Jake melts the ice

One of the subjects that always pops up from time to time is the chemistry - or otherwise - between Jake Gyllenhaal and his leading ladies. In last night's post and comments, it was mentioned that Jake and Jennifer Aniston found their love scene awkward in The Good Girl and that Jake had suggested that he was worried how it had looked on the screen. Here's what Jennifer said when she was asked if it was difficult filming the scene: "Yeah for both of us, because we’ve never done it before. Shooting the sex scene was terrifying and we were both nervous, not to mention 400 pieces of material between us [maybe I shouldn’t say that]."


It turns out that shooting The Good Girl was not a particularly pleasurable experience, with the director wanting the atmosphere as miserable on set as possible, to mirror the sadness and lack of hope in the lives of Justine and Holden. It seems Jake became very protective of Jennifer: "We definitely had our breakdown days. It was a challenge for her to play this role. We had our times when she was just like, 'I f***ing suck, I can't do this.' And I'd have my days like, 'I f***ing suck.' But she's a really hard worker and I really like her, honestly. We would get scolded by the director because we'd joke around, and he'd get pissed. He wanted a very serious set. I remember we were in bed one day, and Miguel Arteta screamed, 'Stop joking around.' And I thought, 'This is Jennifer Aniston, m*********er. You don't yell at her.'" Definitely, one of Jake's more exuberant days...



Jake and Jennifer have clearly maintained a close relationship ever since, preserving the precious and extremely photogenic chemistry, as was evident at the GLAAD Awards earlier this year. How I love these pictures.


I'll come back to Jennifer another time, but I want to mention another of Jake's leading ladies who is one of my favourites - Emmy Rossum from The Day After Tomorrow. This is what she said when asked what it was like working with Jake: "Fantastic! He’s a fantastic guy. He’s very intelligent. It was funny because I was kind of like the only girl on the set. There was Mark Gordon, our producer, Roland, Jake, Dennis and me. So, he’s like my big brother, the big brother I never had. So it was really nice. We also work in kind of a similar way. We both put a lot of emphasis on preparation but then we get there and we kind of let it rip and are intuitive in a lot of ways within the bounds of the character and the arc. I think we work really well together..."


Not unexpectedly, we hear that Jake is "quite goofy in reality. I think we were so cold and wet and shivering most of the time that nobody had enough energy to pull pranks after running through that take 500 times in one day with Roland going do it again. But he’s very much positive. He has a lot of positive energy." So did Emmy feel that there was chemistry between herself and Jake? "It had to be. There was no choice for me. It was gonna be there. It also wasn’t difficult. He’s terribly attractive. So it wasn’t like the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my whole life but, at the same time, I think the heat had to be there. Somebody had to melt the ice! [Laughter]."


But, of course, the chemistry isn't always with a leading lady and, to many, that chemistry reached its most potent and intoxicating with Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. Jake and Heath knew of each other because of their experience of auditioning and competing for the role of Christian in Moulin Rouge: "We knew each other before we filmed this movie. We had both been on an extensive, really intense, audition process for Moulin Rouge with Baz Luhrmann. There was me and Heath and Ewan [McGregor] as the last three for that role. I feel like I was the puppy of all the three of them. I don't know what I was doing in there, but I was just amazed to be in there when we were auditioning. Heath and I started to know each other just by name, because I never saw his face—Baz never let us see each other. We'd be ushered into a room and locked in, and the other would go out and audition with someone and then ushered back in, so I heard him by name for a long time. When we were both not cast we become friends out of jealousy. From there we knew each other on and off, different times we'd see each other." What a strange procedure! Auditioning amid locked rooms and secret faces.


It's interesting to hear Jake talk about how he relates himself to Jack: "There is a strength in nature, holding onto a goal, whatever that might be. To me [it] is something I really relate to. Wanting things to progress, [no matter what] the response, definitely is something that I related to in Jack Twist. I fell into always pushing Ennis to say how he felt, or to communicate something, even if it's imperfect. I never really knew at the time that was [what I was doing]. When I read the script for the first time, I thought, “Oh Ang will probably want me to play the Ennis part,” because I've played much more isolated characters before. That's a very obvious, very actorly way of thinking about it, because actually Heath and I as people are really more the characters that we play." Jake even compared his own childhood to that of Jack: "Yeah, it is complicated, and it is okay to be complicated. So, I had a very interesting childhood in a lot of ways, and I brought that with me, and somehow Jack and I parallel somewhere." [The picture below shows Jake with Brokeback's leading lady Annie Proulx.]


And it's not a surprise to hear that, as with The Good Girl, the intimacy of the love scenes in Brokeback wasn't easy for Jake. "And I was like, “Wow, am I really going to be able to be the one who brings [Heath] into this, and comforts him somehow?” I'm just as skeptical of it also, so how am I going to emotionally go there? Like their scene in the tent where I'm like, “Come in here.” I know what I'm doing, but I have no idea what I'm doing with this, you know what I mean? I'm the one who initiates these sexual encounters—which to me was totally foreign. It's like, “How do you do this? Does it look right?” And, yeah, I consider it a real movement towards something to go to a place where you're like, “Oh, this is about intimacy between two people.” You're going to have to put [the other stuff] out of your mind..." [This picture shows Jake greeting Brokeback composer Gustavo Santaolalla.]


This interview also made me chuckle on account of the interviewer's concern for any damage that Jake might have caused to the Gyllenjewels during the bullriding scenes, to which Jake replied: "Who are you writing for? Thank you for the empathy. No, I didn't really hurt anything, at least not right now that I know of, maybe there's long term damage."

Off topic and on stage with Rufus

I'm sure you might recall that way back in June, Jake got up on stage and 'sang/shouted/hammed' (delete as appropriate) his way through the closing lines of Rufus Wainwright's Between My Legs in New York City. When I saw Rufus with Ruby we were rather disappointed that this part of the song was completle missing, nobody got on stage, not even a Big Brother evictee. But all this is to be put to rights on the next stage of Rufus' world tour. You can compete to be Jake - well, go on stage and ham your heart out. All you have to do is visit the Rufus Wainwright Tour Auditions on YouTube and post your rendition (I must try and work that word into every post from now on...). Unfortunately, you have to have tickets already.


Includes pictures from IHJ.