Jake on Brokeback Mountain: If there's love, that's all that matters

Today may be a wet, dull and rather chilly day in England, nothing very special at all one would think, but to Brokies the world over 24 June IS a special day. Today marks the 40th anniversary of the day that Annie Proulx brought Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar out of the wilderness and back together for their reunion. This has inspired me on a very enjoyable task - to furtle through my collection of Brokeback bits and pieces to look for little treasures.


Brokeback Mountain was a highly anticipated piece of cinema, not only in the US but also in the UK, where enough time had passed since the release of the film in America that expectations were soaring of a controversial and unique depiction of love where most of us, including the protagonists, would never expect it. It showed us how love could be found high up in the mountains and meadows, in glorious wide open scenery, but that it could still smoulder on in small towns, depressed homes and cheap motels. This love affair was almost like breathing - like taking in a big breathe of clean, cold, country air and holding it in for as long as possible.

'Cowboys in Love' was a popular subject for the media, not least because of the leads - both beautiful and interesting actors - and the director, whom, one may have thought, couldn't have seemed further away from America's West. Oscar expectations were high and so coverage was intense. Today, I'm focusing on one example of that interest, found in The Arts and Books section of the Daily Telegraph (Saturday 10 December 2005).


The Telegraph article focuses on an interview with Ang Lee. In these early days after the film's release, Ang seems unaware of how successful Brokeback Mountain would be, financially and socially. He is asked if he was worried about the film's gay element hurting its commercial success: "With this kind of budget, I don't feel much pressure. It was very modest - just over $11 million. It's a love story I believe in. I think it will make its money back, and you just feel lucky to have made this movie." As for why he made the film: "I read the last paragraph of the short story and I got choked up. It's a story I didn't quite understand, but because I got choked up I felt there must be something there."


The interview concludes with an interesting and amusing titbit about how Ang works with American as opposed to English actors: "There's no question that American actors are the most comfortable with cameras. English actors are brilliant with speech and dialogue, but they don't like it if you move your camera around. It freaks them. If you put your camera into a position where it seems it's spying on English actors, they seem to thuink it's rude!"


The Telegraph article is under no illusion about one of the main reasons for Brokeback Mountain's success: Jake Gyllenhaal. 'There is something of the old-time movie cowboy about Jake Gyllenhaal. Tall, muscular, with blue eyes and an intense, deadpan stare.' I can feel my heart beating faster...

Some familiar quotes, and others less familiar, from Jake are used to show Jake's path to Brokeback Mountain and how he made Jack Twist his own. "Yeah, I grew up very, very well-off in many ways, but that doesn't stop me being angry and being able to use the anger in a movie, I hope." During filming of Brokeback, "If I walked into the make-up trailer first thing in the morning and realised Heath was being a pain because he was exhausted and I was a little pissed off with him because of that, then I would take that into our love scenes. I just decided that whatever I was feeling, I was going to incorporate the real stuff into the scenes."


This is a love that refused to die and Jake was able to draw on a whole array of emotions: "What's special about Brokeback Mountain is that it says that whether it's heterosexual, homosexual, if there's love, that's all that matters, and it will last, no matter how scrutinised or abused it is." His own relationship had recently ended in whatever circumstances: "I'm 24 years old and my relationships are going to be incredibly dramatic just by the nature of what they are. I'm at an age where I don't know totally who I am, so how can I know who I am in a relationship? Society gives us these ideas of what love is supposed to be and how we're supposed to act and the movies say very simply, guy gets girl, guy loses girl, guy gets girl again, and I have subscribed to that idea and I think a lot of young people of my generation have done the same and have been led to a lot of unhappiness."


Includes pictures from Focus Features and IHJ.

Within these rules are amazing discoveries - Jake Gyllenhaal on David Fincher

On 23 May, ITV4 ran a programme on The Making of Zodiac, unfortunately in the wee hours of the morning. Earlier I posted some pictures from the programme, which, although squished, gave some idea of what it was like, at times, on the set of Zodiac and demonstrated how Jake Gyllenhaal, undoubtedly a comparative youngster, found within himself the ability to transform into this almost emotionally and physically compacted character.


Elements of Jake's interview for this programme, as well as extra bits, can be found dotted around, including here, but this time they are accompanied by wonderful pictures of a tired-looking, rather dishevelled and dishy Jake in purple. Definitely a plus! As David Fincher says to the cast during the rehearsals of filming the below scene in the Chronicle office: "Graysmith's presence in this room is only because it's incumbant upon the editorial cartoonist to be part of the discussion of what the politics of the paper are and where the paper is leading. But he's [pointing at Jake] obviously the kid."




David explains what it is that interests him, and doesn't interest him, about the Zodiac killer: "I'm not interested in exploiting this... Part of the reason people are going to see this movie is because people got killed - and that's unfortunate that that's dramatic. But that's not what my movie's about. My movie's not about aggrandising a mass murderer. I don't want to see a guy at home sharpening his knives. I'm not interested in that character. I'm interested in all the ancilliary people who were kind of left in the wake and how they picked up and moved on when there was no satisfaction."



