As dual crises broil in Ukraine and the Taiwan Strait, the burgeoning climate catastrophe continues to be met with a shrug by nations across the globe, and we careen towards a future that can be described as nowt but shite, Brad Pitt has embraced his own sense of chic apathy.
When Variety quizzed Pitt on why he wore a skirt — shock! — at the Berlin premiere for new action blockbuster Bullet Train, he offered a delightfully flippant retort: “I don't know! We're all going to die, so let's mess it up." His co-star Aaron Taylor-Johnson, meanwhile, has told Variety that Pitt “is in a new chapter of his life, I think. He just wants to bring light and joy into the world and be around people who are there to have a good time."
What should we call such an outlook in the present moment: laissez-faire fatalism? Or just a sign Brad Pitt, at 58, is entering an era of defiant tranquillity? Either way, it's a moment neatly reflected in his newest project.
Bullet Train is a shlocky, Guy Ritchie-esque B-movie coming just three years after the actor picked up his first, well-earned Oscar statuette for his part as Cliff Booth — the high-priest of giving zero fucks — in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino's somewhat self-serious, artsy revisionist drama about the Manson murders. Whether or not you'd dub yourself a willing passenger, Bullet Train is a lot of airheaded, smooth-brain fun – and Pitt is clearly along for the ride.
This isn't entirely new. While Pitt keeps up the artful film quota like few other stars of his strata (Ad Astra, 12 Years a Slave, Babylon), there are few stars with his Big Name status who poke fun at themselves quite so often. Look at Deadpool 2, in which Pitt portrayed an invisible super anti-hero, Vanisher, who largely appears by way of a disembodied parachute — until he inadvertently lands on a powerline and fries to death during his solitary second of proper screen time. According to star Ryan Reynolds, all the remuneration Pitt asked for was a single cup of coffee.
Speaking on BBC Radio 1, Pitt called his Deadpool cameo the easiest thing he's ever done. “[Director David Leitch's] an old friend of mine and he was my stunt double starting with Fight Club and all the way up till about 2004,” he told the show. "And then he went off and became a really good director, which is rare. Rare.” (Leitch also directed Bullet Train, so his loyalty continues).
Indeed, as Pitt gets older, a level of irreverence — at least in regards to celebrity — has revealed itself. This isn't a guy who phones it in on set, even for something as silly as Bullet Train. He is a guy, however, prepared to tread the red carpet like the world is about to end. He is a guy who, regardless of the money he makes, will do a favour for a friend who worked stunts for him almost two decades ago.
Plan B Entertainment, the production house headed up by Pitt, has been one of the preeminent film bodies for almost a decade now. With a slew of Oscar winners (think Moonlight, 12 Years a Slave, Minari) and thematically rich indie projects (Ad Astra, Kajillionaire, If Beale Street Could Talk) covering a diverse smorgasbord of politics, identities, philosophies, histories and events, few others can boast such a substantial contribution to the Hollywood ecosystem. Yet the lion's share of laymen wouldn't know about any of this, because when Pitt does give a major interview he prefers to wax lyrical about his dreams.
Up until two years ago, Pitt had frequent nightmares of being jumped and stabbed in the dark. “I'd pass under an Exorcist-like street lamp, [and] someone would jump out of the abyss and stab me in the ribs,” he reflected to GQ back in June. He told author Ottessa Moshfegh that he got over his cyclical night terror by confronting it, analysing it, trying to understand what it could mean. The moral of Pitt's 2022 phase then might be just to accept the inevitable, go along for the ride, do cool shit, because fuck it – we all die anyway. And what a liberating moral that is.
