Beth Grant remembers Jake 'Phantom of the Opera' Gyllenhaal and Donnie Darko

Jake Gyllenhaal was spotted walking around NYC yesterday (23 October) with actress America Ferrera, his co-star from End of Watch. Jake took The Bag with him. The pictures provide the perfect accompaniment to this new interview with Beth Grant, who appeared in Donnie Darko and has already spoken about how little boy Jake swam naked with her two nieces. With many thanks to Conojito for the link, we can hear a smidgen more about what a joy it was for Beth to work with Jake. As well as talking about how wonderful it was to work on Donnie Darko, and with old friend Patrick Swayze, Beth has this to say about Jake:

'It was not just that Jake Gyllenhaal was doing the part, whom I'd been in love with since he was three years old. The first time I saw Jake he was running across my in-laws' back lawn to the pool, because he was best friends with my twin nieces, and I remember turning to my sister in law and asking, "Who is that beautiful child?" He just was magical, always, so generous and open. I remember the sixth grade show they had at the end of the year. There he was, this sixth grade boy, and he stood up and sang "The Music of the Night" fromPhantom of the Opera. What a song for an eleven year old! I thought, this kid is a star. Whether or not he's going to be a movie star, who knows, but he's a star in the world, because he's luminous.'

 'We do have it on video! My in-laws have it. It's just crazy, we looked at it one Thanksgiving, still before he became a star, and I thought it all over again. So, for me to be acting with him — and also with Buddy [Swayze], who in many ways was a hero of mine, because he'd been the first person from our acting class who'd really made it, and who'd been a big influence in teaching me to love and accept myself as a character actress — the role became kind of true to life. It was a magical experience doing that film, it really was.'

 Many thanks to IHJ for the new and old pictures!

Jake on a Train! Jake Gyllenhaal to film at Ottawa station for Source Code, Ben Kingsley and Beth Grant

Jake Gyllenhaal has been called many things - hot comes to mind - but today Jake earned a new title, Saviour of Train Stations, Ottawa train station to be precise. Source Code will be filmed at the station, while it continues to work, at the end of March. The Ottawa Citizen presents Jake on its cover and, reminding me of Pittsburgh and Santa Fe in the past, celebrates Hollywood moving into town. While I would like to point out to Duncan Jones that Oxford has a perfectly decent and extremely photogenic railway station - ideal, I'd say, Duncan - it's great to get some details. And there's more... could it be true that Ben Kingsley, Jake's Prince of Persia foe, is back for more?


We also learn that the movie has a budet of $35 million and will mostly film in Montreal, beginning in early March.

With thanks to Silver for the heads up, Brothers is on Film 2010 next Tuesday.

What Donnie Darko means to Beth Grant

Beth Grant has been reminiscing about her career including what would be a highpoint in anyone's acting life - Donnie Darko. Her memories of reading the script for the first time are compelling: 'I’m weeping thinking of Jake doing the part.' Jake, of course, had been a friend of Beth's daughters as a child. Over to Beth:

'I love that movie so much. Just before I got that script, I had been to see some European art film. I walked out of that movie and said to my husband, “That’s what I want to do! I want to do an art film and take it to the edge.” Within two weeks, we were getting ready to go on vacation, and my agent called. The first thing she said was, “You don’t want to do a play, do you? It’s by Horton Foote.” I said, “Horton Foote? Uh, yeah, I think I might be interested!” And she said, “Oh, it’s a world première.” And I said, “A world première of a Horton Foote play? I think I’d like to do that!” Then she said, “And there’s also this movie called Donnie Darko, and Jake Gyllenhaal’s going to be in it. They want to meet you tomorrow.” And I went, “Oh, there goes my vacation.” So I had a slight chip on my shoulder about taking it, but my husband said, “Look, you’ve gotta do this.”


