Generally Speaking

Brad Pitt dons the fatigues for Netflix’s comedy-drama War Machine[Tokyo Exclusive]

- Jedd Jong

F*** was at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Tokyo for a press conference attended by Pitt, writer director David Michôd and co-producers Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner.

War Machine is based on the non-fiction book The Operators by the late Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings. Pitt plays General Glen McMahon, a thinly-veiled fictionalisation of real-life General Stanley McChrystal. As the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command in the mid-2000s, McChrystal was credited with the killing of Abu Musab AlZarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. He became the Commander of the U.S. Forces in Afghanistan in 2009 but held the post for only just over a year. Comments that McChrystal and his aides had made about then-Vice President Joe Biden and other Obama administration personnel, which were documented in a Rolling Stone article, eventually led to McChrystal’s resignation.

Glen McMahon is characterised in the film as a blustering buffoon; Pitt visibly enjoying playing the over-the-top role. Pitt said that he and the filmmakers settled on certain traits, including the character’s awkward posture while running, by deciding what “made [them] laugh the most.” Pitt observed that McMahon “portrays and sees himself as an emblem of greatness when actually he looks quite silly” and that the “absurdity of the General” embodied the ultimate pointlessness of the seemingly endless war in Afghanistan.