February 5, 2004

Care For Some Chicken?

Michael PittIt seems to Cinecultist that greasy-sexy young actor Michael Pitt is everywhere lately. On the cover of Time Out New York this week and thus on posters at newstand kiosks everywhere you walk in the city, in a watch campaign for the Day Job, and in the new Bernardo Bertolucci film The Dreamers where he engages in various NC-17 rated activities. CC first noticed him on Dawson's Creek as the earnest boyfriend to town slut Jen and then as Hedwig's sweet boyfriend in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and thus was shocked to see how grimy he let his looks become after these innocent roles. Doesn't he just look like (in the picture at right) that he wants you to do all kinds of dirty, unspeakable things to him?

CC used to see him around the nabe, particularly stalking across Astor Place with an emasciated surly girlfriend or sitting on the sidewalk outside of the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. We knew he was a working actor but he looked just like any other St. Marks punk. One time, CC had just finished consuming one of our culinary guilty pleasures, medium hot chicken fingers at Pluck U on Third Avenue in the East Village, and there he was eating chicken at the next table. "Perhaps this is where all the grease comes from," we thought to ourselves. He seems to be so blank, so vacuous and yet willing to do anything you might tell him to do, which seems to be why in the end Bernardo cast him over our other favorite young hunk of goodness, Jake Gyllenhaal.

Michael Pitt Quote for the Day from the TONY article, "Okay, 'An orgasm is better than a bomb' may sound like a funny statement," he says, referring to Bertolucci's official remarks after the film's rating was conferred. "But I think a lot of things can be solved by being naked, by being vulnerable and by connecting with people."

Posted by karen at February 5, 2004 8:28 AM