Brad Pitt and George Clooney Are Fighting to Bring You Smart Movies 11/30/2015

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Brad Pitt and George Clooney Are Fighting to Bring You Smart Movies
By Michael Buckner/Getty Images.
by

Julie Miller

In 2015, it’s impossible to discount Brad Pitt and George Clooney as merely movie stars—they’re also humanitarians who have used their celebrity heft for good, and Oscar-winning producers who have done their best to combat Hollywood's glut of franchise blockbusters with substantial dramas. And in a new interview, Pitt confesses that the two heavyweights, who have co-starred in their own franchise blockbuster in the past, have clashed when it came to adapting certain properties for the screen.

“[It] can get competitive,” Pitt tells New York magazine, when asked about his competition with fellow actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Reese Witherspoon, and Clooney, who all have their own production shingles. Pitt, whose latest film under his production company, Plan B—Michael Lewis’s non-fiction book The Big Short—continues to say that he and his Ocean’s Eleven co-star particularly have a habit of going after the same books—most recently with Paul Barrett’s Law of the Jungle.

“In all fairness, he outbid me on Argo,” Pitt concedes of Clooney, who edged him out for the Ben Affleck–directed picture that won Clooney’s company, Smokehouse Pictures, a best-picture Oscar. “We do naturally have a lot of the same tastes and interests. With The Big Short, I think maybe we got the upper hand at auction because Michael Lewis and I got tight on Moneyball.”

Even casual film fans could probably tell you that it is getting more and more difficult for filmmakers to make smaller dramatic fare that does not exactly lend itself to merchandise- or sequel-revenue streams. But Pitt, who has managed to make more than two dozen films with Plan B, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Departed, Eat, Pray, Love, 12 Years a Slave, and Selma, explains, “The studios don’t want to make them because it doesn’t fit the business model anymore. It’s complicated material, it’s a gamble. They need some guarantee with marquee.”

And Pitt, knowing his marquee weight, is perfectly happy to lend his on-screen services in an attempt to build up some development momentum.

“So often I jump in and take a part first because I love the project, and I gotta get in to make sure it gets made,” Pitt explains. “Then, when Steve Carell and Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling all jump in [in The Big Short], I think it is a testament to the subject matter, and the story, and to Adam McKay’s script. Michael Lewis was able to find the story, to make it interesting—he has such a knack for taking complicated, even mundane material, and making it understandable and even thrilling. [...] Adam was brilliant, and our team was brilliant at getting the budget down.”

Even Lewis, who has written for Vanity Fair, voiced his skepticism about Hollywood actually coming through on adaptations of his books. “I assumed the movie people, after they had sent me a check, came to their senses and realized how much harder it was to make a movie about mortgage bonds or baseball statistics than to make another Spider-Man,” Lewis wrote in a piece published in December’s magazine. He continues of the industry: “It’s also a place where movies of books happen, but only in response to a specific kind of accident. The accident is when the book collides with one of about 100 people on the planet who either are willing to pay for a movie to be made or have the ability to persuade other people to pay for it.” That person, in this case, proved to be Pitt.

To read Lewis’s full piece, click here, and to read an adaptation from his non-fiction book The Big Short, click here.

The Big Short opens in theaters on December 23.

Donnamarie wrote:I often wonder what other movies George's company bid on but lost acquiring the rights to.  I saw a preview of The Big Short and wondered if this was a story that George was interested in.  And I guess it was.  Two new movies this fall -  Truth, a journalistic story about the downfall of Dan Rather (a well known news anchor for decades) was another story that I thought George would have wanted to tell.  Plus Spotlight, which just came out about how The Boston Globe newspaper uncovered the abuse of children in the Catholic Church.  Both of these films could have been satisfying vehicles for him.  
But he may not be interested in pursuing more journalism stories since he has taken on Hack Attack.  But it is a genre that he knows quite well.

Interesting bit of trivia.  The guy who directed Spotlight, Tim McCarthy, has actually worked with George many times.  Good Night and Good Luck, Michael Clayton and Syriania as an actor.  But he ventured into writing screenplays and  has now broken into directing.  He is getting rave reviews for Spotlight.

Donnamarie wrote:  And honestly after MM, Tomorrowland and Our Brand I think George does have to redeem himself a bit.  I hate to say that.  I really do.  I love George and the past work he has done.  But lately ....

LizzyNY wrote:Katie, I agree with you and Donnamarie that he needs a big hit, but to be fair the kind of movies he's been making aren't likely to break box office records. They aren't geared to that broad an audience.

LizzyNY wrote:The only film that had tentpole potential was Tomorrowland, and that was screwed up by the writers. George was only an actor in it and worked his ass off promoting it. It was in no way his fault that it wasn't a runaway hit although everyone seems to be laying its failure at his doorstep (which is weird, since they all praised his performance when the film came out)

Katiedot wrote:

I guess it ends up as his failure as his was the big name on the film.