Who let Brad Pitt’s fashotainment shoot happen?

Call off the search. The high-water mark of excruciating celebrity magazine interviews has already been reached for 2017. It is – it will for ever be – GQ Style’s “BRAD PITT IN AMERICA’S NATIONAL PARKS”. That is literally the coverline for the latest edition of the fashion quarterly. It’s as if the editor was given a pile of actors’ names and a pile of auto-parodic location ideas and told to pick one from each deck. BRAD PITT IN AMERICA’S NATIONAL PARKS. GEORGE CLOONEY BENEATH THE CASPIAN SEA. TOM CRUISE ON THE ARCTIC SHELF (hair by Ken Paves). The entire feature has been conceived by the last three people connected with fashotainment publishing not to have seen Zoolander.

Before we proceed with the exposing horrors of the accompanying interview, which is predicated on the notion that performative recovery and fashion advertorial need not be mutually exclusive, I should say this: I am very sorry for Brad Pitt that he is getting divorced, or rather being divorced when he really doesn’t want to be. It must be completely, heartbustingly horrible and he could hardly look more drawn.

But I would like to ask his agent/manager/publicist/anyone remotely responsible for pastoral guidance: what the hell happened here? Do you understand that you should now carry the stain of BRAD PITT IN AMERICA’S NATIONAL PARKS like the mark of Cain, for the rest of your natural lives? I am looking at a picture of Brad in the foetal position at White Sands (socks by Brunello Cucinelli); Brad brimming with tears at White Sands (suit jacket $2,250, sweater $1,380, both by Bottega Veneta); Brad in the Everglades, looking like he could have six burgers and still weigh out for the 2,000 Guineas, and it is impossible not to wonder: where were you, guys, you bunch of massive arses, other than slyly reckoning that open-heart surgery (patient’s gown: Rick Owens SS17) is probably the quickest route back to box office?

At one point, Brad explains to the interviewer, Michael Paterniti: “I went through two therapists to get to the right one.” Yes, the right therapist is so important, and I am thrilled he burned through a couple of duds before apparently settling on one who would greenlight his decision to discuss the intimate details of his private life while hawking Ralph Lauren in a dank cavern. “Yes, yes, Brad – I think this is a really positive move for you – but I would like final approval on the knitwear.”

The other thing to concede is that I am afraid this stuff is really what we want from our celebrities. We don’t want prudent periods of reticence. We don’t want them to hide the fact they are working with the healing medium of clay – more of this shortly – because it might sound radioactively affected. We don’t want them to think that the best way through pain probably isn’t standing knee-deep in the Everglades and talking about court-ordered visitation rights for the readers of GQ Style. We want this.

So, without further ado, let’s have it. On with the show. And it’s clear pretty much from the get-go that this is going to turn out to be of the horror variety. Standout quotes from Brad are too numerous to reproduce the full range, but here is a flavour. “I grew up in caves.” “Genuinely, I just felt like Brad was a misnomer, and now I just feel like fucking Brad.” “I’ve never heard anyone laugh bigger than an African mother who’s lost nine family members. What is that? I just got R&B for the first time. R&B comes from great pain, but it’s a celebration. To me, it’s embracing what’s left. It’s that African woman being able to laugh much more boisterously than I’ve ever been able to.”

Where. Is. Your. Agent.

I mean, to adapt Mickey in Rocky III, they’re killing ya to death out there. At least 70% of the questions initially appear to have been asked as a dare – “What is pain, emotional and physical?” – but, as time wears on, it’s impossible not to conclude the interviewer really is this much of a dick. Consider the bit where he simply says to Brad: “Metaphors are my life.” And then decides to include that statement in the final copy.

At no point is anyone permitted to escape the hilariously ghastly GQ-ness of it all, with references to decor dropped as signposts for some poignant pretension to come. In the opening paragraphs describing the interior of Brad’s house, the interviewer casually mentions “the sideboard, with its exquisite inlay”. Much later, Brad says of his children: “They won’t give a shit about that inlay, but somewhere down the road it will mean something – I hope that it will soak in.”

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Oh God, poor Brad. This is awful. Why can’t we just go back to the time you were giving it to Geena Davis on a motel sideboard, or being released from desert prison to the sort of girlfriend who remembers to bring a pair of Levi’s with her (and was about to get it on a motel sideboard)? No one cared about the inlay then.

As for making the majesty of America’s national parks the backdrop to all this, that seems especially wicked, like getting Ansel Adams to do a shoot with Mariah Carey. Here’s a picture of Brad making a windswept prayer gesture in the Everglades that couldn’t even have been redeemed by a Gentle Ben reference, wearing a $485 shirt that just screams “come, friendly gators”. Here he is sprawled brokenly in the dunes of White Sands National Monument (necklace by David Yurman). Here is a stalagmite desperately trying to erode itself out of shot in Carlsbad caverns. And here Brad is back in the Everglades, demanding answers of the sky in what seem to be $875 Emporio Armani waders. I do think they missed a trick not picturing him on the vast extended arm of the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota, gesturing in a wordless scream toward the inscription declaring “MY LANDS ARE WHERE MY DEAD LIE BURIED”.

Still, we do get to hear about sculptural projects of his own, as Brad reveals: “I’m working with clay, plaster, rebar, wood. Just trying to learn the materials. You know, I surprise myself.” A digression that reminds me of something Chazz Michael Michaels said in Blades of Glory: “Before a big competition, I like to work with leather. The Native Americans always said that working with hides and pelts releases your soul.”

But back to sculpture. “It’s a very, very lonely occupation,” says Brad. “There’s a lot of manual labour, which is good for me right now. A lot of lugging clay around, chopping and moving and cleaning up after yourself. But I surprise myself.” Hang on, there’s more. “Right now I know the manual labour is good for me,” he repeats of sculpting, which I always think of as the coalmine of the visual arts, “getting to know the expansiveness and limitations of the materials. I’ve got to start from the bottom, I’ve got to sweep my floor, I’ve got to wrap up my shit at night, you know?”

“Is the sculpting a Sisyphean thing,” wonders the interviewer, who must have an exceptional gastric constitution to have been able to transcribe his own interjections from the tape. “Rolling the rock up the hill, action obliterating all thoughts?” Of course, that wasn’t the point of the king’s eternal punishment … But given he hasn’t watched Zoolander, I guess we can’t expect him to have googled Sisyphus.

Anyway. That, perhaps mercifully, is all there is room for. All we can do is wish for Brad to feel better as soon as he is able. And if part of that is seeking new representation, then I don’t think any of us would begrudge him it for a minute.