Now that we know that Hollywood’s favorite couple has officially tied the knot, let’s talk about why Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt could not have found a more perfect weekend to get married.
Jolie is known for her savvy when it comes to the media and narrative-crafting. In fact, she’s the best in her business at it, and the fact that she does it without the help of a publicist just adds to her mystique.
Jolie’s been known to cut deals with paparazzi to keep them from continually swarming her family. She harnessed her power as a newsstand draw by auctioning off the first picture of her newborns to the celebrity weeklies – then donated the proceeds to charities that fight AIDS in Africa.
She even went to Namibia to give birth and avoid the press – the Namibian government was perfectly happy to deny visas to photographers and journalists hoping to lurk and get a coveted photograph of the Hollywood mama.
With that in mind, we’d like to posit the great timing of her wedding to Pitt last weekend was no happy accident, but rather her best chance to say “I do” completely under the radar. And who does she have to thank for that opportunity
Why, the NFL.
BACK-TO-BACK AWARD SHOWS
First off, the Hollywood press was fully occupied by the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday and the Emmys on Monday, two glitzy, star-studded events where the couple wouldn’t be missed.
Pitt and Jolie are Academy Awards People. You can barely count on them to make an appearance at the Golden Globes without a nomination.
Remember the time the Hollywood Foreign Press Association nominated Jolie for a Golden Globe for The Tourist, almost universally regarded as a terrible movie that Rolling Stone called a “suckfest” It was clearly a naked ploy to get Jolie – and her costar, Johnny Depp – to show up.
But back to the VMAs and the Emmys: Media-wise, pop-culture watchers were in the throes of prepping for back-to-back award shows. No one was really paying attention to the Jolie-Pitts holing themselves up at Chateau Miraval, their majestic estate in the French countryside, because it’s a summer tradition for them.
Without so much as a tip that something was going to go down, no business-minded paparazzo would bother heading to France on his own dime for a virtually impossible shot of the Jolie-Pitts – certainly not if he had a much better chance of photographing celebrities behaving badly after award show after-parties.
Also worth noting: Ever since Jolie and Pitt first leased Chateau Miraval in 2008 and then bought it in 2011, there has been rampant speculation they chose it because they could hold a wedding there in relative privacy. It does have its own chapel. But for six long years, the only union to come out of that place was between the grapes and bottles used for the family’s C
