Brad Pitt Had Role Of His Career In Kalifornia
Remembering Early Grayce and Forgetting Angelina Jolie
Apr 30, 2009
While Pitt has secured any number of duds throughout his career, or extraneous cameos better left as mullet warnings, there are films which show that the actor can above all act.
While certainly seeming focused on family in the press, it is a shame that all of the great Pitt roles were preformed before the year 2000. As time progresses, he may be forgotten as a truly great character actor and more remembered for his tabloid infested, procreation lifestyle.
One Of Pitt's Least Seen Films Likely His Best
Kalifornia, filmed in 1993 by Director Dominic Sena, is a chaotic and somewhat choppy story of two disparate couple who meet fatefully and end up journeying across country to catalogue crime.
Pitt plays Early Grayce in the film - a stereotypical white trash anti-hero with violent and sadistic undertones.
While it's fairly easy to find a studio actor to fill a wife-beater t-shirt and trucker cap, it's Pitt's "you'd know if you saw it" ease at capturing the character of Grayce that makes the movie so compelling.
Lewis, Duchovny And Forbes Round Out Storyline
Grayce with girlfriend Adele Corners, played by Juliette Lewis, manages to hitch his life, literally, to the "on a mission with intentions" couple of Brian Kessler and Carrie Laughlin, played respectively by David Duchovny and Michelle Forbes.
The dichotomy in the early stages of the film between the two couples is readily noticable by appearance, financial status, education and general personality. Watching the film is like viewing the same couple twice, if they had been dropped in different locations in different environments and left to grow with what metaphorical fertilizer they had to feed from.
As Duchovny's scholarly character becomes more acquainted with Pitt's mangy, down home sensibility, it becomes apparent that the smarter of the two may not have the most "book learning".
Lewis, playing her using little girl lost role in Adele, seems shadowed and underestimated by the much more metropolitan Carrie. As both women become more acquainted, it's clear that the identities that seemed to have been birth-right to them, may instead be chosen roles they have come to play. The litlte girl lost may have wandered away on purpose and an uptown, self-sufficient art lover may have to be reduced to her more basic level of humanity.
Over The Top Or Nailing The Role?
Whether it's the extravagant over the top accent, machismo mixed with madness or hidden insecurities, Pitt manages to capture what is essentially a character who is, by nature, a character. The mangy boy wearing the alpha male dirty boxers and chip on his shoulder.
Some panned Pitt's portrayal for simply being over the top or berated him for trying to hard. This is is the exact reason why the role succeeds so perfectly. Early Grayce himself is a study in trying to hard to be something he's not.
The movie gets little attention by Hollywood, due to the simple fact that basically there aren't many in the business who know an "Early Grayce". You would be hard-pressed to find a Los Angeles movie critic who has been to the house trailer of a financially and morally poor, white Kentucky male lost in a tangle of beer and bad genetics. To those of us that have, Pitt manages the character of his career by nailing not just an archetype, but someone who have the unfortunate acquaintance of knowing.
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