Jake continues about the draw of working for Fincher and how, although gruelling, the constant re-takes and attention to detail were a vital part of immersing oneself into the portrayal of an obsessed individual "At first, I didn't know anything about the story - I didn't know the Zodiac. I didn't know about Robert Graysmith. But I did know about David Fincher. There's a sense in his movies - an interesting numbness in them and I think that comes from him - there's something in him and I think his process brings that out too. The way he does it forces you into the sort of state, and within that state is a David Fincher movie... It was gruelling in terms of the mindset you had to be in, particularly with David, he does lots of takes."



Chloe Sevigny agrees: "David wanted everything to be just rght, everyone had to be in at the top of their game and make sure every prop was reset in the exact place and the cameraman had to be right. He expects the best out of everyone in the crew and you have to really step it up when you're around him and be really sharp." Jake agreed: "He knows what he wants. It's sort of like working on Shakespeare - you have to stay within the parameter - you have to stay within the rules but, within those rules are, I think, amazing discoveries."



Jake also had to find a way, not only to deal with David Fincher's exhausting style of direction, but also with Robert Graysmith's motivation, which, at first, it appears as if Jake couldn't understand. After all, this is, unusually, a man who is prepared to put his family on the line because of an obsession which is not entirely motivated as one would expect. "I discovered that Robert Graysmith's obsession had less to do - when you're working on it as an actor - less to do with me obsessing about the facts, and why he found it so fun. Because I think that Robert found it actually fun. I think that's what's hard for people to understand - that this man enjoyed searching for this person. Whereas a cop would have done it because it's his job, or a journalist would have done it as his job, he really had fun!"

Robert Graysmith is under no illusions himself, well aware of what the Zodiac cost him: "I guess I'm the kind of person that doesn't like to give up. Once I have my teeth into a project I like to stick with it. You know, Dave Toschi gets a case every three weeks but I got ONE and I've got to give it my all, even if it takes ten or fifteen years."



The programme includes footage of the scene in which Robert Graysmith takes Toschi out for lunch - the scene when Graysmith first unveils himself to Toschi as a man obsessed. The footage shows repeated analysis of one or two lines that Ruffalo has to speak, while Jake looks on, drinking his coffee, not a little bewildered. Jake says to Fincher on his character's motivation: "It's exciting! This is Dave Toschi - this is Zodiac! But I also know that..." and Fincher interrupts: "He is the greatest thorn in his side."



Off Topic Rant: Umbrage

I want to take this opportunity to express some umbrage at Jake being called a 'douchebag' simply because he requested that a waiter should ask a woman to stop staring at him in a restaurant in Beverly Hills a few days ago. Apparently, according to this questionable code, it may not be all right to take photographs of a celebrity while he's eating, but it's perfectly acceptable to stare at him to the point where he becomes uncomfortable and then feel like you've been 'slapped in the face' because Jake has asked politely that you stop. I don't think that being a filmstar means that you have to live a life - especially while eating inside a restaurant for heaven's sake - without the manners and respect that are due to us all. Rant over...

Thanks to a DC friend for straightening these photos.

Jake out and about in LA, 21 June 2007 - sans jeans

And the photographs of Jake Gyllenhaal continue - wonderful! Yesterday, on 21 June, Jake was seen walking about in LA. As always, the phone is at hand but this time there is disappointment for The Jeans Club, which has been expressing itself so eloquently in recent comments - The Jeans are being washed so that we can all enjoy them again soon.





Whenever I'm about to post a 'serious' feature, Jake turns up again! Must be a hint.

Photographs from IHJ.

Jake looking the part at a Beverly Hills hotel, 20 June 2007

On 20 June, Jake Gyllenhaal was photographed at a hotel in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. I can only imagine how much film industry business is conducted in such hotels and so I for one am keeping my fingers crossed that this is a sign of decisions being made and of future great things for Jake. And yet again Jake shows the importance of other things in his life, with the phone back at his ear. Is that the Rufus Wainwright shirt again? Above all else, I am struck by how beautiful Jake looks in these pictures.





Remember to click on the photos. Pictures from IHJ.

Rendition trailer - Jake's blue eyes glow

No, I'm sorry I don't have the trailer itself, that is still closely underwraps at the distributors, but what we do have is our first description of it, written by one lucky film critic. This is good timing, as I think it's safe now to mention Jake's co-stars. This is what the fortunate and appreciative viewer has to say:

"Yes, I got to see what looked like a finished trailer for Jake Gyllenhaal's next movie - talk about making a boy's night. The trailer starts, though, with setting up Reese Witherspoon and her Middle Eastern husband's happy life, before he's taken aside in an airport and a black hood's thrown over his head and he disappears into some secret prison where they take off all his clothes and tie him to a chair. Reese, big bellied pregnant, and her other child are waiting for her husband at the airport, he doesn't show, she goes to Peter Sarsgaard for assistance. Meryl Streep is The Man, i.e. Goverment, here and she looks terrific and has what appears to be a Southern accent going; her role, at least from the trailer, was reminding me of what she did in The Manchurian Candidate...



