BP Press

GQ: Brad Pitt Talks Divorce, Quitting Drinking, and Becoming a Better Man

Summer is coming and, in America, that means it’s time to hit the national parks. So we took Brad Pitt and photographer Ryan McGinley tumbling across three of them: The Everglades, White Sands, and Carlsbad Caverns. Then we sat down with Pitt at home in L.A. for a raw conversation about how to move forward after things fall apart.
Brad Pitt is making matcha green tea on a cool morning in his old Craftsman in the Hollywood Hills, where he’s lived since 1994. There have been other properties in other places—including a château in France and homes in New Orleans and New York City—but this has always been his kids’ “childhood home,” he says. And even though they’re not here now, he’s decided it’s important that he is. Today the place is deeply silent, except for the snoring of his bulldog, Jacques.
Pitt wears a flannel shirt and skinny jeans that hang loose on his frame. Invisible to the eye is that sculpted bulk we’ve seen on film for a quarter-century. He looks like an L.A. dad on a juice cleanse, gearing up to do house projects. On the counter sit some plated goodies from Starbucks, which he doesn’t touch, and some coffee, which he does. Pitt, who exudes likability, general decency, and a sense of humor (dark and a little cockeyed), says he’s really gotten into making matcha lately, something a friend introduced him to. He loves the whole ritual of it. He deliberately sprinkles some green powder in a cup with a sifter, then pours in the boiling water, whisking with a bamboo brush, until the liquid is a harlequin froth. “You’re gonna love this,” he says, handing me the cup

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May 3, 2017 by Josan BP Gallery BP Media BP Press magazines photoshoots

NY Times

1. Brad Pitt is a plant murderer.

The worst kind, too. The kind who lets a plant starve to death. The evidence, at two opposing corners of his office in Beverly Hills; skeletal remnants that long gave up hope of ever being watered. He’s been away for 10 months, he says. An explanation, if not exactly an excuse. Regardless, I vow to expose his plant-murdering ways because the American public deserves to know, and besides, at 52 one should take whatever notoriety one can get.

I’m at Plan B, the film production company Pitt co-founded in 2001 and now owns, and I’ve decided to impress him with my knowledge of architecture, something he learned about while helping to rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I figured I’d introduce him to Shigeru Ban, famous for his Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand, and other disaster-relief projects around the world. But there, sitting on Pitt’s bookshelf, is an entire monograph of his work.

Near his record player are Joe Strummer’s albums with the Mescaleros, not a surprise, but also rare books on fringe culture, including Danny Lyon’s “The Bikeriders,” which are. This is a revelation not because Pitt is a megastar, which can lead to a certain out-of-touchness, but because he’s a father, and the first thing that goes after having kids is coolness. The first thing that comes are jorts. So when he gets up to shake my hand — dressed in a white T-shirt, white jeans and a white fedora — he seems more like the Dude than a dad.

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• x037 Narrating passage from novel by Marlon James.

September 8, 2016 by Josan BP Gallery BP Press magazines

Hollywood Reporter

“People suffered as they did and yet no one was held accountable and nothing seemed to change,” says ‘The Big Short’ producer-actor.

A version of this story first appeared in the Dec. 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

On the afternoon of Nov. 23, The Big Short is premiering in New York, just a cab ride away from the epicenter of the financial meltdown of the mid-2000s. The film’s Brad Pitt is livid that greed continues unfettered and justice is elusive. “It’s disgusting. It makes me angry,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter of the Wall Street-generated housing and credit bubble that left millions without a home due to foreclosure. “What I liked about the film is that it tries to explain to people how they got screwed.” Pitt, who also produced the $28 million film through his Plan B Entertainment, hopes the film spurs the public to question exactly how this happened. In a wide-ranging conversation, Pitt talks about why he opted for a small role, how comedy director Adam McKay won the job and whether or not he blames President Obama for the lack of accountability.

How did you become involved as a producer?

