Chad Feldheimer – Chad Feldheimer is a fictional character portrayed by Brad Pitt in the Coen Brothers comedy Burn After Reading. Chad is a trainer at the Washington D.C. gym Hardbodies, and discovers the “secret CIA shit” that drives the plot of Burn After Reading. After Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) quits a job at the CIA, his wife Katie decides to leave him for her lover Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney). Before officially filing for divorce Katie obtains Osbourne’s financial records (which also contain his personal memoirs), which are eventually left in the women’s locker room later to be discovered by Chad. Chad believes that these files would be worth a lot of money, so he proposes a proposition to co-worker Linda Litzke (Francis McDormand). They split the “good samaritan” fee so Linda can get the plastic surgery she so desperately needs.

After Chad fails to obtain any money from Cox, Linda’s desperation for her surgery leads her to try another tactic. She leads Chad to the Russian embassy to try and sell the information. Of course the Russians realize the stupidity of Chad and Linda, but plays along when Linda says they can get more info. Chad agrees to break into Osbournes’s house and steal any files he can get his hands on. Meanwhile Harry, Katie’s lover, comes to the house to take a shower after a nice 5 mile run. Chad hides in the closet, but startles Harry who then discharges his weapon for the first time in his 20 years of service with the U.S. Marshalls. To make things more complicated, Linda is currently dating Harry. When she ask for his help to find him, he becomes paranoid that she is working for NSA, CIA, or the FBI because he has been followed for the last week by an divorce attorney spy hired by his wife. The C.I.A supervisor (J.K. Simmons) put the plot in perfect perspective when said “Jesus, what a clusterfuck!...let me know when it makes sense.”

The character of Chad is your typically “jock moron” character, with an thing for riding his bike everywhere he goes (even in a suit). Pitt portrays the Coen Brother’s motif of really bad hair by sporting a pompadour with streaky blonde highlights. Other bad hair motifs include John Turturro in Barton Fink, Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men, and Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona. Roger Ebert said this of Pitt’s performance, “Brad Pitt fits perfectly into the role of the gum-chewing, fuzzy-headed physical fitness instructor and reveals a dimension that, shall I say, we haven't seen before.” In an interview, Joel Coen stated that “Brad is embraced his inner knucklehead.” Francis McDormand said that she could not remember her lines on the first day because Brad was so funny. George Clooney said in an interview “I thought that I was going to be the biggest knucklehead in the film, then I see Brad in those spandex shorts, and I think well… I will be OK.

Hello…did anybody lose their secret C.I.A. shit. I don’t think so! – Chad Feldheimer