Ugh, let’s do this. I have to admit, it’s incredibly smart of Esquire to release their Brad Pitt cover story piece by piece, spreading out the revelations and quotes throughout the week. Today’s revelations from the Esquire piece do not come from Brad, however. They are from his “longtime makeup artist” Jean Black. Black has apparently been working for Brad for 23 years, and she spends some time in the article praising Brad for keeping his natural look, his wrinkles, her unkemptness. Black told Esquire, “He’s not fighting it.” Then Black seemed to go WAY off-message and she named Jennifer Aniston. RUH-ROH.

Um, really? Brad Pitt’s Esquire interview has even more surprising revelations — this time from Jean Black, a makeup artist and friend who has worked with Pitt, 49, on nearly all of his films since 1990. Speaking with Esquire, Black sheds new light on Pitt’s legendary meeting with Angelina Jolie on the 2004 set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, when he was still married (apparently unhappily) to Jennifer Aniston.

“I think Brad was ready to soar when he met Angie,” says Black, who then quickly clarified of Aniston, whom Pitt divorced in 2006: “This is not to say anything negative about Jennifer. I was part of that and I know that he and Jennifer are very good friends and he cared deeply for her.”

“But in Angie,” Black continued, “he saw a very adventurous person who was grabbing on to life and taking it to its nth degree. It was intriguing because I felt Brad had that in him and wanted to unleash it.”

Whether or not Pitt and Aniston, 43, are actually “very good friends” these days, the World War Z actor himself intimated to Esquire that he was deeply depressed about ten years ago during his marriage to Aniston. Saying he’d done major “drug damage” to himself, Pitt said he was a “drifter . . . I spent years f–king off.” About ten years ago, all that changed.

“It was an epiphany — a decision not to squander my opportunities,” he explains. “It was a feeling of, ‘Get up.’ Because otherwise, what’s the point?”

[From Us Weekly]

OMG, just go ahead and scream that this was ALL Brad’s doing and why can’t he let it go and why does he have to throw so many pity parties and it’s so crazy that People Magazine gave him a “Five Years After Jennifer” cover. Oh… wait. Well, certainly we can scream at Brad because obviously he authorized this woman to speak on his behalf and he told her what to say and isn’t that the most vicious thing his surrogate has ever said about poor, maligned Jennifer? Oh wait.

So… whatever. I’m sure there will be arguments and conspiracy theories but I tend to think this woman was just kind “off message” and what she said wasn’t even that offensive. Who here doesn’t think that when Brad got with Angelina, something inside of him was “unleashed”? As for the idea that Brad and Jennifer are still “friends”… no. They aren’t. They might pay lip service to that idea, but they aren’t friends. I think it was just a verb tense fail – she meant to say “they WERE good friends, he cared deeply for her”.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Obviously, I’m a Brangeloonie and I’ve never pretended to be anything else. Maybe that’s why I didn’t interpret Brad Pitt’s Esquire comments as some kind of “slam” on Jennifer Aniston. The problem seemed to be that Brad used similar wording to his 2011 interview in Parade, where he famously said “I wasn’t living an interesting life myself. I think that my marriage had something to do with it. Trying to pretend the marriage was something that it wasn’t.” It was one of the first and only times Brad had ever specifically bad-mouthed his marriage to Jennifer. But was Brad doing that again in his Esquire interview? Here’s the relevant portion:

“For a long time I thought I did too much damage – drug damage. I was a bit of a drifter. A guy who felt he grew up in something of a vacuum and wanted to see things, wanted to be inspired. I followed that other thing. I spent years f–king off. But then I got burnt out and felt that I was wasting my opportunity. It was a conscious change. This was about a decade ago. It was an epiphany – a decision not to squander my opportunities. It was a feeling of get up. Because otherwise, what’s the point?”

[Via Esquire]

People are hitching their wagons to his “about a decade ago” caveat. A decade ago, he was married to Jennifer. A decade ago, he hadn’t even met Angelina for Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But I interpreted that whole thing as “Brad had been f—king around for his entire life, even before he met Jennifer.” I think Brad is trying to take ownership of what a dumb, burned-out and useless existence he lived and yes, maybe his marriage was part of that but he doesn’t even say that explicitly. So why is everyone like “Brad sucks for slamming Jennifer like always, commence pity party”?

