Jake - 'I was actually bookended by Tony Blair and Mick Jagger'

After a relatively traumatic night, from which I'm still warming up, it feels good to revisit the summer and feel the warmth of sun and blue skies, a time when Jake was lost to public view on Martha's Vineyard. MV isn't just a summer home for Jake, it's also the place where much of Moonlight Mile took shape - it was at MV that Jake and Moonlight Mile director, writer and producer Brad Silberling came together because, completely coincidentally and fortuitously, Brad bought the house next door to the Gyllenhaals - they were 'destined to work together'.


Brad found Jake to be just like him, 'it was eerie'. Brad met Jake when Jake was just 18 and Jake grew stubble to keep Brad interested in employing him. Jake was too young but as the film took shape Jake grew older until at last Brad admitted to himself, 'It's his film, let's figure out the rest.' Jake agrees that 'the similarities were pretty staggering in a way.'

In this interview, recorded for Mvyradio in 2003, Jake and Brad reminisce about the origins of Moonlight Mile, the reasons for Jake's casting as Joe Nast, the meaning of MV to them both and, above all, the extraordinary soundtrack. As Jake says: 'I can't stop playing the soundtrack in my car, I cannot stop playing it. I stole it from Brad and I play the Travis track over and over and over and over again.'


At the very heart of this movie - an 'emotional biography' - is its music. Jake says that each day they would walk around with an earpiece playing the sounds of the film - 'I'd walk down the street with Van Morrison playing.' According to Brad, the music was another performer in the film. The song Moonlight Mile, by the Rolling Stones, is 'a pivotal song... that binds the love story in our film', so says Brad. It's 'a classic road song' and 'Jake does a beautiful job playing a character who has to choose to sort of speak his emotional truth or not.'


Brad recalls that he flew over to London to see Jake in This Is Our Youth and that, while in London, Jake had met the bassist of Travis. Jake describes that it had been 'at an awards show. I made a fool out of myself in London. I was the only American amongst a lot of Brits' ('surprise, surprise' interrupts Brad), 'I was actually bookended by Tony Blair and Mick Jagger... I don't know what I was doing there,' Jake says, '...You guys have great food.' Very true, Jake!


The interview closes by remarking that Jake could be seen in three films at that time: Moonlight Mile, The Good Girl and Lovely and Amazing, all with incredible actors. Jake says 'They're all about human beings, kind of what I'm drawn to, the real, everyday goings on and sort of the magnitude of these things can be huge, are huge, blowing things out of proportion and huge...'

Jake's asked what he's going to do next on MV: 'I'm going to do a little gardening, maybe go to the beach, take a proper vacation and play some basketball with some friends at the end of the day.' Sound good to me.


Pictures from IHJ.