Brad Pitt has exposed himself in W—and we do mean exposed, Chuck Close's unforgiving photos highlighting every worry line to sprout across his iconic face since undertaking fathering duties to a knife-obsessed Cambodian mercenary.

The subject was ostensibly his CGI-enhanced turn as a reverse-aging everyman in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, for which the actor could earn his second Oscar nomination (his first came for 1995's 12 Monkeys). Not surprisingly, however, it quickly veers towards the topic that will haunt him 'til his dying, diapered day: his abandonment of a childless Jennifer Aniston for the orphan-hungry loins of Angelina Jolie.

Barely healed wounds burst open last fall in a series of magazine profiles. First, Jolie told the NY Times, "Not a lot of people get to see a movie where their parents fell in love," confirming what had long been suspected: that the relationship started on the Mr. and Mrs. Smith set, while Brad was still married to Aniston. Aniston then responded to the statement in a Vogue profile, her designation of the revelation as "uncool" splashed sensationally across their cover ("12 Uncool Looks For Winter You Won't Need Friends Money to Afford!").

Rumors swirled that the Pitt-Jolies were ''totally thrown'' by Aniston's call-out, eliciting an agitated call from Pitt—the contents of which we provided for you in a Defamer Conjectured Re-enactment. Aniston expressed in future interviews her surprise that Vogue would have gone "so tabloid," and a hope that she might put l'affair uncool behind her.

Both of their holiday movies opened on Christmas Day; in a career triumph for the former Friends star, Aniston's dog-weepie triumphed over Button, breaking box office records.

That about brings us up to date. Now we'll shut up and listen to what a resolution-hungry Pitt has to say on the matter:

“Listen, man, Jen is a sweetheart,” Pitt says, as if to settle this thing once and for all. “I think she got dragged into that one, and then there’s a second round to all of that Angie versus Jen. It’s so created.” Of his current relationship with Aniston, he says, “We still check in with each other. She was a big part of my life, and me hers. I don’t see how there cannot be [that]. That’s life, man. That’s life.”

A few sentences into the next topic, though, Pitt circles back to defend Jolie’s honor. “What people don’t understand is that we filmed [Mr. & Mrs. Smith] for a year,” he explains. “We were still filming after Jen and I split up. Even then it doesn’t mean that there was some kind of dastardly affair. There wasn’t. I’m very proud of the way that it was handled. It was respectful. [The film] will mean something to our kids. It will, that’s all.”

We'd like to think these heartfelt sentiments unburden Pitt from any dastardly wrongdoing, but until some hard evidence is provided by way of call sheets and studio parking lot records, there will always be some nagging questions. Taking your co-star an astonishing four times in your trailer during one two-hour lunchbreak doesn't mean you can qualify the session as "re-shoots."