Also: The WDW Channel is now being revived, bit by bit. The link is back on the sidebar on the frot page. If there are any videos you would like to see returned sooner rather than later, let me know.
And on with the post...
The recent revelation by Doug Liman that Jake Gyllenhaal is heavily involved in the development of his character's 'voice' in the Unnamed Moon Project, reminds me that references have been made on several occasions to Jake's habit of 'playing' with the script. This does, of course, have both an upside and a downside, depending on your perspective, and can be the result of an intimate knowledge of how one's character would and should behave. It can also be the result of frustration and an active mind.
In yesterday's article about Donnie Darko, Jake speaks of his respect for Richard Kelly's openness to changing lines, but Chloe Sevigny suggests that on the set of Zodiac, Jake tampered with dialogue due to frustration and boredom - charm and playfulness were his weapons. 'We had some rehearsals where we went through all of our scenes and talked through the scenes and the dialogue. I'm not a writer. I'm very happy with the lines you give to me to a certain extent. But he was very active in that and he could come with new ideas for me, for my lines [laughs]. Jake was very boyish and very funny. He kept the whole crew in stitches. They were all very charmed by him. He's very creative. He has so much energy. He's always bouncing off the walls. After 80 takes, of course, I think he would get bored a little bit, especially when it was my coverage, so he'd be switching up the lines and stuff. His mind is always very active.'
Jake also put his foot down a couple of times when faced with some of his dialogue in The Day After Tomorrow: '"There were a couple of instances where I said, 'No way am I saying that line!' and they rewrote it. There won't be any subtitle saying, 'Sorry, these guys don't sound like real human beings, but they just didn't have the balls to say the dialogue sucked." And Gyllenhaal knows more about screenwriting than most actors - his mother Naomi Foner is a writer. Gyllenhaal continues, "Coming from a family where my mom is a writer, I just respond to how people speak. I thrive on the process of getting this stuff right. It drove them crazy, but it was fun. You have to entertain yourself when you're spending seven months in Montreal."'
Despite the lightehearted end to this comment by Jake, there was a sincere desire on his part to bring all he could to his character: 'he admits later in the conversation [with the Northern Echo in 2004] that he "fought with them forever", a reference to discussions with director Roland Emmerich and producer Mark Gordon about the dialogue. "There were times I told them I didn't like the dialogue and that my character would never say this. Then they'd change it, or they wouldn't. It was a constant process".
During the commentary for Zodiac, the ultimate perfectionist David Fincher had this to say about what Jake brought to the film, focusing on two scenes in particular. The first was the scene where Graysmith is allowed to inspect the police archives: 'People feel I don't give Jake enough credit but I will tell you right now that he wrote the funniest line in the entire movie. He came and he said 'I want to do another take of this [scene] where Narlow lets me in and he says 'You don't smoke, do you?' I'm gonna say to him... Just watch what I'll do.' And he walked in. He said 'You don't smoke, do you?' and he said 'Once... in highschool...' And I almost fell out of my chair cos it was such a perfect epitomising of who this guy is, that when he talks to authority figures, he immediately has to tell the truth. He's compelled to tell them even though it's something he's embarrassed about, or... It's actually the funniest line in the movie and Jake Gyllenhaal wrote that.'
One scene that stands out in Zodiac is the scene in which Graysmith brings his young daughter with him when he talks to Toschi outside the courthouse (a scene filmed on Wilshire Boulevard, LA). 'Gyllenhaal showed up this night, he was ill, he had a flu and he had about a 102 temperature and he didn't think he could go on. He said 'I don't think I can do this. I think we're gonna have to do this some other night'. And I just said to him 'There is no other night. We're doing it tonight. You're going out and doing it'. And he, I think, in a weird way, it focused him not only because he wanted to leave so bad, because also, I think, there was something about his feverishness that focused that performance, And he is truly great in that scene.'
The filmmaking process is not an easy one. Jake told the Boston Globe in Toronto in 2002: 'I will bring to movies after this what I got from "Moonlight." [Which is?] Preparation. That it's a discipline. That people who say that acting doesn't involve a tremendous amount of work don't really know the craft. That's the thing that Dustin [Hoffman] taught me; he works just as hard as anybody. Even this play I just did in the West End [of London] called "This is Our Youth," Dustin was a big influence on me doing that. And in rehearsing for a month beforehand, I learned that what actors consider spontaneity doesn't really come from being "spontaneous" and not knowing your lines. Real spontaneity comes from overworking your brain to such an extent that it stops working and something can flow through it. So, in the future, that's how I'll approach it. Unfortunately, as an actor I feel like the performances I've given have not done that yet.'
Pictures from IHJ.
