WGA nominates Zodiac - and Jake on 'fulfilling a childhood fantasy'

Big congratulations to James Vanderbilt, author of the script for Zodiac. For this masterpiece, James has been nominated by the Writer's Guild of America. Of course, the Writer's Guild is also on strike and so it has cancelled the WGA event. The winners will be announced on 9 February and no ceremony will be held until after the end of the strike. I hope against hope that this may hint at an Oscar nomination or two. We'll know soon enough - the ballots are due in tomorrow (Saturday) at 5pm.


'It was just fun for me'

We've had some storms in the British Isles over the last couple of days, lashing rain and howling gales, which, as it ever does, puts me in the mood for The Day After Tomorrow. Now, I know this is the equivalent to some of you of what Proof is to me - ie, one of Jake's few bad choices - but try and put up with me because there's a corking video coming up. This was recorded I believe when Jake was in the UK for the premiere of the film and got artificially snowed on in Leicester Square, in the West End. Because the snow was fake, Jake didn't need Tom Hank's Aston Villa football scarf that Tom proudly wore to his own premiere in London the other night...


In this video, a very good-humoured Jake chats to an appreciative Brit about what he enjoyed about doing such a big popcorn movie. Jake likens the scene where he is chased by wolves on a Russian ship in the middle of NYC to scenes in some of his previous independent movies, 'I tend to play troubled kids', and jokes that if there had been no wolves in that scene it would have been entirely fitting for that other movie where he spent time chatting to a six foot rabbit.



Jake is also asked what his favourite scene is in the move: 'Probably almost every scene that I'm not in.' But Jake settles in the end, despite his enjoyment at seeing his own home town destroyed by tornadoes, on the aeroplane scene. Speaking for myself, that is one of the very few scenes in any of Jake's films where I look at Jake through fingers laced across my eyes - not a good flyer and I dislike peanuts.


At the same site, you can also watch a small feature on The Day After Tomorrow, which includes interviews on set with Jake and Dennis Quaid. With both videos you have to choose your desired internet speed (I recommend the middle setting).


When Jake was back in Canada, in Calgary, preparing to begin work on Brokeback Mountain and all that that involved, he had to fly off to LA and NYC to continue the publicity for this very different film. In LA, Jake revealed he'd watched one of my all time favourite movies (it has both Steve McQueen and Paul Newman in it, after all): 'I remember watching The Towering Inferno on DVD, but most of the disaster movies I grew up on were bad examples of the genre... Even if they weren't particularly good, I loved watching the big summer action movies. I'd be lying if I said I wanted to do The Day After Tomorrow for any other reason than fulfilling a childhood fantasy.'


Jake also looks back on the funny times filming the stunts, or trying to film the stunts, and how close he was to taking the role of Spider-Man: 'They definitely talked to me about Spider-Man... I would have done it if they had needed me but Tobey was able to do it after all.'


Some time ago I was wondering in the comments here what had happened to the boy, Arjay Smith, who played Jake's best friend in the film. I did find an interview with Arjay in which he talks about the experience of appearing in the blockbuster. He also reveals that one day one of the actors' trailers blew up! Otherwise, by the sound of it, everyone had a good time on the set and enjoyed the opportunities to run around: 'We’re running through this fake snow. I can’t remember what type of material they were using, but we’re just really running through the snow. Jake had to do a couple of stunts. They had to put him on a wire because he’s walking across a boat – a ship, actually – and so he was about 20’ high. He had to just get wired up, just for safety reasons. Not too much in the way of stunts, and we had our doubles just in case anything got a little hectic where they wanted us to run through very narrow spots. But we were running through the rain. I said I wanted to do a lot of it myself, running through the rain. It was just fun for me.'


Elsewhere, Dennis Quaid was asked what it was like to film with the young Jake: 'Jake is great. He's very smart, very funny and he's a really good actor. I think he's got a really great career ahead of him.'


And it turns out I'm not the only big Wet Sam fan about, Chloe Sevigny had this to say about Jake when she was interviewed about her role as Melanie in Zodiac: 'He’s a great actor. I mean, even in that end of the world movie that he did [The Day After Tomorrow], his performance in that was so subtle and made the movie so fun to watch, because you just wanted to watch this kid; you couldn’t take your eyes off of him. And he’s great. He’s had all these great roles, one after the other. And he’s a nice guy. He’s very boyish and he’s very charming.'


I was interested to discover that, back in June last year, Hillary Clinton hosted a charity LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) fundraiser event at the glamorous Hollywood home of Roland Emmerich, the director of, and force behind, The Day After Tomorrow. Roland wasn't able to attend himself. Just look at that home...


Includes pictures from IHJ.