Jake Gyllenhaal on Jack Twist - 'caring and simultaneously rugged'

It looks like the Brokeback Mountain opera is back, but now it will be Madrid audiences who will hear the results in 2013. Composer Charles Wuorinen's recent interview makes plain that Annie P has been very closely involved in putting Jack and Ennis' story not only on to the stage but also to music and both the original short story and the film will influence.


'Annie Proulx herself wrote the libretto which is already finished. I feel it does not bear much relation to the film. It has the same characters, but unlike the story, however, women play a slightly bigger part in it, as in the film. But I have not contacted Ang Lee and I have contacted Annie Proulx. I just finished working with her when she came recently to Nueva York to add the last touches.'

Not surprisingly, Ennis will not find his voice as easily as Jack: 'Jack will be a lyric tenor. Ennis is a bass-baritone with several spoken parts. He only sings in some passages. There is a quite marked difference between the two personalities.' 'Q: People who go to the opera are not used to seeing love scenes between men … CW: Well, they will have to get used to it.'


The problem of how to distinguish Jack and Ennis musically is rather intriguing. Instead of the black hat and blue eyes of Jack and the pale hat and brown eyes of Ennis, Jack's emotions can more easily be translated into song, whereas Ennis' voice is not only deeper, it is less musical and mostly spoken not sung.

In a fascinating and quite candid interview Jake Gyllenhaal conducted in 2005 with the Atlanta Journal, Jake revealed: 'I always assumed I would be playing the Ennis part when I read it. And then [Lee] cast me as Jack. It made me see myself more as an open and expressive actor than I've ever been before.' It surprised me, who obviously sees Jake from an entirely different perspective!, that Jake had always assumed he would be Ennis when he is so clearly and brilliantly Jack, not even needing words, just with a look. And Heath, with even fewer words, is Ennis.


This interview isn't available freely so I'll quote some extracts. On the loneliness of filming: 'I guess you could say in a way it was difficult on a movie set, yet at the same time it's also not. It's just inherent. The topography of where we were shooting was pretty isolating. And when I'm really, really, really looking forward to the [real-life rodeo and fair] Calgary Stampede and it's coming in a month and a half, then you know you are pretty isolated. Especially since I grew up in Los Angeles. I didn't even know what a stampede was 'til I was doing this movie. The first two weeks, we were living in trailers right by a river in the middle of nowhere. Flat land for as far as we could see. We shot in one town where it was so windy it had the highest suicide rate in all of Alberta.' [Interesting corrolation between windiness and suicide...]

Nudity: 'I believe if it's toward the story and there's a reason for it, I'll pretty much do almost anything that's not really harmful. Obviously, I was nervous at times, but you gotta get through those things. Got to push through certain fears.'


The sheep: 'Well, they're dirty and they're dumb. And they make you look good though, I gotta say. Especially when you have no experience with them. They pretty much just herd the way you want them to herd. They make you feel very tough and empowered because they are terrified of you. Then again, they are terrified of anything. [Q: They also make you look good because, like you did in the movie, you can put a little lamb in a sack attached to your saddle. It makes you look caring and rugged at the same time.] Jake: (Laughing) That was actually written in the script. But it does, and that may be the intention --- caring and simultaneously rugged.'


The aggressive love scenes: 'I think that's the thing that's really interesting about this movie. You know, the difference between the fight scenes and the love scenes are kind of . . . like in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," when there's a fight scene everybody is so eager to say, "Oh, it's so beautiful. They're like love scenes." But with "Brokeback," some people who see it haven't been able to go there completely yet --- you know, a love scene like a fight scene. But the love scenes really were like that. They were really aggressive and that happened [Ledger almost breaking his nose] by the stairs. And it's written that way, you know. It's like they grab each other and squeeze the air out of each other. And say, "Son of a [expletive]." It got rough. It just got rough. I think it was a kind of place where both Heath and I felt more comfortable going. We know how to fight. So that was easier for us.'


'[Q: Talk a little more about what's behind the aggressiveness.] Jake: These characters are just full of ambiguity. I don't think there's one clear way of putting it, you know? The whole movie is filled with questions. What really happened with my character? What were the intentions at the beginning? Were they drunk? Is it they are just lonely? I couldn't answer that really.'

Jarhead, Proof and Zodiac: 'When Sam cast me for "Jarhead," I think he recognized a real aggression in me. Just pieces of my personality that I don't think had ever been seen before. And it changed my life. And with John [Madden, who directed "Proof"], I think he recognized a kind of older attitude in me than I thought I had at the time [that allowed me to] play against Gwyneth. Also, I was really bad at math and he made me feel like I was good at math... "Zodiac" was a place I was scared to go to. I mean, it's a scary story. It's a true story and the themes of it kind of freaked me out. It's such a seedy world. It scared me. And I wanted to go to that place and see what it was like and how scary it was. The movie itself is just totally, completely terrifying, and I've never made a movie like that before.'


Talking of sheep, thank heavens this didn't happen: 'According to actor Jake Gyllenhaal, director Ang Lee was going to delete a scene in which Gyllenhaal and co-star Heath Ledger kissed because the filmmaker felt 'two men herding sheep was far more sexual than two men having sex on screen.''


Includes pictures from IHJ.