Choose your tee-shirt: Team Aniston or Team Jolie. Which side are you on? Aniston is troubled: estranged from her mother and long estranged from her father, undesirous of children, keen for her film career to develop; on the other, Jolie is likewise estranged from her father (you are not sure about her mother) and is likewise ambitious for her films. Of course, she has a child, who she had intended to adopt with Billy Bob Thornton, the actor-singer-writer who preferred to tour the UK singing songs called ‘Angelina’ than be with his wife.
She left him, who blames her, and then what? She speaks of liaisons in hotel rooms. And then there was Brad Pitt, a simple lad, pilloried in Living in Oblivion, intimate of George Clooney and a kind of replica of Jennifer Aniston. You’ve seen the pictures of Pitt and Jolie holding hands, of course. And the new movie posters for Mr and Mrs Smith. A beautiful couple more so for their dissimilarity. They complement one another rather than resemble one another.
Team Jolie, Team Aniston. Pitt wants children, it is said, and Jolie has one. Courtney Cox blanked him the other day. How upset he would have been! Did he really want a reconciliation with Aniston in the wake of the divorce?
Sometimes you dream of them, the celebrities. This morning, you dreamt Brad Pitt suddenly sat beside you to read your newspaper. You wanted to turn a page to the editorials; he was keen to remain on the pages that report international news. He spoke. He was tender. He went away. You thought, in your dream: he was tender with me. He is famous and I am unknown. He is realer than I am but he speaks with infinite solicitude.
A story you remember from a childhood friend: Prince Philip’s car breaks down near the house of his grandfather. So his grandfather mends Prince Philip’s car and sends him on his way. How marvellous! you used to think, hoping that Prince Philip, or the Queen might visit our school. You always loved the Queen, you loved the colour of her outfits. You are sure you will dream of her again, remembering perhaps the programme Paul Burrell made about her, where he imitated her voice. The Queen was infinitely tender, according to Paul Burrell. She spoke with patience and solicitude. He was amazed that she could deign to speak with him thus.
Team Aniston, Team Jolie. If you met Brad Pitt in real life, you would be sure to call him Mr Pitt, thinking that by so doing you would avoid that overfamiliarity which must plague him. You know he would say immediately ‘Brad, Brad’, and you would be able to call him Brad. Ah, but you would have earnt that right! And if you met the Queen?
Team Aniston, Team Jolie. No, you can’t decide. These people are gods, and the gods really do walk among us. We resent them, these gods, which is why we like seeing them on bad hair days. But this resentment is part of the awe we feel for them. Awe! You can imagine Jolie would be smaller than she appears on movie posters and in films. How tall is Brad Pitt? Quite tall, you think to yourself. It’s his proportions, you can tell. And you remember, all of a sudden, the picture of Johnny Depp, drunken, dissolute, with the British policeman who arrested him. He was tiny, birdlike. He was a drunken bird loose in London. You thought: his small stature betokens a god. He is a god and so too Vanessa Paradis.
Now you imagine the god-celebrities gathered outside my flat. They are large and small, larger and smaller than human beings and they are gazing through your window. They have golden yellow faces and speak in a language you cannot understand. Jolie and Aniston are there, reconciled, at one with one another, as they always were. Why did they allow themselves to appear in discord, you wondered. Truly the gods are strange!
Lars Iyer's Blog 