The producers of the Queen Latifah Show have been in touch and invited Jake Gyllenhaal fans to attend the recording of the show on 12 September. If you're over 18 and can get to Culver City, then apply for tickets here. Mention that you're a huge fan of Jake's in your request headline. They are also asking audience members to bring any pairs of reading or prescription eyeglasses that you could donate to Jake's charity New Eyes for the Needy that day. Mention in your request if you're planning on bringing any and if so how many.
If you're able to attend the recording be sure to come back here and tell us all about it!
If only myself and my glasses were not welded to the other side of the pond.... Photo from InStyle (2009) thanks to IHJ.
I hope you're all enjoying the holidays and - if you're in Blighty - that you haven't been swept away to sea in the floods and - if you're in NE USA - that you haven't frozen to your snow shovel. As one (ie, me) continues to work one's way through an inexhaustible mountain of cheese, I thought I'd aid your digestion with a quick post. This is merited because a) I've been missing you and b) Roger Ebert voted End of Watch his fourth favourite movie of 2012!
'Here is one of the best police movies in recent years, a virtuoso joining of performances and often-startling action. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña as Taylor and Zavala, two Los Angeles street cops who bend a few rules but must be acknowledged as heroes. After too many police movies about officers who essentially use their badges as licenses to run wild, it's inspiring to realize these men take their mission -- to serve and protect -- with such seriousness they're willing to risk their lives.'
Meanwhile, a video interview from Extra in which Jake Gyllenhaal talks about being tasered (not for the first time and possibly not for the last) and New Eyes for the Needy.
Thanks to IHJ for the fab new pic from the set of Time to Dance.
End of Watch finally reaches the cinemas of Britain today! 23 November has come around and now many more of us will get to see this fine film which is stirring up rave reviews left, right and centre. Talking of reviews, here's mine. Of course, End of Watch came out a couple of months ago in the US and it already has an American DVD/blu ray release date - 22 January. You can see details of the extras here. The missed opportunity, though, is no commentary with Jake and Michael.
As you can imagine on End of Watch release day there is a lot going on and it's only going to get busier as Jake Gyllenhaal himself will be in the UK to promote the film next weekend. And so, ahead of the Part 2 WDW Exclusive with Ted, Lisa and Jake in the next post, here's a look at some highlights from this busy week.
Jake was all over the cover of the London free magazine Shortlist this week in a big piece of advertising for the film. In an interview with the magazine there are some comments in which Jake addresses the constantly recurring rumours that Jake could be picked to play a Rebooted Batman of Spider-Man. I wish I ha a pound for every time we've heard this over the years.
'At a certain point you realise there's always someone more interesting, talented and ready to do a role than you are - and you won't get every role you go for. All I want right now is to hone my skills and become a better actor, not dream about wearing a cape. But you never know.'
The potential for embarrassment does persist, however many hours of screentime an actors has clocked up: 'Do you think there is one person on Earth impervious to embarrassment? And do you think it would be me? That’s a rhetorical question, and I’ll leave you with that.'
Jake is also interviewed in the London paper, Metro, and interestingly Nailed is one of the subjects that pops up: '‘It’s weird that a movie you make doesn’t come out,’ sighs Gyllenhaal. ‘But I’m just an actor. It’s other people’s jobs to put the movie together and sell it. I did my job and maybe one day somebody else will put that movie out. Unlikely, though.’'
There is also a little bit about An Enemy. 'Gyllenhaal is next appearing in An Enemy, an adaptation of a José Saramago novel, in which he plays dual roles as a man seeking out his doppleganger after spotting him in a film. It will be, he promises, ‘a real head-f***’. It may not have required five months’ of immersion in LA copland but Gyllenhaal insists it fits into his new ethos of immersing himself in reality. ‘What we do in this profession can often be absurd,’ he says. ‘So now I’m much more interested in learning about real people’s stories and trying to portray those.’'
In an interview with the Scotsman, Jake makes it plain that he's not going to waste any more time answering questions about movie adaptations of Fifty Shades, thank heavens, before talking in some detail about the End of Watch shoot.
