Pop culture has a very short memory but I'm like an elephant. I don't forget. Which is why, amidst all the hoopla surrounding the international romance of the Jolie-Pitts, one question keeps haunting me that no one else is asking: When is Angelina going to star in an Etheridge video?
Brad Pitt's girls always do.
One of my favorite and most adorably subtextual Hollywood friendships is the longstanding one between Melissa Etheridge and Brad Pitt. They've been friends now for at least a dozen years. When Melissa's ex (also the ex-Mrs. Lou Diamond Phillips) got pregnant some years ago there was even initial tabloid speculation that Brad was the sperm donor. It turned out to be David Crosby so hopefully the kid never learns of what might-have-been.And now: a trilogy in reverse chronological order. First up is Jennifer Aniston wandering around bars and parties looking for a little of Brad's love (it's gone girlfriend --let it go) in the Melissa Etheridge video "I Wanna Be in Love." Then, Gwyneth Paltrow doing her trademarked manic-depressive act as she stalks her married Bradlover from a car in "I Wanna Come Over." Brad does not appear in any of the videos... but surely he is there in spirit. He is Melissa or Melissa is he or--I don't know. All I know is that someone needs to snatch up this friendship and its parallel romantic obsession videos for the subject of their doctoral thesis. Just thank me in the acknowledgements.
Finally we come to the best and the first so I saved it for last. It's the truly brilliant Juliette Lewis losing her mind for the love o' Brad in Melissa's enduring classic "Come to My Window".
If I were Melissa Etheridge and I was recording my next record I'd be locking up a few dates on Angelina Jolie's globe-trotting schedule right now. She can fit you in somewhere. Why not make a whole video album starring Angie? Think of the exotic location shooting? She might do it for Brad. If she refuses, I shudder to think of the consequences: the universe torn asunder, hell frozen over, the sky falling.
For this is the way of things: Brad's women becoming Melissa's until the end of all our days.
Related Posts:A History of... Angelina Jolie