Anyway, there are more excerpts from the Esquire interview, including a shout-out for Gwyneth Paltrow’s late father Bruce Paltrow. Oh, Goop will love that. She’ll dine out on that for months.

Brad always lists his occupation as “self-employed” when he is filling out forms: “I learned that from Bruce Paltrow. I always liked it. It’s a humble way to explain what we do.”

What if a stranger asked him what he does for a living? “Well, I’d be very Midwest about it, very Missouri. I’d say, This and that. I’d say, I’m a dad just like you.”

Camping north of Santa Barbara: “I woke up way too early and way too wet. But it was really fun. Six kids — six of ‘em. Including one of our young ones. Angie as well. It’s a great thing, a great thing. Then we drove nine kids three hours in an Econovan. The kind you take a crew in, with bench seats. No other vehicle is big enough. There’s no car we fit in as a family. Everything else holds seven, eight tops. An SUV only holds seven. And we had nine — our six and three friends. Eleven, including us. It’s no frills, man. I’d love to have it all tricked out, shag carpet on all four walls. But we live in a different world. We rent our vehicles. We don’t want things so identifiable because we don’t want to get followed. We spend a lot of time trying to evade the paparazzi. It’s a big annoyance. But everything in life’s a trade-off….”

The ‘troubled production’ of WWZ: Pitt dismisses the notion that Z has been any more troubled than any other enormously troubled movie. He says that its notoriety came about “because of me — there’s a big bull’s-eye on my back.” What he does admit is that Z is a “big, big bet” for both Plan B and Paramount, “with a lot of money on the table,” and that he had a lot to learn about what it takes to make a big commercial movie. “You gotta be able to make it pop,” he says. “You have to keep paying off, keep paying off, and in order to do that you have to be able to set the trap and snap it at the right moment. There are guys who are just great at that, and I didn’t understand how technically sharp you have to be to pull off some of that stuff.”

[From Radar & Esquire]

In the newest Esquire excerpt (go here to read it), the writer glosses over the reported tension between Brad and WWZ’s director Mark Forster. Brad hand-selected Forster to direct because – as Brad says in the piece – he thought Forster “would know how to keep building character even when his character is living up to his summertime obligation to kick some undead ass.” But then Brad spent most of his time finding technicians who could actually do the action-drama stuff while Forster was off “building character” and Brad says he was “more hands on” than he’d ever been. What I get from this excerpt is that Brad owns WWZ, for better or for worse. If the film is a box office disaster, Brad knows he’s going to have a hard time getting financing for future projects. But if the film makes money… well, I guess Brad will own that too. He will be responsible for saving my generation’s Ishtar or Heaven’s Gate.

Photos courtesy of Esquire.

Oooh, the second Brangelina cover story in a row for People Magazine. And still no quotes from Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie! Still, People Mag has sources close to Brangelina and I’m sure that this cover and last week’s cover were “approved” by Team Brangelina. This week’s story is about how Brad supported Angelina during her mastectomy surgeries:

Talk about teamwork. In the weeks surrounding Angelina Jolie’s preventive double mastectomy and subsequent reconstructive surgery, her fiancé, Brad Pitt, served as her No. 1 support.

At the bustling home they share with their six kids in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, “Brad did everything he could to keep things secret and protect Angie,” a family insider tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story.

Using early morning appointments and rental cars to avoid discovery, “They really wanted Angie to be able to recover and rest before they shared the story,” says the insider.

The actress’s medical ordeal only deepened the bond between Jolie, 37, and Pitt, 49, a couple for seven years. Those close to them say the pair’s teamwork is always on display, in public and private.

“They are very loving and inspiring to each other, exchanging ideas,” says Jeremy Kleiner, a longtime exec at Pitt’s Plan B production company and producer on his upcoming movie World War Z.

On-set, “He would light up when his family showed up. It’s just a very cool thing to see.”

