Brad Pitt, John Legend, Russell Simmons, Danny Glover and filmaker Eugene Jarecki released joint statements in praise of President Barack Obama’s evolution on the enforcement of marijuana legislation on Wednesday, agreeing with Obama’s assertion that “we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
The president was discussing recreational marijuana use in Colorado and Washington, two states that legalized recreational pot use by adults.
Pitt and company — executive producers of the Jarecki-directed film “The House I Live In” — released the following statement:
President Obama should be commended for expressing the will of the people in Colorado and Washington. Our jails are overburdened with nonviolent drug users in this country, too often serving harsher sentences than violent criminals. This defies all common and economic sense. The President’s statement reflects a saner and more sensible drug policy, and a step away from the decades long failed war on drugs
“The House I Live In” is an award-winning documentary that urges reforms to drug laws, with a particular focus on sentencing.
plan b
The Returned
In a late buy, ABC has put in development The Returned, a serialized drama produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B, Brillstein Entertainment Partners and ABC Studios. Written by Aaron Zelman (AMC’s The Killing), The Returned is based on the debut novel by Jason Mott, which is slated to be published next September by Mira Books. The rights to the book sparked a bidding war among several production companies and studios. Brillstein and Plan B were able to land the property in their first teaming together, and the project was taken to ABC Studios where Brillstein is based. Executive producing alongside Zelman are JoAnn Alfano and Jon Liebman from BEP and Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner from Plan B.
The Returned is one of several projects BEP has set up this season, including two with CSI creator Anthony Zuiker: soap Taboo at ABC and an Alice In Wonderland sequel at NBC. Zelman is repped by UTA and Circle of Confusion.
HBO, Plan B developing ‘Paper’ series
HBO is developing “Paper,” an hourlong drama inspired by Jake Halpern’s essay “Pay Up,” featured in the New Yorker. Dede Gardner and Brad Pitt will exec produce through Pitt’s shingle, Plan B Entertainment, where Gardner serves as president.
“Paper” centers on a notorious ex-gangster and single father in Buffalo, N.Y., who is trying to reform himself by also serving as a professional debt collector. He finds, however, that life in the debt collection business can be just as lethal as the biz he’s struggling to leave behind.Short-story scribe Wells Tower will pen the project and co-exec produce.
PS. If you are experiencing problems logging into the SB Forum, just email me at webmaster@simplybrad.com and I will sort you out :)
Brad Pitt Promotes ‘The House I Live In’ at Los Angeles Screening
“I’m Brad Pitt and I’m a drug addict,” is the way The House I Live In’s executive producer jokingly introduced his new documentary at the Sundance Sunset Cinema on October 12. Pitt had flown in from Europe to give Eugene Jarecki’s film on U.S. drug policy a boost as it starts its North American roll out.
“My drug days have long since passed,” added Pitt, “But I could probably land in any American city and within 24 hours find whatever you want. But we still support this charade called the drug war. We spent a trillion dollars over 40 years and a lot of people have lost their lives over it.”
• x015 The House I Live In (screening) – Los Angeles, CA.
Brad Pitt: Born Again Book Nerd?
The past two days have been bookended by news from the front of Brad Pitt’s literary land-grab. Yesterday the Weinstein Company announced it had shifted the release date of “Killing Them Softly,” an adaptation of George V. Higgins’ Cogan’s Trade starring and produced by Pitt, to an Oscar-optimizing November 30. And word just got out that Pitt has been quietly developing an adaptation of IBM and the Holocaust, Edwin Black’s bestselling investigation into the computer conglom’s role assisting the Nazis to target Jews.
Perhaps literary evangelism is the most apt analogy for Pitt’s zeal for using his box office muscle to move challenging literary prizewinners from the rarefied microbrew-and-kale-salad haunts of the McSweeney’s generation to anyone within reach of a multiplex or the cable remote. Over the past decade, Pitt has undergone a self-generated conversion from matinee idol to serious-minded producer-actor and hardcore bibliophile, whose taste for ambitious, thought-provoking book-based material could give Scott Rudin — the Godfather of page-to-screen prestige pictures — a run for his money.
Read more. Thanks Gabriella. Interesting article, I must say.
