'Fear is the killer of creativity' - Jake Gyllenhaal on Love and Other Drugs. And the LAOD Macarena...

After this morning's Emergency Post, it's now time for the Debriefing. So, as Captain Picard would say 'Into my Ready Room, Number One'... Where was I? Oh yes, Jake Gyllenhaal is clearly doing his bit for the Q&A. Fortunately we can tell them apart by beard length. Last night, Anne Hathaway took a break from talking about getting naked with Jake, leaving it to Jake and Ed Zwick. Jake's explanation for Annie's absence: “Annie wanted to say that she really wanted to be here but had a previous engagement she couldn’t get out of,” stated Jake Gyllenhaal regarding his notably absent costar Anne Hathaway. “She actually doesn’t care about you [guys]”.



More disturbing is the confirmation that Love and Other Drugs does indeed feature the Macarena. Rumours of this ripped through the fandom during the filming, as extras blogged and tweeted about watching Jake perform this forbidden 'dance'. You can read a full account of this from a post here dating to last October. The post also features an incredibly useful and still relevant demo video of the Macarena, which I advise you to watch and then forget.


Back to the account: '“I never thought there’d be a time I’d use the Macarena,” admitted the film’s director. “The 90s were an odd moment in time, the mid 90s as well, it wasn’t our finest moment,” lamented Ed. He continued, “We were a little hesitant to [use music] too much,” stating that a lot of movies nowadays rely on the music to do the job of the actors. The trick is finding a balance between the two because as Zwick stated, “we had music in movies long before we had talking,” so it goes hand in hand with filmmaking.'


'“I grew up watching [Zwick’s] work,” said Jake... '“I’m the type of actor that needs to put it into motion. I can’t just sit in a room by myself. I need to be able to fuck it up.” He went as far as sitting in on auditions, while the rest of the film was being casted, and going over the scenes with the different actors. The hard work paid off, the actor gives a moving performance which he credits all to Zwick. “Jake is being modest…I didn’t make him do that stuff, it was him. I just gave him the tools to bring it out,” said Zwick.'


Nudity: '“Fear is the killer of creativity,” said Gyllenhaal regarding mentally blocking out the fact that audiences will be seeing their naked bodies. “You have to block that out otherwise you’ll never get anything done,” he said... “We decided last night that we’re not calling this film a romantic comedy,” said Gyllenhaal. “We’re gonna call it an emotional comedy because that’s what it is, it’s life.”' Source.


Similar discussions came up at the previous Q&A at NYU. I know that there was difficulty for some with the sound from the videos and so I've put together some extracts.

Anne: 'In the first movie we shared a life together without sharing a life together... it's a shorter amount of time that we spent together as our characters in Brokeback Mountain but we go a LOT further and we grow into love for each other. Although! I've come to realise that if you put me in a room with Jake Gyllenhaal in a room and you film it my bra has a natural eject button!'



Jake: 'On a serious note I think we inherently as a result of having been even literally naked together - or at least Annie was - in the first movie we did, we were comfortable with each other and it led us into this.' But Ed says he 'went after them independently and it was just a happy accident that they shared that particular experience'.


Jake on jigging scripts again: 'I've worked with so many people where you give an idea and the idea is immediately shot down either in some weird passive aggressive way or in an aggressive way, we're so used to that as actors... it was amazing to watch Oliver Platt and Hank Azaria very timidly ask Ed... 'I was just wondering if...' this is like Hank Azaria... 'if there's a period, if you put a period at the...' And I was like 'Take it out! Take it out!'. 'Oh, in that case, I was just wondering there's a line where I don't like..' He said 'Take it out, if it doesn't work for you take it out, what do you think? What line would work for you?' And he's like...'Well I was thinking about this'... and he said 'That's great! That's great!...' And he was like 'Really?' and all the actors just like eased up. There was a sense of - whether it was a manipulation - all great directors can be wonderful manipulators.'

Anne: 'We want names!'


Jake: 'Whatever it was it worked. That is the wonder of working with someone who has I think, again I think we may be being humble, he's being humble, when I think of the lead actors he's worked with, it was like, I feel like I'm in absurd company. Denzel Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Craig, leib Schreiber and... it's an incredibl... So when you work with someone like that you think there's an immediate intimidation factor and his intimidation comes to anyone who doesn't genuinely love the creative process. I've experienced that even in my auditions. I auditioned with almost every actor who came in and I saw when an actor wasn't prepared or an actor felt like he wasn't that interested, Ed wasn't ok with that. It was very important to be gracious and kind to the creative process because it's something that he loves so much and when you love it it's like absolutely the best process.'


Jake: 'I think pace really helps me as an actor... 'there's less time to do much of anything except trust your instincts.' Jake talks about even at a Q&A, Ed would say 'Where's Jake?!' and it was like being back on set and 'he would shock me into my instincts because I can... I can really, I can really get into my brain and it's not an awesome place sometimes. Sorry to everybody... Annie has so many ideas and he paid so much service to each one of the ideas in a very serious way and with me it was like 'Go, go,go, move, move'.'


Anne talks about arriving on set a month after everyone else and although it was uncomfortable in hindsight it was the right thing to do. Some times her character would have felt like she was hanging on by a thread and so being shocked into it wouldn't have worked.

Many thanks to IHJ for so many fabulous pictures!