Jake Gyllenhaal - putting the x into mathematics

With Oxford being a University town of some note, and the new academic year beginning today, it seems inevitable that the play of Proof - or should that be {Proof} - should hit the boards of one of the city's theatres. And sure enough - just as e=mc2 and pie= 3.something - this is the year. From October 24, audiences will be able to relive the story of Robert, Catherine, Claire and Hal every night for a week.



Now that Oxford has more students than ants, it seems a good time to look at Jake Gyllenhaal's role as the mathematically-gifted Hal, who had the misfortune to fall for the recently bereaved and mathematically-inscrutable Catherine. Gwyneth Paltrow was never quite so sure that Jake was the right choice: '"Of course, it's a little far-fetched that Jake Gyllenhaal is ..." A friendless weirdo too? "Yeah. But it's a movie. Harvey Weinstein was very keen that Jake be the guy. He was not really up for the quirky thing. And he was paying, so."' But there were perks to having Jake as a co-star.



Reviews also pointed out that Jake may be too much of a hunk to be a believable mathematical genius ('Jake Gyllenhaal seems a little too hunky for a math geek — but he is, after all, Jake Gyllenhaal; what're you gonna do?'). As Jake himself said: 'I play a mathematician, which is ridiculous because I am horrible at math'.



Jake had nothing but praise for Gwyneth: 'When you work with certain actors, when you work with Heath, you don't always really know what he's going to deliver. With Gwyneth it's funny. She'll do three or four takes and they'll all be brilliant and will be done with her coverage. And I've never really worked with an actor like that before, ever. And I just saw her recently after not seeing her for a year... and she's just so sweet... For a person who has been bombarded with so much at such a young age, she's such a classy person.' Before going on to say: 'My math teacher would be, and I think is, devastated and hurt that I played that role in a movie.' Just how bad was Jake at mathematics?


Jake impressed director John Madden from the beginning: He 'recalls that Madden "had auditioned a lot of people for Proof and he told me, ‘I’m trying to find someone like you, but older. And now, I realize—I think you can do it. Will you fly to London and audition? I said, ‘Sure.’ In London, Paltrow and Madden gave him his “sides” from a crucial scene and, as Madden recalls, “he nailed it. He was free with us, and as soon as we finished reading one very long scene he wanted to go back and read it again—and different things came out. So his passport into the movie was already assured.”'


'“I always felt a little behind,” recalls Gyllenhaal. “Because they had done it onstage, and I was somewhat in awe of the talent—which worked perfectly in the role. And I’m trying to dust off things that they had already dusted off, then passed by or refined. I’m still trying to dust them off, and they’re going, ‘No, there’s no dust on that,’ you know?” Madden was impressed that the young actor came to the shoot with his part, as a young mathematician who’s trying to rescue the legacy of Paltrow’s brilliantly deranged mathematician father, flawlessly memorized, and apparently no longer entirely in awe. “Jake fought his own—um, he took me to task over some of the writing and some of the beats in a very good, very assured way that was particular to his character’s point of view.”'


Here you can see a video showing clips from the making of Proof, as well as an interview with Gwyneth in which she discusses the not altogether pleasant experience of filming Proof (sorry {Proof}). But when all's said and done, it's not everyday that a young actor has the opportunity to work with an actor such as Sir Antony Hopkins.



Includes pictures from IHJ.

Jake - 'why not do what you really think, even if it's a mistake?'

It has been noted here lately, by more than one reader, that Jake rarely discusses the 'third film' from 2005 - Proof. This could be taken as a sign that the film, or its making, is not something Jake has wanted to dwell on. Although Bubble Boy, very undeservedly in my opinion, is sometimes derided as Jake's mistake, for me it will always be Proof. So I set myself a challenge to do a feature on this film, not least because I know some of you love it and have huge empathy for Gwyneth Paltrow's character Catherine while others, including myself, have owned up to suffering from the Gwyneth Paltrow Effect - ie, not being able to see Gwyneth in Proof without reaching automatically for the Fast Forward button on the remote. I think, though, that after today I understand Proof a little better and I enjoyed some of the other bits and pieces I found along the way.


