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Brad Influence

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In a boisterous family restaurant in Bozeman, Pitt isn't getting recognized at all. Montana brunch, as you might guess, is no lily-livered, eggs Benedict affair. And the actor is right in synch, mopping up plates full of ham and eggs, potatoes, and biscuits with gravy.

At six feet, he's bigger than you expect him to be. He built up his body for River and then put on additional muscle to acquire the requisite menace for Kalifornia. The beard and long hair give him a Rebel sharpshooter look; he could be one of Mosby's Raiders. And true to his Ozark roots, the Springfield, Mo., native brims with an edgy country presence, so much that it almost seems calculated — he's all mumbles and sidelong looks and Tom Waits growls. But this is more youth than affectation, self-protection rather than self-satisfaction. When I comment on the enthusiasm of the party crowd the night before, he brightens. ''You know what they do instead of asking questions? Or saying it's great? Which is just kind of the normal thing — saying it's great. You're great. Whatever. People last night, they all came in and told me really personal stories. They want to relate. It's a whole 'nother deal. This one hit people.''

It's true. Outside the restaurant he finally gets recognized, by a man in a leaping-trout baseball cap, a man who would probably rather eat worms than gush over a movie star.

''Good movie,'' the man calls. ''You really captured the essence.''

Fly-fishing is specifically what he's talking about, yet something in what he says goes beyond that. No major-studio picture in recent memory cuts so close to the essence of what it means to be a man in America, nor has any movie since Redford's 1980 Ordinary People so captured a family whose members can't quite talk to each other.

''Can I tell you what the movie's about for me?'' Pitt says. ''It didn't hit me till last night, seein' it the second time. It's that life is not a work of art. I think most people want to understand what they're even doing walking down the street — why they're here. And this film gives you an understanding that you're not going to understand.''

While the public Pitt is winsome to an almost J.D.-ish degree (''Hi, I'm Brad,'' he said, smiling earnestly, to every woman who lined up for an audience), in quieter surroundings he gnaws ceaselessly at a variety of questions, not least of which is the puzzle of Brad Pitt. He knows he's got the goods — looks, talent, brains. No young star today is in steeper ascent, but many a one has come unhinged under similar circumstances. How, as the world grows ever more dazzled, to build a fitting career?

Before the world took notice, he did a series of odd jobs around L.A., studied acting, and finally began to get small TV and movie roles, usually as a surly adolescent. Then came a long-shot audition for Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise. ''After Thelma I had a lot of pretty-bow offers,'' he says. "Nice packages with nothing in 'em.''

Instead he decided to go his own way, first with Johnny Suede — a campy little piece of surrealism, saved by Pitt's sweet performance as a hilariously dim-witted Ricky Nelson wannabe with a towering pompadour. Next came the disappointing Cool World, Ralph Bakshi's animated/ live-action picaresque, in which Pitt got lost trying to play to blue screens. Had he made a wrong turn?

''In this town and in this industry, the push is to make somebody an icon,'' says Patrick Markey, coproducer of River and a longtime associate of Redford's. ''Here's a kid who could be a teen idol. The camera dearly loves him. Instead, he chooses these interesting, difficult, not necessarily commercial projects. I think he's very, very serious about his acting.''

Despite his still-fresh splash in Thelma, Pitt was no shoo-in for River. ''These were a couple of plum roles,'' says Redford of the brothers Norman (Craig Sheffer) and Paul Maclean. ''Everybody was up for them.'' And, like many other young actors in town, Pitt had zeroed in on the project early. ''About a year before, I'd heard that Redford was doing a big film about two brothers in Montana. That was pretty much it for me,'' he says. He immediately read the Maclean novella. ''I just kept tracking and tracking (the project). Come time to audition, I auditioned, and I wasn't real happy about what I did. There was an importance on it. It was more important to me than the other ones I was going for.''

''Was it intimidating meeting Redford?''

He mulls it for a moment. ''Intimidating's not the right word,'' he says. ''There's definitely a power there. You gotta get yourself up and out of bed to meet him. Redford has to carry around — you know, he always plays this one man against the system, standing up for integrity, and he always gets the girl, and all men want to be him. People's expectations are high going in. And you find the same integrity, the same good man. It's not so much intimidating as...''

''Challenging?''

''Challenging. Right on.''

Pitt asked Redford if he could redo his two audition scenes for River on tape at home, and together with a friend, actor Dermot Mulroney, turned the scenes into a mini-feature, complete with period costumes by Mulroney's wife, Catherine Keener (Keener co-starred with Pitt in Johnny Suede), and background music by another friend, Melissa Etheridge.

Redford was underwhelmed. ''It was not on the tapes,' he says of what finally sold him on Pitt. ''It was in the office. Brad had an inner conflict that was very interesting to me. He's an extremely smart guy inside, quite sensitive, but it's all covered over with the part that needs to act tough to get along in the world. The way it comes out in his acting is very free, very raw. It's the way I like to work as an actor. So it was just worth it to me to try.''

Redford's praise is delicately nuanced. ''You were asking a guy who hadn't had much experience being overt to make a big leap,'' he says. ''I'm quite proud of Brad's performance, and I'm proud of myself for getting it from him. There were a lot of hurdles to get over.

''Brad was very rural, very laid-back. Very James Dean. That I didn't want. I wanted him healthy. Sunny. As vibrant as possible. In those days, when a good education was hard to come by, young people wanted to create the impression of being forward-thinking. They were likely to be much more demonstrative. And Paul was so comfortable with himself physically that I needed Brad to feel the same way — he had to do a lot of working out. He had to practice his fly-casting.''

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