On the surface, a story involving Brad Pitt, Courteney Cox, and Jon Lovitz doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense — in what world would you hear those three names together — until you remember that Jon Lovitz’s best friend growing up with Lisa Kudrow’s brother. Also, Jon Lovitz encouraged Lisa Kudrow to get into comedy, and she ended up on Friends with Courteney Cox (who shared the famous “tartlet” scene with Lovitz) and Jennifer Aniston, who was married to Brad Pitt during her Friends years.
As it turns out, Jon Lovitz also knew Brad Pitt before he was famous, because they shared a manager, whose name is Cynthia Pett-Dant. She introduced the two over the phone years ago, and they became acquainted. Their mutual manager also had a beach house next to Jon Lovitz’s beach house, and Brad Pitt would occasionally stay there.
In one such instance — as Lovitz tells it on this week’s episode of Literally! with Rob Lowe — Pitt was staying in Cynthia’s beach house, and he was walking Cynthia’s nine dogs. Unfortunately, one of the dogs got loose, ran into Jon Lovitz’s house, and killed his cat. The cat meant a lot to Lovitz because he’d gotten the cat after his Dad died to help him feel better about the loss.
Lovitz was obviously distraught over the “murder” of his cat. That night, he went to Courteney Cox’s house — they had been friends since starring the two starred together in a movie called Mr. Destiny. Lovitz has described Cox in the past as someone he basically regarded as his little sister. Anyway, when he got to Courteney Cox’s house, she was with Cynthia and several other women. They were all crying, and Jon asked, “What’s going on?” and Cox said, “We just feel so bad for Cynthia!”
“You feel bad for Cynthia?” Lovitz asked. “My cat was killed! Murdered! Most foul! In my bedroom.”
“And Courteney goes, ‘Well, food chain!'”
“And I said, ‘What? Excuse me! Food chain?'”
“Yes, well, cats kill dogs,” Cox told him.
“My cat was in my bedroom, minding its own business. And the dog came in and murdered my cat!”
Lovitz did not soon forget about the incident. “Five years later,” Lovitz told Rob Lowe, “Someone says to me, ‘Courteney Cox’s grandmother died,’ and I say, ‘Whoa! Tell her I said, ‘food chain!'”
“Three years later,” Lovitz continues, “I see her at a Dodger game, and she says, ‘You’re still mad about that?’ And I say, ‘I hear your grandmother died. FOOD CHAIN!'”
“Just say you’re sorry, Courteney!”
“And she says, ‘OK, fine, [I’m sorry].”
When someone slams me, Lovitz tells Lowe, “I hold a grudge x 10. It’s called, ‘Being Jewish.'”
It’s a surprisingly fun interview, where Lovitz also tells Rob Lowe that Jerry Bruckheimer had originally considered casting him and Dana Carvey for the lead roles in Bad Boys before hiring Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, and he also tells a story about Chris Farley being in that same beach house while fires were raging all around it.
Source: Literally! with Rob Lowe
