LumberJake, CheeseCake Jake, LoveFilm LoveJake and a WDW Filmset Interlude

I hope you're sitting comfortably - we have a lot to get through this evening so no time for slacking, let's get on with it. First off, Jake Gyllenhaal is in New York City today and is he shaven? No. Is he on a train? Yes. 'I just rode the 1 train with Jake Gyllenhaal. Sporting a lumberjack beard.' I think from on, as long as the Face Pet lives, he shall be known as LumberJake. More on The Beard later in the post.


Love and Other Drugs draws slightly nearer and along with it comes more tales of its creation in The Pitt (aka Pittsburgh). Ms Blair recalled this today about her experience on the set of LAOD: '"In the world of extras, it was a step up," she said. She and another woman spent a day with a photographer taking Polaroid photos and wearing early 1990s clothing. She doesn't know where the pictures will be used, but she guessed they could appear as decorations in Ms. Hathaway's apartment. Later, she was an extra in a scene in a North Side cafe, and she spent the entire day sitting near Mr. Gyllenhaal and Ms. Hathaway. That was exciting, but the highlight, she said, was splitting a piece of cheesecake with Mr. Gyllenhaal at a meal that day for the cast and crew. "If nothing comes of it -- if you don't even see me in the movie -- it's totally worth it to have a chance like that," she said.' Source.


At this point I have two points to make - 1) I don't like cheesecake at all but 2) Jake, if you ever need anyone to share a cheesecake with I am willing to make the huge sacrifice of eating as much of it as you don't want because, as a Gyllenhaalic, I am selfless. But just don't offer me an artichoke. I have to draw the line somewhere.


LoveFilm LoveJake

LoveFilm have produced their top ten of Jake and it makes for some interesting reading and you may want to disagree with the choices - or omissions. The ten listed are: City Slickers, Donnie Darko, The Good Girl, The Day After Tomorrow, Brokeback Mountain, Jarhead, Zodiac, Rendition, Brothers, Prince of Persia. Full details here.


Clearly, it is impossible to confine Jake's best movies to a top ten list - and this problem is only going to get worse - BUT, if you have to have a top ten, should it include City Slickers at the cost of Moonlight Mile? And what about October Sky? And where's Bubble Boy and I can hear some people lamenting the rejection of Piilot. There is only one thing for it - don't confine Jake Gyllenhaal to a Top Ten. I'm sure I read that once in a medieval legal scroll.

Thank you to everyone who tweeted this to me today - it's great that you were thinking of me!


THE POLL

The Should Jake Shave poll is closed and the results are in! Please pardon me for a moment while I put on the white coat, protective feet coverings, laser pointy thing and flipchart...

178 people voted - a lot more people than are usually polled for anti-wrinkle cream and catfood surveys as you'll agree. This may come as a surprise to you but it seems most people want the Face Pet ritually slaughtered. To be scientific, 124 people or 69%. This actually came as a surprise to me. I thought it would be slightly higher - 99.9% for example. But 40 people, a whapping great 22% said no, don't shave, Jake!


Obviously, this group requires more detailed study and then it may be revealed that they all hail from the Cult of the Beard and live in the wilds and devour berries and squirrels and wear a belt of leaves around their nether regions. Instead of speaking with voices as we know them they 'caw caw' through the woods and birds and butterflies flock to them as one of their own.


4 voters (2%) cannot decide. Admittedly, if one has to have a beard it could be a lot worse as can be seen here.

An admirable 5% (or 10 voters) haven't even noticed that LumberJake has a beard. This is either a very good thing or a very bad thing, depending on their glasses subscription.


Jake has until Saturday to shave for his New Yorker on stage interview in NYC. He knows our thoughts, now there is nothing to do but wait. At some time the winds will drop, the waves will calm and the moon will shine through unbroken cloud. That time will come, my friends, and then we will look back on the Face Pet Epoch with the wisdom of advancing years and know that we had to go through it to get through to the other shaven side. And we will laugh and we will sing.


Right! That's the preamble over - on with the post!