Jake does occasionally talk about Proof, but it's usually when his purpose is to discuss something else. For instance, in 2004, Jake said of Proof: '"I play a mathematician, which is ridiculous because I am horrible at math," Gyllenhaal said of the movie, which is based on a Broadway production. "Anthony Hopkins plays one of my professors — he dies at the beginning of the movie, and there are a lot of flashbacks, which is how he's in it — and I'm trying to search for this famous proof that I think he wrote, and it turns out that his daughter actually wrote it, and we have a love story."'

What's far more interesting is that this interview also tells us that 'After "Brokeback Mountain" finishes shooting this summer, Gyllenhaal will resume talks with Kevin Smith about starring in his "Green Hornet" movie. "I'm just waiting for the script, to read it and see if I like it, and that's all it's about for me," he said. "The Green Hornet as a character is amazing, but if the story doesn't work, I don't wanna do it, 'cause I know people don't wanna see it if it sucks. But I don't think it will."' I had no idea that there had been that much substance behind all those Green Hornet rumours of a couple of years ago.


Jake also discusses his reasons for committing to Brokeback Mountain: '"I was looking for a story that was actually about love, because I read scripts every day that are about, like, 'Love has no boundaries' and 'Love is universal,' and all these things that are now so cliché, Nike can just pick 'em up and use them as a slogan," Gyllenhaal said. "My generation, I think, doesn't understand it. I know so many kids my age who can't have any relationship at all — and I can only speak for people of my age, though I do see people of all ages not being able to have relationships — because we misunderstand the idea of love. That's what this movie's about. It's not about two guys going at it."' This is particularly special to me because it links together two of my favourite things - Jake Gyllenhaal and Nike.

'"[Director] Ang Lee told me that he wanted to make a movie that families could go see, so I think that's what he's going to do," Gyllenhaal said. "I walked out of 'Sense and Sensibility,' 'The Ice Storm,' 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,' 'Pushing Hands,' 'Hulk' always feeling good. I always have when I walked out of an Ang Lee movie. And I think that the same thing will happen with this movie. And all of us are not in the interest of making anything shocking. It's a story about love, that's our clear intention through the whole thing. It's not a story about sex."'


At this site you can see Gwyneth being interviewed at the press conference for Proof held at TIFF in 2005. Jake is missing. The fates seemed to conspire against Jake and Gwyneth appearing together at such events because at the press conference held at the Venice Film Festival not long before, Gwyneth was missing because her plane had to turn back. In the press conference, Gwyneth notes, and not for the first time, what a hard time she had emotionally during the filming of Proof. She was pregnant, sick with it, and away from home.


Part of the problem must have been that at both Venice and Toronto, Jake had two films to publicise, one being Proof and the other being Brokeback Mountain, which was, of course, hailed as a masterpiece at both events. Inevitably, Jake's role as the mathematically-minded love interest in Proof seemed less intriguing. However, one of the best photographic moments of 2005 was thanks to Proof. At Venice we had the wonderful site of Jake arriving by boat at the Lido, where he happily posed with Anthony Hopkins. A problem at Toronto was that Jake cancelled some of his Proof interviews, the reason being his expulsion from his suite at The Four Seasons Hotel (not surprising, then, that Jake stayed elsewhere in 2007). I had heard about this before, and its relation to cancelled Proof interviews, but here is a fuller account:


'The only remotely “scandalous” issue this year was the way actor Jake Gyllenhaal was treated by the vaunted Four Seasons Hotel. Now, I didn’t witness this situation, but I heard repeated stories about it and read about it in the Toronto Globe And Mail. The Four Seasons is a luxury hotel that is the residence of choice for many movie stars, producers, directors, etc. I've stayed at the Toronto Four Seasons and it’s a swank place, but hardly on a par with the greatness of the Los Angeles Four Seasons, which is grandly run and as comfortable as a favorite pair of slippers. I’ve always found the Toronto Four Seasons to be a bit dowdy, sort of like an overstuffed English sitting room.


