Brangelina

by Ian Halperin

  In fact, there was nothing whimsical or illegal about Madonna’s decision to adopt from Malawi. For months, she had been quietly traveling to the country on behalf of an organization she had founded called Raising Malawi, dedicated to “offering lasting solutions to the orphans of Malawi.” She had chosen to focus her efforts on Malawi when she learned that it was one of the world’s poorest nations, with more than a million orphans in a country of only twelve million people and where malaria, drought, poverty, and AIDS had decimated the population.

  Months earlier, the pop superstar had announced plans to raise $3 million to build child-care centers, orphanages, and support aid projects in the poverty-stricken country. She was already working closely with international aid experts such as Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, as well as local development officials on the most effective ways to help the people. Long before Madonna announced her adoption plans, in fact, an Associated Press writer visited the village of Mphandula and interviewed the locals about her efforts. “The village headman here has never heard of Madonna the pop star,” AP reported, “but he has heard of Madonna the philanthropist.”

  Madonna had even dedicated one hundred percent of the royalties from a children’s book she had written to her Malawi charity. The book, The English Roses, became an international bestseller. She vowed to match every dollar donated by the public with a dollar from her own pocket, putting her money where her mouth was, just like Jolie herself. Unlike Jolie, however, Madonna did not publicize her efforts in advance. She chose to travel without a media entourage or photographer while she visited the country and traveled to remote African villages. She didn’t seem to need the services of a certain Trevor Neilson.

  * * * *

  Whether it arises from a sense of noblesse oblige or as an attempt to avoid appearing too greedy, there is a long tradition of philanthropy among American millionaires. For more than a century, many of the nation’s greatest universities, hospitals, museums, and social-welfare organizations have relied on the generosity of wealthy benefactors from the world of business.

  During the 1990s, as Microsoft cornered the software market and Bill Gates became known as the richest man on the planet, some people began to notice that while he had amassed a fortune of many billions of dollars, the computer entrepreneur didn’t give very much of it away. He did give to numerous charities, but his donations were relatively paltry compared to his net worth.

  The criticism came to a head in 1998, when Ralph Nader took Gates to task in an open letter urging him to sponsor a conference on the “unequal distribution of wealth” in America. In Nader’s letter, he noted that Gates was worth more than the combined wealth of the poorest forty percent of Americans, excluding the value of their cars. “His wealth is highly publicized,” Nader later told an interviewer. “His social responsibility is yet to be developed.”

  The response from Gates’s philanthropic advisor, Rose Berg, was only minutely reassuring. Berg said Gates and his wife Melinda were “just beginning their philanthropy and plan to give most of their money away.” Indeed, the billionaire and his wife had established a foundation and were busy making plans to distribute huge sums of money. Yet in the public eye, he was being portrayed as a greedy capitalist, which is a disastrous position for somebody under scrutiny from the U.S. government for monopolistic business practices. Gates needed to change his image.

  Enter Trevor Neilson. Plucked directly from the White House, where he had worked in the travel office arranging President Bill Clinton’s trips abroad, Neilson was a well-connected Democrat. This was considered a definite asset, given that Microsoft was being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department at the time. But Neilson also had a flair for public relations, which he employed aggressively after he was appointed director of public affairs and director of special projects for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

  Very soon after Neilson was appointed, long, flattering profiles began appearing in the media about the philanthropic efforts of Gates and his wife, and soon every American had heard that Gates was planning to give away his entire fortune before he died. By the time Neilson left Microsoft to work for Angelina Jolie as her “philanthropic advisor,” the Gates Foundation was the largest charitable foundation in the world, and Gates had given away more money than anybody else in history.

