Jake - 'I'm floating in a pan of giant cranberries'

Yesterday, I did a post about The Day After Tomorrow and Jake battling the elements. As a followup to that post, here is a brief video which shows the making of one of my favourite scenes in that film - the phonecall scene, with Jake immersed in a rising flood of water. [You may have to click on the video a couple of times to get it moving.]



The interview I posted yesterday, about Jake's aspiration at that time to play a leading man, made me think today about earlier in Jake's career and the certain 'something' that he brought to roles such as Joe Nast in Moonlight Mile and the impression that Jake made on other, far more experienced actors. In December 2002, Jake was featured in People's Sexiest Man Alive issue, accompanied by this quote from Moonlight Mile co-star Susan Sarandon: 'He's gorgeous, and he's got those big dreamy eyes. A lot of eyes can't offer 'I love you' in a convincing way. With Jake, you believe he has the capability and the depth to love. That's awesomely attractive.'


In 2002, a wise-cracking, 'good-natured', 'reflexively smart-alec' Jake Gyllenhaal ('Maybe it's because he's 21') was interviewed in Toronto by the San Francisco Chronicle about Moonlight Mile and they wanted to know if he is indeed 'the thinking woman's younger man': "Yes, very smart women are throwing themselves at me in a very smart way,... Let's just say the position offers itself up some very nice opportunities, euphemistically put. But then, the smart woman will be able to interpret that." But after reflection: "If it means I can find a lovely, lovely woman to spend my life with, and she has a good mind, then it sounds good."


Jake doesn't seem so happy with comparisons between his own role in Moonlight Mile and the young Dustin Hoffman's in The Graduate, although his high regard and respect for Dustin is pretty clear: 'Hoffman's also in the room, being interviewed at another table. Gyllenhaal, who beams in Hoffman's presence, shouts across the room to his co-star: "She says I remind her of you!" "You're taller, you're better-looking, and when I played your character, I was 10 years older," Hoffman shoots back, without missing a beat.' And it was with the encouragement of Dustin, that Jake took to the boards of the West End.


A wonderful article, in the New York Times Magazine, from September 2003 when Jake had just finished filming The Day After Tomorrow, really brings this young, playful and thoughtful Jake to life. This Jake does everything fom complain about the size of his big head (24 inches), eat meatballs with a toothpick, dance around Ikea to Walking on Sunshine, to collapsing in a box of red rubber balls - 'I'm floating in a pan of giant cranberries'. Jake chose the location of the interview (Ikea at Burbank) because: ''I like Ikea because it feels like the potential of a home,' says Gyllenhaal, who remains undaunted by the actor's itinerant life. 'I've just been roaming the land. I live in a storage bin and eat at Ikea.''


And Jake's upfront and honest about his role as Sam Hall: ''It's not like I'm trying to disguise a movie that is basically a big-action film as some sort of political statement... I do believe that the environment sways and stagnates politics. I mean, if we were using alternative energy, obviously we'd have no interest in Iraq. Hopefully, people will leave the theater and go: 'I'm driving this enormous S.U.V. that guzzles gas, and there are only two people in the car with me every day, and I don't use it for anything else except to kind of look cool. Maybe I should get a hybrid car.' This is exactly what Gyllenhaal intends to do, when the lease on his current ride - a BMW station wagon - is up.'


And Jake's attitude to fame: 'Fame is being able to get into a restaurant... It doesn't inhibit what I do and the way I feel. Needing attention is a destructive, really unhappy way to live. If you watch the ebb and flow of these things, it's like a few seconds in what I intend to be an incredibly long career.'


At this stage in his career, Jake was still keen to play the role of Shakespeare's Romeo: 'I am chomping at the bit... There are periods of time in your life where you can truly and honestly pull certain characters off. Romeo happens to fit right now. I have never performed Shakespeare, but I have an innate feeling that this role and I will get along just fine. I've outgrown quirky - on to the Romantics.'


Famously, Jake turned down the leading role in Bertolucci's Dreamers: 'I'm not shy about taking my clothes off, but if I'm going to see pictures of myself naked on the Internet, I would love to feel like there was a reason for it, that it was of service to the story... [In the past, he would choose] characters that were more screwed up than I am to prove something, rather than accepting that I have certain obvious things that I want to show to people.'

And I love the article's description of Jake's eyes: 'With Gyllenhaal, though, the eyes have it; strikingly blue and expressive, they telegraph hurt and delight, mischief and danger.'


There is no reason to believe that the thought and concentration that Jake put into his role choices does not continue, which makes me very excited and curious about the characters he will don in 2008, before they are revealed to us, later this year and in the coming years: a Brother, an immoral politician, a coloniser of the moon and maybe even a football megastar.

Includes pictures from IHJ.