So Gyllenhaal, who was at the festival (the 30th annual) to promote his superb feature Brokeback Mountain, a perfect film about two male western ranch hands who fall in love with each other in 1960s America, had a deluxe suite at the Four Seasons. He was out in the city doing promotional things, and returned to discover that Reception had given his room to another guest. Some self-important VIP – a name was never mentioned – was handed Jake’s suite after demanding he be given his room ASAP. Hotel staffers actually went into Gyllenhaal’s space and packed up his clothing and toiletries and stored them where the concierge stores guests’ belongings, which is usually a backroom off the lobby. Gyllenhaal was understandably furious. Who wouldn’t be? I would be furious, too. Gyllenhaal was so upset that “others” had touched his stuff, that scheduled interviews with the soon-to-be 25-year old actor were cancelled. But it gets worse. Before the hotel’s front desk would give Jake his suitcases back, he was forced to show an ID proving who he was. Let me tell you something, that crap doesn’t even go on at a Motel 6. Frankly, I think the Four Seasons owes Gyllenhaal a massive apology and probably a week’s free stay. As someone who has stayed in a lot of hotels, I think the Toronto Four Seasons was mightily wrong in this regard and acted like an amateur operation.'


Jake was a big hit at the Roy Thompson Hall in 2007 as myself and several others here can vouch, and so he was back in 2005: 'Movie star Jake Gyllenhaal arrives and the Loudest Photographer shouting for the heartthrob's attention is barely audible over the shrieking young women waiting across the street from Roy Thompson Hall where the screening of the actor's latest movie Proof, in which he stars with Sir Anthony Hopkins and Gwyneth Paltrow.'

My biggest problem with Proof is what I perceive as the lack of chemistry on screen between Gwyneth Paltrow and Jake. Quite possibly, this is due to bad casting: 'There is nothing wrong with Jake Gyllenhaal's performance, except that he is drastically miscast as a quiet mathematician. Imagine Raquel Welsh playing Adrian in Rocky… get it?' says one review which begins 'What went so wrong with Proof?'


The Guardian says: 'We are invited to believe that Hopkins, Paltrow and Gyllenhaal all have, in their various ways, alpha-brains. They look to me like they couldn't recite the three-times-table without smoke coming out of their ears. Gwyneth Paltrow does a kind of lip-biting anguished look that is possibly the result of trying to work out 20 minus 17 in her head. And it is particularly unnerving that her romantic interest is with Jake Gyllenhaal who here models a diluted version of the nerdy-vulnerable look that was his line before raising his game in Brokeback Mountain. Here it is Paltrow who gets to be Donella Darko without the rabbit while Jake does his best to connect with her. But really: Gwyneth and Jake - what a terrifying collision of sensitiveness. Any resulting children would be gold-medallists in the Emoting Olympics.'


In an interview with the Guardian, Gwyneth remarked on the casting of Jake: '"Of course, it's a little far-fetched that Jake Gyllenhaal is ..." A friendless weirdo too? "Yeah. But it's a movie. Harvey Weinstein was very keen that Jake be the guy. He was not really up for the quirky thing. And he was paying, so."' Reading further along, Gwyneth also says 'I don't really have drunk friends. My friends are kind of adult; they have a drink. But they hold their liquor. I think it's incredibly embarrassing when people are drunk. It just looks so ridiculous. I find it very degrading.' Oops.


British director John Madden cast Jake in the role because '“He’s got a very instinctive, unusual, loose kind of talent,” says Madden, who cast him in the part written for a slightly older actor. At a certain stage in Proof, notes Madden, Gyllenhaal’s character, Hal, fails to do the right thing, in the eyes of the audience as well as Paltrow’s tormented Catherine: “One of the qualities that one’s grateful for in Jake is that he’s extraordinarily appealing even when he’s doing something that is such an immense disappointment. It’s quite important to have an actor who doesn’t immediately forfeit the audience’s sympathy . . . obviously the story is on the side of Catherine, but it’s an interesting balance of where the audience awards their sympathy at a given moment.'


