thedrifter
03-04-07, 09:25 AM
Just Jake
When it comes to choosing roles, Gyllenhaal goes with his gut
Sunday, March 04, 2007
BY STEPHEN WHITTY
STAR-LEDGER STAFF
"I am a fan," Jake Gyllenhaal says with a slow grin, "of the unresolved cadence."
Most movies aren't. To leave something hanging in the air, resonating yet not quite finished -- Do the underdogs really win the big game? Do the lovers ever reunite? Is the mad murderer finally caught? -- isn't something that mainstream films often dare.
Which is why Jake Gyllenhaal doesn't make many mainstream films.
He'd rather have the ambiguity of "Jarhead," where Marines go to war -- and wait, and wonder what to do with all their pent-up adrenaline. Of "Brokeback Mountain," where the two lovers never really break past their own lies. Of "Donnie Darko," where his character is either mad, or metaphysical -- or both.
Or of the brand-new "Zodiac," a serial-killer thriller that never really ends.
"That's cool," Gyllenhaal says at first, when asked to think about his choice of no-easy-answer movies. He leans back on the hotel room couch, slim in a dove-gray Armani suit, and furrows the face that's won him legions of starstruck fans. "That's a very new question."
But after he thinks about the idea -- and the quietly intense 26-year-old is a young man who thinks about everything -- he has to agree.
"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."
That certainly describes "Zodiac," the based-on-fact story of the serial killer who terrorized Northern California for years with lovers'-lane killings and taunting letters.
Although Clint Eastwood executed a fictionalized version of the madman in "Dirty Harry," the real monster was never caught. And so, rather than repeating the gruesome scares of his seminal "Seven," director David Fincher has told the tale as a true-crime story, and a bit of a character study. Mark Ruffalo is the weary cop chasing down dead-end leads; Gyllenhaal is the journalist determined to find better ones.
"It's not your typical serial-killer movie," says Gyllenhaal. "As David said, Zodiac's sort of a serial-killer underachiever. Even the codes he used (when he wrote to the papers) weren't that good. The murders themselves are rather mundane. But as soon as the ciphers came out he was uncatchable, because he became millions of people's ideas. He became part of people's imagination."
Yet the real journalist who clung to the case -- an editorial cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle who investigated the murders in his spare time, and eventually turned them into two books -- sees more than imagination in Gyllenhaal's re-creation of his life. He also sees a real dedication to craft.
"He just got it," writer Robert Graysmith says, of the actor's portrayal of him. "I mean, I've never told anyone that when I was living in Japan I was in the Boy Scouts, but he got that, and how he got that I don't know. The deferential thing, and this obsessive thing -- he just got all of it."
"Well, you have to do your work," Gyllenhaal says. "I'm in a business where there's the possibility of having a lot of fun, but you still have to come in and be prepared and get things done."
Gyllenhaal saw all of that growing up in California, where he (and older sister, Maggie) were the children of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner. Whether it was their mother's script for "Running on Empty," or their father's work on "Losing Isaiah," the children were always aware of their parent's careers and the possibility of having their own.
"I don't remember a time when I really wanted to do anything else but act," Gyllenhaal says. "I do have to say, it's hard to do other things when you're in a family that's so creative. I did have dreams of being a chef, dreams of being a lot of different things. There are things that I'm still incredibly interested in that have nothing to do with movies or the arts at all. But the ability to entertain, the joy I got out of that -- that came to me at a very young age."
Gyllenhaal did a few small parts -- he plays Billy Crystal's kid in "City Slickers" -- then followed Maggie to enroll at Columbia, where she was studying English. But when they both turned to acting, he jumped ahead. His big break came first, in 2001's "Donnie Darko"; hers followed the next year, in the S&M love story "Secretary." Their friendly rivalry ("He is my younger brother," she's explained, pointedly) has continued off and on ever since.
"One of the things about the arts that is sort of fascinating and wonderful when it's done in the right way and destructive and odd when it's not is competition," he says. "And I think sometimes between the two of us, at a younger age, there were probably feelings that we didn't really understand. I mean, it's a kid thing -- whether it happens at older ages or not, it's always a kid thing. But I think now it's evolved and matured into something else. She just had a child with a good friend of mine (Peter Sarsgaard) which is extraordinary, and she is so extraordinary, and any other stuff, whether it exists or not ..."
He shrugs.
"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's all a little serious and psychological and deep (and probably could have been a paper in the Eastern philosophy course the siblings took together at Columbia). But it's also a sign of the sort of thoughtful person Gyllenhaal is. And the sort of thoughtful actor he's becoming.
