BRAD PITT MADE UGLY - by Jim Fragale
The first entertainment venue to succeed in making Brad Pitt look, well, downright ugly, coming up.
For decades Gentlemen’s Quarterly was known for its slick covers featuring attractive men in appealing clothing. The last couple of years, the jackets have morphed. Some cloaks are now dark and moody, others weird…odd. Loyal readers have been disappointed, complaining, cranky; others have cancelled their subscriptions. And now, from this lifetime subscriber and big fan, I feel we have GQ’s strange, in all four-colors, August 2022 cover, featuring hunky movie star Brads Pitt, in my opinion, looking like a corpse.
The best cover and cover story ever was written by Jim Fragale featured up-comer Richard Gere, March 1980—controversial also because handsome, hunky, newcomer Gere was holding, gulp, a cigarette. Onetime GQ Editor Jim Nelson, interviewed in the New York Daily News, said that the March 1980 Richard Gere cover was the best in fifty years even though, he noted in the News article, there were considerations of his holding a fag.
I interviewed Gere when he was on Broadway in the play BENT—controversial in itself: two men, looking at the audience speaking a sexual experience—was exceedingly effective and a hit, as well as a the time groundbreaking. (It was brave of Gere to do BENT.) Initially, Gere turned down the original offer from then-GQ-editor Jack Haber to do the cover. Gere thought the magazine “was maybe a bit too gay.” Then, advanced word came down that his upcoming feature, American Gigolo, (Jack Haber’s words to me) “…wasn’t very good.” (Boy, were ‘they’ wrong about American Gigolo!) So, Gere thinking he needed the credit, wisely changed his mind. (Recently, in print, Anderson Cooper when 11 saw the play BENT, and said realized he was gay.
Initially, Gere turned down the original offer from then-GQ-editor Jack Haber to do the cover. Gere thought the magazine “was maybe a bit too gay.”
I was on staff at GQ for two years. Separately, did a bylined general interest double truck column for the sometimes-monthly called “Pulse.” In addition, I wrote four or five cover stories while there. (The ready-to-go cover with Ryan O’Neal when he was in The Main Event was canned. Haber requested O’Neal to retake the cover photo and O’Neal, I’m sad to say, refused. (At the original photo shoot, I met young Tatum and his son, Griffin.)
And now: the first entertainment outing to succeed in making Brad Pitt look, well, I believe, unattractive and corpse-like—August 2022 Gentlemen’s Quarterly Magazine.
I did favor the GQ Summer 2019 Seth Rogan. And, Spring, 2017, Roger Federer.
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