Brad Pitt - Information

Cast: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Mary-Louise Parker, Sam Shepard and Sam Rockwell

Director: Andrew Dominik

Writer: Andrew Dominik.

Based on the novel written by: Ron Hansen

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This western drama film tells the story of Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) who is a seemingly insecure young man. He has grown up idolizing Jesse James (Brad Pitt) and is often seen as a coward by those around him. Most of the story is about the last months of Jesse´s life, from meeting a 19-year old Robert Ford to the day Ford shoots him.

Brad Pitt in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

The outlaw Jesse James was living under a pseudonym, carrying out a train robbery. He was a wanted man and disappeared to Kentucky. He planned a bank holdup with Robert and Robert’s brother, Charley. There’s tension around Jesse when he is around and the insecured Robert wants to be somebody and wants the reward for getting Jesse.

Robert killed Jesse the year 1882 when Jesse was 34 and Robert 20 years old. After the assassination, Robert Ford becomes a celebrity and ends up in a theater reenacting the assissination night after night. His brother Charley was playing Jesse James. Ten years passed since the assassination. After his death 1892 Robert Ford would achieve no fame.

View the trailer

Scene from the film

I’ve Never Seen You Without Your Guns

Interview with Brad Pitt

Stevie Wong interviews Brad Pitt in the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival 2007.

Trivia provided by The Internet Movie Database:

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• When casting for the role of Robert Ford it came down to Casey Affleck and Shia LaBeouf. Affleck eventually got the role, because LaBeouf was felt to be too young.
• Garret Dillahunt was originally set to play Robert Ford’s brother, due to his striking resemblance to Casey Affleck, but due to a TV commitment, Dillahunt was given a smaller role and Sam Rockwell replaced his original part.
• According to Andrew Dominik, Brad Pitt had it put in his contract that the name of the movie was not to be changed.
• At the beginning of the film, Jesse James’ finger disfigurement is revealed to the audience. If one pays close attention, the top half of Brad Pitt’s left middle finger is painstakingly erased in every single scene it appears in with the help of computer graphics.
• Making “James” was a long and arduous process. There was a well-publicized tug-of-war between director Andrew Dominik, who caught Hollywood’s attention with indie title Chopper (2000) and Warners over the editing of the film. Warners’ wasn’t entirely in sync with the pacing of the movie, or the length. Dominik was thinking more like ‘Terence Malick’ in examining the relationship between the famous outlaw and his eventual assassin, Robert Ford, played by Casey Affleck. Warners was in favor of having at least a bit more action. Ultimately, Warners went with Dominik’s version, even though Dominik didn’t have final cut as part of his contract. Part of the reason was that Pitt, who produced the movie through his Plan B shingle, backed Dominik. At one point along the way, Pitt and exec producer Ridley Scott had put together their own cut. When it tested to only so-so results, they went back to Dominik’s. The original cut of “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” was nearly four hours long. It was edited down to two hours and forty minutes, its current runtime, at the studio’s request. However, it did play at least once at its original 4-hour length, most notably at the Venice Film Festival, where Brad Pitt picked up the Best Actor Award. After the viewing, critics at the festival labeled the film as “majestic.”
• When Jesse goes looking for Jim Cummings he introduces himself as “Dick Turpin”. Dick Turpin was a legendary English rogue and famous historical highwayman romanticized in English ballads and popular theatre of the 18th and 19th century.
• The revolver Jesse James gives to Robert Ford is an 1875/1878 Smith and Wesson Model 3, Schofield .45 caliber with single-action, top-break and auto-eject. The first pistol to use a large caliber and auto-eject. It was famously used by other ‘gunslingers’ such as Pat Garrett and John Wesley Hardin.
• The singer whom Robert Ford confronts in the bar towards the end of film is Nick Cave, a composer for the film.
• Although the film had two production designers (Patricia Norris and Richard Hoover), only one name was allowed to be listed in the credits. Because of this, both decided to go uncredited.
• Ron Hansen, writer of the novel, spent about a week on the set, and helped with editing and even enjoyed a cameo in the film. During an interview, Hansen lauded the acting prowess of Casey Affleck, who he thought added his own perspective to the complicated character of Robert Ford. Hansen then says, “In some ways it feels like he was born to play this role.”
• In the saloon scene, the “minstrel” was singing a memorial to Jesse James. The lyrics to that “song” no one person ever claimed to have written. The poem that was developed from the written lyrics of this song became “The Ballad of Jesse James”.
• The poem that Frank James (Sam Shepard) quietly recites to himself early in the film before the train sequence is called “Sonnet 62″ by William Shakespeare.
• The original unedited screenplay was 132 pages long, but the final version was reduced down to 102 pages.