Jarhead's 'shades of grey' - Jake, Peter and Sam talk about making a war movie

As it's a cold and dark winter's afternoon/evening, I thought you might like something longer to listen to and hopefully enjoy. This is the podcast (link at the end), all 32 minutes of it, of the Variety Screening for Jarhead held in November 2005 at the Arclight Theatre in Hollywood, featuring Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard and Sam Mendes (some of the pictures in this post were taken at the same screening and Q&A event). There are gems here, both in terms of what Jake, Peter and Sam say but also for the light their comments - especially Sam's - throw on the process that goes into making a war movie to stand the march of time.


When Jake is asked if he met Anthony Swofford before filming, he replies: 'Sam had devised a little meeting of sorts, about two weeks into the rehearsal I think. I hadn't met or talked with Tony before then. And Sam kind of came up one day and said 'Y'know, tomorrow we're going out to lunch with Tony' [laughs] and then I didn't really think about it. And then 'Oh, we're going out for lunch with Tony today' and I had a panic attack and sat at lunch [laughter] staring at my food and...'

Sam: 'If you know Tony, he's not a talkative individual, he's very private and Jake didn't talk either so they both sat opposite each other staring at each other! And I thought this is a disaster!'


Jake (laughing): Sam talked the whole time! 'Isn't that right, Tony? Right, Jake? Right?' It was an interesting and awkward moment but Tony and I did talk. He came to rehearsal after lunch and we talked after that. Then he came back to rehearsal the next day and we talked a lot about just the idea of Tony Swofford not being Swoff.'

This is interesting - the distinction between Swofford as he is himself, as he wrote himself in his book and the Swoff who came out of the screenplay adapted by Vietnam veteran William Broyles Jr, or Bill. Jake: 'I think he's a sort of an amalgamation of the experiences that Tony's had and myself and my experiences with the film and how I responded to those artificial experiences that were put in front of me, that were representations of the real ones he went through. So - I didn't talk to him through the whole shoot. And Sam actually said to us after the first read through, he said 'It's now time time to put down the book and to not refer to it again. This is going to be our journey and it's going to become something different than what the book is.' And we all did and I did that with Tony and he had the courage and the wisdom to know that someone like Sam was making this movie and was going to do his story the best service.' And I didn't see him until a month ago when we did a photoshoot for Entertainment Weekly and really I love him. And even the short time we sat down the other night and watched the movie together and both sweated it out!'


Another fascinating bit of information to come out of the Q&A session is that the final shot of Swoff standing looking out of the window of his den was to have been of President Bush (Jr) addressing the marines. But Sam decided against it because he wanted the film to have the longevity and resonance of a war film that would never date and it would lose this by making reference to a current situation - or political leader. It's a deliberately subjective view of the war, avoiding 'God shots' (those views from above) and showing war in its 'shades of grey'.


Jake is asked by a member of the audience if being aware of a real war going on in Iraq had made a difference. 'I have two close friends and one who's in the marines and one who's in the navy. And I was really aware - they all thought it was hilarious that I was playing this part - I think we were superaware... I think we just throughout it continued to recognise the artifice in what we were doing and tried as hard as we could to respect the current situation but also realise this war is - that we portray in the movie - though it's hard to see - is a different war at a different time that we do have some perspective on and, for me, it was just really important that, and I think I probably speak for Peter too, we just respect what was going on and what is continuing to go on. That this is a very separate entity from what reality is.'


Jake describes in detail the scene in which he sits in the circle of dead bodies and leaves footprints that are real and not effects added later. 'We had to redo that like sitting there while they took one of those things that they - I don't even know what they are - one of those blowers, and blowing it and blowing the black sand over the sand and noone could walk anywhere - it was hard in those days! Really, really hard! [Peter laughing] I admire those film actors, those filmmakers!'