For much more on this story, including Angelina’s next surgery and how Brad’s family has supported her, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE.

[From People]

People Mag keeps referencing Angelina’s “next surgery” and stuff – while Angelina referenced the idea of a partial hysterectomy or the removal of her ovaries, she hasn’t verified anywhere (that I’ve seen) that she’s planning that surgery any time soon.

Would you like an Uncool Bermuda Triangle story? Of course you would. The National Enquirer reports this week that Jennifer Aniston “cried” when she heard about Angelina’s mastectomy. A source says: “She was moved beyond belief reading Angelina’s story. It really took her by surprise how brave she is. To go through such a major thing for all her family has made Jen realise that regardless of how they hooked up, Angelina does really love Brad and [their six] kids. Sure, Jen got hurt when Brad left her and the pain dragged on for years, but she’s so over it now, and wants to extend an olive branch to Angelina.” Sure. Okay. I don’t believe it but whatever.

Here’s Jennifer’s video for her guest hosting Ellen’s show. This makes me think that they are all terrible actors.

Cover courtesy of People Mag, additional photos by WENN.

Okay, as it turns out, Esquire has not released their full Brad Pitt cover story yet. They only released an excerpt plus Tom Junod’s post-interview thoughts on Brad and Angelina’s relationship after she announced her news about the mastectomy (which I covered earlier today). Esquire did release their full cover shoot by photographer Max Vadukul – you can see the slideshow here. It’s nice. It’s black-and-white and there are some lovely photos of Brad. Here are some highlights from the interview:

He forgets people’s faces and names all the time: “So many people hate me because they think I’m disrespecting them,” he says. “So I swear to God, I took one year where I just said, This year, I’m just going to cop to it and say to people, ‘Okay, where did we meet?’ But it just got worse. People were more offended. Every now and then, someone will give me context, and I’ll say, ‘Thank you for helping me.’ But I piss more people off. You get this thing, like, ‘You’re being egotistical. You’re being conceited.’ But it’s a mystery to me, man. I can’t grasp a face and yet I come from such a design/aesthetic point of view. I am going to get it tested.” It’s gotten to the point where he doesn’t even like going out — “that’s why I stay at home” — but he’s also a public person, the center of crowds. “You meet so many damned people,” he says. “And then you meet ‘em again.”

On his family making him happy: “I have very few friends. I have a handful of close friends and I have my family and I haven’t known life to be any happier. I’m making things. I just haven’t known life to be any happier.”

On changing the direction of his life: “I’d get so far and then want to do something else. I mean, I’m two credits short of graduating college. Two credits. All I had to do was write a paper. What kind of guy is that? That guy scares me – the guy who always leaves a little on his plate. For a long time I thought I did too much damage – drug damage. I was a bit of a drifter. A guy who felt he grew up in something of a vacuum and wanted to see things, wanted to be inspired. I followed that other thing. I spent years f–king off. But then I got burnt out and felt that I was wasting my opportunity. It was a conscious change. This was about a decade ago. It was an epiphany – a decision not to squander my opportunities. It was a feeling of get up. Because otherwise, what’s the point?”

On missing his kids when they’re not around: “I always thought that if I wanted to do a family, I wanted to do it big. I wanted there to be chaos in the house… there’s constant chatter in our house, whether it’s giggling or screaming or crying or banging. I love it. I love it. I love it. I hate it when they’re gone. I hate it. Maybe it’s nice to be in a hotel room for a day – ‘Oh, nice, I can finally read a paper.’ But then, by the next day, I miss that cacophony, all that life.”

[From Esquire & JJ]

“I just haven’t known life to be any happier.” I think that could be taken one of two ways. One, take it at face value and just think that this Brad’s backwards way of saying that this is the happiest he’s ever been. Two, chose to read more into it and think that in a life full of BS, pain and angst, Brad has carved out something that he likes and this is “the best” he thinks he’s ever going to get. I don’t know why Brad speaks in riddles about his family sometimes, but I suspect it’s just because his brain is a tangle of marijuana and wine and not because he’s so terribly unhappy. He is happy. I think.

