Brad Pitt picks his favourite movie of all time
American actor and producer Brad Pitt rose to prominence from a modest and devoutly religious household in Springfield, Missouri. The actor once described the picturesque region as having “a lot of hills, a lot of lakes” like “Mark Twain country, Jesse James country”. As for most children of the 1960s, Pitt grew up transfixed by the box-shaped television in his living room. It was here that he could escape into the familiar rural landscapes that defined the ubiquitous western movies of the time.
“I grew up in Oklahoma and Missouri, and I just loved film,” Pitt told Backstage in 2012. “My folks would take us to the drive-in on summer nights, and we’d sit on the hood of the car. I just had this profound love for storytelling. I think it’s just an amazing thing we get to do. We’re so complex, mysteries to ourselves; we’re difficult to each other. And then here’s this storytelling that reminds us we’re all the same. I consider it such a privilege.”
Growing up through the New Hollywood era, Pitt could feast his eyes on all manner of movies, from Stanley Kubrick’s gritty thrillers to Steven Spielberg’s epic adventures. In the mid-1980s, Pitt began to pursue an acting career and found heard an early call for success with small TV roles amid McDonald’s commercials.
In 1986, aged just 22, Pitt was invited to one of his earliest interviews to discuss his recent breakthrough. First, the actor took stock of his journey so far. “I was in college—I was studying advertising and graphic design at the University of Missouri,” Pitt told Tiger Beat. “I told my parents I was going to California to go to art school. I didn’t tell them I wanted to act. I always wanted to give this a try on my own. When I got out here, I started to check things out, and I never made it to art school.”
Like most travelling students, Pitt was penniless and needed a place to lay his head at night. Fortunately, he had a few contacts up his sleeve. “I knew this girl from home whose dad had a place out here. There was just a housekeeper living in it, so I got to say there free for a month,” he said.
Adding: “Then I got some guys—there were eight of us living in this little apartment in North Hollywood. It was a blast. We had no furniture—we all slept on the floor in the front room. We had a TV, a toaster oven and a stereo. What more does a guy need? We were all short on girlfriends and money!”
Later in the interview, Pitt was challenged to name his favourite actor. Finding it difficult to name just one, Pitt settled for five. “Jack Nicholson is up there,” he pondered. “I love Mickey Rourke—he blows my mind. I love Sean Penn, even with the bad press he gets. When he is on the screen, I admire him. I like Timothy Hutton, too. I have never really gotten into the classics, which I have been trying to learn about lately. Marlon Brando blows me away. The minute he came on the screen in Streetcar Named Desire, wooooo!”
Pitt’s instinct to name Nicholson first as he shuffled through his mind appears to be partly informed by his favourite movie of all time. In 1998, following his meteoric surge to mainstream success, Pitt appeared in a TV interview with Oprah Winfrey. The distinguished host gave Pitt a round of quick-fire questions in which he revealed pizza as his favourite snack and Cormac McCarthy as his favourite author, among other interesting nuggets.
Among the questions, Winfrey asked: “Favourite movie? Could you possibly have a favourite movie?”
“Ah… favourite movie… Cuckoo’s Nest,” Pitt assertively replied
Miloš Forman’s 1975 classic, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, was scripted by Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman and based on the 1962 novel by the post-Beat writer Ken Kesey. Nicholson stole the show in the movie as a convicted criminal who feigns insanity to serve a softer sentence at a mental institution. However, he wasn’t forewarned about the evil Nurse Ratched.
Following Nicholson’s Oscar-nominated appearance in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown in 1974, Nicholson finally broke through with a ‘Best Actor’ win for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at the 48th Academy Awards. Impressively, the movie won the “Big Five” that year, becoming the second of just three films in cinema history to do so.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is certainly a popular favourite among the Hollywood elite. Comedy actor Jack Black is among the film’s other famous admirers. When describing his favourite movie of all time in Cindy Pearlman’s 2007 book You Gotta See This, Black revealed that his favourite movies are psychological dramas, not comedies.
“I always really loved One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Black said, picking his movie recommendation for the book. “Jack was just so darn good, plus the movie is moving. I guess I love this one so much because I’ve always had an obsession with people who are psychologically challenged. Wait… that doesn’t sound good the way it just came out. But I do love people who don’t think in the so-called normal way.”
He added: “I’ll take psychological problems any day in a movie over a car chase or a love story. I love to watch people who think way outside the box, and in Cuckoo’s Nest, it’s almost like they’re in a zoo.”
