Brad Pitt's Couch

By TAD BARTIMUS

One of life's great shocks is waking up the morning after your college graduation and realizing you don't know what you're doing that day.

So you got A's, made the dean's list, graduated magna cum laude.

Now what? Nobody tells you what happens next.

Even the most beautiful, gifted and talented among us can become befuddled as graduation approaches. Take Brad Pitt, for instance.

Back in 1986, when he was a senior at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. According to his advertising professor, Henry Hager, Pitt was a month away from a Bachelor's degree when he came into Hager's office in Room 204 of Walter Williams Hall and sat down on the couch. The handsome blond senior from Springfield, Mo., wanted to show his teacher the "hunk" calendar prototype he'd created to pass a two-credit class he needed to graduate.

"Brad had done very well here," recalled Hager, "but he didn't know what path he was going to take. He liked to come into my office and sit on the couch and talk. I liked him very much; he was a lot of fun, a hearty, energetic guy. That particular day I asked him what he was going to do when he got out of college, and he said he'd come into the school to learn advertising, but that he'd decided to try and become an art director.

"I said he ought to be going to art school. He thought maybe he'd go out to Los Angeles and try to get into the Art Center in Pasadena. I said, 'Whoa, Brad! That's a pretty far reach. It's arguably the best art school in the country.' But he just smiled."

Pitt's hunk calendar was rejected, and he got an incomplete in the class; he was short two credits and did not graduate. Despite Hager's advice that he stick around that summer to make up the work and get his degree, Pitt took off for California.

The rest, as they say in Hollywood, is history.
Brad Pitt now commands millions of dollars as an actor and is happily married to actress Jennifer Aniston, who also earns millions of dollars. Hager says the School of Journalism would like to give Pitt his Bachelor of Journalism degree if he would just edit together a composite of clips from his own films. Better yet, the school would like Pitt to collect his BJ degree in person.
"Being Brad Pitt's professor and advising him to go to art school was my 15 minutes of fame," said Hager. "I'd love to see him get his degree, and so would the dean and the faculty. Brad has the one thing a university really likes -- money!"

Hager, who retired from the journalism department last year, said it's normal for college seniors to get nervous in May.

"Many an indecisive student has come into my office to sit on what came to be called the 'Brad Pitt couch,'" Hager said. "Like him, these students weren't sure what they were going to do with their lives once they got their degree. His story brought them some comfort." 

So what happened to the couch?

"I gave it away," Hager said, adding, "Maybe I should have sold it on eBay."

© 2002 The Women Syndicate

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