  Neilson’s specialty wasn’t deciding where philanthropic dollars could be spent most effectively; it was advising benefactors on how to use their giving to enhance their public image. This became clear when Jolie launched her thinly veiled broadside on Madonna over the adoption of baby David. Assuring the media that she was “horrified” by the attacks on the singer, Jolie proceeded to dig the knife in. “Madonna knew the situation in Malawi, where [David] was born,” she sniffed. “In that country, there isn’t really a legal framework for adopting. Personally, I prefer to stay on the side of the law.” Of course, Madonna had in truth adopted the baby legally and had not flouted any of Malawi’s laws, as Jolie implied. So why did she appear to undermine the humanitarian efforts of another celebrity? The answer is Trevor Neilson.

  “Neilson is a genius,” another Hollywood philanthropy advisor gushed. “This is the same guy, remember, who turned Bill Gates from Scrooge to Albert Schweitzer. He practically created Brangelina. Pitt and Jolie may hate the term Brangelina when it’s used by the tabs to gossip about their lives,” she explained, “but it’s become a very, very powerful brand. It’s practically synonymous with goodness in the public’s mind.” She credits Neilson with intertwining the couple’s philanthropy with their acting careers, which she says is another example of his genius. “Their philanthropy is the source of their power,” she explained. “I can’t name another example of that phenomenon in my entire career, and I’ve been doing this since the eighties.”

  As for Jolie’s apparent 2007 attack on Madonna: “That wasAngelina’s way of saying, ‘There’s not enough room in this racket for the both of us.’ She was saying, ‘Get out of my way, bitch, you’re horning in on my turf.’” The attack on Madonna came just as Jolie was solidifying her image as “Saint” Angelina. “Madonna was starting to work on some of the stuff that Jolie thought she had a monopoly on. Africa was her domain. I think Madonna was starting to hang out with Bill Clinton and his foundation, and that was another area that Brangelina thought was their territory. I’ll bet Neilson had a hand in that.”

  Why did the whole world know about Jolie’s globe-trotting humanitarian efforts, while Madonna was attacked as a dilettante? “That’s easy,” she said. “Angelina brings the cameras along, and there’s nothing wrong with that. She’d argue that by conducting her missions in the public eye, she’s helping bring the world’s attention to very important issues. Can you argue with that? Do you think most of her fans had ever heard of Namibia before she went there? Do you think they ever thought of anything associated with celebrities other than what dress they wore on the red carpet?”

  Asked to what extent she felt Jolie’s humanitarian activities were about enhancing her public image, the philanthopy consultant responded, “I have no idea what her motivation is, but I can tell you about my own clients. They want to do something good, and they donate a lot of money to charities. Some of them even work very hard fundraising for their cause of the moment, but none of them gets their hands dirty like Jolie. I’d kill to have her as my client. Is she an altruist? Of course not, but hardly anybody in Hollywood is.”

  The advisor refused to identify her own clients but proceeded to name “a handful” of celebrities she believes to be altruists. She said that David Letterman has given “scads” of his own money to various charities over the years and to a lot of individuals in need. “I’ve heard that he won’t allow any of the recipients to talk about it. I’ve had a few clients like that, who want no recognition. I still have some, but none of them is famous.”

  She explained that about thirty percent of her business is made up of celebrities who have been referred by agents, managers
, and publicists to get some positive public exposure for their clients. “I like to say that when something tarnishes their image, it’s my job to garnish their image.” Still, she says most of her clients have their hearts in the right places and that the majority of celebrities in Hollywood are genuinely compassionate and want to use their money to do good. “There’s a reason Fox News is always complaining about Hollywood liberals,” she said, laughing.

  She said that Barbra Streisand is another celebrity who gives very quietly and whose foundation is considered a model. She described Dolly Parton as a “genius” at using her money to achieve results. “Have you ever been to Dollywood?” she asked. “Dolly Parton practically rescued the entire Smoky Mountains region out of poverty. That’s why she built it.” Among the other celebrities she cited is Madonna, who has been raising money for AIDS and gay causes practically from the first time anybody heard of her. As for Jolie, “I’ll cut the nuts off anyone who says that Angelina Jolie’s humanitarian activities are phony,” she warned. “She and Madonna do a lot of good.”