I read the Horton Foote play first. Loved it. It was called The Day Emily Married; they later did it on Broadway. I had to play a 75-year-old with Alzheimer’s. Estelle Parsons played it on Broadway, which was great—I mean, she well should have. She was the right age, and I’m sure she was brilliant. I was just so honored to create the role. So anyway, it was probably 10 at night when I started to read Donnie Darko. I had first seen a line earlier in the day about animal feces, and I thought, “Oh no, this is some stupid teen movie where they think that’s funny.” So I was kind of putting off reading it, because I was expecting the worst. I get in bed and read the first page, and I go, “Hmmm. That’s interesting.” Second page, “Wow.” By the fourth page, my heart started to beat, and I knew. It makes me cry, because I knew I had found a classic film. You just know when you get certain material. I’m flippin’ those pages, flippin’ those pages, and then at the end, of course, there’s [Donnie’s] great decision.'


'Richard Kelly would kill me if I said it, but I feel—it’s just my interpretation — that it is this Christ myth, and [Donnie] does make this supreme decision, and it asks all the questions that are important in life: What is life? What is family? What is death? Where do we go after death? Is there time travel? Is everything happening at once and we’re just channeling? All those questions are there, like a great myth. And Richard wrote it in six weeks—it’s crazy! I feel like he just opened his channel and it poured in. He’d probably hate me for saying that, but I love him so much. I just did another movie that his company produced called Rogue’s Gallery that I’m very excited about it. It’s about the CIA kind of imploding the day before the inauguration, and there’s this elite killer squad in the CIA—well, I don’t want to give too much away. We did not base it on anything to do with Dick Cheney. It’s just a coincidence.'


'But back to Donnie Darko. It’s now 11:30 p.m., I’m weeping thinking of Jake doing the part, I can’t wait to meet the writer, and I have no one to call because it’s too late at night. I look around and realize I’m standing in the middle of my bed. I had actually stood up in an effort to try to express my enthusiasm for this thing. By the next morning, I was like a hurricane blowing into the room. I knew exactly how to do her, because she was like my P.E. teacher in junior high. I even wore this funny little pointy bra, because I remembered that was the way she dressed. [Producer] Sean McKittrick told me later that as soon as I walked in with all that energy, they knew they’d found Kitty Farmer. Which is kind of embarrassing, because I wasn’t quite in character yet, I didn’t think. Richard said he didn’t want her to be shticky—which is always such music to my ears, because there’s a fine line between taking it to the edge and going over the edge. He said, “I want to take it as far as it can without going over.” And I thought, “That’s exactly what I just ordered from the universe!” So I read the Sparkle Motion scene: “Sometimes, I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!” Except I got the words mixed up and said, “Sometimes I doubt your commitment to miracles in motion!” They laughed hysterically because I’d screwed it up, and I said, “You have to give me this part!”' Source.


Includes pictures from IHJ.

Jake - 'We're the closest thing to an Italian family without being Italian'

It took Sam Mendes four months to decide if Jake Gyllenhaal was the right man for Jarhead. '"Yes, frankly, I did initially have some doubts," British-born Mendes says. "I pegged him as one of those drippy, sorry, American indie-film boys, a bit too doe-eyed and whiny to pull this off. Which was unfair of me."' Tony Swofford himself was impressed by Jake in an instant: "It took me almost 10 years to level with myself about the type of guy I was in Desert Shield. [Jake] got it immediately. So I see myself in the manic behaviour. But, of course, I never looked as good doing it."


It's well known how Jake failed to impress at his initial, informal audition for Jarhead, having already attracted Sam's attention on stage in London: 'Mendes thought of Gyllenhaal to play Swofford after seeing the actor onstage in London in the 2002 play This is Our Youth. The two later met at Mendes' apartment, where, at the kitchen table, Gyllenhaal read two emotional scenes. His performance fell flat. Afterward, Mendes served sandwiches and watched Gyllenhaal doggedly fight the urge to go down on his knee and beg to do the audition again. Instead, they small-talked, and the actor went home.'


