Scrubbed - The Brad Pitt Story He Never Wants You To See - YouTube
Transcripts:
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the podcast. Today I want to talk to you about something that is absolutely crazy. I have talked about Brad Pitt on here before and I've talked about how he has scrubbed some things off the internet, but this one is the ultimate scrubbing from the internet. It is absolutely mind-blowing.
So, if you Google Brad Pitt lived with a man, you will get some results. It'll be him talking about Jason Priestley. And Jason Priestley and Brad Pitt used to be roommates back in the day for a short period of time, but that's all you'll get. If you Google Brad Pitt lived with a gay man, then you will you get things just like how Brad and Angelina Jolie were LGBTQ friendly.
now because of a podcast that Brad did and Dax Shepard asked him, "Oh, you know, did were you ever with a guy?" And Brad goes, "No, I missed that window." So that's generally what you'll get. Now, if you Google Brad Pitt lived with a soap opera star, then you'll get something like that stars that started on soaps.
Okay? If you Google Brad Pitt lived with a gay soap opera star, you'll either get that result or again you'll be directed to the Dax Shepard interview. If you Google Brad Pitt lived with gay soap opera star agent, you get the same result. You have to know the guy's name that Brad Pitt lived with. And even then, that's not usually enough.
Sometimes it is. Like if you do it today with that guy's name, you'll get like a Reddit thing or something like that, but most of the time you get nothing. So there's this guy named Tom Rina, and it's spelled th ho m. And here's his biography. You know him from a TV writer on General Hospital, the famed Luke and Laura's Wedding Storyline, as well as author of several novels, including The Mad Man's Diary.
And did you know that Tom would eventually be credited with giving his roommate, a struggling actor named Brad Pitt, his first acting job? He also recalls Pit asking him to suggest a scary book after finishing Rena's copy of Interview with a Vampire. He expressed that he didn't care much for it.
Pit, of course, would later star in a movie based on the novel in 1994. On June 4th, 1946, Thomas Frank Rossina was born in Kenosha. He left the Midwest after graduating high school to pursue a higher education. First in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and finally in Chicago, where he earned his master of fine arts and theater arts and directing from the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute.
To help finance college, he wrote books simply to earn money. Books that he didn't even want recognition for. Tom Rina, as his professional name came to be, wrote westerns, romances, porn, or whatever else the publisher paid him for. He moved up to mainstream publishing with a takeoff on the happy hooker my own story by Xavier Hollander called The Happy Hustler which he wrote entirely in one weekend.
The novel ended to being successful selling 3 million copies and spawning three sequels. Next, Rena turned to ghostwriting three books for Hollander, made up life stories for Ivory soap girl turned adult star Marilyn Chambers and Fanny Fox, and turned out 25 novelizations of TV shows and major motion pictures. In his career, Rine has been published by Warner, Dell, Berkeley, Ace, Putnham, and Penguin, authoring 157 books before his own breakthrough success in novel writing.
And the breakthrough came in 1977, was called The Great Los Angeles Blizzard. Rights were purchased by Irwin Allen to adapt it to the big screen, but the cost estimates for the film were too high for it to be profitable. Rena took a 19-year hiatus after this novel to work on writing for TV. He gave the world 4,000 broadcast hours of Search for Tomorrow, General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, Another World, Generations, and Santa Barbara.
Besides writing for the much acclaimed nighttime series, Family as a writer for the soaps, Rena received five Emmy nomination for Days of Our Lives in General Hospital, won specifically for Luke and Laura's Wedding on General Hospital, the single highest rated episode in daytime history. 30 million people tuned in. He also worked in Hamburg in Toronto writing Family Passions, a Canadian German production.
Of his years writing for TV, Rena said on his website it was a treadmill, but so much fun to play God. From busy years spent writing for TV, Rena grew tired of the Los Angeles scene. He returned to life as a novelist and moved to Palm Springs. It was not difficult for him to get back into the swing of writing thriller novels with Snow Angel being published shortly after in 1996.
He also wrote Hidden Agenda, Secret Weekend, The Mad Man's Diary. He said, "I'm a vampire." He told Palm Springs Life he prefers the quiet and solitude of the early hours of the morning for writing. He then retires to bed after the sun rises. Unlike a true vampire though, he gets up at noon and goes out among people whom he enjoys talking with.
Rena attend more than 100 book signings a year, including weekly appearances at Village Fest every Thursday evening in Palm Springs, which is a great time by the way. Sells as many as a 100 books in one evening. He also often happens to be in the right place at the right time to sell his novels. Rena walked into a Costco store in San Francisco for bread and tequila one day and signed 30 books in 10 minutes after he noticed his book on display.
In another instance, he was at O'Hare airport in Chicago where he saw his books lining three shelves in a store. I was on top. John Gisham was down near the bottom and I had never seen that. I said, "Where's the manager? Where's the manager?" After the manager identified himself, Reina reportedly asked him, "Can I kiss your feet?" As the two talked, a crowd gathered and Reena ended up signing 30 books.
I almost missed my plane. He calls his 2001 novel, The Mad Man's Diary, a love letter to his home in Palm Springs. It's filled with references to local places and people, though the idea came from his brother, who still lived in Kenosha. Okay. Now, what about Tom and Brad Pitt? There was a story that used to be on Tom's website, but it's not there any longer.
And it's this OG story, and it was an interview with We Love Soaps. And they asked, "How did you know Brad Pitt?" And he said, "I put up a little sign at Screen Actors Guild that said needed an actor to be a personal assistant to walk the dog when he needed it, drive the scripts to the studio. This kid shows up. He's cute. He's full of energy and says, "I'm an actor," which of course they all are in LA.