Also, that condition where you can’t remember someone’s face/name…? That’s a real thing. I saw a talk show episode about it. Like, people with prosopagnosia don’t even recognize their children. They were shown a photo of President Obama and they asked, “Um, Tiger Woods?” Brad doesn’t have that condition. He just has a terrible memory.

Photos courtesy of Max Vadukul /Esquire.

Brad Pitt covers the June/July issue of Esquire to promote World War Z. The interview was released last night and I’ll be covering it later today. The interview was done by Tom Junod around the beginning of April, when Angelina was in the midst of her multiple mastectomy and reconstruction surgeries. Brad didn’t give Junod any clue into what was going on. And so after Angelina’s announcement (one week ago today), Junod published an addendum (consider it a “reimagining”) to his yet-to-released Esquire cover story. It’s just his basic thoughts on Brad and Angelina’s relationship and Brad talking about how much he loves his girl. It’s really nice:

Tom Junod’s profile of Brad Pitt will appear in the June/July issue, which is on newsstands at the end of the month.

When I met Brad Pitt the day after Easter, he was so tired that he was perhaps more reflective than usual. He had just finished a week of spring break with his family. He had camped out with them the night before on his property north of Santa Barbara, and he had woken up, he said, too early, as well as too wet. They had slept in tents, four of his six children, along with two of their friends, and then he had gotten all of them in a van and driven them down to LA.

“Angie too?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Angie too.”

I told him that I’d met her a few years before, when I profiled her for Esquire. She was making a movie about the wife of the murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, and the thesis of my story was that while 9/11 was supposed to make us all better — a better country and a better people — it only worked for Angelina Jolie. The story has won a kind of immortality as “The Worst Celebrity Profile Ever Written,” and when I told that to Angelina Jolie’s partner, he at first laughed and said that he hoped Esquire would use that as the title of the profile I was writing about him. Then he got serious. “But you were right,” he said. “You were right, you were right. Angie is….the best person…..”

I remembered meeting Angelina Jolie — how thin she was, how much steak she ate and wine she drank, and above all her utter self-possession. She answered every question I asked, but she was the kind of person who responded without ever simply reacting. Brad Pitt was different. He was, like a lot of men, stuck between family and work, and the day he came back to LA from spring break was the day he began the push to finish his summer zombie movie, World War Z. And so, although he was Brad Pitt, he was also a big guy, dressed in black, stained around the eyes by stress and exhaustion, who spoke leaning forward, bent at the waist, with his hands folded between his legs, and was in the habit of repeating himself between long pauses. “I’m a crap interview,” he’d warned me, but when he began talking about his family, he said twice, “I haven’t known life to be any happier,” and he said it in such a way that I never once thought to doubt him.

This was April 1. I didn’t know then what I know now — that a month earlier, his partner, Angelina Jolie, commenced the series of surgeries that would end, a month later, with her pre-emptive double mastectomy. Over the next few weeks, I talked to several of Pitt’s close friends. They must have known what the couple was enduring, but of course they never told me. One of them, however, called me back after our first interview. His name was Frank Pollaro, and he’d spoken about the furniture business he’d started with Brad Pitt, and about Pitt’s excellent eye. But he wanted to say something else, so he called Brad, and asked if he was at liberty to speak about Brad’s relationship with Angelina. He was, and so when he called back, he told me what he’d seen at Brad’s house — “once I walked in and Angie was standing there and Zahara walked up and said, ‘Daddy, you’re not going to start making out with Mommy again, are you?’ And it’s like that. This is a guy who has tried not to do any sexy scenes with other women since he’s met Angelinia. He’s crazy about her, and she’s the same way about him. No matter how hard he’s working, if one of those kids runs by the window he’ll get out of his chair and give them a kiss. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen Angie without one of those children in her arms.”

