Brad Pitt Backfire: Director Edward Zwick Deemed 'Desperate for Attention' After Calling the Actor 'Volatile When Riled'
Brad Pitt might be a lot of things, but it seems "volatile" isn't one of them.
The famed actor's Legends of the Fall director, Edward Zwick, claims Pitt was easily triggered while on set of the 1994 western film in his upcoming memoir, Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood — however, a source familiar with the movie's production countered those accusations.
"They had disagreements, but Brad was not volatile," an industry insider insisted to a news publication before deeming Zwick's choice of words rather pathetic.
"It's sort of sad that he's so desperate for attention that he would talk trash about people like Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt and others, when he's the one whose behavior, kicking over chairs and throwing things, got so bad that it upset the cast and crew," the source spewed after the award-winning filmmaker seemed to point fingers at Pitt in his tell-all transcript.
Backlash against Zwick comes after an excerpt from the 71-year-old's memoir, which hits shelves on Tuesday, February 13, called out Pitt's apparently angry behavior on the set of Legends of the Fall, which costarred Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn and Julia Ormond, roughly 30 years ago.
Zwick accused Pitt of becoming "volatile when riled," according to an excerpt obtained by a second news outlet, recalling one incident where the director "started giving [Pitt] direction out loud in front of the crew," before realizing it was "a stupid, shaming provocation — and Brad came back at me, also out loud, telling me to back off."
The Last Samurai producer said he and Pitt, 60, disagreed about the Bullet Train actor's character, a rural Missouri man named Tristan Ludlow.
"In his defense, I was pushing him to do something he felt was either wrong for the character, or more 'emo' than he wanted to appear on-screen," Zwick explained. "I don't know who yelled first, who swore, or who threw the first chair. Me, maybe? But when we looked up, the crew had disappeared."
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While going into detail about the one alleged incident, the director claimed their feud was recurring.
"Eventually the crew grew accustomed to our dustups and would walk away and let us have it out. 'We hate it when the parents fight,' said one,'" he penned in the unreleased transcript.
Despite butting heads, Zwick said the pair would always mend fences after "each blowup."
"We’d make up, and mean it. It was never personal. Brad is a forthright, straightforward person, fun to be with and capable of great joy. He was never anything less than fully committed to doing his best," Zwick concluded.
People spoke to the industry insider, while Vanity Fair published an excerpt from Zwick's memoir.