him with some sort of nose for sensing true genius in collaborators, and in picking out projects that needed to get made, and probably wouldn’t get made without his star power.

Pitt’s resume since “Ocean’s Thirteen” have been important works of art and entertainment that, I think, will only grow more valuable over time. You can pretty much go down the list.

The cult of Andrew Dominik’s “The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward of Robert Ford” keeps growing. In fact, people are still waking up to the fact that 2007 was a watershed year for cinema and its relationship to the West. (We had this, “There Will Be Blood” and “No Country For Old Men” all looking for our attention – plus we hadn’t quite shaken off the last season of “Deadwood.”) It is a formal masterpiece and an actors’ triumph. Casey Affleck upstages Pitt from time to time, but there’s no way in hell this movie would even exist if Pitt didn’t believe in it. It is gorgeous and thought provoking and not commercial in the slightest.

After the so-goofy-it-hurts Coen Brothers film “Burn After Reading” came one of the only two David Fincher films that is actually worth a damn: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” (The other is “The Social Network,” by the way.) “Benjamin Button,” a beautiful fantasia on loss, remembrance and human connection, is a weird movie to wrap your head around. A lot of people flat out don’t like it. (These are, I should point out, people who don’t know how to live, how to truly live!) It is one of those rarest things, a genuine work of art done with a large canvass, and it made money for everybody, no doubt because Pitt’s magazine face got butts in seats.

Next up was “Inglourious Basterds,” another masterpiece. Now, Quentin Tarantino could no doubt make magic with just about anybody, but Pitt’s performance (particularly the shootout in the bar and the interrogation of Christoph Waltz) is played at a perfect pitch. What you’ll find with so many of his current films is that the directors are finding a way to use Pitt’s (let’s call it) limited range and zeroing in on that – giving him characters that play to his strengths.

After “Basterds” comes one of the greatest stunts ever pulled on the mainstream American movie audience: Terence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.” The fact that this movie played in mall multiplexes is nothing short of a miracle. It probably would have been more appropriate in the installation spaces of the Whitney Museum of American Art, but screw it: the people need to be exposed to beauty.

“The Tree of Life” is sublime. What’s that, you say? The movie is confusing? The plot is messy? Nothing happens? EVERYTHING happens, and if you think the parents are too vague (Mom is nice, Dad is a jerk) that’s because Malick has the insight and ability to strip things bare. Malick’s paintbrush needed broad stroke characters to tell his impressionistic story, and Pitt is perfect in it. (And he ain’t too hard on the eyes during magic hour.) Now shut up as I twirl and tussle in the ground.

Pitt felt no need to reconnect with the slobbering masses with a “Troy 2” after “The Tree of Life.” He jumped right into “Moneyball,” which is arguably the least rah-rah big game sports movie ever made. Some might argue it is the anti-sports movie, where the eggheads are the heroes and the determination of will, spirit and might are all coldly shoved aside against bloodless, cruel math. Hardly apple pie.

His next theatrically released live action feature was “Killing Them Softly,” again from Andrew Dominik. It is an up-from-within tone poem about criminal behavior that has remarkably elegant sequences of violence as well as hilarious monologues. It does all it can to shake off its traditional three act structure. This structure exists, but it colors outside of the lines so much it resists sinking your teeth into it. It isn’t a big budget picture, but I imagine none of it would have been raised without Pitt saying yes.

But the siren’s call of a potential Hollywood franchise ended the streak. “World War Z” isn’t a paycheck gig – it is very much Pitt and his production shingle Plan B’s baby. And it was a breech birth. While the end result isn’t terrible, it sure as hell ain’t marvelous. It is also documented as one of the more boondoggled productions of our time (see Vanity Fair’s expose.) Pitt was smart enough to see a train wreck coming, and knew enough to put his ego in check and allow for a team of specialists (including Damon Lindelof and Chistopher McQuarrie) to overhaul the film to something a tad less ridiculous. The current ending is flawed, but when you read about what could have been, it’s worthy of a standing O.

The reaction to “World War Z”‘s original cut is the decision of a mature, intelligent man – not some Hollywood haircut.  And when all the US Weeklys are left floating amid the melted ice caps, we’ll still be talking about movies like “Jesse James” and “Tree of Life.” Who’d’a thunk it: from a pair of tight blue jeans to great art patronage. It’s a hell of a package.