The Santa hat: 'We joked with Jim Deaver, our military advisor, when I was doing the scene with the Santa cap when we're all partying in the tent, he would always come up to us and say 'No, no, no, you don't wear your pants like that, that's not how it goes, you don't hold that like that, we didn't do that!' So, whenever we did scenes that were absurd, we'd always joke with them and I would always do my impersonation [funny voice] - 'You would never wear your Santa cap like that! That would never... we would never do it like that! We would wear it on the side! or like with a different tie! Not the bow tie!' I mean to the T, I mean to the point where we're wearing our dress blues and he's adjusting a medal. He looks at us like we're so, a sloppy mess, and 'no no no no no' and that he adjusts it and I have no idea how it looks any different and he goes 'that's the way it should be'.


And there's some golden Peter moments! Peter speaks about the emotion of making the film and that he didn't realise he was feeling some of the things in the movie until after it was done: 'It's like you don't realise someone's standing on your foot until after they step off of it.' Jake pipes in: 'Some people realise people are standing on their feet...'

Peter says that, as important as it was to speak to marine advisers about their experiences, it was also invaluable to listen to their dreams, remembering one telling him about how he dreamed of owning land with old trees: 'These guys are everyone'. Sam recalls that Peter had wanted his character to smoke as he 'wanted to smoke on a daily basis!' But the consultants all said no. However, Peter finally found a marine who said his character could smoke, two weeks down the line - 'he was a great marine that guy!' And in the scene where he was so desperate to fire his gun, Peter really was - 'I was going crazy by that point!'


There was a huge amount of improvisation on the film, made possible because of the four weeks of rehearsal, which enabled the actors to feel comfort and support in their roles. Apparently, the whole scene at the beginning between Jake and the drill sergeant, from 'what are you looking at with your baby blues?' through to being made to do press ups was a complete improvisation. Sam describes it in these terms: it's like 'filling the gas tank of the actors with as much gas as possible but don't let them ignite the engine until you start rolling the cameras.'

The film also includes quotes from other war films because, as Sam says, soldiers learn of war not from war but from war movies - as a group, soldiers are expert in war films and quotes from them form part of their language. Music and film colour their experiences and a great anti-war film or singer can be transformed into a pro-war movie or anthem. Films and music have so many meanings and these are affected by time.



So, if that's whetted your interest, here's the rest. As always, I can but trust this works for the vast majority of readers (including Twisted Logic who appears to have an anti-Jake device on her computer).

Here is a new link to the podcast (January 2012).

The other side of the camera

Here, Anthony Swofford talks about the process of creating and filming Jarhead: 'Late in the summer Jake Gyllenhaal was cast for the role of Swoff, and I was pleased with this development. I'd loved Donnie Darko and The Good Girl, and I felt that his onscreen presence was such that he would capture the controversial bloodlust and existential angst of the young jarhead going to war. I visited the set during the last week of rehearsal and met Jake. He was committed to playing the role authentically and intensely. It was bizarre to meet the other actors and guess who would be playing whom: for certain, they all looked like young jarheads. One morning while waiting for Sam to call a meeting, the actors joked back and forth and insulted one another, and I felt like I was among some of the same men I'd served with--nervous, hungry, lonely and committed to a cause. I visited some of the sets, including my high school bedroom. On watching the swirl of activity, sets being built, young actors being thrashed by Jim Deaver, Broyles looked at me and said, "Crazy to think all of this came from a book you wrote alone in a room, sitting in your underwear." '


'After a few scenes I got used to an actor on screen being called Swofford. I recognized the story of Jarhead being told, the intense narrative tale and the more subtle and nuanced psychological and metaphysical storytelling strands that punctuate and intensify the war experience for Swoff and his cohorts. War in the real world is about winning, but war in art is about the expansion of feeling and the explosion of emotion, meaning and beauty.'


In this interview (with Tony and Bill Broyles), Tony describes what it was like seeing the film for the first time: 'Oh yeah, it was bizarre. The first time I saw the film was here in New York and Sam and Walter Murch (editor) were sitting behind me and it was truly bizarre to hear Jake called 'Swofford' and 'Swoff' and see him get his head shoved into a chalk board, but very quickly I fell into watching the story telling. It was like there were three versions of me sitting there in that seat, there was the writer of the work, the person who had that past, and who I am now. I'm aware that now that I'm exposed in a different way, that it's harsh and it's not always attractive. But it's always honest.'


Includes pictures from IHJ.