Pitt plays dumb in Coens' 'Burn After Reading'

TORONTO -- Brad Pitt has wanted to work with the Coen brothers for ages. Then he got wind of the birdbrain they had written for him to play.

"I've been knocking on the brothers' door for a few years, so I was really happy when they called me," Pitt said at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, a day after Joel and Ethan Coen's comedy "Burn After Reading" premiered there.

"Until I read the piece, and I was real upset," Pitt jokingly added.

Pitt's character, an ignoramus in way over his head on a blackmail scheme, is among a gaggle of boneheads caroming about in "Burn After Reading," whose cast includes his and the Coens' frequent collaborator George Clooney, plus John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins and Joel Coen's wife, Frances McDormand.

Opening in theaters Friday, the movie casts Pitt and McDormand as fitness trainers who stumble on a disc containing classified documents and try to extort cash from the ex-CIA analyst (Malkovich) who was the origin of the leaked data.

Pitt plays the goof to the hilt, his character's inept attempts at cloak-and-dagger intrigue providing some of the movie's biggest laughs.

"The leading man role is usually the guy who's got the answers, figures things out and defuses the bomb within seconds and is always experienced. And all of that's pretty good for the ego sometimes. But it's more fun playing guys who make the wrong choices, have limited experience and make presumptions," Pitt said.

Wearing fitness club shorts and T-shirt, with his hair teased into a puffy tower with a blond streak, Pitt also toyed with his movie star looks in "Burn After Reading."

"We had kind of a competition going on the set as to who had the most ridiculous hair, and I think you may have won, Brad," said co-star Swinton, whose character has a strange, swirled hairdo herself.

"We were all going in for that Javier Bardem prize," Swinton said, referring to the odd page-boy hairdo Bardem wore in last year's Coen brothers crime thriller, "No Country for Old Men."

The Coens said Pitt's hairdo was a happy accident. Ethan Coen said they had figured that as a gymnasium worker, the character might have a crew cut.

"Just by accident, Brad had done a commercial or photo shoot or something where his hair had been streaked, and he went in for a fitting for wardrobe for this with this kind of leftover hair, so we went, 'Oh, how about that?'" Ethan Coen said.

Pitt has tended toward action and drama.

Aiming for laughs with "Burn After Reading" did not seem out of place to him, though.

"I feel I've been doing comedies for years, but maybe they weren't so funny," Pitt said.