Don’t talk to Frederic Mitterrand about comedians like Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves, Jude Law or Leonardo DiCaprio. He only has eyes for Brad Pitt – whom he only calls “Brad”. Already in 2007, in his book Cannes festival, Mitterrand imagined that the American star would come to find him at night. “Like what it’s an old disease”, he laughs today at home, where he receives us. This fixed passion ended up inspiring him to try, Brad, in which he dissects with anecdotes and humor the life and work of his favorite living actor. Remained traumatized forever by reading the Cinema notebooks (“boring Marxists”), Mitterrand flees as usual hollow intellectualist postures. His cheerful and sensitive book has two claimed models: Marilyn, by Norman Mailer, and Roland Barthes. Because Brad Pitt, for him, deserves to be elevated to the rank of mythology.
Mitterrand admits having had a crush on it in 1991 in front of Thelma and Louise, where Pitt, still unknown, bursts the screen as a charming hitchhiker: “He is only present for a quarter of an hour but he is striking. We see James Dean reappear, all the cinema that I loved Brad embodies the seductive, spineless thug, the bastard, the one we all dream of!” It’s not a flash in the pan. With And in the middle flows a river And Fall Legends, two great melodies, Pitt settles into the landscape. Very quickly, it turns at the same time in darker films, like The Army of the Twelve Monkeys (which earned him a Golden Globe) or Seven. He will always keep this schizophrenia, alternating roles where his beauty is magnified (Seven years in Tibet, Troy) and others where it seems to seek to destroy itself (fight club, Snap).
Mitterrand’s verdict: “Brad is aware of his beauty, he constantly complains about it, he demolishes it, then he comes back to it. It must be said that in the first ten years of his career, he is always filmed shirtless , he must have been fed up! And don’t forget that he’s very depressed.” In Bradthe former Minister of Culture says that when the actor got depressed, he locked himself up with his friend, director David Fincher, where he slept on the floor and could not see anyone for a month.
Genius and naivety in Brad Pitt
Mitterrand raises a hare: there is both genius and naivety in Pitt. Genius when he plays in films as ambitious as The Tree of Life Or The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (unknown masterpiece), or when he reveals himself as a curious and daring producer with his Plan B company. that he dreams of being a great sculptor despite frankly ugly creations (and which no collector wants). Once again, Mitterrand smiled: “I’m not sure that Brad is very intelligent! I’m not sure either that he has great taste. He massacred the Château de Miraval, this marvelous 17th century country house. He likes architecture, but the pictures you can see of the interior aren’t great. Brad is from Missouri: he’s very American, though…”
For Mitterrand, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood by Tarantino is Pitt’s last great film (he was an Oscar winner): “We find Brad as handsome as when he started. And the theme is interesting. Brad is nostalgic for the great Hollywood story of yesteryear. You can feel it when he shoots for Tarantino or when he produces Blonde hair, the adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ book about Marilyn. This is also in babyloneven if it is missed.” The old-fashionedness spares no one and, according to Mitterrand, it now reaches his idol, whose career is treading water: “Brad misses what happened to Burt Lancaster when Visconti offered him Cheetah : a great European filmmaker who arrives with a great book and takes it as a hero. Maybe Brad is looking for that unconsciously when you see the time he spends in Europe.” Even if he too regrets the cinema of the past, Mitterrand continues to believe in it. As long as there is Brad Pitt…
Brad
By Frederic Mitterrand.
XO, 326 pages, €20.90.