Coens follow Oscar-winning drama with 'knucklehead' comedy starring Pitt, Clooney
September 6, 2008TORONTO - When critical acclaim culminates in an Oscar for your dramatic work it follows that the next move, if you're the Coen brothers, is to release a screwball caper and cast two of Hollywood's hottest leading men as, well, morons.
George Clooney has been down this road before with Joel and Ethan Coen in both "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "Intolerable Cruelty."
This time, Clooney is joined by Brad Pitt to portray "knucklehead" characters in "Burn After Reading" - roles penned especially for them.
"I've been knocking on the brothers' door for a few years," Pitt said Saturday at a press conference coinciding with The Toronto International Film Festival, where the movie is being screened.
"So I was really happy when they called, until I read the piece and then I was a little upset again," he joked.
Pitt, goateed and trim in a white dress shirt, silver-grey dress pants and matching vest, joined the filmmakers and co-stars Tilda Swinton and John Malkovitch - minus Clooney - at the head table.
Despite the team presentation it was Pitt who set the photographers' flash bulbs into a frenzy.
"That was terrible," he quipped when the shutters finally fell silent.
So intense was the attention on Pitt that it seemed Swinton was about to fall of her chair in surprise when the first question came her way.
"Burn After Reading," which opens Friday, follows the resounding success of "No Country for Old Men," which netted three Oscars earlier this year.
At its core is a theme familiar to Coen brothers' films. Once again the ambitions and desires of simple-minded folk set in motion a series of catastrophic events - and of course there's bloodshed.
Frances McDormand, who is married to Joel Coen, plays a gym instructor desperately lacking the cash for extensive cosmetic surgery to reshape her sagging body parts.
Clooney plays a U.S. marshall who cheats on his wife mercilessly and hasn't discharged his weapon, the one he carries in a holster that is, in 20 years.
Pitt is an iPod-addicted personal trainer and colleague of McDormand's whose rather limited intelligence leaves him way over his blond-bouffanted head when the worthless memoirs of John Malkovitch's character, a former CIA agent, turn up on the locker room floor.
Swinton plays the CIA agent's wife and the U.S. marshall's lover.
On screen, Pitt gleefully jumps into the role of the idiot - begging the question: Where did you draw your inspiration?
"That was all me. That was all me in a former day," he said.
"Man I really don't know. It's a mystery to even me and I'm somewhat disturbed by it all, including my other half, she's disturbed by it as well, I think."
The star power of his better half, Angelina Jolie, meant it wasn't long into the questions when Pitt was asked when they would work together again, as they did in "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."
"Angie and I are working together everyday, I guarantee it," he said - together they have several children, including eight-week-old twins.
When talk turned back to the film, Joel Coen offered some insight into how these Hollywood heavy hitters ended up playing the fool.
"We sort of wanted to do a spy movie, it didn't exactly turn out that way," he said.
The fools of their piece, despite it being based in Washington, D.C., aren't meant to be anyone in particular, Ethan Coen added.
"We've all got the inner knucklehead," he said.
"It's good fodder for stories."