The riches continue with a video interview with Jake, Michael and David Ayer courtesy of the Guardian.
Digital Spy has been picking Jake's Top 5 Films. Take a look and see if you agree. Female First has also been using the opportunity to reassess Jake's career.
With its original plans scuppered by Hurricane Sandy, this week New Eyes for the Needy finally managed to honour Jake for his work promoting the charity at its 80th anniversary gala. Jake's co-stars from If There Is... were among the crowd supporting Jake.
Thanks very much to IHJ for the pictures! Including this one below from GQ Korea which has a certain something...
Apologies for the lack of updates over the last week. This is because I am still ill in bed with a very nasty and stubborn bout of the flu. As a result, I do recommend you don't get too close to the blog this evening for this brief update.
It's been quite a week of the NE United States, including New York City. You won't be surprised to learn that the New Eyes for the Needy event to honour Jake Gyllenhaal was postponed from Monday evening. Devastating hurricanes will do that. If There Is... was also cancelled briefly but resumed a couple of days later. Talking of If There Is, big thanks to BBMISwear for sending me scans of these two pieces of Roundabout Theatre post she received, including a letter from Jake. That's what I call post...
Jake's forthcoming movie Prisoners might not be made yet - not even a little bit - but it already has a poster to go with its release date of 20 September 2013. Source. Thanks to Mermon for the link.
Special good wishes to all those of you who were caught up in the horrendous storm on Monday night.
Jake Gyllenhaal's culinary skills are legendary. One can barely think of such foodstuffs as pickled onions, starbursts, strawberries, cilantro, risotto, iPads and meatballs without thinking of Jake. In fact, he is one of the few people in the public eye who would be able to construct a plate of food and a piece of garden furniture from the same ingredients. This week, Jake appeared on The Chew, cooking alongside old friend and TV cooking partner Mario Batali. If you live in the US you can watch the clip here. Wouldn't it be great if internet files could be freed from borders?
Update! As you can see, there is now a version for us all. Thanks so much to Stephanie!
Thank heavens for IHJ. Looks like Jake's beard is coming on a treat. Anyone with a beard like that who eats spaghetti is a brave man (or woman, I don't want to be sexist).
Jake appeared on the Leonard Lopate radio show this week with fellow If There Is... cast member Brian F O'Byrne. I'm delighted to say that the interview is now available to listen to.
And finally...
Jake's charity work for New Eyes for the Needy (as well as his love of food) is being recognised on 29 October by a celebratory dining event that you can go to as well if you live near NYC and have $500. Not only does the money go to a good cause, but you can also see Jake, as well as Peter, Maggie and Top Brit Scout Bear Grylls, and, one hopes, get some good nosh too. Details are all here.
If any of you go, please remember to bag me some pudding.
There is also another one of those famous Jake auctions.
Back on 31 March this year, Jake Gyllenhaal launched the silent auction for New Eyes for the Needy in NYC. This is one of the charities closest to his heart as we've seen over the last few years. The good news is that New Eyes for the Needy has now released a video of the event, in which Jake talks about why the charity is such a good one to support and and why it means so much to him personally.
As a fellow specs wearer I can empathise with these words of Jake's from the auction: 'When I wake up all I see are colors and fuzzy things because my eyesight is so bad. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I didn’t have the resources to be able to see clearly'. A downside of this morning fuzziness is that it can take a while finding your glasses in the morning. Actually, that's more a downside of my untidiness but even so... it's good to hear Jake knows what it's like.
New Eyes for the Needy have also revamped their website, including their rather lovely new homepage. Many thanks to BBMISwear for the heads up!
It's been quite a while since we had new photos of Jake, especially publicity photos. I'm therefore very grateful to IHJ for a few new old photoshoot pictures from earlier in Jake's decade of movies. I particularly like these two:
Jake Gyllenhaal is back in NYC and not only that he's posing with shrubbery. There is a reason for this. Clearly Jake is trying to distract us from TrouserGate by attempting to blend in with the local flora. While this ploy nearly succeeded, it is nevertheless clear that, if these are the same trousers that have been put through the wars during the Mumford and Jake Train Tour, they have now been put to the needle. Either that or, as some suspected, Jake is one of those men who buys countless versions of the same matching outfit, not realising that one or two will do thanks to the invention of other people to do the laundry for you.