Well we got the book. We’re sitting on this great book by Michael Lewis, and it was a subject that I really wanted to take on — still wondering, questioning, angered by the fact that this whole collapse happened and people suffered as they did, and yet no one was held accountable and nothing seemed to change. And it’s true nothing has really changed. So we were lucky to win Michael’s book and we set about developing the script, so we started with Charles Randolph, and we got a really smart, insightful script but still, this kind of material is very, very difficult to get made these days. So I had met Adam McKay a few years prior. We were looking, talking about doing a film about Lee Atwater that he had developed. And I walked away completely charmed by him and absolutely impressed with his knowledge of global affairs and his wit. And my partners had been talking to him at the same time about something, and it just made sense. It just felt like the perfect [fit] if we could get Adam on. It would be the perfect kind of balance and delivery system for this kind of material. And it’s fair to say once it went through Adam’s filter, we really felt like we had our script, we had our story.

December 4, 2015 by Josan BP Press The Big Short

The Telegraph

From Fight Club to family man, Brad Pitt tells Mick Brown how being a father of six has changed him as a man and as an actor

There was a time when Brad Pitt, like most people, would enter a hotel through the front door, but that hasn’t happened for the best part of 20 years. ‘I’m usually carted up the ass end,’ as he puts it. And so it is that here, as everywhere else, he has been denied the pleasures of a hotel lobby thronged with the svelte and the affluent – for this is a very swanky hotel indeed – and too the pleasures of taking a stroll on a sunny autumn morning unmolested, lending his fourth-floor room, luxurious as it is, a curious air of confinement.

It is an air somewhat exaggerated by the fact that, in his downbeat sweatshirt and tracksuit trousers, the Kangol cap pulled down low over his forehead, the straggly half-beard, Pitt looks less like you expect him to look and more like a man attempting to disguise himself as his own minder.

In fact, Pitt’s minder is outside in the corridor, an imposing presence, standing quietly beside the gaggle of clipboard-wielding publicists. He is perhaps less a precautionary measure for Pitt – who with his muscled 6ft frame appears perfectly capable of looking after himself – than for his wife, Angelina Jolie, who is in an adjacent room being interrogated by a handful of European journalists.Being the most recognised show-business couple in the world has its own perils and disadvantages.

Pitt walks over to turn off the air conditioning and reaches for two bottles of water. He is a courteous man, his manner attentive and earnest. Very earnest. He is in London for discussions about his latest project as a producer, ‘a satire about the war in Afghanistan’ (he does not elaborate), but mostly to talk about his role in By the Sea, a new film written by, directed by and co-starring Jolie.

December 1, 2015 by Josan BP Press By the Sea

Vulture interview ‘A lot of people got hurt’

Adam McKay’s new financial-apocalypse comedy The Big Short — the subject of this week’s Vulture cover story — was produced by Brad Pitt, who also took a small role in the film to help ensure the production got properly funded. Here, Pitt talks about his sideline as a genuine prestige-movie mogul (with his company Plan B), what it means to team up with author Michael Lewis again, and his personal outrage in 2008.

Lately it seems like there are a lot of actors with production companies adapting books — you, Leonardo DiCaprio, Reese Witherspoon. Do things get competitive? For instance, your company, Plan B, recently outbid your pal George Clooney on Law of the Jungle.
In all fairness, he outbid me on Argo. But, yeah, it can get competitive. We do naturally have a lot of the same tastes and interests. With The Big Short, I think maybe we got the upper hand at auction because Michael Lewis and I got tight on Moneyball.

Plan B also has a really good track record of getting movies actually made. What’s your secret?
I was weaned on the films of the ’70s, and a lot of the films we make are inspired by those. But the plain truth of it all is that these kinds of movies are hard to make. The studios don’t want to make them because it doesn’t fit the business model anymore. It’s complicated material, it’s a gamble. They need some guarantee with marquee. So often I jump in and take a part first because I love the project, and I gotta get in to make sure it gets made. Then, when Steve Carell and Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling all jump in, I think it is a testament to the subject matter, and the story, and to Adam McKay’s script.

December 1, 2015 by Josan BP Press The Big Short