‘Legends Of The Fall’ Director Claims He And Brad Pitt Would “Blowup” And Yell At Each Other On Set: “I Kept Pushing And Brad Pushed Back”

Director Ed Zwick candidly looked back on his time filming Legends of the Fall with Brad Pitt in his upcoming book Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions, in which he confessed that he and the actor often bumped heads and got into screaming matches on set.

In an excerpt published in Vanity Fair, Zwick said he finally felt he “had found the right actor” to play Tristan Ludlow after he met with Pitt, who appeared to really connect with the character. But they clashed on set as Pitt refused to take direction from Zwick, resulting in more than one heated argument, the director alleged.

“[Pitt] seems easygoing at first, but he can be volatile when riled, as I was to be reminded more than once as shooting began and we took each other’s measure,” Zwick writes. He later adds that the actor’s “anxiety about the movie never quite went away” once they began shooting.

The director claims in his book that their clashing personalities really came out when he would push Pitt to display more “deep emotion” while acting.

“Brad had grown up with men who held their emotions in check; I believed the point of the novel was that a man’s life was the sum of his griefs,” he writes. “Yet the more I pushed Brad to reveal himself, the more he resisted.”

In the excerpt, Zwick recalls one specific altercation they had after he gave Pitt an acting note in front of the crew.

“In his defense, I was pushing him to do something he felt was either wrong for the character, or more ’emo’ than he wanted to appear on-screen,” Zwick writes. “I don’t know who yelled first, who swore, or who threw the first chair. Me, maybe? But when we looked up, the crew had disappeared.”

The director adds that it wasn’t the first time, nor the last, they would get into an argument on set. So much so, the crew “would walk away and let us have it out.” Zwick writes that one crew member even joked, “We hate it when the parents fight.”

Still, he goes on to defend the actor, whom he praises for being ” a forthright, straightforward person, fun to be with and capable of great joy.” The arguments were “never personal,” just a result of their being “fully committed” to the movie.

Legends of the Fall, which also starred Anthony Hopkins and Julia Ormond, went on to earn $160.6 million worldwide.

Zwick notes that he and Pitt’s agents negotiated a caveat in their contracts that promised them “double” the pay if the film performed well at the box office. “It turned out to be one of the best bets either of us ever made,” Zwick writes.