Putting a voice to the pictures and making dreams a reality

Yesterday (Friday), Jessica Biel was photographed arriving at the Wildfire post-production studios in LA, where she is doing voiceover work for Nailed. Now this has to be good news and an indication that perhaps this film is at last receiving its finishing touches. At least, Nailed is in a fit enough state for there to be a voiceover, and that's got to be good. I also like Jessica's jumper - after yesterday's post, I think Jake would like it too.


Voiceovers are not to be sniffed at. They take skill and can play a huge role in setting the mood and tone of a film, not to mention shifting the plot and characterisation along and creating a relationship between the speaker and his listeners. While Jake Gyllenhaal is at an advantage when it comes to voiceovers - just listen to that voice of his - he still has admitted to finding them tricky and his most perfect voiceover, for Jarhead, didn't start off that way and nearly lost Jake the much-wanted role.



In DVD Review, both Sam Mendes and Jake discussed with some honesty how Jake messed up the voiceover for his audition, so much so that, even though Jake was Sam's first choice, Sam turned to look at other actors, leaving Jake to phone him in the middle of the night, fighting to get another chance. Sam said: 'Jake didn't nail the audition. He was very much who I wanted straight away but when he came in he didn't audition well.. When he started reading I thought 'Who is Swofford and who is this guy?' The problem with writing a movie based on a book that's a first-person narrative is that, often, the least clear thing about the book is the person writing it.'


According to Jake, 'I had a really hard time with the narration and it was almost the thing that didn't get me the part. When I came in and read for Sam, he made me read the voiceover. It was really literary and I really thought that I fucked up... and I did fuck it up!... He turned and said to me, 'You didn't seal the deal, I have to tell you!' That's his way of saying that I had just fucked it up. I had a hard time with that.' To get over this, Jake was given Swofford's original journal: 'It was a little green book... and it had on it a song lyric which was so cheesy and young, and kind of sweet in alot of ways.. Then when you open it up it's about how many girls he wants to fuck and how many people he's going to fucking kill and blah-blah-bah, he's on watch and it sucks and this guy sucks and they kicked our asses today - not the same perspective that the book was in. And I just thought, 'That's who I'm playing, not the guy who wrote the book!'


Sam came back round to wanting Jake, 'When I first saw him at the initial audition, I thought, 'Maybe Swofford isn't this, maybe he's something else. maybe he's much more hardcore, more silent and private and inaccessible.' So I met with a lot of other actors and I read the part with them all to try and see what kind of a person Tony was. Every week there'd be a new draft and then, eventually, I came full circle to Jake. It took me a while to realise what I wanted.'


Jake also told Entertainment Weekly about his first audition in Sam's New York apartment: 'It was really, really literary and hard to get your mouth around... I couldn't connect. I thought I'd f---ed it up' and while Jake was filming Brokeback Mountain he was troubled at the thought of Sam auditioning other actors.


This is a far cry from the time when the very young Jake was being put through his action hero paces on the set of The Day After Tomorrow. Back in June 2004, producer Mark Gordon and director Roland Emmerich told SFX magazine, with not a little humour, how they set about making their vision a reality, complete with CGI and wet actors. As Roland says: 'If you make a film that has amazing images, you can still bore people to death.' Obviously they avoided this straightaway by hiring Jake Gyllenhaal.


It was all new for Jake as Roland describes: 'As he'd only done small, independent movies he was really excited to come and do a movie like this... It was an opportunity for him to be really physical. The toughest scene for him was the one in the water tank. Water is always tricky. If you're standing hip-deep in the stuff and you have to do the same scene over and over again, and on top of this it's raining on you, and there are wind machines blowing in your face... well, it's not very attractive. We tried to make it as pleasant as possible for him.'

''We gave them umbrellas occasionally,' deadpans Gordon.'


I was amused to read here that the 'rapscallions behind South Park had received a leaked copy of The Day After Tomorrow screenplay, and had plotted to make their own, alternative version, filmed in absolute secrecy and then released on the same day as the bona fide original. A version made with puppets. 'They're not doing that', says Emmerich, with the air of a man who never once found this idea even remotely amusing.' They called Rupert Murdoch: 'And when Rupert wants to take care of business, he takes care of business, and he took care of it for us...'' I hope they still have their kneecaps.


Jake has said that one of his favourite scenes is the one where tornados devastate his home town of LA. Apparently ''A lot of people wanted me to cut that bit out and I said, 'Only over my dead body,' says Emmerich 'I've had to live in this town for 14 years and I didn't enjoy it one bit.' Sounds fair enough to me.


As you can tell, I've been having a winter's day going through my old Jake scrapbooks, which go back quite a few years. And I rediscovered this newspaper cutting which gives us some idea of what dreams drove Jake to be in the movies in the first place: 'Ever since I was a little boy, I've know what I wanted to be: a bird. Unfortunately, I was not that great at flying, so I gave that occupation up. I felt depressed that I did not have something to look forward to when I grew up. But since the day I saw my first movie, my worries were over.'


'There in front of me was a 'scween' (as I called it then). After the screen opened, people started moving around on it. It amazed me! It was a momentous occasion. It confirmedwhat I would do when I grew up - sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had not gone to that movie, but I did. And it gave me the 'key' to my acting future!'


And finally...

Prince Dastan's rather fine and gorgous foe, Toby Kebbell, attended the UK premiere of Leo DiCaprio's Body of Lies last week and, according to Empire, Toby is currently 'training hard for his big fight scene with Jake Gyllenhaal.' (I couldn't help myself from correcting the spelling of Gyllenhaal...). Now, I would pay good money to see this big sizzling fight scene, and I expect I will, over and over and over...


Includes pictures from links, IHJ, Getty and scans from WDW.