Hot Actor: Brad Pitt

Pitt experienced a similar less-than-glamorous movie moment during the shooting of Johnny Suede. One scene required his character, Johnny, a pompadoured rock-star wanna-be, to pee in a bucket. Pitt faked it for the cameras, but when the shooting was done, the soundman still needed the sound of piss hitting the bucket. Pitt volunteered. "There's fifty crew members standing around," says director DiCillo, "and a boom girl standing there next to the bucket with a microphone. And Brad just pulled out his pecker and pissed for twenty-five seconds."

"I still didn't get the sound I wanted," says Pitt, ever the perfectionist.

Because Thelma and Louise had yet to be released and J.D. had yet to slink into the hearts of millions, DiCillo went against the wishes of his "money people" when he cast Pitt in the lead role of his movie. So did Ralph Bakshi when he went with Pitt for the lead role in Cool World over many Hollywood "names." "I had seen about 200 actors for the part," says Bakshi. "Like, everyone. Brad walked in the room, did a reading and blew me away. I thought he was the only one who could do this part."

Shooting Cool World provided its own challenges, like acting with invisible costars who would be drawn in later. "If you have an ego," Pitt says, "you'll lose it, just having to do this" ? he puts his arm around an invisible girl and kisses the air — "with all these people standing around. That'll humble you real quick." Pitt had to act love scenes and fight scenes all by himself. "It just became a dance," he says.

After shooting an entire movie in a studio, it was a relief to play a fisherman in A River Runs Through It. Pitt plays Paul, the brother who's great at fly-fishing but bad at fitting in. Pitt, who's had plenty of experience playing misfits, mostly needed to work on the fly-fishing. He started practicing his casting with a fly rod on top of buildings in Hollywood a few weeks before leaving for Montana. "I'd hook myself in the back of my head all the time," he says. "One time, they had to dig the barb out with pliers."

Beyond learning such essential skills as fly-fishing, Pitt says that he doesn't believe in excessive preparation for a role. "Most actors can get kind of silly," he says. "Wackadoos, most of us. Part analysis, part preparation — I usually end up throwing most of it out the window. Once you get on the set, you go on instinct, on impulse. You have all these grand theories about your character, but I never really understand them until I see the movie, and then I say, 'Oh, that's what that was about. That's who he was.' "

Pitt has been reading a lot of movie scripts, looking for that rare well-written character who tries. "The typical hero with the cool one-liners just doesn't interest me," he says. "I'd rather see people dealing with problems, trying to get around them. There's places for both kinds of roles, but what I respect is this thing of seeing people trying." After about a year of reading scripts, he has finally found a couple of movies that he would like to act in. If one of them works out, it will be his first job in almost a year. "I'm in no hurry," he says. "You start thinking that you gotta start picking the best of what's available. Tricky business.

"A funny thing happens that I just now became aware of, and I really believe it's why some actors don't keep doing what they started out doing," Pitt says. "All of a sudden, these people are telling you you're worth this, you're worth that. You're worth more than you feel, and what they're really telling you is that now you have something to lose. And so actors start operating out of fear; they're scared to do that, they're scared to do this, emphasizing all these other elements that have nothing to do with the art. It's a business, but business can't be the main emphasis."

Part of the business, of course, is hype. Pitt has had to deal with the James Dean comparison, which haunts every wiry young Midwestern actor with cool hair. Some people have even gone so far as to speculate that the dead icon is alluded to in the initials of Pitt's breakthrough character, J.D. And how about that peeing thing? Didn't Dean take a leak on the set of Giant to prove he wasn't intimidated by Elizabeth Taylor? Pitt shrugs off such comparisons, saying, "I don't know why you'd want to pattern your life after someone who's not a survivor."

"People have been asking me, 'What is it like to be a star?' " he says. "That's when you gotta get all coy and humble and say, 'Gee, I don't feel like a star.' It's work ? that's all it is. You're still stuck with yourself.

The basketball backboard isn't going up as easily as the toothbrush holder did: The flimsy metal brace that came with the kit is sagging under the weight of the backboard, and the hoop hasn't even been screwed into it yet. "It's no good," says Simmons. "Flimsy piece of shit"

"Very disappointing," says Pitt, slowly bouncing the basketball on the dirty cement driveway. Then, suddenly, he charges down the driveway toward the hoopless backboard, dribbling maniacally. Simmons guards Pitt closely, practically pushing him into the fence while trying to swat the ball away. Then, with an abrupt move that scatters tools and metal parts, Pitt whirls to the backboard and slam-dunks the ball through the invisible hoop. Without even trying.

[From Issue 630 — May 14, 1992]