Brad Pitt Is Happy, Are You?

In response to a flood of rumors about the state of his marriage, Brad Pitt has announced that he is happy. Happy. He is hanging out at the Cannes Film Festival. He has a beautiful family. He might make more family. He is not banging the nanny or trying to look up nuns' habits or whatever else he might do out of desperation to telegraph to the world that he is miserable.

This is wonderful news from Brad Pitt, who has begun to look as if he is suffering the disturbances of suburbia. It's a very curious state of affairs. The more beautiful his wife becomes, the more Pitt appears as if he is covered in atomic ash. He has become the banker on the 5:15, the guy with the broken rake, the swimmer with the college medals who now blows up the kiddie pool and finds himself short of breath.

As a result of the innumerable inquiries into the Pitt-Jolie marriage, one cannot avoid Brad Pitt even if one wants to avoid Brad Pitt. Recently, one magazine called out another for manufacturing Pitt-Jolie drama solely for the sake of selling magazines. The horror of this is unfathomable. Since 2005, the offending magazine has run 21 cliffhanger covers, each of which claimed the couple was done, or almost done, or done as soon as it was revealed that Angelina Jolie was really a man. Or that Brad Pitt was made to wear a French maid's uniform (with frilly pink panties) while bending over and serving Angelina Jolie escargots en croûte and other homely French comestibles.

From a cheap physical standpoint, the best of Brad Pitt came early in his career, when he became the subject of the national swooning experience. This type of attention becomes a physical challenge for the subject, but not fot Pitt, who now enjoys the experience of middle age yet who no longer causes fans to go into a dead faint.

This is really rather unfair. Pitt has failed to live up to expectations. He has jowls, dull hair, and there probably won't be any post-mortem revelation that he was a belligerent drunk with a bad case of cystic acne on his ass. His last movie was sketchily based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short and Pitt cocooned himself nicely in its special effects; he has made moves since he was moved on by Jolie in the useless Mr. & Mrs. Smith. There were tenderer questions and a willingness to be shown in the process of balding. There is always the gleeful implication that he has betrayed himself as amuse-gueule of the vagina dentata, but keep in mind to whom that vagina belongs. If Jolie seemed more exciting during her marriage to Billy Bob Thornton, you remember Thornton's fear of antique furniture and wonder if this and perhaps other idiosyncrasies led to her healing rush towards maternal nature.

Pitt has not seemed to be the propulsive force in his marriage; the tabloids would have you believe that he lives in a constant state of romantic Sturm und Drang, with hurled knives and mental imbalances and the looming threat of potential lesbian alliances. He is Euro-pastel in his Cannes ensemble, but he was never a sartorial lion in the first place. He has too many influences at hand: David Niven, Noel Coward, Sonny Crockett. What if he wanted to play nude hacky-sack on the beach at Juan-les-Pins instead of sitting through a screening of Inglourious Basterds? He keeps busy; he has 12 films in development.

He looks as if he might be at home behind a lawnmower. This is the great secret of his happiness. He might one day rebel and burgle a neighbor's home to steal the neighbor's wallet, but not today. He is a lucky man. Sometimes, you barely notice him. Go to his house, he might break out the bridge mix.

You could probably borrow his tools. He is happy. Are you?