You might think that most movies are filmed in Hollywood or Pittsburgh - but you would not be correct. Oxford is not just boatraces and gown-wearing students chucking flour, eggs and squid over other gown-wearing students. It has more filmcrews than you can shake a tourist at. I once saw Brad Pitt when I popped out for a sandwich. This week it became apparent that a certain movie may have moved in to town, X-Men - turning back the clocks by 50 years. It was something to do with the cranes, the big white trucks, the security, the catering lorries, the cameras and lights and the radio reports that gave it away. Bleeding Cool had a lot of success yesterday. I got to see them clear up - obviously a vital stage of the shoot.


And so, not having had any success there I went round a few corners, past a few more beautiful old buildings, and suddenly I was on another filmset. This time, Oxford had gone back in time by about 40 years and there was the beautiful, extremely talented and feisty Duffy (in changing coats) shooting her latest video. Having seen An Education film in Oxford it was rather nice seeing its theme singer in the town as well. It all makes a change from Harry Potter and murder mysteries.



Pictures from IHJ and WDW.

Jake Gyllenhaal's KFC turn back time dream and a Right Royal WDW interlude

It has most assuredly been one of those days - it started off with a reminder that Prince of Persia has done a lot more for Jake Gyllenhaal's fitness levels and body tone that it has done for mine. It is certainly possible that blogging about the Prince of Persia uses up far fewer calories than being the Prince of Persia. Nevertheless, it's good to see that Jake is back at the gym on a daily basis once more, getting us all fit and ready for the next adventure. The day continued with another Prince (see the interlude below).


The anticipation for Prince Charles entering the room today was motivated largely by intense heat, humidity, high heights and the most uncomfortable wooden slabs for seats. The anticipation for Jake Gyllenhaal entering the room is often coloured by stomach pains, a need to chant loudly, sharpie marks on your neighbour's shirt, sore feet and an out of body experience. Thanks to PoPsugar for sending me a link to another part of their 'Greatest fan' series from the LA PoP screening. This video shows what it was like for the audience waiting for Jake to arrive. I must say that this lot are very well behaved indeed.



I can't help thinking back to the time when I saw Jake walk out on stage in front of me in the theatre in Toronto and he almost tripped. It was edge of the seat stuff - deep worry and concern that he'd be all right. Then I saw Rendition and I swear I may as well have sat in front of a car commercial, I remembered so little about it.

Jerry Bruckheimer's company have just launched a YouTube channel and on it has gone a video from the Prince of Persia premieres and footage of Jerry's hand and foot ceremony. Jake looks starstruck - one feels that he has an inkling of what it's like to be starstruck. Maybe not. But he gives that impression.



I've done one post today already so I don't want to outstay my welcome but I want to post a link to this German interview in which Jake talks again, amongst many other subjects, about his shampooing and conditioning regime which, he reveals, took four and a half years to get him into PoP shape, and that he should apply for a job at l'Oreal. In Morocco 'they sometimes set up a bucket for me, so I could play with shampoo and conditioner.'

Jake also says that he's aware of some of the internet bad feeling against Jake for bringing the game hero to life: 'I've noticed too'. And he speaks about the chemistry with the feisty, lovely Gemma Arterton: 'On the first day on set she looked down at me and showed straight away that she was not impressed with me at all... I am an actor after all and spend at least 75% of the day in front of the mirror. That was a joke. The flirtation was natural between Gemma and me.'


When Jake is asked if he has ever been lost for words with a girl, as Dastan was before Gemma, he replies that it's all part of a boy's biology: 'I drew on my own experience fot the scene.' And on why Jake has done another blockbuster when, after The Day After Tomorrow he'd said that was a one off: 'Oh God, it's hard to live with all the things I said when I was 23, with no experience of the press. I'd now better be careful what I say.'

And to continue yesterday's cooking theme. If Jake could turn back time, 'I would turn back time to when 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' was still "Chicken Littles" - like "Chicken McNuggets", but with a lot of dough around the outside drum. That was my favorite dish when I was eight, but it was taken from me.' Count your blessings, Jake.


