Youthful Pitt had 1st dibs on `Last Days'
By Stephen Schaefer
Sunday, July 24, 2005

With his pouty expression and otherworldly air, Michael Pitt was Gus Van Sant's only choice to star as Blake, the Kurt Cobain-style rocker ending his life in ``Last Days.''

For Pitt, who was 17 when he first talked to Van Sant about ``Last Days'' and who is now 24, it was worth the wait.

``Gus and I were friends,'' Pitt said. ``Whenever I could spend time with him, I'd just listen and learn. One day, he came out with this idea, and I jumped up and said `You have to make this film!' I hardly had any movies under my belt at the time. He said, `Well, I'm kind of interested in you playing the role,' and I just called him crazy.''

Van Sant enlisted Cobain's friends from Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, to work on and consult on the film. Pitt, who wrote and performs two Cobain-style songs in ``Last Days,'' lived with the couple as part of his research for the role.

``It was the first time that I've tried to stay in a character for an extended amount of time,'' he said. ``Just as an exercise, I tried not necessarily to speak so much; just listen and concentrate and sort of take things in, just be thinking the whole time. I did that pretty steadily for maybe three or four days.''

Cobain was depressed before he famously killed himself with a shotgun. Pitt knew the feeling.

``It was familiar, and it was a little sad,'' he said. ``As a kid, I had to work a lot with depression. I think it had a lot more to do with my environment than my brain tendency.''

How did he find filming?

``Depressing,'' he said with a laugh. ``I thought it would be interesting to watch for the audience, if you kind of got the sense that it was a young body but this old man, the posture and the movements. There's a lot of factors in this: depression, neglecting yourself physically. There's also drug use - that plays a big part.''

One of the most striking images in ``Last Days'' is the bearded Pitt slipping on a dress. It seems fanciful but was inspired by real life. Van Sant made a list of 30 things Cobain liked to do that he wanted to include in his film - and putting on Courtney Love's dresses was one of them.

``That was among a couple of images that Gus had in his head for a while. I didn't necessarily understand how they were going to read, but I trusted him - and I wasn't going to turn down the chance to put on a dress. It was a black dress. I tried on a couple, and I thought that was the best.''