The movie that Brad Pitt and Sandra Bullock almost collaborated on
Is there anyone in this world who doesn’t like Brad Pitt and Sandra Bullock? If it is you, then please raise your hand and we’ll see that you’re seen to by medical professionals. Their universal appeal is grounded in the fact that they both embody a sense of charisma and the humanised ability to not take themselves too seriously, subverting the lucky beauty they were blessed with. As Ryan Reynolds said of Bullock: “I think that people see that Sandra Bullock has an ability to laugh at herself and you just don’t find that too often.”
This bond over the quirky side of life has made Bullock and Pitt close friends over the years. So much so that Pitt said that his Hollywood hero “would drop anything for me.” And I’m sure the Inglorious Bastrerd would do the same in return. After all, they go way back. Pitt secured his first role as ‘Boy at the Beach’ in the 1987 film Hunk. That same year Sandra Bullock also landed her screen debut as the lead role, Lisa Edwards, in the appallingly rated thriller Hangmen.
In short, they were both settling into the tough realities of Los Angeles at a similar time. Pitt graduated as a journalist and headed out west with not much to his name. He started out with a rather comical trade to bring in the beer money between auditions, driving a limousine full of strippers. “My job was to drive them to bachelor parties and things,” he once explained. “I’d pick them up, and at the gig, I’d collect the money, play the bad Prince tapes and catch the girls’ clothes. It was not a wholesome atmosphere, and it got very depressing.”
During these hard times, he needed a like-minded friend in a similar sticky situation. After they met in an Irish pub, Bullock and Pitt found that they both had affable shoulders for each other to lean on. “Sandy is an angel for me,” Pitt told Hello. “I can call her for anything—she will drop her holiday for me. Really. ‘Stop your holiday and out on your gown and come host a 1000-person event for me, and she will do it.” Pitt looks back at their collaborative friendship – which recently came to the fore when they starred in cameo roles in each other’s movies, The Lost City and Bullet Train – as a happy segment of “old-time Hollywood.”
However, there was once a time when they were set to star alongside each other in much more than a mere cameo capacity. Pitt said that because they were such old friends, he wouldn’t be able to act alongside Bullock “unless it was a comedy.” And that is exactly what they cooked up one drunken evening. And boy do we wish that their idea came to fruition. If there are any sane-minded producers out there, then how is this for a pitch:
“Sandy [Sandra Bullock] and I did once try to develop a whole idea of a husband and wife team, who were QVC’s most successful salespeople, but we’re getting a divorce, we hate each other, and we’re taking it out on air as we sell things,” Pitt recalls. “That’s as far as we got.” I’d venture that’s far enough. The world of telesales is already primed for Alan Partridge-like farce so if you throw in the passive-aggressive overture of a petty divorce, and two consummate comic actors, then you have yourself a cracking dark comedy for my money. Imagine Mr & Mrs Smith but with even more sharp knives and deadly gym equipment to hand.
