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The Waiting Is the Hardest Part
Brad Pitt at a Party for ‘Fury’
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Brad Pitt flew in from Malta on Tuesday and was expected at a V.I.P. screening of his new World War II movie, “Fury,” which opens Friday.
Around
5:30 p.m., guests rolled into Kingside, a restaurant on West 57th
Street, for an event billed as “cocktails and hors d’oeuvres with Brad
Pitt.”
Blaine
Trump stood by the front bar, telling a reporter how much she likes Mr.
Pitt. “I fell in love with him during ‘Thelma & Louise’ and I’ve
tried to see every movie since,” she said.
Nearby
was Susan Lucci. Same thing. Although she tried to make a point about
how hard it was to be good looking and be taken seriously. “He’s so
handsome people sometimes forget what a great actor he is,” she said.
But the minutes kept ticking by and no Mr. Pitt.
As
waiters handed out crab croquettes, Jess Cagle, the editor of People
magazine, talked about the recent weddings of Mr. Pitt and his buddy
George Clooney, which were both featured in exclusive coverage in his
magazine. Mr. Cagle seemed to imply that Mr. Clooney provided more bang
for the buck. “He gave us 50 photos,” he said. “It was amazing.”
Mr.
Pitt’s co-stars Shia LaBeouf and Logan Lerman walked in. It was
arguably Mr. LaBeouf’s most public appearance in New York since he
disrupted a “Cabaret” performance in June and was sentenced to three months of substance-abuse treatment.
Now
he was back, in his gray suit (“It’s from Italy,” he said, unsure of
the brand), sober and munching on sliders, as part of his Oscar season
redemption tour. He was clearly nervous as he sat in the back with the
film’s director, David Ayer, talking tenuously about how Mr. Pitt had
been there for him when things got tough during the grueling shoot.
“I
ain’t never worked with a man in his position who gives as much,” Mr.
LaBeouf said. “I got really vulnerable early on, and he carried me.”
At
7 p.m., there was still no sign of Mr. Pitt, but women with clipboards
nudged guests next door to the Directors Guild theater for the
screening.
As
the crowd, which also included Spike Lee, Ivanka Trump and Anna
Wintour, took their seats, Mr. Ayer moved to the front of the room and
thanked his producers, John Lesher and Bill Block, before adding,
“There’s also some guys that star in this thing and I’d like to bring
them out.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Brad Pitt,” he said proudly.
Mr.
Pitt came out from a side entrance, wearing a dark jacket, untucked
shirt, tinted glasses, faded jeans and dark brown boots. For a minute,
he stood there, saying nothing, as the photographers went snap, snap,
snap and audience members craned their necks to see if he was everything
they had dreamed.
As
the lights went down, Mr. Pitt and the cast left the theater, jumped
into a pile of SUVs and headed uptown to the AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13
for another screening, another star-struck crowd and more photographers
going snap, snap, snap.
What do the Jolie-Pitt kids think of mom and dad's marriage? Brad spills to PEOPLE at the #Fury premiere http://t.co/NUrW3SWw9b
— People magazine (@peoplemag) October 16, 2014
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's six children played a large role in their parents' recent wedding – after all, it was the kids who urged them to get married and even penned the couple's vows.
So how are Maddox, 13, Pax, 10, Zahara, 9, Shiloh, 8, and 6-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox enjoying their mom and dad being husband and wife?
"They like it," Pitt told PEOPLE at the world premiere of his new movie Fury in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, pausing thoughtfully and smiling. "They like it."
Pitt spent time with members of the military, including retired WWII veterans, at the patriotic premiere. He also got plenty of face time with his costars while making the war movie; Navy Seals put the cast through bootcamp to prepare them for their roles.
"It was actually very complex. It wasn't like, dig a foxhole and you're done," director David Ayer told PEOPLE on the red carpet. "It was engineered to break them down and then build them up as a team. Once they came out of that, they were glowing. They had this incredible chemistry together and I was a bit jealous because I hadn't shared in that experience and was now an outsider."
One insider, 22-year-old Logan Lerman (who played Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower and the youngest team member on the tank crew in Fury), had an intimate task assigned to him during bootcamp.
In an effort to keep the men sleep-deprived, they took turns staying awake on watch each night. Because Logan's rank was at the bottom of the list, he had a very senior member of the group behind him.
"We each had to wake the next person, and the next person was Brad for me," Lerman told PEOPLE. "So I had to be the guy to wake Brad Pitt up."
So, how did that go?
"It was weird. How do you wake up a sleeping beauty? It took a while to figure it out. You just kiss him gently and you rock him and you hold him and you say, 'Hey, sweetie.' "
In all seriousness, though, how do you wake up Brad Pitt?
"I told you," Lerman said with a grin. "Tenderness. Be kind."
