Wednesday, September 18, 2019







Earlier this week, I got to sit down and talk with Brad Pitt about his new movie Ad Astra. In James Gray’s sci-fi film, which Pitt also produced through his production company Plan B, Pitt plays astronaut Roy McBride, who is tasked with trying to communicate with his missing father when his father’s work threatens all life on Earth. It’s a surprisingly emotional and somber picture with one of Pitt’s best performances as he portrays a stoic, reserved man coming to grips with his past and his weaknesses.







"We set out to make a very sincere film, a real bare bones, bare, raw honesty.  The danger in that, in sincerity is it can become to earnest and tip the scales of the film. "

"You get older and you just get tired of protecting yourself or having any secrets.   You want to get on with it and we wanted to get on with it in this film in a way.  We all carry great pains, great regrets. We've all experienced loss, we've all experienced great loneliness at times.  And we're good at packing that away and not dealing with it.   Some of us are good at getting through it and coming out the other side with a more well-rounded, a more confident and loving human being.  We just wanted, no holds barred, let's just go, let's get it out there."

"My individual experience is somewhat universal, in the fact that you know our parents, our universe, our gods, our first imprint on on how to behave, react, feel in the world. And with that, to different degrees, some of us more than others, carry pain and confusion from that. I think it almost takes a lifetime to understand what was yours, and what was theirs.  As a child we take fault or something of that nature on ourselves.  It was just a real investigation of parsing through that and being able to understand yourself.  "
"My dad always said he wanted to give me a better life than he had coming from extreme poverty, and he did it. And it makes me think, as a dad, what do I have to offer that's better than I had, to my kids?"

What about women? It's interesting that,hahaha (Brad makes a face) that the 2 female characters are pretty minor characters, minimal appearances on screen and some people have remarked on that.  Tell me the reason for that and the thinking behind that.
"I'm not sure what the remarks are.  This is an investigation of masculinity and our definitions of a Marlboro man-type, never show weakness or vulnerability.  Liv Tyler's character represents his regrets, what he got wrong, what he feels he mishandled or he missed.  And she is in the feminine an example of what we in the masculine need to take better note of.  Ruth Negga's character is a voice of wisdom that sends us in the ultimate direction of death and rebirth.

Publicly you spoke of what it's like to go through one of these things that not many men talk about, many men don't think it's OK to get help for certain things like alcohol and other kinds of substance.  You spoke without revealing the confidential nature of Alcoholics Anonymous about what it did, what it gave to you.  Can you tell me so that other people who are in that situation might get a boost from somebody like you if they need that kind of help.
"I don't know, for me what I realized is that I was running to things to avoid tough feelings, painful feelings.  I just didn't know how to deal with them. Anything I found that I used for escape.  Those kinds of difficult feelings, I don't know how better to describe it. It can be anything, drugs, booze, Netflix, snacks. Anything. I don't want at this point to be running from anything.  I want to sit in it, I want to feel it, I want to get through the rough night. I found in doing so, you come out the other side with a more profound understanding, of yourself and a greater gratefulness for those in your life. And the birds and the trees and everything else."

"At that moment, I was just a boy from the Ozarks on the playground.. and that's.. and that's how we confronted with things."
"I just wanted to make sure nothing was going to happen further, because she (Paltrow) was going to do two films. I think the interesting thing is that we, Hollywood specifically, but the workplace, men and women's dynamics is being recalibrated, recalibrated in a very good way that is long overdue. And I do think that's an important story to tell."





VENICE, Italy (AP) — Brad Pitt made the first move with James Gray.

In 1995, he saw Gray’s debut “Little Odessa” and decided to call up the young filmmaker behind the grim Brooklyn crime drama. They’ve been talking ever since — about films, life and working together. But it would take almost 25 years for the stars to finally align, fittingly, for an ambitious, original space odyssey called “Ad Astra” that opens in theaters nationwide Friday.

