iProduct Placement: Burn After Reading
In “Burn After Reading,” the Coen brother’s black comedy about privacy and politics, Brad Pitt plays Chad, an amiable goof who works in a gym.
Along with co-worker Frances McDormand, who thinks plastic surgery will buy her love, he tries to sell a memoir from a former CIA agent found in a diskette left behind at the gym.
Chad is almost always plugged in to an iPod (and singing out loud) even when he’s on a stake out — as shown in the movie poster. Pitt doesn’t have a big part, but gets a lot of mileage out of playing a dim bulb in a stellar cast including George Clooney, John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton.
Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco native who has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek. You can find her on 