A Royal WDW Interlude

Today I popped down to the Sheldonian, Oxford University's stunning theatre built by Christopher Wren in the 1660s, to listen to Prince Charles commemorate the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies with a lecture on the relationship between the environment and Islam. He spoke for an hour, which was, to be honest, one of the longest hours of my life. However, it was enlivened by a girl in front of me fainting due to the heat and vertigo of being perched at the very top of a Restoration Chimney. I also got told off for taking pictures by a blue-rinse scary lady but, in my time old tradition of ignoring that kind of thing, I took a few anyway and dared her to come and get me - and then ran away.





Pictures from IHJ and WDW.

WDW's Oxford adventure - it was An Education

A strange thing happened on the way to the office this morning...

Little did I know when I set off for work this morning that I would be able to disprove the theory that a certain movie is only being filmed in locations beginning with W. Demonstrating (with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer) that it's a small world, I turned the corner by my office and saw a whole load of movie trailers, along with a double decker bus serving as a canteen. We're used to filmsets in Oxford (I've seen more movie stars here than I have in LA) and so I approached the security guard - the one with 'Manchester United FC' tattooed onto his neck - and asked what was going on. He said he didn't know if it was a movie or a TV show but it was called 'An Education'. You could have knocked me down with a feather.

To cut a long story short - well, I won't because I'm going to keep talking about it - several hours later, this is how it ended up. Me and Peter Sarsgaard - don't you think we look good together?


At lunchtime, having sat patiently at my desk as long as I possibly could, and dragging along a not-very-reluctant friend with me (who, being a glamorous sort, managed to get quite a bit of information from one of the movie roadies), I headed off to the trailers to find where the shoot was taking place. My friend learned that we had to go left, then right, then left, then right, then right again. This led us to one of Oxford's most familiar filming locations, the Radcliffe Camera, which, to be honest, was a disappointment to me as I thought it would be nice if crews looked elsewhere for a beautyspot as we have so many.



We went over and spent a very enjoyable hour watching one scene being rehearsed down an alley by Brasenose College. This scene featured two girls dolled up to their early 1960s' best, bouffants and all, leaning on a car, while student-types walked by. It was fascinating to see all the attention hair and wardrobe were getting - photographs were used to ensure that continuity was preserved in the arrangement of the hair. One of the girls had a lot of trouble with her shoes and she took them off whenever she could. Otherwse, there were extras passing by on foot or on bicycle, dressed as students would 40 years ago or so. To be honest, it was hard telling them apart from the observers, and I'm not kidding.



After work on this beautiful sunny day I headed back to the Camera (this is a beautiful round building which acts as a library as well as a favourite site for youngsters in centuries past to hurl themselves off the top of) and watched the preparation for a scene in which the young lovely young actress Carey Mulligan cycled past the Bridge of Sighs. She was accompanied by an extra, a student, whose friends were standing behind me and kept trying to put him off.




The sun was bright today and apparently there was too much sun in the shot and so they had to wait a few minutes before what the director called 'The Peter Shot'. That got my attention. I turned round and there was Peter standing by some old cars, by the Bridge of Sighs and an old newspaper stand. I took his picture and, because the filming was held up for the sun, I decided to walk over and say a few words to him, along the lines of how thrilled I was to see him and that I had seen him in Toronto and got his autograph.


Peter was very kind, shaking my hand, and - completely staying in character, speaking with an impeccable English accent (it was weird, I have to tell you, to not hear the beautiful voice we're so used to from Peter) - said how great that was. I asked if I could take his picture and he suggested we could do better than that and he called a guy over to take our picture together and I got an arm put round me and he got one round him. I asked him if he was in Oxford for longer and he said for only one day. I told him how pleased I was that it was so sunny for him and that he'd made my perfect day. He laughed, shook my hand again, and I went off. I couldn't beat that moment.

So they're only in Oxford for one day. I tried but failed to find out where they are tomorrow but really I don't think I care too much. Oxford is a beautiful city, especially when it's bathed in sun as it was today, but today it looked even more stunning than usual.



I realise I have written a whole post and not mentioned Jake Gyllenhaal's name. Oops - no I haven't. Thank you, Peter, for being so kind to me even though you were in character and had your mind on work. You were lovely to me in Toronto and you were just wonderful today. To say you made my day would be as banal as saying Monday follows Sunday - you absolutely made my day. Thank you!


By the way, please take pity on me - I wasn't expecting to be photographed with an international movie star today! All pictures by WDW.