Behind closed doors

Hollywood diaries

During the filming of By the Sea, Angelina Jolie Pitt and Brad Pitt — who play a depressed former dancer and her blocked novelist husband — had a go-to method for lightening an often sombre mood on the set.

“There were a lot of jokes about how nobody is ever going to want to be our neighbour again,” said Angelina, referring to how their characters often spy through a peephole on two lovers in the hotel room next door.

By the Sea is written, produced and directed by Angelina and represents the first time she and Brad have appeared on screen together since their 2005 spy thriller Mr. & Mrs. Smith. The potential pitfalls of directing one’s real-life spouse aside, the movie is a risk in other ways. Set in a quiet seaside town in France, it’s inspired by the deliberately paced European art films of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and — let the speculation begin — tells the story of an American couple’s imploding marriage.

Angelina, 40, whose last film as director was the World War II survival tale Unbroken, seemed sanguine about it all — from the fact-or-fiction parsing By the Sea might generate to the possible critical reception of what she called “a bold choice.”

She added: “I know some people are going to hate it. Some are going to like it. But it was important to me to feel like an artiste again.”

Candid and engaged, she spoke of the grounding influence of having her six children on location and of how hard her husband worked on his French. “As we were shooting he’d sometimes say: ‘It’s strange. You seem to have given me 10 times more dialogue in French than you’ve given yourself,’” she said, laughing hard. “I told him, ‘That’s the bonus of being the writer.’”

Here are excerpts from the conversation.

Your first films involved lots of research. How do you prep for a circa 1970s marital drama?

It helped that it was set in France, so we focused on the culture and the time in history. But it’s really just me from a blank page. It’s like my study of something that I didn’t even understand about my own pain, my own self. It was a strange experience — and not one I think I’ll do often. (Laughs) I got married right before: Maybe that was my study.

You had been with Brad for roughly nine years by then. Did tying the knot change anything?

It was just a nice thing. For me, the big moment was when (we) signed the (joint adoption) papers for Maddox and Zahara. That was a decision to parent together, to commit to being a part of each other’s lives for the rest of my life. So (marriage) wasn’t close in comparison. In a way, it was casual.

Then not much later it was off to Malta to shoot a movie about a relationship in crisis. That’s your idea of a honeymoon?

Well, technically it was a honeymoon. A few days into filming I thought: This is such a bad idea. What was I thinking? This is going to destroy us before we’ve even gotten started. But by the time we got to the end of the film, we’d argued, challenged each other, disappointed each other, had good days, bad days, all of it. We’d pushed through, learned something about each other, found a new working relationship.

Talk about the challenge of directing and acting at the same time.

As a director I had to be sure, strong in opinion, stable. My character? She shouldn’t direct anything. Not even traffic. She’s a mess. The duality — being a director, then having to become a person that vulnerable — would often be hard.

What do you think Brad’s first experience with a woman director was like?

I’m not just a woman, but a writer-director. We’re also husband and wife. I think it was doubly hard. We know certain things about each other. At first it was a little uncomfortable. You want to be careful what button you press and what you don’t.

In the midst of all this you had children to tuck into bed at night, one of them a teenage boy, Maddox, working as a gofer on a not-exactly-PG movie.

He’d be there for the lighter scenes or funnier ones, but obviously we had a rule that for certain scenes he was on lockdown, not on set. I remember one day I was in my robe, my mascara was running down my face, my hair was still in curlers, and we ran into each other in the hallway. He just shook his head, like, “Wow, Mom. Nice.” This business, I grew up in it myself, so I’d almost be happier if the kids weren’t interested. But he loved it.

In By the Sea, there’s plenty of shouting, tears, drinking and, at one point, kicking. Do you mind that audiences will see the film and read into it?

And think, this is what they’re really like? I think you have to accept that. But if people think these are our particular issues, well, that’s wrong. But if they want to think we have terrible fights, are imperfect, have insecurities and can be depressed and emotional, of course that’s true. We have problems, arguments. We are flawed people. And I think that’s a good thing to show.