Johnny Suede (1991)
Directed by Tom DiCillo
Johnny Suede (Brad Pitt) longs to be a teen-age idol like Ricky Nelson. He has a pair of black suede shoes, an impressive pompadour, a guitar, and some pals who will play backup for him. Yet he doesn't have much talent or drive.
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In a comedy of errors explained (sort of) later on, a CD copy of Ozzie's autobiographical jabberwocky winds up in the possession of two dingbat employees of a gym called Hardbodies: Linda (Frances McDormand, married to Joel Coen), a Ms. Lonelyhearts frustrated in her quest for love and plastic surgery; and Chad (the previously stated Pitt), a dumb twit with vertiginous hair that's still only a third of the height of Pitt's über-pompadour in Johnny Suede .
Brad Pitt as McDormand's dense partner in extortion lets his frosted pompadour (recycled from the early '90s -- Johnny Suede to be exact) do most of the acting for him, though he's pretty funny when his character tries to suggest menace by cluelessly narrowing his eyes.
But though the narrative isn’t all that clever, it’s enough on which to hang a steady succession of amusing touches, from Malkovich’s rant on learning of his demotion through Clooney’s peculiar anniversary present for Sandy, McDormand’s conversation with an amazed cosmetics surgeon (Jeffrey DeMunn), Jenkin’s sad-eyed worship of Linda, and Pitt’s happy return to his “Johnny Suede” look and his engagingly flippant, goofily conspiratorial attitude.