Update: Jake is the Prince! - Comedy Jake: 'I'd like James Franco's head.'

Typical... I publish a post and what happens while I do it? Yep, Disney announce Jake Gyllenhaal IS the Prince of Persia and Gemma Arterton is his princess! This is great news! You can read all about it at Variety.


On with the post... (with a quickened pulse)

Jake Gyllenhaal is currently - hopefully - filming the comedy Nailed and while there has been some doubt on whether this film will be actually funny (the heroine has a nail in her head and another leading player chokes to death on a cookie), there is no doubt that Jake is a funny guy. Anyone, even the most tightly pursed-lipped viewer, who has ever seen a talkshow with Jake on it or listened to one of his film commentaries, has to accept that Jake can tell a funny story with impeccable timing and delivery and has been waiting for a chance to display his comic touch on the big screen. Bubble Boy was funny to many, including this appreciative fan, but Jake has grown so much since then and he is ready to do an adult comedy and we are ready to laugh at it.


Not everyone has expected Jake to be quite as funny as he really is. Could anyone have believed that Jake's Saturday Night Live would have become a modern classic, featuring on DVDs and in endless repeats. We even got to see it, eventually, on UK TV but without my favourite meatball sketch, something that remains a sore point. So for a funny reminder, do enjoy this:



Away from the strict comic format of shows such as SNL, Jake has been funny on no end of talkshows, knowing just how to tell a tale, right down to voices, expression and, allegedly most importantly, the pauses... My favourite without doubt, even making me literally cry with laughter on a crowded rush hour tube, is Jake's Gooberballs story on the Rendition Letterman, back in October 2007.



And Jake tickled Jonathan Ross with his swimming.



Jake doesn't just entertain on talkshows - his commentaries are priceless, especially the one that he did for Bubble Boy, which alone makes the DVD an essential buy. All those of you who have yet to hear the commentary in its entirety can listen to a few minutes here:



It's interesting to note - not to mention peculiar - that some people have been surprised by how funny Jake is. Take this article for example, which announces with great incredulity that 'Jake Gyllenhaal is funny!' As the writer notes, we are ready and waiting for Jake to make us laugh.


We are well accustomed to the banter that is exchanged between Jake and those closest to him, especially Peter Sarsgaard. In this Rendition interview, for example, Jake had a laugh by insisting that he and Peter were dating and when discussing the beards both men were sporting: 'Peter is merely doing it for vanity—he’s really vain and full of himself (laughter). We all know he’s a bad actor, so he needs to cover himself up. I, on the other hand, am doing it for a role (in “Brothers”).'


Bubble Boy has not been Jake's only go at a comic role. In This Is Our Youth on the London stage, Jake played Warren and the reviews for his comic performance were exemplary, and the role was, of course, rewarded. Check out some of the reviews here. The Financial Times had this to say: 'As Warren in the American playwright Kenneth Lonergan's new play This Is Our Youth, Jake Gyllenhaal creates one of the great late-adolescent characters of recent drama. He's gauche, accident-prone, sweet. He keeps escaping from the clutches of a father who beats him to those of Dennis, a drug-pushing friend who bullies him. He hasn't yet made it successfully with a girl, and he likes blowing his own assets and his father's on drug experiences. Even his humour is clumsy. Trying to make conversation with a girl, he says dopey things such as: "Like, I've never begun the cigarette scene myself, but I hear great things about it."'


'The sweetness in him comes hand-in-hand with honesty. He doesn't hide the child he has been; he has no clue about what kind of adult he might be, if he should even live that long. But he's so spontaneous that wit just bubbles up in him. He's an adorable, heart-catching blunderer. But he doesn't really blunder about his feelings or his heart: he's firm about the things that matter to him, and he grows firmer as the play proceeds.'


'This Is Our Youth is set in Manhattan in 1982; it's a kind of theatre cousin to Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, set in the era of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. As its two acts take Jake through one evening and the morning after, we begin to see him just starting to grow up, just starting to get a life of his own. It's extraordinary from how many sides we start to see him during the play, and the peaks and troughs to which his experience takes him. Gyllenhaal's performance is perfect - and so rounded that it takes a very long time till you even begin to like this Warren, let alone to realise that he's the central character in the play.'


'I love his body-language: stiff, gawky, artless. When in doubt, he tends to grin: a grin that's apologetic, simple, sincere. His Warren's an enthusiast, or wants to be. There are things wrong with both Lonergan's play and Laurence Boswell's production, notably anachronisms. New York girls surely did not use the adjective "jappy" as early as 1982; none of us used those telephones; and did anyone back then talk of "chilling out"?'


'Dennis is a vain pretty-boy narcissist, but Hayden Christensen demonstrates that side of him so early on that the character has almost nowhere to go. Even so, Christensen handles his very long Act Two speech, helplessly revealing Dennis's absurd self-contradictions, extremely well. And Anna Paquin catches brilliantly Jessica's assured/confused contradictions, taking her to the cusp of vivid caricature without ever sacrificing credibility. It is depressing to read in the Garrick Theatre's Really Useful programme that David Garrick was a famous 17th-century actor. But it's dazzling to read there that this is Gyllenhaal's stage debut. His performance enriches the whole West End.'


Finally, Jake has come out with some very funny liners in interviews, which can only make one chuckle and puzzled all at the same time. I like this one, where Jake is talking about the insecurities he suffered on the set of Brokeback Mountain because his head was too big for the hats: 'In the movie that I'm doing now they all made special hats for me. Heath has a fine-sized head. We just did a make-up test the other day and they were all bringing our make-up in and stuff and it was like the hats were the special moment. 'Jake's special hats are coming; they're coming in!' I felt so insecure because of it... Just don't mention special hats!.. I'd like James Franco's head. That'd be a good head!' [James Franco played Harry Osborn, or the Green Goblin's son, in the Spider-Man movies.]


And then there is quite possibly my favourite of all Jake's quotes, taken from InStyle magazine, way back in 1999: 'There are three things I'll never do again: eat Play Doh, run with scissors, and keep my ice cube collection in a shoe box.' Following that advice, one need never go wrong.


Whether or not Nailed turns out to be funny, we can count on many more comic gems and turns coming our way from Jake through the course of his career.


Includes pictures from IHJ and the Seattle Times.