It’s the nature of marriage — or, in the case Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, a committed relationship — to both invite and repel scrutiny. We have no idea how any two people make a life together, much less two people as professionally exhibitionistic and privately enigmatic as the two combined in the public mind as “Brangelina.” But I will say this: a long time ago, Brad Pitt left college in Missouri to come to LA and act in movies. He insists that he wasn’t looking for stardom, only a sense of life and possibility larger than what he left behind. He insists that he was searching the chimera of Hollywood for something real. This morning, the mother of his children revealed in the New York Times that he was “at the Pink Lotus Breast Center, where I was treated, for every minute of the surgeries.”

You do not have to be a celebrity, only a father and a man in love with a woman, to know that life doesn’t get any more real than that.

[From Esquire]

Does Junod sound like a fan-boy? Sure. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy this piece immensely. Junod infamously profiled Angelina several years ago – he references that in this piece, and you can read the old story here. It’s not a particularly revealing interview for Angelina, but again, it sounds like it was written by a fan-boy. And why not? Why can’t a celebrity journalist admit that he or she believes that Brad and Angelina are in love and in it for the long haul? That despite all of the glitz and bulls—t that comes with their jobs, they actually managed to make something real and lasting together? *adjusts Brangeloonie tin foil hat*

Photos courtesy of WENN.

I’ve been full of praise for the way Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have publicly handled Angelina’s double-mastectomy, even allowing my Brangeloonie Freak Flag to fly proudly in a way I haven’t in a while. But I do need to have a word with Brad Pitt about this ensemble – Brad was photographed yesterday in LA, leaving a business meeting. At first I thought he was wearing Justin Beiber-esque hammer pants, but I actually think these are slouchy linen sweatpants or something. And they’re too big for him, so they just LOOK like Bieber Pants, and it’s a bad look in total. I’m fine with black sweater – everything from the waist up is fine. But Brad needs to stop trying to make the linen casual-wear happen.

So, we’ve got an assortment of Brangelina news today. Let’s do it with bullet points!

*Angelina’s doctor has begun to blog about Angelina’s process – you can read the first blog post here. The doctor notes that Brad really was there every step of the way and Brad was the first person Angelina saw after she got out of surgery.

*Angelina’s friend Nicholas Kristof, who is an advocate-columnist for the NYT, wrote on his Facebook page: “Angelina Jolie also asked me to convey her thanks. She is just so, so grateful for the overwhelming outpouring of public support that’s she’s getting. And she’s grateful to all for taking this and running with it to start serious conversations about women’s health.” Angelina came out to support Kristof’s book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide several years ago.

*Kristof also tweeted that Angelina is “the gold standard for celebrity activism… [this is] a conversation that’ll save lives. I’ve spoken to Angelina Jolie several times in [the] last few days, and she has been so strong, so brave, so determined. She wants to use her medical issues to nurture a nat’l conversation on health options. No self pity; she just wants to help.”

*Jon Voight found out about his daughter’s double mastectomy on Tuesday, like the rest of the world, despite the fact that he just seen her days before. Voight said: “My love and admiration for my daughter can’t be explained in words. I saw her two days ago with my son Jamie. We all got together for his birthday, with her and Brad [Pitt]. But I didn’t know. It wasn’t obvious at all. I found out [Tuesday] morning. I was as surprised as anyone and deeply moved by the way she’s handled this. She’s a very extraordinary person, the way she examined it and what she shared.”

*Dr. Oz issued a statement that was extremely complimentary of what Angelina is doing and has done already. His statement reads like a love letter from a fan-boy. It’s really sweet.

Update: OMG, Angelina scored the cover of Time Mag!! You can read an excerpt of the cover story here, and here’s the (absolutely gorgeous) cover.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.

Brad Pitt has more to say about Angelina Jolie’s double mastectomy! Can I just say? I’m glad that Angelina Jolie announced her medical choice the way that she did, in a well-written, explanatory op-ed, and I like how she just left it out there for people to discuss at will. I watched All In With Chris Hayes last night, and his big story at the end of the show about Angelina and breast cancer and health care, and I think so many straight-news shows are covering it that way, as they should. That’s what Angelina wanted, I think. She announced it her way and she controlled how the information was released, but she doesn’t want to control the spin. Which is a great way to handle it.

