By Barbara Vancheri /
Saturday night,
Sept. 5, 2008
TORONTO - Brad Pitt doesn't need to look for projects to share with Angelina Jolie, his partner and the mother of their brood of six children including newborn twins.
Asked at a press conference if he was searching for a movie to do with Jolie, Pitt said, "Angie and I, we're working together every day, I can guarantee."
If Pitt (left, photo credit: Evan Agostini/Associated Press) is stressed about being the most wanted man in the world - for festival sightings this weekend - he didn't show it. Clad in a silvery vest and pants and white open-collar shirt, he was the picture of handsome health and contentment. He looked little like his character in "Burn After Reading," a personal trainer with hair brushed straight up and a bad blond streak in it.
For much of the movie, he chews a wad of gum, wears a Hardbodies Fitness Center polo shirt, shorts and sneakers, has an iPod strapped to his arm and a habit of grooving to the music in a way that steals every scene in which he appears.
Asked about his inspiration for his character, he said, "That was all me. All me in a former day. Man, I really don't know. It's a mystery to even me and I'm somewhat disturbed by it all," just as his "other half" is, too.
Although "Burn" reunites the Coens with George Clooney, it marks the first time Pitt is working with the brothers who wrote the role for him.
"I've been knocking on the brothers' door for a few years, so I was really happy when they called, until I read the piece and then I was a little upset again," he said, with humor shot through his voice. He plays just one of the knuckleheads caught in the comic and cataclysmic collision of hard bodies, big brains and an ousted CIA analyst who opts to write his memoir just as his wife decides to divorce him.
John Malkovich is the CIA employee, Tilda Swinton his sharp-tongued wife and George Clooney the married federal marshal with whom she's having an affair. Pitt's character works in the same gym as one played by Frances McDormand (not at the press conference), a woman obsessed with Internet dating and trying to find a way to undergo plastic surgery to lift, tighten and tuck various body parts.
She owes her bobbed blond wig and some of her makeover madness to Linda Tripp in her days after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. She prowls a site called BeWithMeDC.com and argues with her insurance company - when she can penetrate the voicemail system -- over her proposed plastic surgery.
You'll find more about the movie, its cast and its makers in Friday's paper.
The day started with "Burn After Reading" and moved to interviews for "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist," starring Michael Cera and Kat Dennings, advanced to "Ghost Town" with Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear and segued to "The Secret Life of Bees," with a screening of "The Duchess" still to come tonight.
In a cringe-inducing question that could have come straight from "The Office," a reporter asked Gervais (left, photo credit: Evan Agostini/Associated Press) what he had done to his teeth in "Ghost Town," in which he plays a dentist who dies during a colonoscopy and comes back to life with the ability to see ghosts.
"No, that's my own teeth," said Gervais. "What, you think I put these in for press conferences?" he asked, pointing to his mouth. "I'm also wearing a fat suit and I'm much taller than this as well. ... A little, fat superstar with bad teeth," as the crowd of reporters howled as he played out this bit for all it was worth.
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Posted
Sep 07 2008, 08:14 AM
by
Sharon Eberson