What happens when you send a Man Booker Prize-winning author to interview Brad Pitt? A surprisingly wonderful interview is what happens. The NY Times’ T Magazine sent Marlon James to interview Brad at the offices of Plan B. They apparently shot the sh-t for hours, and James seemed to come away impressed with Brad’s general coolness/wokeness. There are tons of great little details, like Brad forgets to water his office plants for months on end, and at least one of his kids is obsessed with cassette tapes. You can read the full piece here (I would recommend it) and here are some highlights:

Whether the people in third-world countries laugh at “foreign do-gooders”: “I’ve been one of those at times. But you’ve got to start somewhere. You start with your best intentions, understanding the world as you do. And then you get in and you see that it’s much more complicated than you could possibly imagine. Our failings in foreign policy have always been to think that we can place our ideas on another culture, while not really understanding the other culture.”

On Brexit: “Man, I never thought that would happen. Same way I can’t bring myself to think that Trump will be in charge. In the simplest terms, what brings us together is good, and what separates us is bad. We have this great line in ‘The Big Short.’ ‘When things are going wrong and we can’t find the reason for it, we just start creating enemies.’”

Trying to understand Trump supporters: “Coming from Oklahoma, southern Missouri, which leans more toward a Trump voice, I try to understand it…It seems that the people who suffer the most end up betting for the party that would hurt them. And so I try to understand where they’re coming from.”

Trump can’t be explained by just economics: “You gotta understand that it’s also in our DNA. Most Americans don’t have time to watch CNN and Fox and Al Jazeera. They’re trying to make the rent, get the kids fed, they’re tired when they get home and they want to forget about everything. And so suddenly when this voice comes in — and it doesn’t have to be a voice of substance — saying he’s fed up with all of this, that’s the part that hooks into the DNA… What I’m most hopeful about is that we’re a global neighborhood now, and we start to understand each other more and more — and yet, you see this reactionary push for isolation and separation again… A Trump supporter is fighting against just about everything. What does he even mean, take our country back? Would someone please explain that to me? Where’d it go?”

He’d love to make a film about Pontius Pilate: [He wants to do it] mostly because the script, which focuses on a mediocre Roman official stuck in the middle of nowhere with difficult people he doesn’t like, makes him smile. Jesus doesn’t get much screen time. “It certainly won’t be for the ‘Passion’ crowd,” he says, which reminds me that Mel Gibson’s torture-p0rn epic is one of the things that drove me out of the church. Pitt bursts into laughter. “I felt like I was just watching an L. Ron Hubbard propaganda film.” Xenu aside, Gibson movies typically do one thing really well: violence. “Oh, extremely well,” Pitt says. “?‘Apocalypto’ is a great film.”

[From T Magazine]

Marlon James also judges Brad for being too skinny, and for being too cool even though he’s the father of six kids. And it’s sort of true – Brad IS still cool. Somehow. You know he probably has a lot of dad-humor (he probably loves Tim Kaine), but he’s legit cool. As for what he says about politics and Trump… I think his parents are Republicans. His mom was a big Mitt Romney defender, remember that? Jane Pitt hated (hates?) Barack Obama. I get the feeling that Brad tries not to talk about politics when he goes home to Missouri, although his mom probably talks AT him.

Photos courtesy of T Magazine, WENN.