Anyway, Brad issued a statement yesterday, hours after Angelina’s op-ed went online, and it seems that he also sat down with USA Today yesterday to discuss the situation. You can read the full USA Today piece here, and here are some highlights:

How Brad feels: “I’m quite emotional about it, of course. She could have stayed absolutely private about it and I don’t think anyone would have been none the wiser with such good results. But it was really important to her to share the story and that others would understand it doesn’t have to be a scary thing. In fact, it can be an empowering thing, and something that makes you stronger and us stronger.”

How Jolie kept her commitments: Pitt spoke with proud wonderment recounting how Jolie kept commitments in the past two months visiting the Congo, as well as London for the G-8 Foreign Ministers Conference and New York to honor Pakistani teen Malala Yousafzai. “This was during Stage 2 (when the double mastectomy was performed),” he said. “Literally it was just weeks after she’d had truly major surgery.”

Making recovery fun: “We set up our own little post-op recovery that became pretty fun. You make an adventure out of it.”

The experience was… “an emotional and beautifully inspiring few months. And I’ll tell you, it’s such a wonderful relief to come through this and not have a spectre hanging over our heads. To know that that’s not going to be something that’s going to affect us. My most proudest thing is our family. This isn’t going to get that.”

[From USA Today]

Yeah. Brad’s not the most eloquent person, but I believe he’s speaking from the heart, and more than that, I believe that, at this point, having gone through everything they’ve gone through, Brad knows that he and Angelina are in it for the long-haul. They always said that their children bound them together more than any piece of paper, but I think this experience has made them tighter than ever before.

I previewed People Magazine’s cover story in the earlier Jolie-Pitt post, but here’s the whole online article:

Angelina Jolie is one resilient mom.

The actress, 37, has experienced no complications since undergoing a double mastectomy in February and reconstructive surgery in April. “She is doing well,” a source tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story.

But her medical odyssey is not done. The mother of six is also planning to undergo surgery to remove her ovaries. Because of her “faulty” BRCA1 gene, she still faces a high risk of developing ovarian cancer, which her doctors estimate at 50 percent. Some doctors recommend patients undergo the surgery by age 40 or when a woman is done having children, though it may trigger early menopause.

For now, though, the actress and her fiancé, Brad Pitt, have been focused on maintaining a sense of routine for their kids – keeping up family traditions such as a Valentine’s Day gift exchange and an Easter egg hunt while Jolie was undergoing treatment.
In the weeks surrounding the surgeries, “life was normal” for the children, says a source, and they didn’t notice anything amiss.

Adds a family insider: “Her kids always come first to her.”

For much more on this story, including Jolie’s family’s life during her treatment, how Brad has supported Angelina and how her mom inspired her, pick up this week’s PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday

[From People]

Angelina’s mother Marcheline had ovarian cancer for years, and it’s interesting to me (medically) that Angelina’s doctors thought she had a higher risk for breast cancer as opposed to ovarian cancer. But it does sound like Angelina is going to be dealing with her ovarian cancer risk soon, probably this year. Be well, Angelina!

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.

Everybody has chimed in about Angelina Jolie’s double mastectomy at this point, and from a celebrity perspective, it’s been all-positive, although I’m waiting to see how the tabloids and/or Chelsea Handler spin this. Brad Pitt issued a statement hours after Angelina’s NYT op-ed came out, and most celebrities have tweeted well-wishes and positive thoughts to Jolie. And now Brad’s mom Jane has issued a statement! James Haven too.

After she revealed she underwent a preventative double mastectomy, Angelina Jolie’s family members are voicing their support.

“We’re so very proud of Angie, this means so much to our family especially our grandchildren. We love her dearly,” Brad Pitt’s mother, Jane Pitt, says in a statement.

Jolie’s brother, James Haven, also spoke out about her decision to undergo the procedure.

“My sister like our mother always put her children first,” he says in a statement. “I am so grateful to be her brother.”

In a New York Times op-ed piece, Jolie describes her difficult choice to have surgery after genetic tests showed her to have a high risk of developing the disease. Her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, died of ovarian cancer at 56 in 2007.

