VENICE, Italy (AP) — George Clooney and Brad Pitt: Bachelor and family man.
Inevitably, a news conference Wednesday promoting their new Coen brothers film, Burn After Reading, turned to the birth of Pitt's twins with partner Angelina Jolie, and whether his good friend would ever settle down.
Clooney, 47, put on a look of mock bemusement.
"I am so surprised to hear that question. That is honestly the first time I have been asked that," Clooney said. "I am getting married and having a child today."
Pitt, whose brood has grown to six children with the birth of twins Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline last month, offered to share his children with Clooney, adding deadpan: "I'll have two more by next year."
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The movie, which premieres Wednesday at the Venice Film Festival, is a tale about idiots — and what happens when their worlds collide.
Pitt, 44, looked flustered as a Spanish TV journalist pushed her way to the front of the press conference dressed in red gym shorts similar to garb he wears as a gym trainer in the film. She asked Pitt if he would help her work out.
"It's a movie," Pitt reminded her.
"Would you run after me?" she asked Clooney and Pitt.
"I think we're more likely to be running away from you," Clooney replied to laughter.
Several times Clooney good-naturedly ran interference for Pitt, who was peppered with questions about his personal life. Asked about the infants, Clooney intervened: "The twins are fine," then joked that he and Pitt were sitting at opposite ends of the podium because of a restraining order.
And when another questioner asked if they would rather win an Oscar or fall in love with an Italian woman in Venice, Clooney warned: "Don't answer that, Brad."
Oscar winners embrace idiotic roles
The movie, set to premiere tonight at the Venice Film Festival, is a tale about idiots — and what happens when their worlds collide.
Pitt and McDormand are a pair of hapless gym employees who get in way over their heads when the memoirs of a failed CIA analyst (John Malkovich) fall into their hands and they try to peddle them as classified intelligence secrets. Clooney plays a hypochondriac philanderer having an affair with the CIA analyst's disappointed wife, played by Tilda Swinton.
"Looking at the parts we are playing, I'm very concerned about what you think of us," Clooney said at a news conference.
It's Clooney's third film with the Coen brothers — completing what he called "his trilogy of idiots" after O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty.
Pitt said he had waited a long time to work with the Coen brothers.
"Like George ... I'm not sure if I should be flattered or insulted," he said. "I'm still a bit unsure."
Asked if the movie is a love letter from her husband, Joel Coen, McDormand quipped: "Have you seen the film? And you call that a love letter?"
To point: The movie's opening shots are of McDormand's Linda Litzke having her behind, belly and arms scrutinized by a plastic surgeon in her attempt to fend off middle age.
"We started writing the movie as kind of an exercise, thinking of what kind of parts these actors might play, what kind of story they might inhabit," Ethan Coen told a news conference.
Burn Without Reading is set within a spy story for no other reason than "we hadn't done one before," Joel Coen told reporters.
McDormand's and Pitt's characters appear driven by a combination of naivete, greed and the kind of trite wisdom and oversimplified world view that can be gleaned from the self-help shelf of the corner bookstore and daytime television.
The film — part comedy, part satire of Washington's government community — got a number of laughs during the press screening ahead of the gala opening Wednesday night.
At one point, Pitt's Chad Feldheimer shows up for an extortion date chewing gum, wearing a bike helmet and calling himself "Mr. Black."
The stars said there was no room for ad-libbing in the tightly written script, which weaves together overlapping stories.
"It's really a funny script. I didn't feel any need to wander off the script," said Pitt. Of his iPod-loving, spandex-wearing character, he said: "He doesn't consider any other possibility other than what he thinks will happen. I pretty much ran with that."
Swinton plays an angry wife unable to shake her disappointment at being married to a failed spy and lush.
"There's something really, really funny in terms of my character being so angry all the time," Swinton said.
Clooney said the movie — though poking fun at the world of intelligence — has no political intent.
Speaking of politics, wouldn't Clooney, who is planning a fundraiser for presidential candidate Barack Obama in Geneva next month, have preferred to be at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this week?
"I'm sort of happy to be here. It is one of my favorite places," Clooney said. "The stars of the convention should be the people who are being elected."
Burn Without Reading is playing out of competition for the Golden Lion, which will be awarded on the festival's closing night Sept. 6.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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