Madden goes on to say in this review of Jake's work, '“He has in common with Gwyneth that he’s grown up in a family that’s in the business. He’s been around it all his life, grown up in the hothouse of all that. And I think the family’s a very whole family, as Gwyneth’s was, and that gives you a kind of confidence, a sense that your feet are not going to be slipping unless you’re really careless. So—ego’s not quite the right word for him, but that sort of self-belief, that self-confidence, is very important. And it is a large part of his presence onscreen.”'

Further on: Jake 'recalls that Madden “ had auditioned a lot of people for Proof and he told me, ‘I’m trying to find someone like you, but older. And now, I realize—I think you can do it. Will you fly to London and audition? I said, ‘Sure.’ In London, Paltrow and Madden gave him his “sides” from a crucial scene and, as Madden recalls, “he nailed it. He was free with us, and as soon as we finished reading one very long scene he wanted to go back and read it again—and different things came out. So his passport into the movie was already assured.”


“I always felt a little behind,” recalls Gyllenhaal. “Because they had done it onstage, and I was somewhat in awe of the talent—which worked perfectly in the role. And I’m trying to dust off things that they had already dusted off, then passed by or refined. I’m still trying to dust them off, and they’re going, ‘No, there’s no dust on that,’ you know?” Madden was impressed that the young actor came to the shoot with his part, as a young mathematician who’s trying to rescue the legacy of Paltrow’s brilliantly deranged mathematician father, flawlessly memorized, and apparently no longer entirely in awe. “Jake fought his own—um, he took me to task over some of the writing and some of the beats in a very good, very assured way that was particular to his character’s point of view.” '

Off topic, my favourite part of this review, is the section in which Peter Sarsgaard and Ang Lee discuss Jake and what it's like to work with him: 'Sarsgaard, who’s virtually a member of the family, says he and Jake survived the rigors of the desert partly by crabbing at each other like brothers. Underneath the hard work—“a large portion of the movie is on Jake, and he was completely bushed by the end”—he watched his fellow actor grow up: “I think the interesting thing is that his character in Jarhead is traveling the distance between boyhood and manhood, just as Jake is.”'


'An interesting question with both personal and career implications for Gyllenhaal is what will happen when and if his seemingly indestructible innocence is lost? Lee was mindful of it.“He’s sometimes too smart, and you need a sympathy from the audience—a lot of the time I would sort of turn him down,” he says. “Because he’s so talented, has so many skills at such a young age, he might forget there’s still innocence on his side. He doesn’t have to fight against it. Sometimes he can just forget about ‘acting,’ about trying too much. So that would be my advice for him—which I did give him—and he was very appreciative.”'

'“I think you can have that innocence and still be a man,” says Sarsgaard. “I have an uncle who has that—to be able to see something that needs to happen and try to make it happen, even if you don’t succeed, you will die trying. I mean, that’s really all you can hope for. I hope he doesn’t lose that quality either, but, you know, I don’t think you could yank it out of him with a coat hanger. I mean, it’s lodged in there.”'


So the final word to Jake, who may not talk much about Proof these days, but he undoubtedly took what he needed from it, and, for its part in shaping Jake's career, I can appreciate it. 'I know it seems so adolescent to say it, everybody goes through this, but people try to change who they are, and—I’m not interested in not showing my faults anymore. I don’t want to pretend to be something . . . I’m not pretending anymore to fit somebody’s mold. That’s a long-winded statement but—why not do what you really think, even if it’s mistake?'

Includes pictures from IHJ and here.

Jake - don't put me in a box

Over the last day, we've had a good chat here about Jake Gyllenhaal's role choices, which probably isn't suprising as I think we're all eager to find out what's next for such a versatile actor. That made me think about what Jake is like when he wants a role and what will he do to get it? For clues, I looked to Jake's words and those of his directors, Ang Lee and Sam Mendes, both of whom, as did David Fincher, had Jake in mind for their respective projects, although they needn't necessarily have told him that. Fun and games.


