Updated 9/18/2007 1:53 PM
By Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY
TORONTO — There's a reason Brad Pitt is as elusive as his latest character, slippery, sinister gunslinger Jesse James. He is today's outlaw celebrity, living a nomadic existence with his family. There's a sizable price on his head, as any paparazzo will attest. His face sells magazines, his presence inspires hysteria among fans, who abandon rational behavior for a glimpse, a touch, a photo. Like James and his gang, he travels with a posse of kids, security and a life partner.
So it's hardly shocking that Pitt, 43, relates to the desperado he embodies in the intense character study The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The nearly three-hour film, opening in limited release Friday, just netted Pitt the best-actor award at the Venice Film Festival, though the film itself is getting mixed reviews. Pitt's Jesse James is a mercurial, mercenary killer with a mean streak, murdered by a member of his gang.
"I understand the essence of paranoia," Pitt says. "I understand being hunted, to some degree. I understand a bounty on my head. But the movie is about so much more. The real tragedy is that there was a chance he could have gotten past this moment. He's wrestling with himself and lost that battle."
If Pitt wrestles with anything these days, it's the media and fan frenzy that encroaches on his life but is necessary to sell his films and promote his causes.
For this interview at the Toronto Film Festival, Pitt at the last minute insists that director Andrew Dominik join him to keep questions squarely focused on the film. One thing is clear: He's not interested in sharing touchy-feely details of life with partner Angelina Jolie, 32, and their kids Maddox, 6, Pax, 3, Zahara, 2, and Shiloh, 1.
He's dressed casually in a tan shirt and gray newsboy cap as he lopes into the room accompanied by a small entourage of publicists and stylists. Knowing the effect his name and presence have, he makes an effort to bridge gaps and connect by extending his hand and saying, "Hi, I'm Brad." But he never once makes eye contact.
At first, he tries to shift the attention away from himself entirely, pointing to a newspaper with fellow festival attendee Terrence Howard on the cover and saying, "That boy's good."
He praises his Babel wife Cate Blanchett, exclaiming happily when he learns she's at the festival for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, calling her "exquisite" and "gorgeous," and adding, "you can't take a bad picture of her."
He eventually does share a personal detail. He misses his children, who are back in New York: "Two days without the kids," he mutters, shaking his head. But he's not here to discuss his home life: "Personal anecdotes — what does that have to do with the movie?" he asks.
Perhaps the actor is still shaken up by the previous night's premiere of Jesse James, which metastasized into a mob scene. "We had to come back here. We had to get under a garage," he tells Dominik. "Nothing was cordoned off. There were no barriers."
Toronto gossip columnist Lainey Lui (laineygossip.com), who has covered the festival for years, calls what unfolded "the biggest celebrity mob scene ever. Ever."
Jolie and Pitt were in a car together, en route from their screening to the private after-party. "The crowd was so thick anyway, from people downtown on a Saturday night. And then, they were spotted," Lui says. "The crowd started to find out that it was Brad and Angelina. People who were driving down on other streets left their cars and ran to see them. Seven people jumped on their car."
Pitt and Jolie's vehicle tried to inch forward. "We saw all these people running. People were holding up their cellphones (to take photos). This woman appears out of nowhere, runs up with her child, and was pushing her child up against the (moving) car. The lady was like: 'I want my baby to see Brad Pitt.' "
Through it all, "Brad was yelling at the driver to drive, Angelina looked like a woman completely paralyzed. You could read her lips, and she kept saying, 'Get back to the hotel.' "
None of his buddies — Matt Damon or George Clooney, say — have to deal with anything near the furor surrounding Pitt's life.
The next day, Pitt insists that he and Jolie control and manage the fame and rarely find it overpowering. "I understand the deal. It got chaotic last night, but there was genuine happiness, and it meant something to them. It only bothers me when they get in the kids' faces."
Yet they have no plans to stop adding to their family. He has talked openly before about wanting a fifth child. Now he adds, "We're certainly not done. Sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth …"
The family's current base is New York because he is shooting the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading. Jolie and Pitt globe-trot from movie set to movie set, stopping in at their homes in Los Angeles, England and New Orleans in between. It's no accident their life starkly resembles the wandering existence of the James clan, which quietly shuffled from home to home to evade authorities.
"It's impossible for us," he says. "We're run out of every major city. There's just too many paparazzi. There's always cameras in the kids' faces, yelling their names. Angie gets out of the car, and they take the camera down to the curb and shoot up (her skirt). It's unbelievable." That's why "there's a constant negotiation in how to survive and how to maintain a family life."
There's also the maintenance of their charitable causes.
Jolie famously advocates for refugees worldwide, while he is active in the ONE campaign to eradicate poverty and Global Green, which is replacing homes in New Orleans destroyed by Hurricane Katrina with eco-friendly buildings.
"It's dismal down there," he says of the city. "We're expanding to a larger project that we're not ready to announce yet."
Bono, who sets the standard in celebrity activism and knows Pitt through their work on the ONE campaign, praises Pitt's efforts and his "intellectual curiosity."
"He has another thing hardly anyone else has in his position: modesty. He never wants to be the professor and always wants to be the student. His modesty belies his capability. He rolls up his sleeves and gets to know the subjects. He's not turning up for the photos, he gets into the trenches. There's a striking candor about him."
Surely, Pitt isn't perfect. Bono responds: "Would you give your house to him for the weekend? Absolutely, but you'd better check your scotch."
Dominik can't quite believe his collaborator of four years is the celebrity world's most wanted man. His first film, Chopper, starred a then-unknown Eric Bana. And Dominik is seeing firsthand the global sensation that is Brad Pitt.
"I just realized how famous he was over the last two places (Venice and Toronto). It's kind of thrilling, a sugar rush, but also really threatening. In Venice, after the press conference, a wave of 200 people ran at the table."
Pitt likens it to "a starting gun going off."
Moviegoers won't find that kind of rush in the pair's film. The movie, which Dominik admits is long and has no surging plot, moves at a saunter and lacks the furious gunplay of a standard Western. Both Dominik and Pitt acknowledge it could be a tough sell for mainstream audiences accustomed to big, brash action flicks.
But Pitt clearly believes in his director: "Andrew understands the undercurrents that propel us to behave like we do, that don't make sense. And through the whole process, he never wavered on his vision."
Dominik says after a few days of shooting, he forgot Pitt was the star of his movie. "I completely accepted him as Jesse. Even in the cast, they would talk about Jesse, not Brad Pitt," he says.
"The hardest thing about doing something with Brad is that he's Brad. When you watch Brad on screen, you never really feel like you know him. He's got an old-time mystery."
James could sniff out liars and traitors. Pitt, too, says he has honed instincts he didn't know he had.
"You develop radar. Like I know when there's someone in the bushes 300 yards away shooting," he says. "I know to recognize that feeling. (On the Canadian set), there was a guy in total camouflage, who commandoed his way on knee and elbow. And I know that feeling. It's inexplicable, one of those instincts."
Confirms Dominik: "He would always spot the paparazzi hiding in the tree."
not mine.credit and source: USA TODAY
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