Brad Pitt, Celebrity and a Random Act of Kindness

Columbia Pictures "Moneyball" Screening — Jonah Hill, Dave Karger, Brad Pitt

Photo posted on JustJared

I was invited to a special screening for Moneyball on the Sony lot. If you’ve never been there, or don’t live on the Westside, it’s quite a trek out to Culver City. I’m almost always late, and I can’t find the right driveway, not ever. Once on the lot, I often get lost trying to find the right theater, and then get lost again trying to find my car. It’s never my favorite place to see a movie (that would be the Academy’s theater on Wilshire in Beverly Hills — it’s the place movie lovers call Heaven) because I hate driving those freeways — the 405, the 10, Overland exit, Motor Avenue and then finally, there’s Sony. But it was worth it this time because I was getting to see one of the best films of 2011: Moneyball.

The special screening at Sony meant that Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill were going to be there for a Q&A. It’s hard to get people out to Sony to see Moneyball now, after it’s had its box office run – they didn’t pay to see it so why would they drive all the way out to Culver City to see it? Well, obviously because it was a chance to sit in the same room with one of the most splendid among us. The only catch was that they had to watch Moneyball first.

Moneyball is a slow burn of a film. It isn’t a hot and heavy romance like most Oscar winners. It isn’t the zipless fuck that leaves you breathless and satisfied but you hardly think about ten years on. It’s the relationship. It’s the one you can talk to afterwards for hours, and it’s the one you stay friends with as you get older. The reason is, and this was confirmed for me on the third viewing, Bennett Miller takes his time telling the story. Each long scene is well thought through. It never cuts you off too quickly or leaves you hanging. He finishes them. He lets the arc of the scene play out, allowing the actor breathing room. Movies move so fast now, to adapt to our ever diminishing attention span. But the ones that know how important storytelling is — those are the ones that last for the long haul.

In Moneyball, Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane is just one move away from total failure. His marriage fell apart, his career as a ball player ended prematurely. When he decides to give the new concept of statistics baseball a try, for better or worse, it is, in many ways, a last stand. Sure, it’s not saving him from life on the streets, and it isn’t curing an incurable disease and it isn’t helping the poor — maybe it isn’t anything that important. But it doesn’t matter in the end because the movie is about, as Pitt put it in the chat afterwards, what matters. Winning doesn’t matter. The game is … the game. By the end of Moneyball, one feels much like they do after the Oscar race ends. Okay, so that happened. What team wins the World Series in a given year matters to that year, it matters to the players and the managers and owners. It’s a lot like … well, the Oscars. To be more specific, Oscar campaigning. The movie themselves can’t “train” to “play better” the way ball players do. It isn’t a sport, as many filmmakers will often haughtily remind us. But campaigning is about winning and losing. When you feel you’ve lost by the end of it, like last year for instance, you are missing the bigger picture: it doesn’t really matter all that much who wins and loses. Not really. Not in baseball, not in beauty pageants and not at the Oscars.

Photo taken by Jeff Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere.com

Once the movie ended, Pitt and Hill came out, took their seats in front of the crowd. The q&a was moderated by Entertainment Weekly’s Dave Karger. They talked about how vital Catherine Keener had been to setting up the project, and they talked about how many times the film almost fell apart. It had changed hands so many times. They talked about what a task master Miller is on set. He apparently has no bedside manner, according to Pitt. They joked about how theirs is the love story of the movie. And indeed, that point is not lost in the film – Pitt knows the power of his good looks, and Hill plays up how he’s finally getting to hang with the homecoming king. “They cut the nude scene,” said Pitt. Hill mentioned how Bennett Miller made him read the giant book on Moneyball, and how he studied math in order to sound like he knew what he was talking about.

When the discussion opened up to the audience, the questions were mostly fawning over Pitt. Women and men alike simply can’t help themselves but to worship him. How can you not? His sinewy frame is far narrower than it looked in Moneyball, where the clothing flattered what was already perfection to begin with. He dresses down in public – scraggly hair, sunglasses, baggy pants. But what can he do – he’s Brad Pitt. Sitting up there he was like the Sun hanging in our solar system and everything in that room yearned towards him like plants do when there isn’t enough light in the room. Hill made jokes about it. It was impossible to ignore.

But then a strange thing happened. They kept having trouble with the mics. They never worked. Pitt would trade with Hill and then his wouldn’t work. At one point he hurled his mic across the stage. When the mics started working again a red-haired man in glasses rushed to grab the fallen mic and hand it to Pitt. Pitt smiled warmly and said “thank you very much.”

When the questions were opened up to the audience, that man in glasses got a hold of it. He stammered through his question and then said something like “I’m much better with one on ones,” and he talked about suicide, and seemed to ramble on in a way you never hear at one of these things. Audience members were exchanging glances, wondering who this weirdo was. It was an unpredictable moment. His ramble went on way too long and who knew what Pitt would say? But he answered him so kindly and thoughtfully it was surprising. Not so much because Pitt isn’t a nice guy, hell, everyone knows he’s nice. But because he afforded him so much respect. He could have made a flippant joke and brought the house down. But he chose compassion over winning the crowd. And I’m sorry to say, I know those gorgeous arms carry babies and wrap around Angelina Jolie, and I know he’s one of the best looking men to ever walk the planet, but he won me over then. Nice guys finish first.

When it ended the crowd swarmed him. One woman pressed her body up against him and had to be pried away by security. Cameras flashes, people gawked in that way they only do when they see someone famous. Pitt tried to act nice about it all but it would be strange for anyone. I’ve seen many stars among people doing this job – hell, I saw Clooney amid many different crowds this year but I’ve never seen people glom on to someone like they did Brad Pitt. He had to be escorted out — but of course, on his way out he stopped and had what appeared to be a real conversation with that man. Whatever he was saying, who knew, but he somehow managed to say something, even with everyone else trying to get a moment, a look, a whiff, a touch.