"Donnie Darko" was the first sign, with Gyllenhaal playing a disturbed teenager in a dark and complicated movie about a plane crash, a pederast, a malignant rabbit and a break in the space/time continuum. It wasn't a mainstream hit -- how could it be? -- but it turned into a major cult favorite, and made its star one, too. He followed it up with successive roles as an indie romeo, romancing "older women" Catherine Keener in "Lovely & Amazing" and Jennifer Aniston in "The Good Girl."
And then he suddenly threw fans a curveball and starred in the goofy Hollywood disaster epic "The Day After Tomorrow," fleeing a modern Ice Age.
"I don't want to surprise you in the future if I do another one, so I'm not going to say 'Just once,'" he says of his foray into big-budget blockbusters. "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."
What Gyllenhaal did next was far more serious, including a supporting part in "Proof" and the lead in "Jarhead," director Sam Mendes' drama of the first Gulf War. Although the film's point was both unique and specific -- the day-to-day stress of waiting for combat -- audiences and critics expecting a more conventional battlefield drama were disappointed. The movie flopped, and when "Proof" was held back a year -- in vain hopes of building better Oscar chances for its leads -- Gyllenhaal's career seemed stalled.
It was the point when another actor might have looked around for a sure-fire mainstream movie to star in -- and, indeed, at times Gyllenhaal has been on the shortlist for several comic-book epics, including "Batman Begins." But instead he opted for a smaller, grittier, riskier picture about the modern West, with director Ang Lee, no obvious commercial hook and a plot about two ranch hands in love.
"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."
Still, plenty of people did credit Gyllenhaal for "daring" to play a gay man -- a backhanded compliment when you realize no one praises actors for playing mass murderers.
"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."
Typically, although no one left "Donnie Darko" thinking Gyllenhaal was psychotic, gossip began after "Brokeback Mountain" that he was secretly gay (and, according to one popular rumor, even involved in some more-than-male-bonding with Lance Armstrong). Gyllenhaal -- who, for the record, has dated Maggie's friend Kirsten Dunst, but is currently unattached -- took the speculations as flattery, and the nastier jokes as just part of the job.
A job that he was apparently getting better and better at doing.
"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."
Those on-the-set wringers including a perfectionist director who would often run a simple scene through dozens of takes, insisting the actors continually find ways to keep it fresh even as they consistently hit their marks and nailed their dense expository dialogue. There were grumbles during the shoot, and some of them made it into the papers.
"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."
And maybe leads, in its own way, to a different kind of resolution.
"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."
Stephen Whitty may be reached at swhitty@starledger.com or (212) 790-4435.
Ellie
When it comes to choosing roles, Gyllenhaal goes with his gut
Sunday, March 04, 2007
BY STEPHEN WHITTY
STAR-LEDGER STAFF
"I am a fan," Jake Gyllenhaal says with a slow grin, "of the unresolved cadence."
Most movies aren't. To leave something hanging in the air, resonating yet not quite finished -- Do the underdogs really win the big game? Do the lovers ever reunite? Is the mad murderer finally caught? -- isn't something that mainstream films often dare.
Which is why Jake Gyllenhaal doesn't make many mainstream films.
He'd rather have the ambiguity of "Jarhead," where Marines go to war -- and wait, and wonder what to do with all their pent-up adrenaline. Of "Brokeback Mountain," where the two lovers never really break past their own lies. Of "Donnie Darko," where his character is either mad, or metaphysical -- or both.
Or of the brand-new "Zodiac," a serial-killer thriller that never really ends.
"That's cool," Gyllenhaal says at first, when asked to think about his choice of no-easy-answer movies. He leans back on the hotel room couch, slim in a dove-gray Armani suit, and furrows the face that's won him legions of starstruck fans. "That's a very new question."
But after he thinks about the idea -- and the quietly intense 26-year-old is a young man who thinks about everything -- he has to agree.
"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."
That certainly describes "Zodiac," the based-on-fact story of the serial killer who terrorized Northern California for years with lovers'-lane killings and taunting letters.
Although Clint Eastwood executed a fictionalized version of the madman in "Dirty Harry," the real monster was never caught. And so, rather than repeating the gruesome scares of his seminal "Seven," director David Fincher has told the tale as a true-crime story, and a bit of a character study. Mark Ruffalo is the weary cop chasing down dead-end leads; Gyllenhaal is the journalist determined to find better ones.
"It's not your typical serial-killer movie," says Gyllenhaal. "As David said, Zodiac's sort of a serial-killer underachiever. Even the codes he used (when he wrote to the papers) weren't that good. The murders themselves are rather mundane. But as soon as the ciphers came out he was uncatchable, because he became millions of people's ideas. He became part of people's imagination."
Yet the real journalist who clung to the case -- an editorial cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle who investigated the murders in his spare time, and eventually turned them into two books -- sees more than imagination in Gyllenhaal's re-creation of his life. He also sees a real dedication to craft.
