Brad Pitt Gives More Than Just Good Face

Brad's evolved more than just his look over the last twenty years.

We recently remarked that Brad Pitt "gives good interview," citing his recent magazine interviews with Parade and German magazine BILD.  (The BILD piece was ostensibly part of his press tour for Inglorious Basterds but strayed into the actor's politics and personal philosophy.)

Friday night the actor appeared live on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, and I was curious if Brad could keep up the winning streak without a publicist and a professional writer to clean up his act — not to mention dealing with the acerbic Maher. So how'd he fare?

After more than 35 movies, Pitt has reached those rare heights of Hollywood royalty that when he has a project to promote, as he does with the Quentin Tarantino directed Inglorious Basterds, all he has to do to promote a movie is show up — He doesn’t actually need to talk about it, so he gets to use the press to promote his pet projects.

He does have a movie opening August 21st.

For Pitt, that is primarily his Make It Right Foundation, which seeks to rebuild New Orleans, and to do it in an affordable and sustainable way. They’ll reach 150 homes rebuilt sometime next year, and by then, there won’t be a cost difference between their “green” homes and homes built in the traditional way.

For all this work, he’s become a bit of a folk hero in New Orleans, and there’s a more than half serious movement to elect him mayor.

You can buy the t-shirts anywhere in New Orleans, much like a good hurricane.

Brad seems to find this amusing, as he says “Sure, I’ll run on the no religion, pro-gay marriage, and legalization and taxation of pot platform. Also known as the Bill Maher going straight to hell campaign.”

Obviously, with Maher, he’s on safe ground talking about his problems with religion, which he credits Maher’s movie, Religulous, with inspiring. Where it intersects with us, is how he seems to apply it, and how I end up so impressed with Pitt.

“Like gay marriage, you have a group of people telling other people how to live their lives, and you can’t do that — and I’m talking like there are actually Christians watching the show, for the three that are watching — I just say that you have to check what country you’re living in. Because the freedom that allows you to practice your religion is the same freedom you’re stepping on, and it’s not right. And I want to add, that if there were a nation of gay married couples who were telling you you couldn’t practice your religion, I’d be speaking out for you, too, so let’s stop the nonsense.”

A nation of gay married couples? Fab-u-lous!

If that sounds a bit like a canned speech, let me assure you there were enough interruptions and interjections by Maher that it couldn’t have been. It was genuine, and quite heartfelt.

Plus, he spent the next several minutes sparring with Maher about his ability to roll a perfect joint on demand, which, while decidedly awkward, he handled smoothly, reading his audience perfectly and playing the crowd for laughs.

Sparring with Maher is always ripe for disaster.

The topics may have been sort that haunt the nightmares of publicists and handlers, but Pitt handled them with aplomb. Frankly though, even if he hadn’t, it hardly matters. As Maher says, Pitt is like Charlie Sheen, in that “he could beat a nun to death on a pile of dead puppies, and America would just go ‘Oh, that Charlie! We love him.’”

As for Pitt, yes we do.