  Likewise, British entertainment journalist Annette Witheridge of the Daily Mirror, who has covered Jolie extensively, believes Jolie’s efforts are sincere. “I want to believe her humanitarian work is for real,” she said. “I don’t think anyone could see such awful suffering without being affected. [The actor] Rupert Everett once went half-heartedly on an Oxfam mission to Africa. He hated it, couldn’t wait to get home. And when he did, he realized that the sight of starving orphans had got to him. He couldn’t get them out of his mind. Before he knew it, he was back on a plane working for Oxfam, still does stuff for them to this day. Maybe Angelina felt the same way. I can certainly understand her wanting the children to connect with their roots and from there taking on more and more commitments for UNICEF, etc. Pre-Maddox, I could not have imagined her popping up as a Mother Theresa character helping starving orphans. Motherhood clearly changed her.”

  Indeed, individually and together, Pitt and Jolie appeared to be everywhere lately, acting as professional do-gooders. Both the news section and the entertainment section of the newspaper seemed to report about their activities almost daily. One day she was testifying before a congressional committee, the next she was invited to sit in at the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations alongside such power hitters as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Condoleezza Rice. She was giving millions of dollars of her own money to various causes and, with Neilson’s help, had set up a foundation with Pitt, who was busy with various humanitarian enterprises of his own, including a widely hailed effort to build houses in Katrina-devastated New Orleans. They were indeed helping to change the world, whatever their motivations.

  Meanwhile, it appeared that Jolie’s humanitarian efforts had long since eclipsed her film career, which had suffered a bumpy road in the years since she had taken up with Pitt. Mr. & Mrs. Smith, perhaps capitalizing on the publicity surrounding their off-screen romance, was a major hit, taking in almost $200 million at the box office. But her subsequent performance in Alexander—playing Colin Farrell’s mother even though he was only eleven months younger than her in real life— was savaged by critics and the film was a major box-office flop. Two other significant commercial disappointments followed: The Good Shepherd, starring Jolie and Robert DeNiro; and A Mighty Heart, in which Jolie played the role of Mariane Pearl, which had been originally designated for Jennifer Aniston.

  “Is Angelina Jolie box office poison?” one newspaper wondered. It didn’t seem to matter. One flop after another didn’t seem to effect her earning power, as Jolie quickly became the top-paid actress in Hollywood, pulling in $15 million to $20 million a picture. Pitt earned even more. A clue to the couple’s ability to continue bringing in this kind of money came from a survey conducted by AC Nielsen in forty- two markets across the globe, which found that Jolie and Pitt were now the world’s “favorite celebrity endorsers.”

  The power of what the philanthropy advisor described as the Brangelina “brand” was made even clearer by the survey’s finding that, while she and Pitt were number one as a couple, Jolie had actually been edged out by Jennifer Lopez as the favorite individual female endorser. It was becoming increasingly clear that as a couple, Pitt and Jolie were worth more than the sum of their parts.

  In June, 2009, Forbes magazine named Jolie the most powerful celebrity on the planet, dethroning Oprah Winfrey, who had held the top spot for years. A Forbes editor explained that, although Oprah earns significantly more money, Jolie is by far the most famous woman on the planet. A Warner studio executive went further, saying that studios will pay a premium to have Jolie appear in their movies. “Other than her action films, where she’s the only woman in that genre who can draw, her films have been something of a box-office disappointment, fair to middling at best. She can’t necessarily open a film. But I think studios want to be associated with her because of the goodwill it brings. She now has that halo effect that helps immunize Hollywood from the usual shit they sling our way.”

  It was Trevor Neilson’s job to build that brand and safeguard it from threats. For years, he did a masterful job, achieving the same impressive results as he had with Bill Gates. In June 2007, however, he may have crossed the line. That summer, as Jolie was readying a promotional blitz for her new film, A Mighty Heart, reporters wanting to interview the star were suddenly presented with a contract to sign. The contract started by stipulating that the interviewer will “not ask Ms. Jolie any questions about her personal relationships.” More troubling still was the contract’s third clause, which forbade the interview to be used “in a manner that is disparaging, demeaning or derogatory to Ms. Jolie.” A palpable shock rippled through the media community at the terms of the bullying document.