So, enough of the trousers, what about that bag?! It reminds me of the bottomless pit of a bag that Hermione lugged around during HP 7.1. With a bag of that size and depth, I would like to pass on to Jake one of my biggest tips - colour code your possessions. Don't have a black cover for phone, iPod, Kindle, iPad, camera. You'll never find them. Here is the link to the lucky tweeter who took this picture.
Before Jake headed off to NYC, he paid a last minute visit to the Pinkberry in New Orleans with Marcus Mumford. Fortunately, we have a picture. It may not contribute to TrouserGate but any association of Jake with ice cream is fine by me. The picture originated here.
Le Smoking
While Jake was blending in in NYC yesterday, Maggie and Peter attended the MET Costume Institute Gala Benefit and both looked stunning. Maggie is wearing a Stella McCartney dress here while Peter is smoking in a 'Le Smoking' by Yves Saint Laurent. Good job Jake was back in time to babysit.
Moulin Rouge
During the publicity for Brokeback Mountain, we grew accustomed to hearing Jake talk about how he and Heath Ledger had met during the auditions for Moulin Rouge - although most of the time each had been hidden away behind locked doors. The role of Christian, as we know, went to Ewan McGregegor and it is very likely, as Jake has suggested, that Heath and Jake were too young then for the role. Today, director Baz Luhrmann has been talking about those auditions:
'Dear Heath Ledger, (he had) incredible scenes with Nicole. Because at one stage, Christian was very young, he was a younger guy, and then I was aware of Ewan but I didn't know if he could sing. Jake should do a musical. He's a wonderful actor, but (he has a) great voice, tremendous voice. He sang some (Stephen) Sondheim for me, complicated singing, great voice. When is he going to guest on Glee?' Now there's a thought...
And finally...
New Eyes for the Needy has posted pictures from its Silent Auction at the end of March this year. These pictures herald from the time when there was a little bit more hair on Jake's head than there might be now.
Includes pictures from IHJ and links. Many thanks to BBMISwear for help with bits of the post :-)
The day is here - Source Code is released today in the UK and US and is set to sweep across the rest of the globe in the coming days and weeks. This means that I could very well me talking to myself this afternoon because I'm hoping that a good proportion of you have your bums on theatre seats. But to keep you entertained, hopefully, while you wait, here are some more updates to go with the videos of Good Morning America and Regis and Kelly, which I posted late last night in the post below. The latter featured a rather romantic moment and, at a glamorous red carpet screening in NYC last night, Jake Gyllenhaal talked some more about how he gets involved in affairs of the heart.
As for the NYC screening, there are pictures in this post, which show that Jake and Duncan Jones have more than a love of scifi and making cracking movies in common - yep, knitware.
Earlier in the evening Jake attended a silent auction for one of his most well-known good causes, New Eyes for the Needy.
As you can imagine, release date brings with it lots more interviews. Here is one from MTV.
There are also lots of written interviews. The Independent featured a double-page spread on Source Code yesterday. This interview is both excellent and extremely spoilery and so click this link at your own risk. I have scanned the image from the paper.
These few little snippets are not spoilery but you'll want to read them: '"As giddy and innocent as Duncan is in his press, which I think is genuine and very wonderful and positive," ventures Gyllenhaal, "when he's on set he reminds me of someone like Ang Lee. He's quiet, he hardly says a word. He's strangely confident in this way where he allows people to be themselves and then ultimately you realise you're in his vortex! He really empowers his actors. I responded to his confidence as a visionary with Moon – I could feel it in that movie – and because I also have a certain amount of experience there was a real camaraderie between the two of us. Duncan and I had to be almost in sync because you see the story through the character I'm playing so if he made a choice I had to move with that choice, we couldn't really veer off each other's choices."'
'"Bottom line is that, as a director, Duncan feels like a contemporary but at the same time he's just as in charge as somebody like Ang Lee or David Fincher or Sam Mendes or anybody I've worked with which is a rare quality for a young film-maker on a second movie."'
