To be clear, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt are not making a sequel to their film Meet Joe Black. But they just interviewed each other for Interview and the interview reads like a meditation on mortality which is what Meet Joe Black was about. I’m not saying the movie was a good meditation on mortality, but mortality was the subject matter – a man, literally, spending time with death before dying.
Neither one is playing death in this interview but they do keep circling back in their conversation to the meaning of life, of how their perspective about life and living has changed. Some people have been excerpting the part where they each talk about their relationship with alcohol, and I suppose that’s the quick-hit takeaway but my big takeaway was that reading this article felt like I was watching the movie again, only without Brad’s bad acting. I mean, he’s a good actor, and I’ve written many times this year, especially after Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood, that he’s the finest supporting actor of his generation, and totally underrated. In Meet Joe Black though, it’s really not his best work – though the love scene is GREAT. And he seems to acknowledge that in this interview with Anthony, that he wasn’t quite comfortable on that set, that he was working out some personal sh-t at the time. This was after he and Gwyneth Paltrow broke up and Anthony has actually said in past interviews that Brad “was in real pain” and “very sad about his breakup”.
But it would be misleading to suggest that there’s any romantic gossip in this interview. Like I said, these two are preoccupied with the existential and when you read the interview and hear Anthony guiding Brad through his thoughts, it’s almost… therapeutic? Here, if you haven’t yet, don’t read it until after you watch this video and you have his voice in your head:
Oh yeah, he’s on Instagram. I didn’t actually know that but now that I do, I’ll be checking a lot. He’s good at it, and that shouldn’t be surprising but they say social media is supposed to be a young person’s game and yet, here’s Anthony Hopkins doing his thing with over a million followers and if ever there was an Instagram account for self-care, it would be his.
Anthony is currently promoting The Two Popes. In a lot of the Oscar predicting I’ve been reading, people keep leaving room for The Two Popes, in which Anthony plays Pope Benedict and Jonathan Pryce plays Pope Francis. The field is so crowded this year, I wonder if it’s really possible considering no one’s really talking about the film outside of deep cinephilia.
Back to Meet Joe Black though…
Brad’s acting was sh-t but goddamn he looked good in that movie. But remember that scene where Brad speaks in a Jamaican accent?!? Maybe we shouldn’t talk about that ever again.
Click here to read the full interview at Interview.