“It’s a gutsy film,” Pitt said last month. The 55-year-old both produced and stars in the story about an astronaut who ventures almost entirely alone into the outer reaches of space to investigate a disturbance that may be tied to his missing father. It’s something Gray had been working on for years.

Pitt’s choice of the word “gutsy” is appropriate, not just as a description of the film and its exploration of big themes like masculinity with the grand canvas of space as its backdrop, but in talking about the fact that it exists at all. Not many studios and production companies are handing over $80 million for original ideas anymore. That Pitt’s Plan B, New Regency and 20th Century Fox banded together to make “Ad Astra” happen is, Gray said, “Beyond rare...It’s a big risk.”

Pitt, sitting next to his director, chimed in: “It’s why studios have veered away from them. They’re a big gamble: The cost, the prints and advertising. It’s why they have to take safer bets.”

The business has changed so much that Gray doubts that “Ad Astra” would even be made today. But three years ago the two decided to take a leap on this big idea to make an epic set in the near future that Gray likes to call “science-fact-fiction.” Gray was fascinated by the type of personality that’s required for space travel and that Neil Armstrong, upon returning to Earth from the Apollo 11 mission talked only about the logistics and facts — nothing metaphysical or contemplative.

“Deflection,” Pitt said. “I do it all the time.”

Not that Pitt isn’t introspective about his work. He said he was drawn to the idea of the “dark night of the soul. When one is really forced to address their self and the things we carry and most likely bury, congenital griefs, regrets, those personal pains and to come out the other side, hopefully, embracing those is the way to becoming whole.”

“It was something on my mind as well,” Pitt said.

And his performance is a standout that critics and awards observers have taken note of, on top of his acclaimed work earlier this summer in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”

“He is a fabulous actor,” Gray said. “And there aren’t that many fabulous actors with mucho charisma in the world.”

Pitt disagrees with his friend, but he is happy to keep working.

“I so believe in being creative and want to be creative till it’s all said and done, until someone pulls the plug on me,” Pitt said.

Part of that involves throwing his production company’s weight behind ambitious, original projects, some of which work out and go on to win Oscars and steer the cultural conversation (“12 Years a Slave,” ″Moonlight”), and some that don’t. Plan B produced Gray’s last film, “The Lost City of Z,” a period adventure film about explorer Percy Fawcett, which never played on more than 1,000 theaters, nor made back its $30 million production budget.

“Ad Astra” has already seen a bit of turbulence before its release. It was one the Fox films that is now being released by Disney after it acquired the rival studio, causing “Ad Astra’s” release date to shift a few times.

“It’s like worrying about the alignment of the planets. It’s so past your pay grade,” said Gray, who was finishing the film when the deal was happening. “Was I worried? No, because I can’t do anything about it. I just thought, ‘Well that’s weird.’ But I will say in one small respect I disagree with Brad on this. I do think that one company controlling 40% of the theatrical market in the world is a dangerous proposition. That’s almost a monopoly. So to the degree that means fewer films, fewer, fewer chances to make this kind of film, that’s a source of some concern.”

Pitt has also been asking big questions like if “film as an art form is going to last” when the two start riffing about whether they have the same staying power today.

“If I say to you ‘I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse,’ you know what I just did, right?” Gray asked. “Can you quote me a line from ‘Avatar?’”

Pitt’s response? He loves “Avatar.”

But Gray has a bigger argument: “It’s visually spectacular, but it’s a different form of the medium. And if we lose ‘I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse,’ then we lose something big.”

By this point, Pitt had wandered over to the massive window in the room and was snapping photos of the beach and water outside when he started to laugh to himself. He said he was thinking about the lasting quotes that have come from his own career and spit-balled a few, like “What’s in the box?” from “Seven,” and “Don’t condescend me, man,” from “True Romance.”

Nothing, he concluded, had the weight of Marlon Brando’s line from “The Godfather.”

“Well you know what Francois Truffaut said,” Gray asked. “He said cinema has to be part truth, part spectacle.”

Pitt paused and thought about it: “Now we either have all spectacle or all truth.”

The hope is that “Ad Astra” is a bit of both.


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