The Unbearable Bradness of Being

PORTUGAL

Brad Pitt Swishes down the Lisbon streets, one more American on vacation. In his hand he carries a camera, which he shoots from waist height. "I learned a few tricks from the paparassholes," he announces. "The paparnazis. They all look alike to me — horns and a pointed tail and a big Cyclops eye...." He snaps a ragged, down-and-out Portuguese man on a bench and pushes through a flock of pigeons, a little disappointed that the birds, with their seen-it-all urban ways, are too underwhelmed to scatter in front of the lens. Instead they nonchalantly hop out of his path, and he swishes onward.

It is the last week of May. "I'm unemployed, and Jen's on a break," Pitt says, "so we thought we'd travel." He describes his state of mind: "I'm on the move. I'm in the ramble-on state of mind. Just, you know...on the search. On the..." — he pronounces this last word as French — "...exploration." I ask him what he's looking for. "Just playing," he says. "Just seeing how other people live, that's all. Other people's cultures." Pitt has not acted since David Fincher's Fight Club, a remarkable film — out this month — in which Pitt and Edward Norton play the co-founders of an underground group in which willing men beat one another with bare fists to rediscover feeling in themselves. Having turned down roles in films from Robert Redford and Cameron Crowe, Pitt has no jobs in the pipeline. "I just go with the flow pretty much," he says. "I'm enjoying floating, too, man."

Pitt seems relaxed. His girlfriend, Jennifer Aniston, is back in the hotel and will not be seen today, but the very fact that he mentions her so readily — and that he is happy to meet up during their European break — marks quite a change from the blinds-down, determined privacy behind which they have previously shuttered their relationship. "We did well for a while there," he says. "We just didn't participate. We just wanted to see if something was going to grow on its own without any outside influence. We just wanted to keep it special. Keep it ours."

Right now, Pitt's plan is to go to an art-deco cafe he spotted earlier from their cafe car. He heads down the long road toward it, moving swiftly. If anyone half-recognizes him, he is gone before the photo-fit match is completed. If you are famous like Pitt, you adopt smart tactics. You learn that the best way to see a city is on a bicycle — you can out-pedal any pedestrian attention and cut away to places where the paparazzi cars can't follow. But even on foot, there are useful strategies. "Good hats," he says. (Today he's in a floppy-rimmed Puma number.) "You've got to switch the hats. You've got to have some good glasses and stay on the move." Mostly, Pitt and Aniston have been doing all right.

Pitt: I'm a little more concerned about it than when I'm on my own. Because I don't want... [His voice trails off.]

Me: It's called chivalry.

Pitt: No, it's called... [Pitt gets this far through the sentence and stops, as though he realizes he has a decision to make. And then he makes it.] ...love, I suppose.

Me: Well, there's nothing wrong with that.

Pitt: No, there's not. Absolutely not. [More confident] Absolutely not. [Grins] Greatest thing in the world. On record, I say that.

In the cafe, a Portuguese woman comes to the table and asks whether he is Brad Pitt.

"No," Pitt replies, though not in an unfriendly manner, and she backs away. He tells me that when he is asked that question, he usually replies, "No — not today." Anyway, later, when another person approaches with the different opening line, "You make film of Tibet?" he nods and happily signs a shirt.

We are alone. Pitt glances suspiciously at what lies between us on the table, as though it's always the inconsiderate, tattle-telling interloper that spoils a good conversation. "The dreaded tape recorder," he says, fingering it. "I'm going to point the evil red light facing your way." He hunches down a little bit and stares at me. "What's your angle? You gotta find something." As I will learn, his faith in this form of communication is not great. Maybe he has his reasons. In our times together, Pitt and I will each have our faith stretched; it is perhaps best simply to relate it as it happens.

To begin with, we talk about Pitt's other passion, architecture. This is not a flighty celebrity hobby. Back in his hometown of Springfield, Missouri, Pitt and his father are developing a subdivision with forty or fifty houses. Fighting the hegemony of the strip mall. "We're going to do something where everybody's got land and space," Pitt says. A way of living where "we don't completely have to destroy and manipulate nature." In California he is working, in a more hands-on way, on personal architectural projects of his own.