Josh Brolin talks about the toy in his pants

Josh Brolin on the cover of the Men’s Fashion Issue of this weekend’s NYTimes Magazine. (click to supersize). Though the photo is captioned “True Grit,” it refers to the man himself, since the interview with Lynn Hirschberg never mentions the movie. Several of the questions involve “W.,” but let’s not waste our beautiful minds on that.

I’ve always wondered if it’s harder to do a scene where you die or a scene where you kill someone.

I don’t like killing. When I shot Sean Penn’s character in “Milk,” there was a lot of joking going on at the moment because we couldn’t deal with the intensity of it. Recently, it dawned on me that I’d killed two dogs in two movies back to back. Some animal activist was riding me, saying he was going to turn me in. In real life, I would never kill a dog. In “No Country for Old Men,” the dog was chasing my character, trying to kill me. He was a huge pit bull named Scooby. I had to put his toy in my pants so he would follow me. Scooby is a sweet dog. I still have his toy. And he is a very good actor: I’d like to think I could die as well as Scooby.

Brolin has at least 4 movies coming out this year. Jimmy Hayward’s Jonah Hex (June 18), Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger (September 23), Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (September 24), the Coens’ True Grit (December 25), and possibly Waterbug (a remake of the 1993 Italian thriller, La Scorta, winner of 6 Donatello awards.)