No Justin Theroux interviews for months and now two major interviews drop within 24 hours? Somebody’s publicist needs to work on spreading out the press. I already covered Justin’s feature with Interview Mag here – it was a surprisingly good piece, with an interview conducted by Justin’s dear friend Amy Sedaris. Justin also covers the new issue of Details, complete with guyliner and gun-show-flashing. I don’t really care for the editorial but it’s way better than the too-shadowy Interview Mag editorial. You can read the full Details piece here and here are some highlights:

He used to be a bartender in NYC: “Yeah, I still take credit for the idea of selling cheap beer for lots of money. It was a whim. I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny to sell Schlitz and Pabst Blue Ribbon up there with all the great wheat beers?’ We added every horrible beer we could think of and charged four bucks for them. Those beers ended up outselling Chimay, everything. So that might’ve been me that started that and gave everyone the squirts. You’re welcome, Pabst.”

Nostalgia: “I’ve never been particularly nostalgic. I’m not sure whether nostalgia is a weakness or a strength. I lean toward weakness, because it takes you out of experiencing what’s cool if you’re constantly the guy who’s like, ‘Oh, this place used to be amazing, and now it’s s–t.’ Because that’s not true. It’s the same reason I don’t keep pictures of friends and family around. I don’t need to be reminded that I have friends and family.”

He’s a little bit ADD: “It’s only one lifetime that you have. So you have to, in a weird way, keep pivoting on whatever it is you’re doing. Follow whatever it is that’s keeping your interest. I’m sure if everything else went away and I picked up a sketchbook again, it’d rekindle something. I think I’m a little bit—I don’t want to say A.D.D., I don’t think I’m that, but I can get bored with something quickly.”

Garbage-picker: “I used to garbage-pick. It sounds much more disgusting than it is. You learn a lot about society by seeing what’s thrown away. During the period I was doing that, a lot of great stuff was being tossed. What do they call that now, ‘Ironweed chic’? Edison bulbs and all that s–t. This was stuff I was finding for free 15, 20 years ago.”

He’s not the leading man action hero: “There are certain actors who can grab a woman by the back of her hair and plant a deep one on her and say something like ‘We gotta save the world,’ and that’s not me. I can’t not be outside of my body, making jokes about that dialogue. Some people do it really well and effectively because they have the charisma to pull that off. I just know that I don’t.”

Falling in love with Jennifer Aniston & dealing with the paps: “It doesn’t feel like a hardship, it doesn’t feel difficult. It can be an annoyance, but it’s not the end of the world. You have to center on what its core thing is, which is that you met someone you fell in love with. It’s hard to explain. I just find myself wondering, What’s the big f–king deal?”

The tabloids: “It’s always based in fiction,” he says, citing the awkwardness of being congratulated by a Leftovers crew member on the twins that one of the tabloids had announced Aniston was expecting. “You just kind of ignore it, but then you also become reluctant to say anything about the relationship. I could say everything’s good, and then it’s reflected back as JUSTIN THEROUX: EVERYTHING’S GOOD? That just creates this echo chamber, and as it ricochets around the Internet, it just gets wacky.”

[From Details]

This Details piece was actually a decent read – I learned some new stuff about Justin’s early New York years that I didn’t know, like he tried to make it as an artist and he kept getting hired to do odd-ball artsy jobs. His buddies are quoted extensively throughout this piece too, like Amy Sedaris (again!), Robert Downey Jr. and John Krasinski (I didn’t realize they were so tight). Those are the people filling in the lovey-dovey backstory on Justin’s relationship with Jennifer, while he just uses the interview to talk about the media attention.

Maybe I’m a Brangeloonie conspiracy theorist (true story), but did it strike anyone else that Justin’s “I’m not the save-the-world leading man” quote was about Brad Pitt? Like, he knows he’s being compared and he wants to draw a distinction?

Photos courtesy of Details.