Brad Pitt’s sneaking suspicion about the worst movie he ever made: “Too many elements”
Brad Pitt has been so successful that it’s almost easy to take him for granted as an actor, and to his credit, he’s been upfront about his failures as an actor, too.
Pitt has certainly had many roles in which he coasted on his inherent charisma, but he’s also an actor who can make dramatic transformations, so whether it was playing a failed baseball player in Moneyball, a crazed environmentalist in 12 Monkeys, a ruthless outlaw in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a World War II hero in Inglourious Basterds, or a goofy gym employee in Burn After Reading, he has often surprised by playing against type.
He also has tremendous control over his own career, as he has worked with his production company, Plan B, to produce some of the films that he stars in, such as 12 Years a Slave, The Big Short, and F1. Moreover, it’s also refreshing that he has been so honest about the times in which he missed the mark and has spoken about some of the challenges he faced during the earliest days of his career. Unlike many of the other A-listers of his generation, he did not have a famous family name that helped him get a foot in Hollywood; he built his career purely on talent, enthusiasm, and hard work.
What’s most remarkable about his career is that there is a consistent level of quality throughout the films he has appeared in. While obviously not every film is going to be a classic in the vein of Fight Club or The Tree of Life, even the relatively ‘mediocre’ projects are still relatively entertaining.
There are even a few of his more negatively reviewed films that have developed a different reputation over time. While Meet Joe Black was a legendary bomb, it has since been defended by those who have come to appreciate Martin Brest’s career, and The Counselor and The Mexican are two other films that have become cult classics over time, with their defenders claiming that they were misunderstood initially.
The one Pitt film that no one seems to defend is Cool World, the animated-live action hybrid directed by the legendary animator Ralph Bakshi. Although Pitt admitted that he never saw the film, he did get introspective about where it went wrong.
“I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m interested to see where it went wrong,’ Pitt said, “I know I’m going to have some that hit and some that don’t work. There are just too many elements involved. There’s not one of our great actors who hasn’t had a weak film.”
Cool World was thankfully early enough in his career that it didn’t do any significant damage and has mostly been forgotten as an oddity. He was also able to essentially erase the film’s failures by appearing in A River Runs Through It the same year, as the Robert Redford-directed coming-of-age drama helped show what a versatile performer he had become.
After Cool World, Pitt has been smart about picking films for an adult audience, as he hasn’t tried to take on too many family–friendly films. The rare ones that he has been in include Happy Feet 2 and Megamind, where his face cannot be seen.