Categories: Features

Tags: Brad pitt, Fight club, Killing Them Softly, Thelma and Louise, Twelve Monkeys, World war z

Fanboy Meets World: Why J.J. Abrams Is a Khan Artist

SPOILER WARNINGS LIKE THE GALACTIC BARRIER, YO.

One line. One word, really. Heck, four letters, though four letters stretched out quite a bit. Removing them from the final cut of “Star Trek Into Darkness” would have done a lightyears worth of goodwill for this long time Trek fan. The insistence of Abrams and Co. to stick with their policy of legacy-mining and expecting us to all squee with joy is, at heart, why I’m grousing – even though I admit that, in broad strokes, I enjoyed “Star Trek Into Darkness” a great deal. (My review at ScreenCrush, if you are interested.)

It goes like this: there are a number of really annoying little things about this movie, and you can find an exhaustive list of quibbles at the bottom of this post.

But first we need to focus on the biggest disaster, of course, is deciding to shoehorn the “known” bad guy Khan into the mix. Because everybody knows Kirk and Khan are matched enemies, even people (like Abrams) who don’t watch “Star Trek.” It’s perfect marketing. (Although Abrams, being an M Class nincompoop, decided to kneecap his own movie by keeping this secret. The moment when Benedict Cumberbatch says “My name is Khan” is the worst of both worlds. Fans get annoyed by the obvious, while non-fans – unaware that Khan didn’t have a fake identity in the original, and unfamiliar with what the name portends – say “so?” and “who?” unsure why there was this whole mystery to begin with. )

Prima facie it is a failure. Khan’s Eugenics War is supposed to take place in the 1990s, and his banishment on the Botany Bay took place prior to the destruction of the USS Kelvin in the 2009 reboot. This means that it existed before the timeline split.

Does this mean that I refuse to accept another actor playing Khan? No, I’m not a complete mental patient. But Khan Noonien Singh is supposed to be a Sikh from northern India. Ricardo Mantalban of Mexico City could at least pass. Benedict Cumberbatch of London, England does not. (Those who read the trades know that Abrams’ first choice was Benecio Del Toro, which shows a somewhat lazy attempt to get it half-right. When Del Toro passed there were rumors about Edgar Ramirez and Jordi Molla – nothing, however, about Indian actors, but come on . . . it’s not like India has one of the world’s most thriving film industries or anything.)

ALL OF THE ABOVE. ALL OF THIS I WOULD BE WILLING TO SUSPEND MY DISBELIEF AND ACCEPT. WE’RE GOOD SO FAR UNTIL. . .

The line.

The yell.

The howl.

It wasn’t enough that the focus group-based crypto-creation machine knows as Bad Robot decided to take the easy route and stick Khan in this movie. They had to go “full retard.”

When Kirk dies at the end (but just for like five minutes, because no one would ever accuse this group of having the courage of its convictions) Zachary Quinto’s nu-Spock, unable to contain his Earth emotions, starts to tremble and quake as Michael Giacchino’s score rumbles until finally. . . “KHAAAAAAAAAAAN!”

It’s an insult. And an embarrassment. It makes Jake Lloyd saying “Yippiee!” sound like Peter Finch’s monologue from “Network.”

It hurts because this movie can’t just appropriate the character Khan from the originals, it has to go and appropriate the “meme,” too.

“Khaaaaaaaan!” as rallying cry is a relatively recent creation, egged on by a “Seinfeld” episode from 1996. I didn’t see “Khaaaaaaaan!” on a T-shirt until 2008 or so (and, believe me, I would have noticed.) It began as a bit of a goof. A play on Shatner as a lovable and, let’s face it, not-always-great actor. It’s as much a play on Denny Crane and the Priceline Negotiator than it is on actual “Star Trek.”

(To be fair to Shatner, there is the theory that Captain Kirk is quite aware of his “overacting” in this scene, as it is Kirk’s intention to fake Khan into thinking that he’s truly won by stranding him on Regula, whereas the Enterprise’s captain actually has an ace up his sleeve. I strongly suggest you read my 2009 interview with “Wrath of Khan” director Nicholas Meyer for a full breakdown of all this.)

