Wolfs, the film that reunites George Clooney and Brad Pitt, will premiere at the Venice Film Festival in a couple of weeks. It’s going to be a big splashy carpet, preceded by all kinds of excitement when George and Brad arrive on their boats in polos and linens, flashing their movie star smiles behind their sunglasses.
George and Amal will bring Old Hollywood glamour to the gala; Brad Pitt might walk his first carpet with Ines de Ramon. Unless they don’t want that to be a story since Angelina Jolie is expected at the festival too. At least we hope to see her – because if we don’t see her (in support of her film Maria) it would mean that she’s skipping Venice to be with Pax who was seriously injured in an accident a few weeks ago. Not that that would stop his dad from being there.
But we’re not supposed to be thinking about that. Instead we’re supposed to focus our attention on these two Movie Stars, two of the biggest movie stars of the last century who also happen to be “BFFs”, at least that’s what it says at the top of the GQ’s cover story with both George and Brad, capitalising on pop culture’s enduring obsession with their friendship. It’s a huge coup for the magazine but George and Brad are also selling their relationship for their movie too, hoping that the public’s decades-long fascination with their partnership will compel the audience to see their movie which, as Sarah wrote last week will have just a one-week theatrical release at the end of September before streaming on Apple.
The point, then, of this GQ feature is to present George and Brad, now in their 60s, as they were in Oceans Eleven, just older. But still cool as f-ck, stylish as f-ck, but with fewer f-cks to give. As if they’ve really had to give a f-ck for the last, oh, 30 years, LOL. You only give a f-ck if you have something to lose. And in this case I’m talking about cultural capital, industry power, influence, wealth, access. Has that been a concern for George Clooney and Brad Pitt since 1995?
The conversation, then, is boring, because there’s no stakes. The most interesting thing, I guess, about their vibe is how they acknowledge, and then talk exhaustingly, about how important it is for them to have each other because there are so few stars who occupy their elite status, only they can understand what the other is going through. And this conversation, you’ll note, is taking place at the controversial Chateau Miraval, when George drops in from his place down the road; it turns out he and Amal have a home in the French countryside too. So we’re talking about exclusiveness, on multiple levels. George and Brad are exclusive, TO each other, and maybe to a couple of other white rich movie stars. And they are exclusive FROM the rest of us, because they just told us that it’s impossible for us to relate to what they have experienced: the celebrity, the scrutiny, fame and all its terrible gifts.
Between them, George is, not surprisingly, the one with more personality, whose answers are at least entertaining if not enlightening. He’s willing to talk sh-t about Quentin Tarantino and David O Russell, two directors with whom he’s had sh-tty experiences. He concedes that he has an ego, that he finds it insulting when people say he plays the same character over and over again; they both agree that they’re highly competitive about their work, with George admitting, maybe jokingly, that if they both had movies that were up against each other for Best Picture, he’d campaign as hard as he could to beat Brad’s ass. These are the details I appreciate, personally, because during award season there’s so much talk of how collegial it is on the circuit when, really, they all want to f-cking win, they all want that validation, and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but can we stop pretending that they don’t?
Peppered in throughout the piece are the luxury details. At one point Brad reveals that he made his lake bigger. A LAKE. He enlarged a lake on the property. That’s not just redoing a kitchen, it’s actually changing the margins of a body of water – it’s a rich man’s flex, and while some people will get off on that sh-t, my mind went to the younger generation. Because yesterday at The Squawk, re: the post about Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, someone in our community talked about how the kids on TikTok don’t really f-ck with the uber-wealthy, and they perceive Blake and Ryan Reynolds to be super rich, and in their circumstances, it’s a turnoff, considering how bleak it is out there for Gen Z.
But here’s Brad Pitt, in the pages of GQ, swaggering all over his French estate with the lake that he decided to steroid. And yet, the mythology is too strong, too powerful. TikTok is too busy ripping apart Jennifer Lopez. So nobody’s thinking about Brad’s lake, they’re too busy squeeing over the fact that George and Amal’s twins make a cameo in the GQ article and it’s pointed out that as soon as they see their Uncle Brad, they’re climbing all over him so he takes them to see the animals that he has on the land.
This, of course, is the land that his own children once frolicked across. He hasn’t been seen with those children since 2016. And this land has become a source of pain for them and their mother, and also a main point of contention in their interminable divorce since he’s suing her for selling her share of it. The fact that this interview takes place there, though, is a choice, a breathtakingly savage one.
One final note though… why is it called WOLFS?! Is it meant to be a verb? Like “wolfs” down his food? I don’t get it!
Click here for more on George and Brad in GQ.