The filming itself was hard, after long physical and mental preparation: 'There was usually always - like when the oil fires were going on, we had two real fires in front of us and we had oil raining on us and then in the background, and then they filled that in, but everything that we're in is all real. So it was burning hot, those fires, and they didn't use real oil, but we had like molasses, basically, so we had all of that dripping all over us all day. In terms of the explosions and things like that, they were happening, and then they would add them - the far background. The foreground and initial background was all real, and then the far background was computer-generated, so as actors, we were pretty much in the real thing all of the time. There was never a moment where they were like, "oh, don't worry - we'll drip oil all over you in post."'


To Jake, filming Jarhead, and the role of Swoff, was a step away from the kind of roles audiences were accustomed to see him play. This was partly due to the creative freedom granted to Jake by the director: '"I just tried to take risks, and Sam allowed it. He made me feel my ideas are intelligent and correct, and now," Gyllenhaal adds wryly, "you can't sway me from that."'

'These days, Gyllenhaal wants to reinvent himself. He wants to drop the loopy, disaffected image he has perfected in arty movies such as "Donnie Darko" and "The Good Girl," as well as his people-pleasing ways, and become, well, more selfish. "I think I've spent a lot of time [worrying] about how people perceive me rather than doing what I want," he says. Gyllenhaal tends to talk in circles and can be hard to follow, like the instructions on a new toy made in China. "I'll go into situations and fit right in, and that's sort of where I'm coming out of. I'm tired of fitting the way I think everybody thinks I should fit." Gyllenhaal credits "Jarhead" with setting him on that path.'


The soldiers themselves had to grow up young: 'As much issue as I have with our current situation, [as far as] the troops themselves, it's extraordinary what they do. I mean, at my age, I'm still figuring out who I am. When you're 25 years old or in your early 20s, and even younger than that, you're figuring out who you are, and when you're put in situations that they're put in and doing the things that they're doing, within that discovery I think it's just the bravest you could be.'

After Jarhead, would Jake have made a sharpshooter? '(laughs) I don't think any of them wanted to see me doing it. I mean, I dug a great foxhole (laughs).'


In addition to information on how Jake approached Jarhead, these interviews include other gems. In USA Weekend, Jake let on about what it's like around the Gyllenhaal family table: 'The actor grew up surrounded by creative types with "big personalities." His family was loud at the table and never short on opinions. They debated Reaganomics and environmental issues over farmer's-market-fresh food. "We're the closest thing to an Italian family without being Italian," says Gyllenhaal, whose mother is Jewish and father grew up in the Swedenborgian church, a traditional Christian faith from Sweden. "We're all verbose, so it's hard to get a word in edgewise. You have to claw your way around." Gyllenhaal learned early that in order to get attention, he would have to perform.' Jake is also informative: "if you drive a hybrid, you don't have to pay for [meter] parking anywhere."

Some time ago, I posted a link to an audio interview with Jake, in which he described how, for days after filming ended, he came across sand on his pillow - 'it invaded me'. Here is the video to go along with it, which begins with an 'exposure check'.



And while I'm posting videos, here is a video interview with Jake from a French source, in which Jake discusses how he prepared himself mentally for the role and how he worked with the real Swoff to do justice to the character.



Jake and Beth Grant

While finding information for this feature on Jarhead, I stumbled across this Q&A session for Donnie Darko, with Jake and others from the film. I knew that Jake had known Beth Grant (who played Kittie Farmer) for years, but here we discover that Jake's casting had a big influence on Beth taking the role and Jake says 'I used to play naked in their pool with [Beth's] two nieces. Two beautiful blonde twins. Things have changed. (Laughs)' Now there's a thought.


Beth says of the film 'It's honestly my most favorite thing I've ever done, it's my favorite movie, I must have seen it fifteen times, and Richard, I know I'm so Kittie Farmer right now, I loved this cut so much... Richard is a great director and he knew what he wanted in every scene and he got the freedom to try things and do new ideas.' Jake says: 'But it was an amazing experience for me and a familiar one too because this was hopefully not the last time that I work with my sister, but everyone sort of became family from that experience and I'm so proud of it.'

Earth Day

Thanks to I Heart Jake for posting New Old pictures of Jake and Salma Hayek from Everything's Cool and Earth Day in 2005.





Includes pictures from IHJ.