So first to Brokeback Mountain and Ang Lee tells us that he cast Jake first for the role and did not audition Jake and Heath together; he didn't need to see any chemistry between Jake and Heath before casting Heath Ledger opposite his 'romantic lead'. The first time that Ang, Jake and Heath all met together was in a LA restaurant. When asked how he knew that they would have chemistry, Ang replied: 'I just imagined they were a good couple. I cast Heath very much as the short story required. I did something quite different with Jake. In the novel, he is even stronger, bulkier, shorter, very rough. Jake, of course, is more like a city boy. I think he is a good romantic lead, and I think he is a good counterpart to Heath. I cast Jake first and then Heath. I was hoping I would meet somebody like Heath. As soon as I met Heath I imagined they would be a good match for a romantic love story.'


Ang comments on how different Heath and Jake are as actors: 'they are pretty opposite. I think Heath is very methodic. I don't usually ask them. They don't have to tell me, they just understand what I tell them. When I see something I like, that's all that counts. What they use, how they get there—I never bother them. I guess Heath has a very meticulous way of approaching the character, because from take to take there is not a lot of difference. It's not like he pre-programmed it. He would respond, but he set himself in a certain zone that seemed to me pre-determined, and he kept refining it. Jake on the other hand was more free style. Every take he would have a wide variety, [but] with an understanding of what the scene was about, what the character develops. He'll respond differently. In a way, I think it's good, because Heath is really the anchor for that Western mood. So, it's good he's reliable and always that way. Very subtle changes. Jake, I sometimes had to remind him that innocence is on his side. As a young actor they are scary good, but they can forget that innocence is on their side. [If] they are too skillful, they are too good, they take away some of the innocence. So, basically just remind them.' Jake has said in the past that there were times when he didn't know what Ang expected from him and one suspects Jake may have felt a little lost and lonely in Ang's process of direction by osmosis.

Ang also says this: ' It never occurred to me that female fans, girls—what would happen to their careers.' I find that odd, I must say, that he didn't think that women would fall for his cowboys.


Jake had a far more difficult time winning the role of Swoff in Jarhead - it took four months before he even heard if he'd been successful or not, despite Jake's succession of midnight calls to the Mendes household (I believe Jake and Kate Winslet are still friends...). The fact that Jake made no attempt to disguise his eagerness to win the role seems to have counted in his favour, as Sam Mendes says: 'I am probably launching a whole series of midnight phone calls to me when an actor wants to play a role, but it does make a huge difference to a director to know that an actor is willing to go the distance. And they are willing to push themselves to the limit. And that’s what happened with Jake. He had let me know how badly he wanted it, and how hard he was willing to work for it... It was a pleasure to work with him. Apparently I made Jake wait four months to hear from me before I gave him the part. It wasn’t deliberate. I wasn’t being cruel. But I think one of the things that I was worried about is that we all know Jake as soft and puppyish, sensitive and fluffy-haired. But he became a tough young marine. Yes, he was innocent. And yes, he had to be accessible. But he had to be angry, frustrated and difficult… I had never seen Jake do all that before.'

'soft and puppyish, sensitive and fluffy-haired' - not much of that on show in Jarhead.


Jake told the UK's The Independent, in the comfort of a suite at the Dorchester, in the first days of 2006, why he had to do Brokeback Mountain: 'My agenda is to tell stories that I care about and that move me. And those were two stories that moved me. I didn't go, 'Oh, if I do Brokeback Mountain, it's not gonna put me in a box.' I'm crying after I finished the script and I'm, like, 'I will do anything to do this movie.'' Jake also talks about how terrible his initial audition for Jarhead was: 'I did a really bad job. And then I got ugly. Then I got really upset... I didn't punch him in the face or anything, but I would have if he hadn't given me the part... Ultimately, it was just my passion for it - calling him up in the middle of the night and telling him that and letting him know.' Neither role was mainstream: 'For me, growing up as a teenager was more like struggling with, y'know, identity in general, just who I was. I could very easily in the way I was feeling be talking to a big rabbit [as in Donnie Darko] and maybe I could be having an affair with an older woman [The Good Girl]. Those topics were more realistic.'

