Annie's quicksilver Jake

When we were talking about Jake's leading ladies and man yesterday, Annie Proulx was brought into the equation and we wondered what Annie would have made of seeing her two men, Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar, embodied before her on the big screen in the delicious forms of Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. Marina and Pia mentioned that Annie had found a quicksilver element in Jake's portrayal of Jack and this just caught my imagination like a sharp hook. Annie seems to me to be a woman of few words - just as in her novels and short stories, she uses words with care and it shows for many are jewels, allowing the reader - and the screenwriter, and the director and the actors - freedom to create around her story.



When Ang Lee took on Brokeback Mountain, Annie must have wondered if she would recognise her short story turned into a full length movie and whether she could believe in Jack and Ennis. Also it makes one appreciate the genius of Annie in breathing life into these two men: "I had to imagine my way into the minds of two uneducated, rough-spoken, uninformed young men, and that takes some doing if you happen to be an elderly female person. I spent a great deal of time thinking about each character and the balance of the story, working it out, trying to do it in a fair kind of way." It was a surprise to hear that Annie had had nothing to do with the film: "I had no idea if it was going to be good or frightful or scary, if it was going to be terribly lost or sentimentalized or what. When I saw it in September, I was astonished. The thing that happened while I was writing the story eight years ago is that from thinking so much about the characters and putting so much time into them, they became embedded in my consciousness. They became as real to me as real, walk-around, breathe-oxygen people. It took a long time to get these characters out of my head so I could get on with work. Then when I saw the film, they came rushing back. It was extraordinary—just wham—they were with me again."



Of Heath and Jake's performances: "I thought they were magnificent, both of them. Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack Twist...wasn't the Jack Twist that I had in mind when I wrote this story. The Jack that I saw was jumpier, homely. But Gyllenhaal's sensitivity and subtleness in this role is just huge. The scenes he's in have a kind of quicksilver feel to them. Heath Ledger is just almost really beyond description as far as I'm concerned. He got inside the story more deeply than I did. All that thinking about the character of Ennis that was so hard for me to get, Ledger just was there. He did indeed move inside the skin of the character, not just in the shirt but inside the person. It was remarkable."



"I hope that [Brokeback] is going to start conversations and discussions, that it's going to awaken in people an empathy for diversity, for each other and the larger world. I'm really hoping that the idea of tolerance will come through discussions about the film. People tend to walk out of the theater with a sense of compassion, which I think is very fine. It is a love story. It has been called both universal and specific, and I think that's true. It's an old, old story. We've heard this story a million times; we just haven't heard it quite with this cast."


I've illustrated this article with pictures from the Screen Actors Guild Awards from 2006, for which Brokeback received several nominations. Jake and Heath got up on stage to describe their film and Heath didn't seem quite in the mood! Here's the clip. Other pictures are from the Director's Guild Awards.


Jake sees Mike Nichols on MV?

Rumours follow Jake around MV like a plague of locusts, but hidden amongst one such plague is the Boston Herald's mention of "we’re told [Jake's] been hanging out with Broadway director - and fellow long-time island res - Mike Nichols during his vacay. Gyllenhaal reportedly is going to star in “Farragut North,” a political drama directed by the venerable veteran of stage and screen, next fall - right around the time of the presidential election. Fancy that." With thoughts of what might be in store, here is Jake collecting his newcomer's Evening Standard Award in London in 2002 for This is Your Youth.



Heath to the rescue!

Maggie had a frightening experiece on the set of The Dark Knight recently when a special effects generator set her skirt on fire. But Heath Ledger ran to the rescue and put it out, proving that in a crisis he's no wall flower. I reckon that means Jake owes Heath a drink in Toronto. Talking of Heath...


Includes pictures from here and IHJ.