The movie that “reinvigorated” Brad Pitt’s fading love of acting: “I just got the jones back”
If you think the lives of major movie stars are non-stop glitz and glamour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Brad Pitt‘s summer of 1994 will quickly disabuse you of that notion. By this point in his career, Pitt had already ascended to leading man status and was coming off the one-two punch of shooting Interview with the Vampire and Legends of the Fall. There was just one problem, though: he was miserable.
So, instead of revelling in his burgeoning career as a major movie star, Pitt fell into a funk. He vegged out on the couch, listened to music, and ate bad food, all while continuously mulling over the “not such great experiences” he’d had on his previous films. The Interview shoot was rife with rumours of strife between he and co-star Tom Cruise, while Legends had been a battle of wills between Pitt and director Ed Zwick that exhausted and frustrated both men in equal measure.
“I just wasn’t really sure what I was doing,” Pitt confessed when he spoke to Dax Shepard on the Armchair Expert podcast. “I had the weirdest summer. It was the most unhealthy time. I just needed to check out.” By checking out, Pitt meant that he developed a, shall we say, unique routine for a man making millions of dollars in motion pictures. He would wake up, take a hit of his bong, drink four Coca Colas – bizarrely specifying that they came with “no ice” – and then watch the OJ Simpson trial that was gripping the entire nation.
During this lost summer, he agonised over what he wanted to do with his career next, and rarely came up with any good answers. Then, out of nowhere, his manager, Cynthia, sent him a script and implored him to read it. Pitt didn’t have much going on, so he begrudgingly cracked open the screenplay by an unknown scribe, Andrew Kevin Walker, and – somewhat ironically – read the first seven pages before calling Cynthia back.
“Are you kidding me?” Pitt grumbled incredulously, not liking what he was reading at all. “The cliché old cop wants out, the young cop comes in, and he’s looking at his high school football trophies?!” Thankfully, Cynthia must have been half-expecting this response from her listless client, as she calmly replied, “Just finish it.”
To Pitt’s surprise, Cynthia was 100% correct, and by the time he turned over the last page of Se7en, he knew he wanted to star as Detective Mills in the movie. Walker’s serial killer thriller was unlike anything he’d ever read, with its relentlessly grim urban landscape and nihilistic tone speaking to his disillusioned soul. It was a script that took no prisoners, and had a twist ending that was so shockingly brutal that Pitt wound up having it written into his contract that the studio couldn’t change it to something less upsetting.
Best of all for Pitt, though, was the fact that Se7en couldn’t have been further away in style, tone, and intent than Interview with the Vampire and Legends of the Fall. He wouldn’t be required to play a long-haired heartthrob anymore, and could instead sink his teeth into a young, cocksure, yet inexperienced cop who is too naive to realise he’s in over his head.
While Pitt was already champing at the bit to make Se7en, the deal was sealed when he met director David Fincher, who “was just talking about films like I’d never heard anyone speak about film.” The two would, of course, strike up a creative partnership that led to two more films, Fight Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but at that time, Pitt was simply delighted that his spark had been lit again.
“I just got the jones back,” he concluded, “and finding that thing, it just reinvigorated what I wanted out of this thing.”