Jolie, 37, also expressed how much she leaned on Pitt, 49, whom she described as “loving and supportive,” and there for her “for every minute of the surgeries.”

Pitt released a statement of his own on Tuesday, saying, “Having witnessed this decision firsthand, I find Angie’s choice, as well as many others like her, absolutely heroic. I thank our medical team for their care and focus.”

[From People]

See? Despite Jane Pitt’s super-conservative politics, she and Angelina still get along really well. Angie and Jane have spent a lot of time together over the years, with Brad’s parents coming out to support Angelina’s films, and Jane in particular coming out for some lovely happy-family photo-ops. There really isn’t any drama (or at least not the kind of drama the tabloids claim there is). As for James Haven… he barely ever issues public statements anymore. I don’t even know what he’s up to at this point. Idly, I wondered why Jon Voight hadn’t piped up in the first hours after Angelina’s announcement, but The Mail claimed (at first) that Voight already knew about the double mastectomy and that he’s “been immensely helpful in the last month.” But they have a new story saying that Voight wasn’t told and that he found out when everyone else did.

Meanwhile, The Mail has an “exclusive” story about how Brad and Angelina are determined to marry “sooner rather than later” after this medical ordeal, but the story is mostly a hodge-podge of older quotes, mostly from Brad. A source claims: “Angie is keen on a wedding and the kids are clamouring for a marriage and keep asking Brad and Angie when it’s happening. Brad has been caught up in production turmoil with his new film World War Z, so there’s been no wedding planning as a result, but Angie has said it will happen sooner rather than later. They are all for all intents and purposes married, but it’s become clear that it’s important to them to make it official.” Apparently, they’re not so sure about getting married at Chateau Mirval, and Angelina is angling for maybe a Bosnian or a Cambodian wedding.

Oh, and I just saw this – Angelina covers the new issue of People Mag (they must have put this together yesterday). You can read the online excerpt here. There’s a piece of new information – sources claim Angelina is going to have her ovaries removed at some point to bring down her chances (50%) of developing ovarian cancer.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.

Angelina Jolie’s preventative double-mastectomy op-ed is the story of the day, and it’s all anyone can talk about. Us Weekly has a summary of some celebrity reactions – Sheryl Crow, Christina Applegate (both of whom have dealt with breast cancer and mastectomy issues) both tweeted their support for Angelina. A slew of other celebrities have tweeted and commented about it too, all of the comments positive and praising of Angelina and her informative, educational and inspirational op-ed. And in case you were wondering, Brad Pitt has issued a statement too. And so has UK Foreign Secretary (and Angelina’s latest BFF) William Hague.

Brad Pitt today hailed his fiancée Angelina Jolie as “heroic” after the actress revealed she has undergone a double mastectomy because of her extremely high cancer risk. Jolie, 37, revealed she had chosen the surgical procedure as a preventative measure after genetic tests revealed she had an 87 per cent chance of developing breast cancer and a 50 per cent chance of ovarian cancer.

The Oscar-winning actress, whose mother Marcheline Bertrand died of ovarian cancer in 2007 at the age of 56, said she had taken the difficult decision so she could tell her children “they don’t need to fear they will lose me”.

Pitt told the Standard: “Having witnessed this decision firsthand, I find Angie’s choice, as well as so many others like her, absolutely heroic. I thank our medical team for their care and focus. All I want for is for her to have a long and healthy life, with myself and our children. This is a happy day for our family.”

Amazingly, Jolie kept working throughout the past three months, making a high-profile trip to the Congo alongside William Hague and appearing at the G8 Summit in London last month to call for an end to sexual violence in conflict zones.

Mr Hague said today: “This is a brave choice by a remarkable woman. The courage it must have taken not only to go through this treatment but then to speak about it to help other women is truly inspiring. Throughout it all her humanitarian work has not missed a beat. This is a courageous decision by one of the bravest people I know. I wish her and her family the very best.”

[From The Standard]

God, I love Brad. I can just feel how this really did bring them closer together. And I think this is probably why we haven’t heard much about their wedding plans too – they wanted to get all of this stuff sorted out before they officially tied the knot. They are in it for the long haul – the fact that Brad was there every step of the way says that.

