Yes, you read that right. The Dark Night, not The Dark Knight. I just read a long article about Brad Pitt and his eating and drinking habits on screen. How natural and unselfconscious he always makes it look.
The article was written from the perspective of someone who has struggled with weight issues all his life. A guy who was always the chubby kid. Always. From infancy through adulthood, and how that has affected his life and relationships. It was interesting to read his take on things and to recognize that this guy – now married with a kid of his own – was just as taken in by Brad Pitt’s beauty as anyone else, gay or straight. Perhaps he saw Pitt’s natural, apparently unselfconscious beauty as something to aspire to. We all did in our way. And perhaps still do.
Brad Pitt has acted in something like 84 movies. Of those 84 movies, I’ve probably seen at least a couple of them. I was entirely unaware of him until a date took me to see A River Runs Through It – I believe this was possibly around Christmastime, 1992. I was so taken in by Pitt’s beauty that the storyline of the movie was completely lost on me. In my defense, I was also taken in by the beauty of the scenery in the movie. I recently watched A River Runs Through It on Netflix, and felt very sad about the story, but was still taken in by Brad Pitt’s unselfconscious beauty. He’s riveting. You can’t take your eyes off him. You want him to go on forever. His death at the end of the story is depressing for sure. How does one even recover from such a loss?
Brad started his acting career doing TV shows in the late 1980’s. Mostly in TV shows that my kids watched, like Head of The Class and Growing Pains. He was in one TV show I used to like called Thirtysomething, but I don’t remember him at all. I think he may have only been in one episode, which ran in October of 1989. In that year, I was married to a wild and woolly, crazy, abusive man and was raising two young daughters. My youngest was five years old and hadn’t yet started kindergarten. I was hanging on by the proverbial emotional thread. Brad – and everyone and everything else – would have to wait for my attention for another three years.
It’s also not like that has prevented me from EVER going to another movie, but over time, I find I just don’t go to the movies as often as I used to. When I do go, I sometimes feel like a wooden duck sitting in a shooting gallery. I’m sure they’ve made changes to the way movie theaters are constructed, so that people can escape through the back, if need be. I hope so. It’s terrible that we even must think about such things. Going to the movies used to represent a few hours of escape from reality, and now it’s more of a truth or dare situation. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t dwell on this, but the thoughts do come up. I push them to the back of my mind. I go the movies when I feel like it, which is rarely.
I also still occasionally go to the grocery store, despite the recent mass shooting at a grocery store in Boulder and I am reminded of this when I see the – usually overweight and unprepared looking security guards at the front of the store – stuffing candy bars in their pie holes and checking their watches to see how long until their shift ends. These collective memories of mass shootings have become the background of our modern lives, like a soundtrack that constantly plays the Muzac version of The Fool on The Hill. I hear some people saying, “well, I never think about that!” Well, good for you. You’ve obviously mastered Brad Pitt’s apparent unselfconscious embrace of the eternal now. Keep in mind that Brad Pitt gets paid well for acting like this. My guess is that a large percentage of people DO think about it, if only in passing, when they go out in public anywhere these days, and for almost any reason.
People who can afford it are installing their own movie theaters at home these days. There is even movie theater furniture you can buy. And a giant movie screen with a Dolby sound system. The ultra-wealthy can even get first-run movies to play on their at-home movie theaters. Back in the 90’s and early aughts, I used to routinely stop by Blockbuster on the way home from work on a Friday evening to rent movies for the weekend. I probably spent an hour every week in Blockbuster, looking at all the video tapes of movies. I’d watch last season’s movies with my kids or friends over the weekend and take them back the next week for new weekend movies. I saw a fair number of unmemorable movies doing this. Now, movies are available to be viewed on your TV via Netflix and other streaming apps. You can’t get current first run movies, but they do seem to make it to Netflix fairly quickly, so it’s not like you must wait too long. Personally, I’d rather still be alive when watching a movie, so I think of the wait as a life extender.
I wish we could all be as comfortable and unselfconscious in our own skin as Brad Pitt appears to naturally be. I also wish we never had to have a faint thought of finding ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time with a mass shooter on the prowl. At this point, I have no idea how popular it still is to go to the movies on a Friday or Saturday night. I haven’t done that for so long. It’s not where I often choose to spend my time or money, but maybe it’s still a popular thing to do with some people. Personally, I’d rather stay home and watch Brad Pitt on Netflix.
Adventures on Earth and Beyond 