"When I was first working, I would just take whatever I was cast for. But now, it's like I have to have 'that feeling'. I've done movies where I didn't have that feeling and I knew the audience didn't either. So every time I have that feeling, I know that I'm taking the audience along with me and they're gonna say, 'What's this about?' because I've made enough consistent choices that they go, 'It may be interesting what he's doing, let's check it out'. I just feel the responsibility to people who might go see it that there is something new in it. I respect the audience so much and I think it comes from growing up with storytellers. I watch movies a lot, I get feelings from movies, I love watching trailers, I love hearing directors, actors and everybody whose job has to do with movies".
'"A lot of times, the most wonderful, interesting movies are not exactly fun to make. One of the hardest processes I went through – and I'd say that every actor would agree on this – and which wasn't a tonne of fun was Brokeback Mountain. Yet we loved each other on that movie so much that we are all still close and we will be for the rest of our lives. Also if that movie would have been successful or not, financially or whatever, there was still something special about it, even though it didn't feel good at the time. So in accepting this role, working with Duncan, I wasn't sure if it would be fun but I knew it was gonna be rad! There's a mystery about Duncan that is totally original."'
'"I think everybody has time to fall in love when they're doing anything. I think there's always some time for that. But don't just take it from me, you should ask the presidents of countries if they have time to fall in love while they're trying to save the world."'
SheKnows has also interviewed the man it has found the sexiest alive (understandably). There's an interview at Flicksandbits. And a quick Q&A with the Daily Record reveals that Jake might like to use those eight minutes to alter things for the good for Abraham Lincoln.
So it's the Apple store tonight and more to come, no doubt, before the publicity train comes over to Europe. Do keep watching Duncan and Rodene's blog and Man Made Movies for further updates.
Many thanks to IHJ for the pictures, there are many more there.
After all the excitment of yesterday, I'm preparing to put my feet up while offering constructive tips to the England football squad and practising my French on the ref. But before all that I thought I'd knock a quick post into the back of the net and and warm up with Jake Gyllenhaal. First off, I just saw this video of Jake answering some more fan questions, this time in Canada, and one of the questions is from a WDW friend! I hope you're reading tonight - Congratulations Silver!
As we touched on in yesterday's post, Jake is now chair of the New Eyes for the Needy foundation, taking his charity work to a new level. Aside from helping to raise funds and awareness for this excellent charity, Jake also shows that even the most beautiful eyes to look at may be not be the best to look through. I was that freckly kid in thick ugly specs held together by tape and maybe Jake knows a bit of what that's like - but without the freckles. We have some more pictures from Jake's visit to the charity on 24 May. You can see more here and learn more about the charity here.
'"Jake has been a great advocate for New Eyes for several years now," said Susan Dyckman, Executive Director of New Eyes for the Needy. "He has been instrumental to New Eyes’ fundraising through his help in gaining foundation grants - and with his celebrity, he has raised national awareness of New Eyes by promoting our cause in magazine profiles."' Excellent news - being a successful (and hot) actor can be fun, as Jake has said on many occasions through the PoP extravaganza, but it can also have huge benefits.
Talking of Jake's eyes, as is my wont to do on frequent occasions, their lack of vision has caused Jake a bit of trouble on occasion. Jake told Irish Examiner about his love of running: 'Any city or any place in the world that I have an opportunity to work, whenever I land, I always go out and run for a long time and eventually find my way back. I’ve never really encountered anything dangerous, but I have definitely gotten lost. I went out for a run in Morocco and decided to run straight into the desert, I rubbed my eye and my contact lenses fell out! I have really bad eyesight and so I can only see out of one eye. This was literally like a scene out of a movie – there I was lost in the middle of the desert until a little Berber kid found me and took me back home.’
If there should be a PoP 2, Jake neds to have a satnav fitted before he's let loose in that desert. Either that, or a team of volunteer escorts needs to be assembled.