So, I hired him. We became very close. He moved in with me in the maid's room. He had his own life. And yet, we became good buddies. My parents loved him. They became the new family he had away from Missouri. Anyway, I came home from days early one day just in the last few months.
I saw him doing this scene with this girl in my living room. An acting scene. Yes. Right. I did see him do some other scenes in other various parts of the house, too. So, I went to another world a few months later. I settled into New York. I said to them, "I've got this terrific kid. He can play 18 even though he's 23.
We can give him a two-year story." And I wrote a two-year story for him. They brought him to New York and he did the one day in another world. Then we sat down with the idiots around the table. Proctor and Gamble, NBC, and one after another they said he can't act. He's not good-looking. Maggie Depri said he had bad skin.
Finally, at the end, I turned to John Whitel and said, "Give me this." He said, "I know he's your buddy, but I've got to tell you, Tom, this kid sucks. He'll never be an actor. Tell him to go be a plumber." I had to go home and tell him. He cried and I hugged him. I said, "Listen, a-hole, you're now going to be able to audition because before you didn't have a SAG card.
Now you've got it. You did one day and you've got it. This is my gift to you. Now go out and prove me right. And he did. Had they liked him, he would have been a soap star forever. The universe works in mysterious ways. By the way, Tom Rino also found an h, which I'm going to do an episode on here in the next few days.
Now, there is a revised story to the one I just read you, and said, "Okay, so this sweating kid shows up late for the interview. I needed a house boy, man. Friday secretary someone to walk the dog and clean the pool. But he says to me, "I'm going to be a movie star. I just got here from Springfield, Missouri. I need this job.
" I was from Wisconsin, just up the river, so to speak. He was cute, energetic, and didn't seem flaky. I hired him. His name was Bran Pit. He moved in for almost 2 years, and we had a good friendship. He worked hard, but the job was loose, giving him time to study acting and to audition. So, it was a good partnership as well. He loved my dog Hershel. Walked him every night.
Missed his girlfriend back in Missouri. She came to visit. I gave them my house in Palm Springs for the weekend. He cried when she left. They broke up right after that. Hated his complexion. Wrote poetry, some I still have, and dreamed of becoming a movie star. I let him do a scene for me one afternoon in the living room of the house in Los Feliz, and he was really good.
I thought, "This guy has more talent than I knew I wanted to help him." He was having trouble getting work because he needed a sag card and it was frustrating to him. He was tired of dressing up in a chicken suit, a job he'd actually held and wanted to act to make money and clean my pool. I was writing another world back then, flying to New York a lot.
So, I told the producers that I had this kid I thought was quite talented and that I wanted to give him a chance. I developed a one-day part for him, a basketball player that a bitter John Hudson meets when he returns to his high school after Vietnam. a kid full of life that reminds him of himself. Brad was thrilled.
We flew him to New York. His first time being treated like a star, I guess, and he did a wonderful job. A few days later, I sat down with the producers to discuss giving him a long-term contract. He's not appealing. This 180 woman from Proctor and Gamble said, "No talent." Another piped in. The producer said, "Didn't do much for me, so I had to fly home and tell Brad it wouldn't happen.
" Which devastated him, but there was a blessing in it. Had these morons in their infinite wisdom not rejected him, he would have been a soap star and nothing more. He got his after card from being the show which led to a SAG card and the rest is history. He was a good friend, supportive as I was going through some hell with personal relationships as he was too.
I remember the way he leaped into the air when he got the call that he got cast on Dallas and then leaped in my arms and knocked us both over onto the dog and we laughed and laughed. The thing is I believed in him kind of feel I discovered him, pat myself on the back. I constantly encouraged him when he felt down. Reminded him that breaking into the business isn't easy.
I knew it was going to take more than talent and drive. He'd need a lucky break, a serendipitous moment. He got that playing the cowboy and Thelma and Louise. He didn't have the body then that he had when I saw him in The Thelma and Louise. Boy, did I feel amazed and proud when I saw him do that. Brad comes up to my bedroom one night and asks if I have a book to read. Duh.
The house is filled with books. He wants something scary. I give him one. And two weeks later, he returns it, saying he didn't care for it much. I remembered the title when years later I sat there watching him in the movie version. Yes, interview with the vampire. No, I haven't heard from him in years.
He got famous and famous people have layers of people protecting them. I guess from old friends. I wrote Snow Angel because of him with him in mind. He said he would love to one day play the part of a psycho like Ted Bundy, a great guy you'd never suspect of having such a dark side. He was always attracted to characters like that, thus Fight Club.
And with that in mind, I created Matthew Henson. Trouble was, by the time it was published, I couldn't even get it to someone to get Brad to read it. He'd become the movie star. I missed him for he was a terrific friend and almost felt like family. He spent his Thanksgivings with mine and everyone in my family still tells people how Brad Pitt drove them in from the airport and stuff like that. But life goes on.
It's strange to me that in every interview he's ever given and every silly biography him that I've ever seen, he never mentions me or the two years he was with me, some manager gets credit for putting him on another world. Odd. If someone knows the reason, let me know. Also curious, in the years he lived with me, he never once let anyone take his picture.
All the family gatherings and pool parties and stuff that he was a major part of, he'd run the minute someone pulled out a camera. This from a guy who makes his living in front of the cameras. Go figure. People come into your life for various reasons and some leave your life the same way. Some friendships last forever.
Others serve their purpose for only a short time. In the five or so years that I was close to Brad, I think we shared enough to know that it was important at that time and valuable. I have great memories. I'm glad I helped him and I thank him for all the stuff he did for me. God love you, Brad. You did what you set out to do.
You have my respect. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. And like I said, this is the guy that discovered him. This is the guy that gave him a place to live for two years and paid him. But how come Brad Pit has it entirely scrubbed from the internet? Okay, you guys, that is it for this one. I will talk to you later.
