Movies

Robert Pattinson Is Hollywood’s Weirdest, Most Lovable Troll

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
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Dominique Charriau/Getty

The “Piccolini Cuscino” is only the tip of the RPatz iceberg.

Bless Robert Pattinson. This week, Da Vinci’s “most bellissimo man in the world” became the apple of the internet’s eye with two words: Piccolini Cuscino.

During an interview with GQ’s Zach Baron, the Twilight star and future Caped Crusader unveiled a series of hilariously saturnine selfies, along with the recipe for his “fast-food” prototype—a saccharine monstrosity he claims to have pitched around the L.A. restaurant scene with an eye toward creating “a pasta which you can hold in your hand.” The recipe for Piccolini Cuscino (translation: little pillow) calls for cornflakes, pre-sliced cheese, a lighter (for “doing a little flambé”), hamburger bun, some form of pasta (“it looks like a sort of messy…like, the hair bun on a girl”), “any sauce,” and lots of sugar. After microwaving penne in water for eight minutes, he coats a piece of aluminum foil with sugar, cheese slices, red sauce, and cornflakes; adds the pasta; burns a “P” and “C” (for Piccolini Cuscino) into a hollowed-out bun; and puts the aluminum orb into a microwave oven. A lightning bolt shoots out and he nearly Britney Spears’ his kitchen

The stunt proved so amusing it was replicated by a number of quarantined journalists, including our very own Laura Bradley, who determined, “There’s no way this isn’t a bit.”

She’s right, of course. This Piccolini Cuscino stunt is Pattinson, dashing rapscallion, in his purest form.

In the wake of the Twilight tetralogy, a mostly embarrassing pro-abstinence saga featuring one of the most outrageously silly sex scenes ever put to film (Pattinson’s horny-virgin vampire shatters a bed, then bites a pillow), critics weren’t exactly sold on the former British model turned brooding bloodsucker. So, despite shooting to the A-list and banking an estimated $41 million, the FernGully-coiffed actor eschewed Hollywood blockbusters to do more indie, character-driven fare, embodying a Machiavellian billionaire, period lothario, wasteland clown, bearded explorer, the list goes on. Along the way, he earned the film world’s respect, culminating in a live-wire turn as a New Yawk stick-up kid in the Safdies’ Good Time that earned him comparisons to a young Pacino.

Pattinson’s talk-show appearances were even zanier than his outré on-screen performances. There was that time on the Today show when, during the promotional tour for the circus-set drama Water for Elephants, Pattinson spun a wild yarn about his first trip to the circus. “The first time I went to see the circus, somebody died,” he recounted. “One of the clowns died…His little car exploded. The joke car exploded on him...Seriously. Yeah. My parents had to—everybody ran out. It was terrifying. It was the only time I’ve ever been to the circus.”

While plugging Good Time, Pattinson told Jimmy Kimmel one of the scenes that didn’t make the final cut featured him masturbating a dog. “There’s this one scene which we shot, where it’s basically…there’s a drug dealer who busts into the room and I was sleeping with the dog, and basically giving the dog a handjob,” he tells Kimmel, who eats it up. “The director was like, ‘Just do it for real, man, don’t be a pussy!’ and then the dog’s owner was like, ‘Well, he’s a breeder, I mean, you can. You’ve just got to massage the inside of his thighs…’ But then I didn’t agree to do the real one, so we made a fake red rocket.”

He later confessed to me that both stories were made up, and that he is possessed of a strange fetish for telling tall tales in interviews to amuse himself—and his audience. “I got in so much trouble for that,” he told me of the dog story. “There’s something about being on a talk show where you have ten minutes and you think, gosh, I’ve got to say something funny, and…”

“I also got confused if [the clown story] even happened or not!” he added, with a mischievous chuckle. “I thought for a second that it actually did happen, but then my mum was like, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ I was promoting a circus movie—Water for Elephants—and they asked me what my experience with the circus was, and I basically said ‘clown death.’”

There’s something about being on a talk show where you have ten minutes and you think, gosh, I’ve got to say something funny, and…

He even successfully put one over on me, alleging during our interview that Trump had deleted the 11 tweets he’d fired off on Pattinson’s breakup with his Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart, accusing the president of “trying to sweep me under the rug” (he hadn’t).

At 34, Pattinson has not only evolved into one of the most exciting character actors in Hollywood but its goofiest, most adorable troll. This playfulness extends to his film roles as well.

Take last fall’s The King. Pattinson enlivens David Michod’s dour spin on Shakespeare’s Henriad as The Dauphin, a cat-stroking villain who gets his jollies abducting small children in the woods and taunting Timothee Chalamet’s “leetle cock” in the most bonkers French accent you’ve ever heard. After an hour of chest-thumping threats, we’re treated to Pattinson and Timmy’s big showdown—only to have Frenchie repeatedly slip in the mud. I’d say it’s Pattinson’s finest cinematic rick-roll but that would have to be Remember Me, whose final 9/11 pull-away shot is completely insane.

You know, when Pattinson first landed the role of Batman, I had my doubts. Could the lanky heartthrob make for a convincing-enough bruiser? Then it hit me: who better to play a billionaire heir with a fetish for donning spandex and beating the ever-living crap out of criminals than this charming weirdo.   

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