Pitt In This Movie: Aldo Raine Meets Billy Beane (SPOILERS)

QT has let on that "everybody wanted to play Cliff" -- Pitt's role. And its clear to see why. While Leo is giving us the teary-eyed neurotic ego bust-out that is Rick Dalton...Cliff the Stunt Man is a macho hero role of epic proportions.

It is as if all that the festering monster that was the Manson Family had ever REALLY needed was a tough macho guy to go up against them, ignore all of their BS...and physically beat bloody hell out of them on the slightest confrontation(vs men OR women, but these Manson women were killers, too.)

Just as Leo plays up his star strengths(yelling loud at stress points, brooding) as Rick, Brad Pitt here plays up his.

I found Pitt's performance to be a mix of two of his greatest earlier ones:

ONE: Aldo Raine, the Tenneesee twanged "good guy psychopath" of QT's "Inglorious Basterds." Here, Cliff doesn't seem to be from the Deep South, but he has a bit of a twang and Pitt reads some of Cliff's reaction lines just like Aldo's. Compare: "Anybody kills somebody in a fight, you go to jail. Its called manslaughter" with "There's a buncha problems fightin' in a basement. The biggest one is your fightin' in a basement." Yes, Cliff is sort of Aldo's country cousin.

TWO: Billy Beane, the Oakland As manager in Moneyball. Pitt played Billy Beane with an Oscar-nominated "cool meanness mixed with compassion." Billy's always thinking, always quietly smiling, NOT always talking..but always holding his ground against all opponents to his "Moneyball" plan.

I felt some of Billy Beane's silent consideration of how to beat the opposition when Cliff visited the Spahn Ranch, but MIXED with the more comical and violent Aldo Raine character. Sometimes you can hear Aldo talking, sometimes you can hear Billy talking. And sometimes, you definitely hear Brad giving us a NEW character voice, too.

One thing, though: for this role, Pitt elected to drop the "kind of dumb eye squint" he gave to Aldo.