Jake Gyllenhaal and David Ayer on making End of Watch and a WDW London Interlude

End of Watch continues to gather buzz. Next week it is shown at the London International Film Festival - I'll be there which makes me really rather happy - and the interest mounts. This week director David Ayer has been talking to Los Angeles Magazine about his road to End of Watch as well as what it meant to his stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena. It wasn't necessarily pretty.

'To make LAPD officers of Gyllenhaal and his costar Michael Peña, Ayer put them through five months of punishment. Several days a week Gyllenhaal reported to an Echo Park dojo run by a friend of Ayer’s. “Dave said, ‘I really need you to know what it’s like getting the crap kicked out of you and how to beat the crap out of somebody,’ ” Gyllenhaal says. “And in the beginning it just started with getting the shit beaten out of me by 14- to 20-year-old kids literally every morning. Towards the end I definitely got some good kicks and punches in on those boys.”'

'Instead of the couple of nighttime ride-alongs that have become obligatory research for cop movies, the actors spent weeks in L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, LAPD, and Inglewood police squad cars. Over yogurt and granola at a Silver Lake café, Ayer describes how during Gyllenhaal’s first time out, he saw a gunshot victim die on the street. “Jake called me up that night and he was like, ‘That shit changed me,’  ” says Ayer, who is 42. His head shaved, he wears cargo shorts and a plaid button-down shirt whose loose fit only manages to make his shoulders look more massive. “I’m like, ‘Good, that’s exactly what I was hoping.’ It was horrible, and I know it isn’t going to sound right, but my hopes were that in this process he would encounter some truth and some reality about what’s really going on in L.A.”'

There is much more here. Thanks to IHJ for the pics!

Last night (6 October), Jake was on hand in NYC to help Proof co-star Gwyneth Paltrow celebrate the big 4-0.

WDW Greenwich Interlude

Today was a beautiful Autumnal day and so we took off to Greenwich in London on the motorbike. Greenwich is a beautiful place - a World Heritage Site which is also the home of the prime meridian (where time equals zero), the Cutty Sark, the  Christopher Wren Old Naval College, the Maritime Museum, the river in all its glory as well as 2012's Olympics equestrian events. Stunning, historic architecture can be found side by side with beautiful old pubs, shops and markets, not to mention the odd morris dancers. You might also spot some Tower of London and Tower Bridge in the photos below.

On the ride home, we stopped in the middle of the gorgeous Oxfordshire countryside to have a drink in a beautiful old pub. Once named the Admiral Nelson, it was renamed Lord Nelson when the man himself was elevated to a peerage all those years ago. The nautical theme continues.

My review of Looper is now up at MovieBrit!