You can practically see Abrams in story meetings, sixteen cellphones held by assistants up to his head as he closes deals on television shows, saying “yeah, yeah, we gotta have the line!” with no actual understanding about what it means – how, to fans of “Star Trek,” this little bit of ridiculousness is our ridiculousness, and to do a clip and paste of it into the emotional death-by-radiation scene is an atrocity.

There’s another problem. Quinto doesn’t nail it. Quinto is a decent enough actor, about as good of a Nimoy proxy as we’re likely to get. But there’s a reason he’s segued his “Star Trek” fame into producing whereas nearly everyone else in the crew has taken leading roles in mainstream pictures.

The Bad Robot team probably expected hoots and hollers from fans when Quinto delivered the line. My gut tells me that test audiences never gave it – which is why there isn’t room for a beat afterwards (the action cuts mid-scream to the Vengeance smashing into the Enterprise while both ships are in Earth’s stratosphere.)

The lack of reaction (and I’ve seen the film with audiences twice) is, I’m guessing, a mix of Quinto’s middling delivery and the fact that, in the context of this film, it doesn’t make a lick of sense. Khan isn’t really the one responsible for Kirk’s death. Kirk had to go fix the reactor core because of cumulative damage from throughout the film – damage that started with Admiral Marcus’ sabotage.

Quinto could just as well be shouting “MAAAAAAAARCUS!!!!” or at least “MAAAAAAARCUS AND KHAAAAAAAAAAN WORKING IN CONJUUUUUUUUUUUNCTION!” But he doesn’t, because it’s important to get the meme in there, because the people in charge of this movie really and truly don’t get it.

There’s something they teach you in any creative program: kill your babies. Sometimes you have to cut out great stuff for the sake of the larger piece. You’d think “Star Trek Into Darkness,” a film that cut the COLON out of the title, would know how to make a cut. But this line, this word, these four letters remain in the finished film. If it were gone I may would have been able to ignore all the other problems in the film – or at least accept them a little easier. I still like “Star Trek Into Darkness” a great deal, because Abrams knows where to put the camera and, with the exception of this beat, all the performances are great. But this is because I have the ability to root out the good parts in a movie, even when I’m being khanned.

And now, bring out the quibbles!

** World-building problems like: why would a Federation hospital, even in England, have the monarchial name “Royal” associated with it?

** Story beats like Nero’s 25-year wait from 2009's “Star Trek” that were probably explained in earlier versions of the script, but were removed so this movie could zoom at Warp Factor 6, like: If Section 31 was just blown to bits, how did “John Harrison” find the transwarp beaming device after the bombing? And if he didn’t, then what was in that black bag that Kirk was focusing on? And how did Kirk just contact Scotty on his communicator without patching through to Uhura’s communications array? And how did they get from Kronos to Earth in only, like, 45 seconds of warp?

** Inexplicable gales in logic, like: why would a new super torpedo, even if it runs on some new, undetectable fuel source, have ROOM to let you just, you know, crack it open and stick a giant 20th Century cryotube inside of it? How is this efficient design?!??!?

** Moments of great disrespect to the audience, like: Why wouldn’t Carol Marcus just, like, wait 30 seconds to get undressed, or step in another room? (Answer: super bowl ads demand a panty shot, but we Trekkers should demand more!)

** Moments of great disrespect to the legacy of “Star Trek,” like: Carol Marcus implying that Kirk the Jerk pulled a “love ‘em and leave ‘em” on Christine Chapel. Pardon me? Christine Chapel? You mean . . .Gene Roddenberry’s wife? If this isn’t Abrams and his gang “marking their territory” on Roddenberry’s version of “Star Trek” in the most disgusting, phallocentric way, then I don’t know what is! (Eh, I’ll allow that Abrams, who time and again in interviews has proven he doesn’t know, and doesn’t care, about “Star Trek” history didn’t mean it this way. But someone should have spot-checked this and changed the pointless fan-wank namedrop to somebody else.)

Categories: Columns

Tags: Fan Rant, Fanboy Meets World, J.j. abrams, Jordan hoffman, Khan, Star trek, Star Trek Into Darkness