Ray Pride

Brad Pitt likes to play goofballs.

In "The Mexican," Pitt co-stars as Jerry, a hapless criminal and diffident bag man who must repay one last debt before he can accede to demands that he quit from girlfriend Samantha (Julia Roberts), an always-agitated therapy-speak bitch. Sent to Mexico to claim a priceless antique pistol cloaked in romantic lore, Jerry finds himself surrounded by greed and double-crosses, and James Gandolfini shows up as a possibly-gay hit man who appropriates Roberts when Pitt fouls up. Director Gore Verbinski shows himself as much more than a capable director of computer generated mice (as in "Mousehunt"). It's a lovely little screwball thriller with a truly sturdy script (by J. H. Wyman) and restless, ruthless cutting. Its physical cost is reported at $15 million, and the resultant off-kilter comedy and steel-striated, gritty visual palette reveal a knowing nostalgia for eccentric American films of the 1970s.

Pitt and Roberts had hoped to work together, and are in the cast of Steven Soderbergh's now-shooting "Ocean's 11." With DreamWorks' decision to make the film for a price, Verbinski had proceeded with a small-budget script, but the studio's Jeffrey Katzenberg (who was at Disney at the time of "Pretty Woman") suggested approaching Roberts. "This thing came out of nowhere," a grinning Pitt says. "It was a delightful little script and [then there's] the idea of us going into this little low-budget, hand-held, one-light, bounce-card, two-takes on-to-the-next kind of movie, which was kind of exciting for us."

It's unusual that egos and paychecks are sacrificed nowadays to make a film with more than one large star possible. "'Ocean's 11,' which [Julia and I are] going to do, is going for that 'Great Escape' cast, Soderbergh and [George] Clooney's idea. It's been so difficult to get people. I was surprised by the people who couldn't work out scheduling and backends and who gets what. It's not the spirit we were going for in this thing [either]."

The movie opens in situ and out-the-door with their breakup -- "Jerry, you're a fucking moron!" is one of Samantha's first lines. Pitt says he likes the bang-up opening. "I like that. We've all been in relationships, relationships gone awry, and I think it starts at a beautiful jumping[-off] point, where we're just at that peak where we're not seeing eye to eye, she's got issues, he's got his issues. Everyone's locked into their position. You get enough in that first scene about their past, where they are at that moment, going to 'group,' group therapy. I thought it was perfect."

While most shared scenes are between Gandolfini and Roberts, Pitt says that Gandolfini is "one of those great guys to watch process. I found the same thing about Benicio del Torio, [he] has to find a meaning for every line. I think that he gives such specific characters, his breakdown is so intensive. He's the man. He's the king. Julia and I are starting a church, the church of Gandolfini."

While he plays a not-so-bright, well-meaning doofus, Pitt himself is a little more charming here than amid the punch-drunk grunginess of "Fight Club" or the marble-mouthed accent of "Snatch." "That was kind of the point. We can all do this guy, that guy who does the looks. The idea of the guy who doesn't have his shit together really kind of cracked me up." He cites Tom Cruise's character in "Jerry Maguire" as an influence. "He really went that direction."

Pitt was an advertising major in a J-school program, and always says he ducked out at the last minute. "It's not an option there in Missouri, the list of careers. It hit me two weeks before [school was over] -- people getting accepted to jobs, 'I'm not ready for that,' [I realized] that I could come [to California], I figured out I could go to it."

He admits admiration for those who practice the trade he almost went into. "The advertising for this movie? Good trailers. It's a science the way they break it down. Actually, I'm kind of torn because it's a science of getting people in the seats. It's a science of manipulation in a sense. If a movie's good, it'll stick around. But again, I'm not the guy putting up the money. I don't have the money to promote it myself. That's capitalism."

So does he consider the relative failure or success of projects like "Fight Club" or "Snatch"? "No, again, it's this thing: I'm not coming from the monetary side of things. I'm more interested in a movie that's going to stick around. It's gonna have some kind of impact on some level that'll have legs. I'm not as concerned with the big hit that's gonna disappear and we're never going to hear from again. [David] Fincher, on the DVD, it cracked me up. He put all the bad reviews on the DVDs."

Pitt doesn't want to be bored by his work. "It's exploration for me. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. This one, I just wanted to get into the guy who's defensive, didn't have it all together. My line was, [it's] a quest for fairness. Treat people fairly, he treats them fairly. If not, the injustice drove him crazy. That was just a funny line to take for me. It wasn't necessarily calculated to show something different. The most fun for me is when I surprise myself, when I find something I didn't know I was capable of. The most miserable time is when I don't find it."

Did he find it here? What was the discovery? "Just [playing] the over-the-top frantic goof. The chump."

(2001-03-01)

Also by Ray Pride

KNOWING DICK
While Jessica Villines' keen, sidelong portrait of Cynthia is chockfull of diverse interviews with the likes of artist Ed Paschke and Camille Paglia defending Cynthia's pursuits, her dentist, Dr. Michael Feinberg, shares the keenest insight. Artists have fixated on features of the human form throughout history; Rodin liked hands, Cynthia Plaster Caster admires rocker's cocks.
(2001-02-22)

CROUCHING PRODUCER, HIDDEN EGO
With its two milestones in one week in mid-February -- surpassing "Life is Beautiful" to become the highest-grossing foreign language film in the U.S., followed a couple days later by ten Oscar nominations -- "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" has outgrown producer-co-writer James Schamus' tag that it's "'Sense and Sensibility' with martial arts."
(2001-02-22)

HANNIBAL THE AMICABLE
Loving and hateful, luminously rendered, an examination of what love is forbidden, wrong, impossible; "Hannibal" is great for its contrariness alone.
(2001-02-08)

WATERY, GRAVE
A pungent succession of an impoverished Cuban childhood and voice-overs of poetry by the late, exiled Cuban novelist and poet Reinaldo Arenas situate painter Julian Schnabel's second feature (after "Basquiat") as a lyrical memory piece, steeped in sensation and sound.
(2001-02-08)

SLIPPERY SLOPES
(2001-02-01)

SLY CONCEPT
(2001-01-25)

GUY STUFF
(2001-01-18)

CINE-MAGIC!
(2001-01-18)

KIDS IN TULSA
(2001-01-11)

FIGURE IN THE MIRROR
(2001-01-04)

HUMANE TRAFFIC
(2001-01-04)

THE SEA OF EMOTIONS
(2000-12-21)

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