Althouse: Why Brad Pitt is fun to watch half the time.

June 4, 2005

Why Brad Pitt is fun to watch half the time.

I agree with this theory. And don't forget "Fight Club," where Brad's good.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...: Unfortunately, the problem Brad Pitt has is that Hollywood is very rigid. It has a relatively small number of fixed roles: “Leading Man”, “Leading Lady”, “Hunk”, “Sex Kitten”, “Comical Sidekick”, “Best Friend”, “All-Purpose Character Actor”, etc. Great stars make their own slots (eventually) cf. Katherine Hepburn. Brad Pitt isn't a great star and there is no slot for a hunk sidekick. So they'll keep sticking him in unsuitable “Hunk” or “Leading Man” vehicles until his box office runs out.; 6/4/05, 8:06 AM
JohnF said...: Interesting. You're the first woman, Ann, who I know of, who has admitted to liking Fight Club.

I'm sure there are more women out there who like the movie.; 6/4/05, 9:49 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I love "Fight Club." It's one of my favorite movies of the last 10 years. I find the revelation of the central secret one of the most thrilling things I've ever seen in a movie. Maybe the most: I literally get chills, even on repeated viewings and even just remembering it!; 6/4/05, 11:26 AM
Joan said...: Excellent insight into Pitt's abilities and limitations.

I adored "Fight Club", and "Twelve Monkeys" too... but have never been sufficiently interested to see a film that Pitt has headlined.; 6/4/05, 2:05 PM
Wade Garrett said...: I loved Fight Club when it first came out. I was a sophomore at Yale at the time, and since Edward Norton and a couple of the film's producers went to Yale, the film's east coast premiere was held at a small theater on Yale's campus immediately following its true premiere in LA. At the time, I was 19 years old and surrounded by a ton of rich kids, so certain aspects of the film really spoke to me.
Over the years since it came out, my enthusiasm has lessened. I think its pretty cynical to seemingly renounce materialism, but at the same time always portray its characters wearing $250 shits, leather jackets worth thousands of dollars, and fancy sunglasses. In the wake of 9-11, the collapse of all those buildings at the end makes me a little uncomfortable. And, perhaps most importantly, I think that too many men left that movie wanting to start a fight, instead of re-evaluating their masculinity and their materialism. Does anybody else feel this way about it?; 6/5/05, 3:48 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Terrence: I haven't watched the whole movie through since 9-11, but I did rewatch the ending, which can no longer be experienced the way it was back in 1999. The idea of a group of people bent on blowing up buildings to protest Western materialism doesn't work the way it did before. But, as you note, the movie tries to say something worthwhile by using extreme exaggeration. If people take it literally, they are fools!; 6/5/05, 3:58 PM
Wade Garrett said...: I had forgotten about this, but another reason I really liked the movie was that I thought it was an improvement on the book. There aren't many movies about which that is true . . . and most of the ones for which it is true, for instance The Godfather, were based on pretty mediocre books. But Fight Club is an improvement on a pretty good book -- I was very impressed.; 6/5/05, 4:14 PM
Ann Althouse said...: I read the book after seeing the movie and didn't like it at all. The tone was entirely different -- I can't remember exactly how -- and it just didn't appeal dto me.; 6/5/05, 4:18 PM