Don’t let Brad Pitt corner you at a party

It Girl novelist Ottessa Moshfegh has profiled Brad Pitt for a GQ cover story. 

Elizaveta Porodina

It Girl novelist Ottessa Moshfegh has profiled Brad Pitt for a GQ cover story. 

They are both having a moment. Brad Pitt is promoting his latest film, Bullet Train, based on the ​​Kōtarō Isaka novel of the same name and Ottessa Moshfegh has released her My Year of Rest and Relaxation follow-up, Lapvona (which we panned.)

Brad Pitt is also in the midst of a messy, public legal battle with his ex-wife Angelina Jolie over a vineyard they bought together in Provence, Château Miraval. Something that was conveniently not mentioned in the piece — which feels less like a profile and more like an aura reading.

Photo by Elizaveta Porodina

Ottessa Moshfegh wants you to know that Brad Pitt is doing 👏 the 👏work 👏. He’s taking “radical accountability,” he’s been sober for six years, and he’s given up smoking. All good things. He seems like a sincere guy, attuned to his feelings, like anyone who's recent musical obsession is an Arcade Fire single. He’s just trying to be his authentic self, man.

In illustrating that Brad is indeed a thinking man, Ottessa has made him out to be an annoying man.

• “Lately, he’s been rising early to play his guitar.”
• “One close confidant, Flea, the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist.”
• Brad: “I’m one of those creatures that speaks through art. I just want to always make. If I’m not making, I’m dying in some way.”
• “World-class rosé production” (annoying, can’t explain.)

I am a fan of both these people. I signified that I read My Year of Rest and Relaxation with a gauzy photo of the Jacques-Louis David cover (Maison Balzac decanter in frame, of course).

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

And Brad is a smokeshow that’s had my heart ever since I was a teenager lying to boys about Fight Club being my favorite movie. He brings capital C charisma to every film he’s in.

I would hate to be stuck next to them at a party. 

Photo by Elizaveta Porodina

Reading this piece felt like being wedged on a couch between two people far more erudite and spiritually attuned than you. 

You’re trapped in their back-and-forth of musings on the 13th-century poet Rumi, unable to contribute because every endeavor to ‘do the reading’ ends at an Emma Chamberlain vlog.

They’re talking about a 17th-century Italian sculptor and the last art you saw was a Yayoi Kusama exhibition because you wanted a photo in front of the pumpkin. It’s a level of mystical aestheticism you’ll never ascertain. 

At least we have Elizaveta Porodina's truly psychedelic photos to gawk over. Glorious, vivid pictures that seem to reference touchstones we actually understand. We have Brad Pitt as a dripping wet Ophelia, and for that we are grateful.