Brad Pitt Thinks His Bizarre Character In 'War Machine' Will Start A New Fashion Trend

The Hollywood actor was joined by the film's writer and director David Michod as well as producers Jeremy Kleiner and Dede Gardner at a press conference with Asian media.

Sporting grey hair and a range of exaggerated facial expressions, Pitt's Glen McMahon is pretty much a comical caricature based on real-life US Army General Stanley McChrystal, a former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan whose military career came to an abrupt end following a Rolling Stone exposé by the late journalist Michael Hastings.

In fact, the premise of 'War Machine' is largely based on Hastings' New York Times bestseller, 'The Operators', chronicling the rise and fall of the ultra-confident McMahon.

"General McMahon developed over many sessions with David. Truthfully, it just made us laugh the most. We wanted, from the get go and by design, to illuminate the absurdity of the machinery of war and we felt that it was best embodied in the absurdity of the general and that was the first springboard for us," Pitt explained at the press conference.

"But the running, specifically, was… he (David) first did the imitation, by the way. I’m imitating David but he does it much better. I think it speaks to the delusion of the character himself and he portrays and seems himself as an emblem of greatness and when actually he looks quite silly."

"I take full credit for the shorts. I dare everyone here. We’re going to start a new trend together. We unite."

Michôd chipped in, saying, "I’ll show you what you do. You get a pair of shorts. They’re slightly too big and you just pull them up as high as they’ll go."

"We - when I say we, I specifically mean the United States of American and Australia - have been at war in Afghanistan now for more than 16 years, and that in itself is terrifying. In all of the reading that I had been doing about this war, I couldn’t work out why it has been going on for so long and how it is possible that people - who I would assume are quite smart and capable - are still pretending as though there is some kind of victory waiting for them just around the corner," Michôd said.

"Then, these guys brought me a book called 'The Operators' by Michael Hastings, because what I saw at the centre of it was a character, a general who was kind of delusional because he was so removed. His ambition had seem him climb to the top of the ladder and removed him from the real world... removed him from the the experiences of the troops on the ground, and from the civilian world that he was there to serve. And so I started to see that at the root of this endless war was actually a kind of just plain human delusion."

"Of course we start with an absurd tone, but the film turns quite serious when we are dealing with the expense of young men and women, life and limb, great cost, civilian life. We wanted to ask questions like, 'What is winning?' 'What is our idea of winning?' 'Is our definition of winning even achievable?'

We really think it’s time to take a good look at our strategies and tactics instead of this business as usual climate or wheel we seem to find ourselves on. And that was the impetus for embarking on this journey for us."