Jake doesn't show up until like halfway through the trailer, with his hair all slicked back and one specific shot that made his blue eyes glow and my knees go wobbly - the trailer builds to this crescendo of Reese wailing about where's my husband and Meryl staring iciliy and Jake grabbing the husband by the throat and yelling that they need to know why he made some phone calls - it was all very dramatic. I kept waiting for Angelina Jolie in brown-face to slide into frame, though. But everybody looked on their game and Gavin Hood impressed me with Tsotsi and... Jake... so I'm sold."


This sounds like a completely different Jake, one free of the physical containment he felt playing Graysmith. I am very ready to see Jake in a dramatic and controversial role of this kind, which I am sure he will dominate, and I'm excited to think how Jake will convey his character's life-changing conflicts on the big screen, complete with those glowing blue eyes and slicked back hair.

I don't want to leave Peter out of this. After enjoying the on-screen relationship between Jake and Peter in Jarhead, I am more than ready to see them share a film again (whether they have screen time together or not).


Includes pictures from IHJ.

Jake Gyllenhaal stands out in a crowd

An airport full of the bustle of people, most with their minds elsewhere, and there, right in the middle of it all, is Jake, minding his own business (while his minder loses her business), standing out in a crowd.



I suppose if you're being escorted through an airport, you don't expect your escort to get you lost, which very much looks like what happened in new photos from Jake's walk through LAX on 18 June. Jake appears to have taken it in good humour, although with some bemusement, and I suppose being taken up and down every escalator in an airport is good exercise after sitting on a plane for five hours.





Photographs from IHJ.

Jake's reading, Maggie goes Italian and Heath 'Don't Mess With the Joker' Ledger

With Jake back in Los Angeles, I feel a little hesitant to mention the possible Farragut North project. However, if I talk quietly maybe it will be all right... I want to mention it because further details have emerged about the reading and about the staging of the play. The theatre newsletter, the Playbill News, has more information on who else took part in the reading with Jake. The other names are Denis O'Hare (a Tony winner in 2003 for Richard Greenberg's play Take Me Out and also a Tony nominee in 2004 for his part in Stephen Sondheim's Assassins), Mark Plum, Jessica Hecht and Alison Pill. The reading was directed by James Lapine who is a Pulitzer Prize winner, who also has three Tony Awards in his collection.


Farragut North, which is named after a subway station in Washington DC located near to K Street where a number of lobbyists work, is set to be the third of four productions taking place during the 2007-2008 season at the Second Stage Theatre (307 West 43rd Street, just off Eighth Avenue in NYC).


Talking of directors, which I wasn't really, it's rumoured that David Fincher is to appear at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival that takes place on 12-14 August this summer. The aim of the gaming festival is to focus on the 'cultural and business impact that games are having on the public, entertainment companies and on more traditional media such as film and television.' Other guests include Stephen Berkoff and Stuart Beattie, the screenwriter of Pirates of the Caribbean.


Meanwhile, Maggie, Peter and Ramona are still doing their bit for the Gyllenhaal campaign to eat at every restaurant in the United States. My favourite guide to the Batman filming, the Chicago Sun-Times, reports that Maggie and her family were spotted lunching on pasta at Cafe Spiaggia, which, apparently, serves the best tiramisu and ice cream in town. Another one to add to the list.

This leads me to the Joker, who as we all well know is played by Heath Ledger. The first eye witness description of the Joker has made it to the net. This is what they say - it's a bit spoilery so don't read unless you know you'll have forgotten it by July 2008.


'I. saw. the. JOKER! He comes out of an elevator with 4 or 5 of his masked minions, two with actualy plastic masks and guns, and the others had painting on their faces. The Joker does not look as grotesque as he did in the photo on the harveydent site. He has long hair with green highlights in it, he was wearing a long purple jacket with a blue sport coat under it, purple gloves and I regret to say I forget the color of his pants. But anyways, he comes in shooting and people are being hurt and killed left and right, he's looking for Harvey Dent (his first line says so). As Joker is hitting people along the way (he's slapping extras!), comes in Batman in that new suit that was in Entertainment Weekly this week. They fight, it's all long and drawn out and during this, JOKER DOES HIS LAUGH. It was high pitched, unique and really badass. Not exactly like Nicholson's, but who the hell can pull that off? It was awesome, just leave it at that. After all that, the Joker grabs Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhal) and begins his escape.'

Heath Ledger grabbing Maggie Gyllenhaal - this has got to be worth waiting for!

Includes photographs from Celebrity Baby Blog and IHJ.