Actor Brad Pitt says he and partner Angelina Jolie like to bike around New Orleans, and he enjoys seeing the energy-efficient homes his Make It Right Foundation built for families displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
"In New Orleans, the people are great. They leave Angie and me alone," Pitt says in an interview on the New Orleans Times-Picayune's website. Despite the paparazzi that often trail them, he says: "Everybody treats us like neighbors."
"The Lower 9th is now the greenest — I don't even like the word green — it's the most high-performing clean neighborhood in the world, according to the Green Building council," he says.
Pitt, who has a home in the French Quarter and is now there for Katrina's fifth anniversary events, says he was drawn to the city because he found it "sexy and sultry." He was interviewed by historian Douglas Brinkley, a longtime friend.
In 2006, Pitt's non-profit foundation commissioned 13 architecture firms to design affordable, eco-friendly houses and has since built 30 in the Lower Ninth Ward, according to Brinkley. Here are excerpts of his interview with Pitt, as provided to the Times-Picayune:
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt pose for photographs with children affected by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans on Dec. 22, 2007.
Tell me about your love affair with New Orleans.... How did that happen?
I came to New Orleans back in 1994 doing the Interview with the Vampire movie, based on the Anne Rice novel, and fell in love with the city. It got under my skin. Everything was sexy and sultry. I'd ride my bike all over the place, amazed by the architecture. I'd return to New Orleans every chance I could. What can I say; it's got the best people, the best everything. It's the most interesting city in America.
Where were you when Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005?
In Calgary, up in Canada, making the movie The Assassination of Jesse James. I couldn't get my eyes off the TV. It was frustrating seeing all those people on rooftops screaming for help. It was abhorrent. I was gutted. I remember thinking we can do better in America. Everybody seemed to make mistakes at a federal, local and state level. I used to ride my bike around the Lower 9th — usually going to the Holy Cross area to look around. My instinct said that we have to find a way for those people to find a road home. New homes were clearly going to be needed.
When did the idea of Make It Right houses come into focus?
I got involved with Global Green and various Bill Clinton initiatives. I met a lot of smart people. But nobody was doing what I thought needed to be done. Look, I'm an architecture junkie. And the holy grail of architecture is finding ways to design sustainable urban communities. The Lower 9th had become a clean slate. Everything had been washed away. So quite naively — and I know I'm naive — I said let's start at ground zero, the very historic neighborhood that got devastated by Katrina. We brought architect William McDonough into the picture and things took off. We started building prototypes. The Lower 9th is the iconic spot of Katrina. It's where the levees breached. It represents a marginalized people stuck in a man-made disaster. I met Katrina victims who had been given FEMA trailers and had nothing to hook them up to. Others had formaldehyde problems. What was the message? We were telling people to come home and yet when they got back to New Orleans they were treated in a substandard way. I just thought it was atrocious.
How do you feel seeing those Lower 9th families living today, on the fifth anniversary of the storm, in beautiful Make It Right houses?
Great! I was in the Lower 9th for Memorial Day. Families were barbecuing and swimming in the little, you know, pop-up swimming pools. And families were coming together and saying hi. You know, the simple acts of kindness. A lot of residents no longer have only a cynical view of Katrina, they have a brighter perspective about life. And when I say kindness I mean Make It Right was built on the donations of people. Americans donated. That has a deep effect on the people living in these homes. We have solar panels providing the energy, and it works and fellow Americans paid for it. Not the government....
Are you hoping this can be a pilot project or prototype community to develop elsewhere? Do you have a global vision?
That was the plan. That was the plan all along. This thing could become a template for other communities to follow. And we've trained New Orleans contractors on how to build these homes.
Can you still get around New Orleans on your bike? Do you put a sweatshirt hood over your head? Or does your facial hair serve as a disguise?
In New Orleans, the people are great. They leave Angie and me alone. Unfortunately, we drag paparazzi with us from other places in the world. They become a bit of a hindrance. We try to go out and all the locals are so great, and then these paparazzi ruin it. But otherwise, man, we can just live and breathe and ride bikes. We can take our kids on bike rides, and local people just give us a shout out—and let us move on. It's very free for us in New Orleans, very nice for us. It's like Venice or Rome; an essential world city. So we feel honored to be involved with the community. Everybody treats us like neighbors.
How do you feel about the grass-roots movement of Brad Pitt for U.S. senator or mayor of New Orleans?
Yeah, with my past? (Laughs). It isn't going to happen. Oh, my, the skeletons that would come out of my closet. That's a losing venture.
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