Brad Pitt’s mettle as Hollywood producer validated with 2nd Oscar Best Picture win

Brad Pitt beams while holding his best picture Oscar after the Academy Awards on Sunday. (Reuters)

Back in 2007, Brad Pitt and Paramount Pictures lost a bidding war against Leonardo DiCaprio for the film rights to “The Wolf of Wall Street” based on the memoirs of former stockbroker and now motivational speaker Jordan Belfort.

Pitt went on to co-produce “12 Years a Slave”, the acclaimed historical drama based on the 1853 memoirs of black musician turned slave Solomon Northup.

At this year’s recently concluded Academy Awards, both films were nominated for several categories, including Best Picture. When the smoke cleared, it was Pitt who had the last laugh on DiCaprio as he won his second Oscar as a producer after 2006’s “The Departed”, which ironically starred DiCaprio and was also directed by Martin Scorsese.

“12 Years a Slave” is also the fourth film produced by Pitt to be nominated for an Oscar Best Picture. In 2011, “Moneyball” and “The Tree of Life”, two films he both starred in, also competed for Tinseltown’s highest honor.

It was the film’s director, Steve McQueen, who initiated the project after his wife pointed him to Northup’s book at a time when he was trying to develop a film about slavery together with screenwriter John Ridley.

But it wasn’t until Pitt backed the project through his Plan B Entertainment outfit that “12 Years a Slave” was set into motion.

“Plan B, Brad Pitt, who without him this film would just not have been made,” McQueen acknowledged in his acceptance speech with Pitt and the rest of the cast and crew behind him onstage.

“I know I speak for everyone standing behind me that it has been an absolute privilege to work on Solomon’s story. And we all get to stand up here tonight because of one man who brought us all together to tell that story. And that is the indomitable Mr. Steve McQueen,” Pitt said, returning the favor.

But just as Pitt seems to be very astute when it comes to choosing projects to produce, he also seems to be equally gifted with shrewd box-office sense as proven by blockbusters like “Eat Pray Love”, “World War Z” and the “Kick Ass” franchise.

Like DiCaprio who has been nominated four times for an acting Academy award, Pitt has yet to win the golden statuette for acting. He has been nominated for three acting Oscars in his career: Best Supporting Actor for Terry Gilliam’s “Twelve Monkeys” and Best Actor for both David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and for Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball”.

Having produced and acted in some of the most acclaimed films of the last eight years, one may think that it’s only a matter of time before Brad Pitt naturally progresses to directing. Surprisingly, he doesn’t see himself sitting on the director’s chair anytime soon.

“Dude, I’d be a pain in the ass. I would. I’d be a pain in the ass to myself, to the people around me. Too much of a perfectionist. I’d never see my kids. It’s just a bad, bad idea. Too much agony for me — and everyone around me,” he declared in a 2011 interview with The Arizona Republic.

Brad Pitt’s mettle as Hollywood producer validated with 2nd Oscar Best Picture win

Source: InterAksyon.com (March 04, 2014 at 08:06AM)

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