Jake Gyllenhaal: 'I am a fan of the unresolved cadence' - goofiness, snakes and having fun

Jake Gyllenhaal is now, at least for the moment, off Martha's Vineyard and is back in Philly indulging in his regular sport: eating in every restaurant a city has to offer before trying to get from said restaurant to vehicle in less time than anyone can utter those immortal words - 'say cheese!'


One definitely gets the impression that Philly's The Insider is enjoying having all these stars in its midst. Today it reports: 'Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal chose not to walk the line Friday night after having sushi at Morimoto on Chestnut Street. They left out a back door and hailed a cab to take them a block to their SUV's parking space, reports photog HughE Dillon, who saw her as the cab zipped past the restaurant. Thursday night, the couple did the steak scene at Butcher & Singer at 15th and Walnut Streets.' As I have wondered so many times over the years: For someone who likes to cook, Jake sure does eat out a lot.


With Jake continuing to avoid cameras it means we must entertain ourselves again. Tonight, I thought I'd take a look at one of the many reasons for Jake's wide appeal to audiences and people general - that loveable quality of his, Jake's goofiness. From Bubble Boy and This Is Our Youth onwards, Jake has been described as goofy by co-stars and critics alike, and almost every single time it is said with the utmost affection and love for the actor and person who never finds it hard to entertain fans and those around him. With a word, with an expression, with a laugh. With a giggle.


Way back when, Kirsten Dunst said of Jake: 'Talent is such a turn-on. If he looked the way he does when and was a bad actor and not a nice person, I wouldn't be into him. He's just smart, thoughtful, goofy, sweet and not trying to be somebody he's not.'


Emmy Rossum, Jake's lucky co-star in The Day After Tomorrow, recalled of Jake: 'He’s a fantastic guy. He’s very intelligent. It was funny because I was kind of like the only girl on the set. There was Mark Gordon, our producer, Roland, Jake, Dennis Quaid and me. So, he’s like the big brother I never had. So it was really nice. We also work in kind of a similar way. We both put a lot of emphasis on preparation but then we get there and we kind of let it rip and are intuitive in a lot of ways within the bounds of the character and the arc. I think we work really well together.' [Q: Is there a side to Jake that we don’t normally see on screen that’s different about him? Does he pull pranks?] 'He’s quite goofy in reality. I think we were so cold and wet and shivering most of the time that nobody had enough energy to pull pranks after running through that tank 500 times in one day with Roland going ‘do it again’! But he’s very much positive. He has a lot of positive energy.' [Q: So nobody gets that he’s really goofy unless you’re around him.] 'Yeah. Then you’ll get it.'


This reminds me of a review of Jarhead: 'If there's anything stranger than the sight of an oil-slicked horse roaming the desert by the hellish red fires of burning oil fields, it's the casting of Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard as uneasy buddies in the sandy trenches. With their heads shaved military style, they're reduced to acting mostly with their eyes. And they both have great eyes - just not the kind you expect to find among the gung-ho Marines, or "jarheads." Gyllenhaal ("Proof") has soft, goofy eyes, like a shy teen, and Sarsgaard ("Flightplan") has the hooded, keen eyes of a white-collar criminal.' I cherish this description of Peter.


As befits a post that celebrates one particularly adorable aspect of Jake Gyllenhaal, here is a classic peace of Gyllenspeak - referring to Zodiac: '"You know, David said about this movie, it's sort of that you can walk around in a forest and there's a killer snake, and you can live your life in fear of that," he says. "Or you can find the snake. You don't have to kill it, but now you know, okay, I found it, now I don't have to go in that corner and get bitten all the time. And, not to get too abstract about it, but it's that dangerous myth of resolution again, that idea that you go in and slay it and now it's over and you don't need to think about it anymore. Instead of saying, okay, I have to face this and deal with it, whether it's the idea of competition or whatever."'


It seems wrong to quote this particular statement of Jake's without looking at other things that he said in the same wonderful interview (with the Star Tribune in 2007). ''I am a fan," Jake Gyllenhaal says with a slow grin, "of the unresolved cadence."... "I hadn't even realized that until now," he says about his work. "But I guess I feel the idea of resolution is kind of a figment of our imagination, and a myth that more modern filmmakers are trying to dissuade us from. So I suppose I am drawn to the sort of movies that have another angle on the world. Or, if they do leave you with a resolution, leave you with one you've never seen before."'


Of choosing to do the non-serious and goofy TDAT: 'But my instinct takes me to funny places, and fascinating places, and `The Day After Tomorrow' was my instinct taking me someplace I really enjoyed. There are choices you make that people are always going to say you shouldn't have done, but they lead to the other movies you do, so, you know, you should have done them. You had to.'


'"If people want to say I'm brave for doing `Brokeback Mountain,' hey, I'll take the credit," Gyllenhaal says now with a smile. "But bravery is about not wanting to do something and doing it anyway. A story that feels new, that feels alive, with a director at the helm who you know is going to steer the ship in a fascinating, beautiful direction - I always wanted to do a movie like that... I do think it's weird that some people have a problem watching actors having sex on screen but not watching them slaughter thousands of people," Gyllenhaal says. "I think that's a very odd thing. . . . But there are always choices in a career. And maybe sometimes you want to be the guy who slaughters thousands of people, and is a badass and all that stuff. And sometimes it's just better to get on a horse and do a movie with Heath Ledger where you have some explicit love scenes."'


'"I've known Jake for a long time," says "Zodiac" co-star Mark Ruffalo, "and it was fun to see him really kind of stretch his wings with somebody like David Fincher. They were tough scenes and they took a lot of building, but I'm really happy with it. I think it's a really wonderful performance from him, one of his best. As much as he was put through the wringer, I think it really paid off." "Yeah, we did tons of takes, and it wasn't always easy, and at the time I claimed that I wasn't the kind of actor who could do that," Gyllenhaal admits. "But I learned from David. And I talked to him the other day and he's so kind to me, and he said, `Now you know you can do anything if you put your mind to it.' And the fact that he said that to me - I mean, he's a really tough critic. And after all we've been through? I'm just amazed that somebody like that would say something like that, to me. It's very cool."


'"The opportunity to be young in the business and to be open to learning a lesson from someone like David Fincher, or Ang Lee, or Sam Mendes?" Gyllenhaal marvels aloud. "I just have a tremendous respect for them, and maybe that comes from my dad being a director and maybe it just comes from knowing the process of filmmaking, but it's just exciting to be a part of their visions. This might sound weird coming from an actor, but that's more interesting to me than the performances I give. I don't know that I'm good enough yet to move a mediocre story to a better place. But I know I can help a great story along. And that," he says with a smile, "is one thing I've resolved."'


You'll notice, if you look to the sidebar to the right, that the WDW Channel is being rebuilt. If there are any video requests, please let me know.

Includes pictures from IHJ and article from WDW Archives - as always, pdfs supplied on request in return for chocolate.