Pitt’s Patois
Creator: Archive Photos | Credit: Getty Images
Nothing like a movie with a good lore behind it. Like the stories behind the story of The Room, I finally succumbed to watching Meet Joe Black — director Martin Brest’s 3 hour drama-fantasy-romance from 1998. Browsing through Twitter, I came across the absolutely bizarre car accident scene with a 30-something Brad Bitt and Claire Forlani. Rather than lean on CGI, crew molded a dummy from Pitt’s body that in one take, actually crashed through the windshield inches from a stunt driver’s head.
Like a lunar eclipse, the wild scene makes the rounds every now and then to be discovered by a new generation. From those images, you can’t help but be seduced into watching the whole marathon melodrama. The film itself was a flop, with a $90 million production budget that grossed only $44 million in the states. But thanks to Brad Pitt ping-ponging off two cars on a Manhattan street, Meet Joe Black has become something of a cult classic in recent years. It currently has a 7.2 rating on IMDB.
The film plods along from the very first shots inside media mogul Bill Parrish’s (Anthony Hopkins) Gilded Age-seeming bedroom. Is he Rockefeller? Charles Foster Kane? On the cusp of a milestone birthday, Bill is slowly dying. But it’s not enough to show him waking up in the dead of night clasping his heart once. We come back to it a second time, and then a third, and a fourth, as he lies wide awake. He’s sick, by golly, and this is the note the film must strike!
Bill is a wealthy man but also a decent family man. He has two daughters, Allison (Marcia Gay Harden), who often manages her father’s affairs in the hopes that she will be loved in the same way her younger sister Susan (Claire Forlani) is. Bill and Susan fly into Manhattan together where she works as a doctor. In another plodding scene, Bill gives a monologue about how Susan shouldn’t settle for a guy who only kind of makes her excited. That poor middling guy just so happens to be a Parrish Communications board member, Drew (Jake Weber), who comes to regular family dinner to be with Susan and also wants more power within the company.
Before work, Susan hangs out in a cafe where she meets a man (Brad Pitt) new to the big city who immediately sweeps her off her feet. So much so that when they part ways, they still keep looking back, always missing each others’ glance. The moment is mined for every morsel of drama even though we’re at a point in the story when we’re not much invested in characters we barely know. It’s a “bad” choice cinematically, you could say. But then there’s the twist of seemingly killing off prime Brad Pitt 20 minutes into movie in almost comedic fashion only for him to be resurrected as Death/Joe Black.
But rather than a spoof of your typical predictable rom com, I’d argue that Meet Joe Black considers itself a more refined version of the romantic genre.
I haven’t watched a movie with subtitles all the way through in a long time. But when Death arrives at the Parrish mansion and starts haunting Bill in his library, I could barely make out most of those lines. The basic premise is that Death is here to take sickly Bill but for some reason wants to experience life on Earth for a little. So as long as a well-connected Bill can show him around, the billionaire will be granted a few more days on Earth.
Soon, Death, or Joe Black, as he’s called, is following Bill around to family dinners and company boardrooms alike. Susan recognizes his image, but also feels that something is off with this guy. After all, instead of eating a 5 course meal like a normal creature, he prefers even finer dining — a jar of peanut butter and a spoon.
Eventually, Susan starts to take a liking to Joe, and in a wild scene, takes his virginity by the pool: “That was like making love with someone making love for the first time,” she swoons. But just like the car accident scene, it’s not anyone who is being portrayed as a neophyte, but Brad Pitt.
Another viral moment involves a subplot at Susan’s hospital with an elderly Jamaican woman. She rolls into the hospital with her daughter and immediately is chilled by Joe. To the world’s surprise, Pitt puts on his best Jamaican Patois accent and starts to develop a friendship with this woman, eventually ending her suffering. It is here where the film’s thematic messages shine brightest, though I can’t help but wonder if this entire scenario is yet another Magical Negro trope, with a twist.
As a titan of industry, Bill is also trying to get his affairs in order and protect his company and legacy from being swallowed up by a conglomerate. Here, Bill is hoping to avoid another kind of death. And in the final hour, Joe tries to figure out a way to be with Susan while Bill, resigned to his death, wants to protect his daughters and his legacy.
This movie should probably be funnier than it is, but for some reason has a habit of taking itself far too seriously in spots — leading to a lot of unintended comedy, a la that Tommy Wiseau masterpiece. Still, the story of social media rediscovery starts to make you wonder if the very way viewers first come across a film influences our perception and experience of it. Or if a conventional movie trailer still sells a movie better than a patchwork collection of clips on Twitter or TikTok curated by popular demand. Fittingly, a film once left dead in the streets lives on.
*** outta *****