People Magazine has a story about how Brad and Angelina kept their schedules “normal” and how they’ve really just been focusing a lot on their kids, like always.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Brad Pitt covers the June issue of Vanity Fair. The cover shot is freaking me out a little bit. It’s not that Brad looks bad or anything, it just feels like they Photoshopped his eyes or something. He looks sort of like a zombie – which might be on purpose, considering the cover story doesn’t seem to be a straight-forward celebrity profile, but rather a profile of how much it cost to make World War Z and how difficult it was for everyone involved. Brad has put a lot of his Hollywood power on the line, and I’m sure he’s lost professional friendships because of World War Z. Will it be worth it in the end? Will WWZ end up making money? Also: there are some concerns that Brad didn’t even sit down for a photoshoot with VF, that this is an outtake from a photoshoot he did with the New York Times two years ago. Well… at least it’s not a dead celebrity. Here’s the VF cover story excerpt:

“He took me through how excited he was when he read the book, what was exciting for him, the geopolitical aspect of it,” screenwriter Damon Lindelof tells Vanity Fair contributor Laura M. Holson in the June issue of Vanity Fair of meeting Brad Pitt to discuss the star’s troubled zombie project, World War Z.

Lindelof says Pitt explained, “‘But when we started working on the script, a lot of that stuff had to fall away for the story to come together. We started shooting the thing before we locked down how it was going to end up, and it didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to.’” The actor asked him to watch an edit, and told him, “The thing we really need right now is someone who is not burdened by all the history that this thing is inheriting, who can see what we’ve got and tell us how to get to where we need to get.” Lindelof tells Holson the ending was abrupt and incoherent, but more importantly they were missing a large chunk of footage.

In her revealing report, Holson also speaks to director Marc Forster and Paramount executives Marc Evans and Adam Goodman about the many problems that plagued the set—which included re-writing and reshooting 40 minutes of the film to find a coherent ending—and, most astonishingly, how the budget ballooned to around $200 million.

While closing down the production in Malta, for instance, the wrap-up crew found a stack of purchase orders related to the cast and extras that had been casually tossed into a desk drawer and forgotten; the amount totaled in the millions of dollars. Marc Evans, president of production at Paramount, was shocked. He calls the overages an “unthinkable action” which needed to be addressed immediately. “It was literally insane. Adam [Goodman, president of the Paramount Film Group] and I believed we’d gotten out of Malta good, and I found out we weren’t. That is a nightmare.”

When it came time to watch the director’s cut, Holson reports, the room was silent. “It was, like, Wow. The ending of our movie doesn’t work,” says Evans. “I believed in that moment we needed to reshoot the movie.” After 10 minutes of polite discussion, everyone left. “We were going to have long, significant discussions to fix this,” he recalls thinking.

“I said to them, There are two roads to go down here,” says Lindelof. “Is there material that can be written to make that stuff work better? To have it make sense? To have it have emotional stakes? And plot logic and all that? And Road Two, which I think is the long-shot road, is that everything changes after Brad leaves Israel.” That meant throwing out the entire Russian battle scene—or about 12 minutes of footage—and crafting a new ending. “I didn’t think anyone was going to say, ‘Let’s throw it out and try something else,’ ” Lindelof recalls. “So when I gave them those two roads and they sounded more interested in Road B”—which meant shooting an additional 30 to 40 minutes of the movie—“I was like, ‘To be honest with you, good luck selling that to Paramount.’ ”

[From Vanity Fair]

I am pretty interested in reading this just because we’ve spent the past two years talking about the disastrous production and all of the angst and drama that came along with trying to film the unfilmable story. I think it’s interesting that this excerpt doesn’t include any quotes from director Marc Forster, or even anyone giving his point of view. That’s probably because Forster is being thrown under the bus. NY Magazine reported last year that Brad wasn’t even speaking to Marc when it got time for the reshoots, and that everyone’s nerves were frayed and Marc got a lot of the blame for it.

Photos courtesy of Vanity Fair, NYT & Fame/Flynet.