"He just got it," writer Robert Graysmith says, of the actor's portrayal of him. "I mean, I've never told anyone that when I was living in Japan I was in the Boy Scouts, but he got that, and how he got that I don't know. The deferential thing, and this obsessive thing -- he just got all of it."
"Well, you have to do your work," Gyllenhaal says. "I'm in a business where there's the possibility of having a lot of fun, but you still have to come in and be prepared and get things done."
Gyllenhaal saw all of that growing up in California, where he (and older sister, Maggie) were the children of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner. Whether it was their mother's script for "Running on Empty," or their father's work on "Losing Isaiah," the children were always aware of their parent's careers and the possibility of having their own.
"I don't remember a time when I really wanted to do anything else but act," Gyllenhaal says. "I do have to say, it's hard to do other things when you're in a family that's so creative. I did have dreams of being a chef, dreams of being a lot of different things. There are things that I'm still incredibly interested in that have nothing to do with movies or the arts at all. But the ability to entertain, the joy I got out of that -- that came to me at a very young age."
Gyllenhaal did a few small parts -- he plays Billy Crystal's kid in "City Slickers" -- then followed Maggie to enroll at Columbia, where she was studying English. But when they both turned to acting, he jumped ahead. His big break came first, in 2001's "Donnie Darko"; hers followed the next year, in the S&M love story "Secretary." Their friendly rivalry ("He is my younger brother," she's explained, pointedly) has continued off and on ever since.
"One of the things about the arts that is sort of fascinating and wonderful when it's done in the right way and destructive and odd when it's not is competition," he says. "And I think sometimes between the two of us, at a younger age, there were probably feelings that we didn't really understand. I mean, it's a kid thing -- whether it happens at older ages or not, it's always a kid thing. But I think now it's evolved and matured into something else. She just had a child with a good friend of mine (Peter Sarsgaard) which is extraordinary, and she is so extraordinary, and any other stuff, whether it exists or not ..."
He shrugs.
"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's all a little serious and psychological and deep (and probably could have been a paper in the Eastern philosophy course the siblings took together at Columbia). But it's also a sign of the sort of thoughtful person Gyllenhaal is. And the sort of thoughtful actor he's becoming.
"Donnie Darko" was the first sign, with Gyllenhaal playing a disturbed teenager in a dark and complicated movie about a plane crash, a pederast, a malignant rabbit and a break in the space/time continuum. It wasn't a mainstream hit -- how could it be? -- but it turned into a major cult favorite, and made its star one, too. He followed it up with successive roles as an indie romeo, romancing "older women" Catherine Keener in "Lovely & Amazing" and Jennifer Aniston in "The Good Girl."
And then he suddenly threw fans a curveball and starred in the goofy Hollywood disaster epic "The Day After Tomorrow," fleeing a modern Ice Age.
"I don't want to surprise you in the future if I do another one, so I'm not going to say 'Just once,'" he says of his foray into big-budget blockbusters. "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."
What Gyllenhaal did next was far more serious, including a supporting part in "Proof" and the lead in "Jarhead," director Sam Mendes' drama of the first Gulf War. Although the film's point was both unique and specific -- the day-to-day stress of waiting for combat -- audiences and critics expecting a more conventional battlefield drama were disappointed. The movie flopped, and when "Proof" was held back a year -- in vain hopes of building better Oscar chances for its leads -- Gyllenhaal's career seemed stalled.
It was the point when another actor might have looked around for a sure-fire mainstream movie to star in -- and, indeed, at times Gyllenhaal has been on the shortlist for several comic-book epics, including "Batman Begins." But instead he opted for a smaller, grittier, riskier picture about the modern West, with director Ang Lee, no obvious commercial hook and a plot about two ranch hands in love.
"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."
Still, plenty of people did credit Gyllenhaal for "daring" to play a gay man -- a backhanded compliment when you realize no one praises actors for playing mass murderers.
"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."
Typically, although no one left "Donnie Darko" thinking Gyllenhaal was psychotic, gossip began after "Brokeback Mountain" that he was secretly gay (and, according to one popular rumor, even involved in some more-than-male-bonding with Lance Armstrong). Gyllenhaal -- who, for the record, has dated Maggie's friend Kirsten Dunst, but is currently unattached -- took the speculations as flattery, and the nastier jokes as just part of the job.
A job that he was apparently getting better and better at doing.
"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."
Those on-the-set wringers including a perfectionist director who would often run a simple scene through dozens of takes, insisting the actors continually find ways to keep it fresh even as they consistently hit their marks and nailed their dense expository dialogue. There were grumbles during the shoot, and some of them made it into the papers.
"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."
And maybe leads, in its own way, to a different kind of resolution.
"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."
Stephen Whitty may be reached at swhitty@starledger.com or (212) 790-4435.
Ellie