Toronto, Sept 07: Brad Pitt has wanted to work with the Coen brothers for ages. Then he got wind of the birdbrain they had written for him to play.
"I`ve been knocking on the brothers` door for a few years, so I was really happy when they called me," Pitt told reporters at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, a day after Joel and Ethan Coen`s comedy "Burn After Reading" premiered there.
"Until I read the piece, and I was real upset," Pitt jokingly added.
Pitt`s character, an ignoramus in way over his head on a blackmail scheme, is among a gaggle of boneheads caroming about in "Burn After Reading," whose cast includes his and the Coens` frequent collaborator George Clooney, plus John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins and Joel Coen`s wife, Frances McDormand.
Opening in theaters Friday, the movie casts Pitt and McDormand as fitness trainers who stumble on a disc containing classified documents and try to extort cash from the ex-CIA analyst (Malkovich) who was the origin of the leaked data.
Pitt plays the goof to the hilt, his character`s inept attempts at cloak-and-dagger intrigue providing some of the movie`s biggest laughs.
"The leading man role is usually the guy who`s got the answers, figures things out and defuses the bomb within seconds and is always experienced. And all of that`s pretty good for the ego sometimes. But it`s more fun playing guys who make the wrong choices, have limited experience and make presumptions," Pitt said.
Wearing fitness club shorts and T-shirt, with his hair teased into a puffy tower with a blond streak, Pitt also toyed with his movie star looks in "Burn After Reading."
"We had kind of a competition going on the set as to who had the most ridiculous hair, and I think you may have won, Brad," co-star Swinton, whose character has a strange, swirled hairdo herself, said at a festival news conference alongside Pitt, the Coens and Malkovich.
"We were all going in for that Javier Bardem prize," Swinton said, referring to the odd page-boy hairdo Bardem wore in last year`s Coen brothers crime thriller, "No Country for Old Men."
In an interview with The Associated Press a day earlier, the Coens said Pitt`s hairdo was a happy accident. Ethan Coen said they had figured that as a gymnasium worker, the character might have a crew cut.
"Just by accident, Brad had done a commercial or photo shoot or something where his hair had been streaked, and he went in for a fitting for wardrobe for this with this kind of leftover hair, so we went, `Oh, how about that?`" Ethan Coen said.
Pitt has tended toward action and drama, including "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," a tale due out late this year adapted from an F Scott Fitzgerald story about a man who ages backward from old age toward infancy.
Aiming for laughs with "Burn After Reading" did not seem out of place to Pitt, though.
"I feel I`ve been doing comedies for years, but maybe they weren`t so funny," Pitt said.
Pitt, who has worked with Clooney on "Ocean`s Eleven" and its two sequels, was asked if he might work again with romantic partner Angelina Jolie. Their relationship began after they co-starred in the action hit "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."
"Angie and I, we`re working together everyday, I can guarantee," Pitt said.
Bureau Report