Category: BP Gallery

Pitt: ‘I feel fantastic’ about Make It Right

BP Gallery / BP Press / magazines / Make It Right
August 16, 2015

The origin story of the collection of angular, brightly painted homes called Make It Right has become a piece of New Orleans lore. The Lower 9th Ward neighborhood near the Claiborne Avenue bridge was more or less wiped out by floodwater surging through a gap in the levee wall in 2005. Then, as if by Hollywood magic, Brad Pitt appeared to attempt to rebuild it. At the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the flood, 109 homes stand where there once was only mud and wreckage. More homes are on the way.

“I’ll tell you, every time I drive over the Claiborne bridge, no matter what frustration I might be dealing with at the moment, I get this well of pride when I see this little oasis of color and the solar panels,” Pitt said in a telephone conversation Friday (Aug. 15) from Los Angeles.

An ecologist, architecture enthusiast and part-time New Orleans resident, Pitt called on the top building designers of the region, nation and world to draw up houses with striking appearances that married advanced environmental practices with affordable building methods. He also founded a nonprofit organization to see that those design gems rose on the empty landscape.

“I drive into the neighborhood and I see people on their porch,” Pitt said, “and I ask them how is their house treating them? And they say, ‘Good.’ And I say what’s your utility bill? And they’ll throw something out like, ’24 bucks’ or something, and I feel fantastic. It’s a reminder of why we’re there. It’s a reminder of why we push like we push. It makes it all worthwhile.”

Pitt sees his Lower 9th Ward homebuilding efforts as a model

BP Gallery / BP Press / Charity/Philanthropy / magazines / Make It Right
August 15, 2015

Actor Brad Pitt didn’t have much experience with financing forgivable loans when he built his first home in the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Lower 9th Ward in 2008.

But seven years later, Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation has gained worldwide attention for the eye-catching home designs and “green” building features — such as solar panels and rainwater collectors — that it has incorporated into a growing development for low-income residents seeking to return to the neighborhood.

“I walked into it blind, just thinking, ‘People need homes; I know people who make great homes. Let’s solve this problem of the inequality and low-income housing in a place that’s been ravaged by the environment,’ ” the 51-year-old Pitt said Friday in a telephone interview.

Although Pitt and his wife, actress Angelina Jolie, put their French Quarter mansion on the market earlier this year, he said they’re not planning to leave the city for good and may buy another home in time.

A decade after Katrina’s floodwaters destroyed more than 5,300 homes in a neighborhood once known for having the highest rate of black home ownership in New Orleans, Pitt’s efforts have paid off: His foundation has spent $26.8 million to build 109 homes in a 20-block area.

In part because of his efforts, the neighborhood has managed to bounce back somewhat, though slowly. It now has about 37 percent of its population before the storm — a lower figure than most other devastated parts of the city.

Though he said there’s still work to do, Pitt considers the Make It Right development to be an example of how to rebuild in a neighborhood that some city and federal officials had suggested should not be rebuilt at all in the storm’s aftermath.

He called it “an oasis of color, an … oasis of how to build with dignity for low-income housing, and I see it as a template for how we can build our cities and certainly our neighborhoods in other areas in the future.”

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt spent their honeymoon fighting By the Sea

BP Gallery / By the Sea
August 15, 2015

Would you expect anything less than arresting beauty from a film starring Angelina Jolie Pitt and Brad Pitt? But the actress, who also wrote and directed this film about an estranged married couple struggling with grief, says that setting By the Sea in the 1970s wasn’t without its aesthetic challenges. “It makes me happy when people say the movie looks period but also beautiful,” she says. “I was little in the ’70s, and to see our old pictures, well…” She laughs. “It was not great.”

Filming took place in Malta last August, with the quiet island of Goza standing in for seaside France. Cinematographer Christian Berger (The White Ribbon) kept the look of the production as realistic as possible. “It’s all natural light so it doesn’t feel artificial,” Jolie Pitt says. “When we did scenes, we didn’t have big lighting setups in our face for close-ups.” That stripped-down intimacy helped with some of the film’s heavier moments. “We watch this couple go off the track and we wait to see if it gets more unhealthy, or if they will recover,” she says. “I think too often people go through very painful transformative experiences and they don’t stay together. They abandon each other.”

The reverse was true for the newly wedded stars — who worked on the film during their honeymoon — though it certainly wasn’t without its darker moments. “It was an emotionally charged set,” Jolie Pitt says. “Even though the characters are very different from us, when you act you still express real emotion.” Luckily, the couple’s six kids were on hand to ground them. “It’s impossible to bring your work home with you when you have to snap out of it for your children,” she says. “It wasn’t easy for either of us, but when we walked away, we were closer than we had been.”

Read more. Thanks Yukko for the pictures!

• x004 By the Sea – Stills.

Trailer: Brad Pitt And Angelina Jolie Reunite On Screen In ‘By The Sea’

BP Gallery / By the Sea
August 7, 2015

Ten years after lighting up the big screen in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are reuniting for the movies once again.

Entertainment Weekly released the first trailer for By The Sea, which offers a grim look at the messy relationship between lovers writer Roland (Pitt) and former dancer Vanessa (Jolie).

Harry Nilsson’s melancholy “Perfect Day” plays over the clip as Roland and Vanessa, yell, kick and scream at each other — very much like Pitt and Jolie’s first foray into on-screen romance!

The clip also features picturesque views of the island of Gozo, but don’t go planning your next vacation around the film’s locales. “It’s this lovely and quiet island and we built the hotel and bar,” Jolie explains. “Everyone who has seen the movie wants to go to that exact place — but it’s just the magic of film.”

Days after secretly tying the knot in France last summer, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Pitt were hard at work on their latest collaboration, By The Sea.

Now, thanks to exclusive access obtained by People magazine, we’re getting a first look at the couple as they reunite on-screen together in the romantic drama.