  Fox Online columnist Roger Friedman labeled Jolie a “mighty hypocrite,” and a number of journalists threatened to boycott the film, prompting Jolie’s handlers to withdraw the contract and blame the “mix- up” on an “overzealous lawyer.” Few bought that explanation, though. It later emerged that Jolie’s people had also insisted that journalists sign a contract restricting the use of interviews from the promotional tour for Mr. & Mrs. Smith, although the terms of that contract were not nearly as restrictive.

  What made the blatant attempt to muzzle the media all the more paradoxical was that A Mighty Heart is about the importance of press freedom, and the premiere was scheduled as a benefit for Reporters Without Borders, an organization that campaigns against press censorship.

  The brouhaha over the contract provided a revealing glimpse into a behind-the-scenes apparatus, orchestrated by Neilson, that attempted to control or manipulate virtually everything of significance written about the couple. And while the pesky tabloid press couldn’t be so easily controlled, they could be kept at a distance.

  When the couple announced that Jolie was pregnant with her first biological baby and was expecting to give birth in the spring of 2006, there was the same frenzy of media interest that accompanies most major celebrity births. But not every celebrity has the connections to bend a foreign government to their will. Jolie and Pitt announced she would give birth to their child in the southwest African nation of Namibia. The desire to get as far away from prying paparazzi was perhaps understandable. But when Namibia announced that it was refusing to grant foreign visas to foreign journalists without written permission from Pitt and Jolie, something more clearly was at play. Again, the tactic had the mark of Trevor Neilson all over it.

  The image-controlling mastermind was at it again in the summer of 2008 when the couple was expecting twins, setting off a bidding war between celebrity magazines vying for the first photos. The money, they announced, would be donated to their foundation, which continued to do good work around the globe. Nobody could accuse them of exploiting their babies, knowing that the money was going to help end world hunger. But it was more than money that Neilson was looking for this time. According to the terms of the deal proposed by Jolie, the winning bidder was required to “offer
coverage that would not reflect negatively on her or her family.”

  People magazine won the bidding war, and the resulting photo spread was a fawning portfolio. Notably, the hated term Brangelina appeared nowhere in the captions or accompanying article. At the same time, perhaps to deflect criticism, the magazine released a statement denying there were any terms placed on its coverage, and insisted that People magazine “does not determine editorial content based on the demands of outside parties.” Yet two years earlier, People had also negotiated with Trevor Neilson on the sale of photos of Maddox, just after the couple adopted him in Cambodia. In that negotiation, Jolie explicitly made coverage of her charity work part of the sale and People appears to have acquiesced, though it must be said the restrictions actually benefited a good cause. In a December 2006 memo sent by Neilson to editors who wished to bid on the Maddox photos, they found, “While Angelina and Brad understand the interest in their family, they also expect that the publications who purchase these photos will use them in a way that also draws attention to the needs of the Cambodian people.”

  In November 2008, bristling at the continuing trickle of stories about how the couple were manipulating coverage of their activities, the New York Times ran an investigation headlined, “Angelina Jolie’s Carefully Orchestrated Image.” The paper describes a particularly revealing incident to illustrate how cleverly Jolie and her spin machine manipulate the public to enhance her image. According to the Times article, after Jolie divorced Billy Bob Thornton in 2003, US Weekly asked Jolie if she would agree to an interview and be photographed. According to two people involved, she declined, but then proceeded to offer the magazine a very different photo opportunity. Jolie informed the magazine what time and place she would be publicly playing with Maddox. “The resulting photo, the origin of which was not made public to US readers, presented Ms. Jolie in a new light: a young mother unsuccessfully trying to have a private moment with her son,” the Times revealed.