Brad Pitt Compares Manson Family Murders to Harvey Weinstein Scandal – Hollywood Reporter

10:11 AM PDT 7/30/2019

by


Ryan Parker

During the same interview, the actor who plays a rough-and-tough Hollywood stuntman, discussed how the idea of masculinity in the business had changed.

Brad Pitt in a recent interview drew parallel lines between the Manson Family murders that rocked Hollywood nearly 50 years ago and the 2017 Harvey Weinstein scandal.

Speaking with the U.K.’s Sunday Times to promote his new film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the actor recalled a story his parents told him about the slaying of actress Sharon Tate and others. 

“When my parents described it, it was as the end of this idealized revolution,” he told The Times. “My parents are still hippies, but it was the loss of this dream. As (Hollywood director) Quentin [Tarantino] describes, you sort of portray this utopia, but there is a mildew around the canvas that brought the darkness of humanity into play and ended a lot of my parents’ hopes for how they could infuse that ‘love and peace’ ideology into the rest of the world. It all sort of crashed and ended so much that some talk of it as a conspiracy. It was the total end of an era — immediately.”

Asked what he feels has rocked the town in such a fashion since that time, Pitt, who plays Cliff Booth in the Tarantino film and whose character interacts with some members of Manson’s “family,” pointed to the sex scandal, which gave way to the #MeToo movement. 

“Harvey Weinstein. Can I say that?” Pitt said in the interview. “It’s more that I think we’re getting recalibrated, but in a good way.” 

During the same interview, Pitt, who plays a rough-and-tough Hollywood stuntman, discussed how the idea of masculinity in the business had changed. 

“When I started, I loved Mickey Rourke and Sean Penn,” Pitt said. “I loved them because there was a toughness to them, which was how the male I’d grown up being taught about was meant to be. But they were also vulnerable, raw and open, and I always appreciated that.”

Pitt continued, “What I see now is a new masculinity, especially with people who have gone through Hollywood and its recalibration, a new male who is more vulnerable. I’m not talking mushiness — I mean a man who owns his own flaws and is aware of them and open about it. And vulnerable, with real feelings, rather than being this macho, trying-to-be-tough guy. But that might just be me in my old age, on my own trip, projecting onto everyone else.”

Sony’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, also starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie, is in theaters now.