Updated: New Jake Gyllenhaal interview ('All we have is right now'), Jarhead Jake retrospective and rave reviews for LAOD

Update: A new interview with Jake Gyllenhaal thanks to the release of Brothers in Australia's theatres. And at last we learn more about the ankle injury that led Jake to need crutches and wear - deep breaths - crocs. All Tobey's fault! Also, I don't know if it's just me, but in that first answer, I can sense the weight of the loss of Heath Ledger.


'Q: Having interviewed you several times over the years, you seem more at ease with yourself nowadays? JG: Yes, I do feel that. I think that’s part of growing up. A lot of things happened in my life while I was making this movie, and it made me think that we never know what’s going to happen in the future. All we have is right now, so what do you have to lose but to go for it?'


'Q: You spent your first day of shooting in a jail? JG: Yes. People are most open and most vulnerable when they feel it is safe, and it is hard to feel that way in a jail, that’s for sure. It was weird to start the first day of a movie in a jail. Q: That must have been tough? JG: It was. I went to LA County Jail and then I went to a couple of juvenile halls which was life changing. Q: How so? JG: I think we tend to generalise and to just look at anybody who is in jail a certain way. We don’t look at the story of each person who is in there which is what I think is frustrating. It’s the same as people saying, ‘Is this movie a war story? Is this a story about war?’ I feel you tend to generalise each individual story, what the story is. If someone is a soldier and they are at war, does that mean they are just a soldier at war? Or do they have their own story? And has that story become a war story because they are a soldier? People are coloured by things and that type of prejudice because it’s not what the story about. But in this movie, as in every movie, I found myself learning a different lesson and the biggest lesson I learnt from this movie was from my experience with these boys in juvenile hall.'


Q: Working in the same field as your sister (Maggie) do you feel pressure to compete with her? JG: No, I think we have a lot of other complications, but I don’t think that’s one of them. Q: Like what? JG: The idea of competition, particularly in a creative atmosphere, is always present and if you don’t acknowledge that then you are doing yourself and the process a disservice. What made it so much fun working with Tobey for example, is that he’s my contemporary, and what’s great is the acknowledgement of admiration, the acknowledgement of competition, the acknowledgement of the complications. As regards my sister, if you are really with someone from the beginning of your life, like I have been with Maggie, she had a couple of years on the earth before me but I’ve been with her since the beginning of my life. This would take so long to explain. Sorry, I’ve gone off on a tangent. Can you ask me the next time you interview me?'


'Q: OK, I’ll hold you to that. In this movie Tobey again will be seen as a great actor. A lot of people just remember him as Spiderman – do you think people will be surprised? JG: Yes. It’s like when I worked with Heath Ledger. When we started working together I think people were blown away by his performance in the movie (Brokeback Mountain). I don’t think people expected that from him. At least that’s what I heard that from the journalists and people who saw that movie. It is wonderful to see someone who everybody talks about. It is wonderful to hear. It is wonderful to have either fooled the people as he has done or to have been honest in the way that he has been that they go, wow!.'


'Q: You studied Eastern religions? JG: I haven’t heard that question in a very long time. At the time, I just went with what moved me. I read this book by this Lama when I was in high school, and I thought it was fascinating. The ideas were fascinating and so when I went to college there was an incredible Eastern religions professor, so I just started studying it. I couldn’t give you a reason for why I gravitated towards it, it just seemed right. It was just one of those things. My mother’s Jewish, my father’s Christian, so when I grew up I didn’t really know exactly like where I fitted in or how I felt spiritually. Then I started to believe and started to like the idea that we’re all kind of interconnected. I liked it on an intellectual level but I didn’t really understand what it meant. I still don’t totally understand what it means, but then I studied Tibet and the culture of Tibet in particular, and again, I found it unbelievable how they went from being a totally warring society where essentially they ruled the world to a non-warring, all spiritual country, nation. All of it was fascinating to me and somehow, who knows, maybe it’s another life or something. I don’t know, but I just liked it.'


'Q: Are you spiritual – for instance do you meditate? JG: Yeah, of course, I do lots of things. Yeah, I do. Q: What does meditation give to you? JG: What does it give me? Sometimes it gives me gas, sometimes it creates a sense of ... God. We’re getting really serious now. Sometimes I think that. ... one can’t separate the world from one’s self, and it kind of brings you back to, this is me and that’s what’s happening in the world, and what’s the difference? Is it me that’s doing it, or is it just what’s happening? It just gives perspective.'


'Q: Actors always say they love each other when they’re talking about a film they’re promoting, but the three of you actually do seem to like each other. JG: I was honoured that Tobey wanted to do the movie, because I know he’s very picky. And he’s had so many opportunities to choose to do movies and he picked this one. So, from the beginning I felt kind of honoured that he wanted to do it. I don’t believe and I could be wrong, that there are filmmakers who are so extraordinary, that they can make something charismatic, or they can make something moving, when two people don’t like each other at all, or have no connection. I do think that’s possible, and there are those famous stories about all those things that people love, but in this case there was real camaraderie between us. Tobey and I would work out together, we played basketball together, I tore both ligaments in my leg and my ankle because of it ... and I don’t think either of us ever pretended like there wasn’t great admiration and great competition. And I think that made for the experience.'

'Q: You seem to have a natural style about the way you work – what kind of role do you think you wouldn’t be able to pull off? JG: Well, I definitely couldn’t play Denzel Washington’s part in Glory. That would probably not work out so well. But it would be interesting in some strange way.' Source.


