Isidora's Daydreams

It can be stated that Boza Nikolic had "discovered" Brad Pitt, however not in such a banal and fatalistic way as Isidora Bjelica claims in her diary, published in the Belgrade Profil magazine. Nikolic truly did choose Brad Pitt at a Hollywood audition amongst a dozen or so candidates of which, at that moment, the above mentioned didn't stand out with a significant acting career (a few short episodes in TV soap operas).

However, taking into account that the Dark Side of the Sun saw the light of day only a few months ago, this film certainly couldn't have significantly influenced Pitt's further career. Which is exactly why it is never mentioned in his biographies and movie books. At the end of the day, true talent uncovers itself, despite the decisive belief which thrives in the Balkan region that anyone who had ever achieved anything had only done so because someone else had given him a "push" and a "shove".

Brad Pitt became a famous film star at the beginning of the nineties (following an episode in Ridley Scott's well known film Thelma and Louise which is regarded as his true film debut). During the almost ten years which elapsed before the material called Dark Side of the Sun finally made it to its final, edited version, neither the director Boza Nikolic, nor the humble author of these lines, in a single media release (in the meantime we made Three Tickets for Hollywood together) had ever mentioned the Dark Side of the Sun (why talk of something which didn't exist as a final product?), nor the collaboration and otherwise close friendship with this Hollywood mega-star. Unlike the two of us, Isidora Bjelice does not miss an opportunity to extensively write about her allegedly accidental one-hour Belgrade meeting with Hollywood's Mr. Handsome.

In this meeting, at the very beginning of his career, she (the sophisticated Belgrade writer immediately prior to the last Bosnian tragedy, which personally sounds to me like an omen presented in a parody version) refuses his ambiguous offer to accompany him to the post office so that he could call his mom in America. (In those days, the telephones in the Intercontinental hotel were probably out of order, or perhaps, despite the admirable fee which he had received for his role in the Dark Side of the Sun, a hotel telephone call proved to be too great an expense for Brad Pitt.) Even though she had unconsciously shivered when he had, allegedly accidentally, touched her throat with a strand of his hair, she assessed that what she had before her was an uncreative, not overly bright hillbilly from a desolate spot located somewhere in the American midwest with a desparate wish for the stage lights, and that it would be better for her if she rushed off to her pre-arranged date with her then boyfriend, Belgrade colleague writer, a person who had a lot more style and polish.

Despite the fact that I can personally vouch that Isidora Bjelica had never met Brad Pitt in her waking hours (as the backbone to her story, she clumsily used an episode from my story on his one-day-long sojourn in Belgrade during which he had visited some Belgrade galleries and bought a few paintings), the article would otherwise have failed to anger me. Isidora wanted to meet Brad Pitt (even Pinki saw Tito once), and as Borghes himself does not attach a lot of importance to actual occurences in comparison to the experience attained by reading and daydreaming, why shouldn't we believe her? Maybe her article is not a documentary report but rather a literary achievement with all the prerogatives of a poet's liberty which otherwise belongs to him/her. On the other hand, I am extemely familiar with the habit of certain local popular types who build their exclusivity and image on an acquaintance with the famous with whom, as a rule, they are on the most intimate possible terms.

So why did I become angry? I was angry because one of the rare modest and unpretencious young people whom I'd had the opportunity to meet in the last few years, and whose acting talent no one can contest, a young man who had, with his spontaneity and unimposing manner won over the entire crew of the film Dark Side of the Sun, is depicted in a highly prentious way as a woeful outsider and perplexed creature hungry for fame at any price, whom Isidora Bjelica regards in a slightly bored manner from her level of old (and family-tree wise probably medeival) Serbian ladyship.

Why is it that anyone who means anything in the world today and who has had contact with this region, is always described by local authors as a fool who doesn't know what's hit him, in the Beckovic style of "I' knew you before you could tell the difference between your nose and mouth". Unfortunately, this stands as yet another painful detail of our mentality, and supplementary issue of the history of our paranoia which has been attaining climatic heights in the last few decades.