The Guardian in October 2005 reported on Jake's success with directors Ang Lee, Sam Mendes and John Madden [Proof]. Sam saw Jake acting in London in This is our Youth: 'I don't think I had realised until I saw him on stage how masculine he was,' recalls Mendes. 'He's a big guy, and he has the combination of soulfulness and "man of action" I was looking for. Also, he's very accessible. His face is accessible. His soul is accessible.' Madden says of Jake: 'He's got a very instinctive, unusual, loose kind of talent,' and so cast him in a role originally intended for an older actor.


In addition to learning that Jake starred in a home version of Cats, directed by Maggie, we also hear that Madden ''had auditioned a lot of people for Proof'. In London, Paltrow and Madden gave him his 'sides' from a crucial scene and, as Madden recalls, 'he nailed it. He was free with us, and as soon as we finished reading one very long scene he wanted to go back and read it again - and different things came out.'' Ang had decided to 'go with young and innocent and rely on their acting - because there's something about youth and the lack of knowledge that I think is the best part of the material. Heath Ledger is a natural cowboy, ranchhand type, and that's very quiet. And the other person should be more talkative, on the verge of being a city boy, but with all the open, romantic character in him - and very smart, of course.'


Sam Mendes recalls, 'I felt like he had not been stretched at all as an actor, but he was ready to be. And just meeting him, he was desperate to be punished on some level - made to feel things that he'd never felt before. You could say that he probably felt he's had it ... not easy, but not that difficult in his young acting life. Because, you know, he entered at a young age, and he's a goodlooking boy, and he's got showbiz family and all that kind of stuff, and he's come up sensing that that was always where he was going to go. But he felt, on some level, that he hadn't earned it. And he wanted to earn it. He wanted to work, and he wanted to explore himself. And I couldn't be more excited about the performance he gives.' Jake said that working on Jarhead was 'lifechanging.... Because I've worked with directors a lot who thought I was a certain thing and fit me into that box, you know. And Sam wasn't like that at all. And Ang is, though I hate the word, an auteur. The last two movies I shot, though I didn't know it at the time, were really about loneliness - and what you find in the loneliest of places. Plains and mountains that go on forever, deserts that are hot and dry with nothing growing ... and go on forever. That's why I gravitated toward them, I suppose.'


'Some movies you fall a step behind, and some you stay in the same place, make the same choices. And then sometimes there are people who know more than you but show you, and that's the maximum you can hope for - doing that with someone who says, "I like you for what you are, and I want you to be in my picture." I didn't have to fake it or put on a mask - all the resources I had inside me were more than adequate. I don't want to pretend to be something ... I'm not pretending any more to fit somebody's mould. That's a longwinded statement but - why not do what you really think, even if it's a mistake?'

Final word - how rumours catch fire

By way of contrast, I thought I'd also look at a good example of one of those rumours regarding Jake's 'next project' and how it spiralled out of control. The rumour was Captain Marvel and here discussing this case of 'celebrity arson' is screenwriter John August: 'It’s frustrating how in the digital age, random speculation turns to fact in about .003 seconds. And once it starts, it’s like a tire fire: any attempt to extinguish it merely creates a lot more smoke. Since it’s impossible to put the conflagration out, we can at least try to figure out how this case of celebrity arson began. My hunch is that it was a combination of factors:


1. The announcement that I got hired to write the movie.
2. The Captain Marvel illustrations that ran with the story, leading to questions of, “Who does that look like?”
3. Gyllenhaal’s recent visibility in Zodiac.
4. Jake’s sister Maggie being hired for the new Batman.
5. Recent trailers and leaked photos from Spider-Man 3, re-igniting… the old rumor that Jake Gyllenhaal was replacing Tobey Maguire.

'Amplifying all of these factors is what I call the Sticky Celebrity Constant: associating a recognizable star with a concept makes it exponentially more interesting.'


As far as John August was aware, Jake never knew of these rumours although, of course, should there have been a list of desired cast members, Jake's name would certainly have been on it - right at the top. Pictures of Jake as superhero Donnie Darko seem appropriate here.


Includes pictures from IHJ. I have replaced all of the pictures and so I hope this has solved the bug with this post.