Jarhead retrospective

Last night, Rendition had its premiere on British terrestrial TV. Its broadcast time of 11.35pm is unlikely to have won it much of a new audience, nevertheless Radio Times hailed it as Film of the Day. Of course, this was not the first (nor the last) film that Jake Gyllenhaal has made about war and conflict. In today's Sunday retrospective, time to go back to the first one, Jarhead, via the WDW Dusty Archives, revealing how completely Jake threw himself into the role of Swoff, right from the very beginning.


'[Sam] Mendes said he kept Gyllenhaal waiting for four months before he gave him the part. "It was a long casting search. I saw every actor under 30. I had seen Jake onstage in London, and I knew he had the acting chops, but I felt he was a little soft. A boy. Doe-eyed and puppish. But he persisted. He left me messages and said, 'I'll do anything I have to do to play this part. I'm the one for it.' And he did. He went through six weeks of weight training that completely changed his body, adding weight and muscle. He danced naked in one scene. I think he got so totally into the part that he was hallucinating at times - completely channeling the madness of the desert."'


'Interviewing him in Los Angeles the day after "Jarhead" was unveiled, Gyllenhaal obviously had lost much of the weight he put on to play the young Marine. "I had a physical trainer who put me through workouts twice a day for six weeks, with a heavy diet of protein. I didn't consider it hard. I considered it necessary." The film was shot in the deserts of California and Mexico, not the Middle East. "I liked the grunginess of the role. You didn't have to worry about how you looked. The desert was the real enemy."' (Source: Virginian Pilot, November 2005.)


And in another article from November 2005 (The Fort Worth Star-Telegram): '"Usually, the action's moving so fast you don't get the opportunity to see the psychology, really," notes 25-year-old Gyllenhaal, who's on quite a roll this year with Jarhead, Proof and the upcoming Brokeback Mountain. "You do see the effects of it, but you don't see what happens when people are given these standards to live up to and pushed to the brink but not given a situation where they can use that. So the enemy becomes themselves, ultimately. The idea that both a film and a book could be made about waiting and boredom, and make them entertaining, was pretty extraordinary... And as an actor, you can go to those places of rage and aggression and feel those feelings, and have so much fun doing it. I think that's also part of what the armed forces harnesses. Every day, I woke up excited to go to work, even with an hour's sleep sometimes."'


'"When I was in Jarhead, I felt really good about my body, really confident," says Gyllenhaal, who got in the habit of doing 25 push-ups between each take at the film's main location, the Holtville airstrip east of El Centro, Calif. "Insecurities just sort of go away in that atmosphere. You're messing around with the guys, that's what was going on in my mind. I walked around the set all day, naked, with that thing on. I didn't care . . . especially when you have a rifle in your hands!"


'"I have a friend who is in Iraq right now and is doing a lot of good over there, restoring schools and helping democracy in a way. Do I agree with the administration and their intentions behind this war? I don't know; I don't think so," he says. "But I can't do anything but support wholeheartedly, and actually look up to, these soldiers in a way that I never did before I made this movie."'


Jake's performance won over Swoff himself: '"I love Jake's performance," Swofford says. "It's thoughtful, introspective, rough, brash, conflicted . . . and those are things that I was. Through the combination of having read the book, Bill's script and Sam's direction, he really captured that young 20-year-old Marine at war with many things."'


Love and Other Drugs

Talking of rave reviews over Jake's performances, they're still coming in from previews of Love and Other Drugs. You can read the full reviews here, but here are some little, non-spoilery tasters. Thanks to Silver for the headsup!

'The film, which is like 'Up in the Air' with more humour or '(500) Days of Summer' with less quirk, is fantastically acted by the leads and supporting ensemble of familiar faces. The writing is phenomenal with some of the freshest dialogue and wittiest banter I've seen since Howard Hawks's 'His Girl Friday.' The story is also very topical, especially in the days of the fight for healthcare reform. Director Edward Zwick (Glory, Blood Diamond) puts forth one of the best films of his career alongside a list of solid past work, creating some of the most heart-wrenchingly sad and gut-wrenchingly funny cinematic moments in years. The film is also full of some of the hottest and funniest sex scenes I've seen in a long time, so the movie's humour isn't all guys will want in this romantic-comedy. Overall, 'Love and Other Drugs' is a great variation to the 2010 romantic comedies thus far, giving something worthwhile outside of the typical 'The Bounty Hounter'-type rom-coms.'


'Saw a preview tonight. Really, really good. Plenty of nudity from the leads....Well paced, well acted and well written.'

'I was expecting something good from Ed Zwick and Anne Hathaway but Jake Gyllenhal really tore it up. This movie is very, very good and will be a huge hit commercially and critically when it comes out. I will say it is long. It has the perfect mix of gross out comedy, serious dramatics, and emotionally connecting love story... This is absolutely, hands down the best role Jake Gyllenhal has ever played... The movie was laugh out loud funny the entire film... The chemistry is off the charts between Jake and Anne which is obvious but the other characters do a fantastic job standing out as well. I have seen a lot of films and enjoy good films of all genres but this might be the best Romantic Dramedy I have ever seen.'

For the latest on another upcoming movie Source Code, do keep an eye on the excellent Man Made Movies blog.


Articles from the WDW Archives (pdfs as always available on request) and pictures, including two new old goodies from January this year, with big thanks to IHJ.