Many thanks to Carol for the Irish Examiner and its article on Jake called 'Game boy'. Here is some more: ‘It’s a very weird thing for me, but I was starting to feel as I got older that I’ve done enough work. I thought I’m tired of taking myself so seriously. There’s a sense of like ‘let’s just have a good time’. If I were to go back to the eight year old in me, he would probably say to do the Prince of Persia. This movie was like awakening the kid in me and it feels more like me than ever.’
‘I really want to be in a musical and I definitely want to reinvent the idea of what a musical is and to bring a modernity to it, like what Once achieved. I would like to retell the story of Hans Christian Andersen. I’ve just finished two smaller movies – I don’t know how you can get much bigger than The Prince of Persia – but these are stories I want to tell. One is with Anne Hathaway that Ed Zwick directed and the other is with Duncan Jones who directed Moon.’
‘What we wanted to do was create a totally separate story and base most of the action from the video game in a sense of reality. One day on the set where I was jumping from pillar to pillar cutting the horses off their reins and at the very end the stunt guy did this incredible flip backwards and landed on his feet forwards. Jerry was on set and I remember him saying ‘that looks cool, but I don’t understand why he did that ornate flip’. ‘If you go back and look at Super Mario Brothers, the adaptation from the game to the movie, those performances and those stories I don’t think were too true to the game and they didn’t have enough courage to go their separate way.’
‘I now have perspective behind and in front of me. I have enough to regret and I also have stuff to look forward to. I consider there to be a huge separation between my work and my life and my family. These are things that I want to protect and that I care deeply about in my heart. Ultimately, although I love audiences and their responses to things, I know that those people love me and will be there for me, no matter what. My work I love, but I am beginning to get a sense of humour about it, because I don’t need to take any of it that seriously.’
So now, it's about time to settle down with Jake and watch England vs USA. Fortunately, no lasting damage was done when I accidentally set fire to my match-snack tortilla chips this afternoon, proving true yet again that age-old adage: 'when the oven ring is turned on, don't put a bag of tortila chips on it'. So who do we want to win....?
[Updated Update] We can ask Jake a question! 'This Saturday, Nov. 21, Moviefone is excited to host Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire for an Unscripted interview where they'll be asking each other questions submitted by you. Ask them anything you'd like, just make sure you do it before Thursday, Nov. 19 (don't forget to include your first name and where you live). Then check back here on Monday, Nov. 30 to see if your question made the cut. Good luck!' Ok then, wouldn't it be great if one of us was to put a question and have Jake answer it? If you have any ideas, see you in the WDW comments!
[Update]A little tweet has just informed us that Jake is to host SNL once more, this time in Brothers Weekend (5 December). So! How can Jake possibly out perform his last time on the show, a show that has now slipped into legend? Note I'm not mentioning that this is show #666. Off to look for some confirmation...
Jake Gyllenhaal in InStyle December 2009: 'I've had really poor vision ever since I was a little kid - my mom first took me to the doctor because I was smacking into walls and every time my prescription changed, we gave my old glasses to New Eyes... What if, when I was young, my parents hadn't been able to afford my glasses? What would my life have been? Thankfully, my eyesight is something that I can take for granted. I want to try and help other people take theirs for granted as well.' With many thanks to Get Real for taking the time and trouble to scan the article for us, featuring a very hot Jake in Armani, with his own glasses - not to mention the most beautiful eyes.
Judging by the hair and beard, I wonder if this picture was taken a while ago, towards the beginning of this year, perhaps. This is such a good charity to support, speaking as someone who spent her school days wearing enormous glasses that matched the freckles, tied together with white tape and hope. Jake has spoken for New Eyes before.
Jim Sheridan is in Ireland this week and today it was announced: 'Six time Oscar® nominated Irish director Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father) will attend an exclusive Irish Film & Television Academy preview screening of his latest feature film ‘Brothers’ in Dublin on Thursday 19 November 2009. The acclaimed filmmaker will participate in a post screening Q&A with IFTA Academy Members.' While this is not the glamorous Irish premiere that Jim once mentioned (perhaps that will follow closer to the time of the film's release in Ireland), it is good news indeed to see some publicity on this side of the pond as well.
