There was apparently tension with Brad Pitt on the set of the 1994 film Legends of the Fall, according to the movie’s director, Ed Zwick.
In an excerpt from Zwick’s new memoir, Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood, the director wrote that it fell to producer Marshall Herskovitz to talk Pitt, 60, “off the ledge” when the actor “wanted to quit.”
“It was never mentioned again, but it was the first augury of the deeper springs of emotion roiling inside Brad,” Zwick wrote in the excerpt, which was published by Vanity Fair on Tuesday, February 6. “He seems easygoing at first, but he can be volatile when riled, as I was to be reminded more than once as shooting began and we took each other’s measure.”
Based on a 1979 book of the same name, Legends of the Fall centered around three brothers — Tristan (Pitt), Alfred (Aidan Quinn) and Samuel (Henry Thomas) — and their father, Colonel William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins), who all reside in the wilderness in Montana. After one of the brothers dies during World War I, the two others have a rivalry over his former fiancée.
“Sometimes, no matter how experienced or sensitive you are as a director, things just aren’t working,” Zwick noted, claiming that Pitt “would get edgy” when they were about to film a scene that “required him to display deep emotion.”
“It was here that ideas about Tristan differed from mine,” Zwick noted of their contrasting approaches to showing emotion. “Brad had grown up with men who held their emotions in check; I believed the point of the [Legends of the Fall] novel was that a man’s life was the sum of his griefs. … Yet the more I pushed Brad to reveal himself, the more he resisted. So, I kept pushing and Brad pushed back.”
During one afternoon, Zwick recalled he gave instructions to Pitt in front of the crew. The director admitted that was “a stupid, shaming provocation.”
“Brad came back at me, also out loud, telling me to back off,” Zwick wrote, adding that he was “angry” with Pitt for “not trusting” him. “But Brad wasn’t about to give in without a fight. 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 onscreen.”
According to Zwick, things got so tense at least once that furniture was thrown. “I don’t know who yelled first, who swore, or who threw the first chair. Me, maybe?” he wrote. “But when we looked up, the crew had disappeared. And this wasn’t the last time it happened. 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.”
Despite their bickering, Zwick noted that he and Pitt would “make up and mean it,” adding that “it was never personal.”
“[Pitt] is a forthright, straightforward person, fun to be with and capable of great joy,” Zwick continued. “He was never anything less than fully committed to doing his best.”
When reflecting on whether the movie “was worth it,” Zwick wrote, “I’d have to say yes.”
Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood is set to be published on Tuesday, February 13.
