Movie or madness?

Days later, it's still unclear if Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Chistopher McDougall and others were in Leadville, Colorado, for film research or just for fun. Though the book's publisher, Knopf, denied any knowledge of it, rumors were rampant that they were in town for a movie version of McDougall's Born To Run.



Brandon Fuller, who brought us the first photo of Jake in Leadville, saw Jake again at the start of the race:

Actor Jake Gyllenhaal was standing in front of me on the start line with his Flip camera shooting some video. Another crew was over further with some big lights. I gave Jake the head nod…what’s up. He responded.

If you want to read a detailed account of the grueling race, Fuller's blog provides it. He also has a lot of photos, including the one of Jake above and below:




Until I read this account, it had seemed like Jake and company did an admirable job of staying low-key:

Jake Gyllenhaal and another big star that my non-movie-star, non-fanboy head can't identify, and a small crew of others who seemed to be producers and/or directors and movie technician guys showed up and followed the race. And I mean they really followed it. They lived in Leadville for a few days before the race, they didn't sleep much or at all during the 30hr race, and even at night, I ran into them again at Fish Hatchery aid in the middle of the night. Mostly they watched, but I think they helped at times too.



They didn't seem to be filming any final footage of anything. It seemed to be tons of snippets. I was standing around with a random runner and friends at Twin Lakes. Jake G's star-friend was taking photos of us with a huge camera. It was only later that I noticed he had a small shotgun-mic attached. So he was taking movies and over-heard everything we said!

The director guy, of course, had to have a special chair that couldn't look like anyone else's. And of course he parked his glorified ass in it, apparently unable to stand amongst normal folk. LOL And he had to have guys handy to write anything down in case he said something important, like, "gimme a bigger latte manana" or something like that.

Ouch. I hope there wasn't too much of that posturing! It's interesting that they were there a few days ahead of time and that they pitched in at times.



Just a note that the man posing with Jake is, I think, Ken Chlouber, founder of the LT100 and the person who gives out buckles to finishers.

There are links to photos and videos in the Fuller blog. You can get an idea of the kind of effort and insanity it takes to run this race. It's easy to understand why it would intrigue Jake.

Also, if they are making a dramatic movie and not a documentary, and Jake is going to star - there is apparently a strong shirtless running tradition :)



Belated congrats to Brandon Fuller for finishing the race and thanks for the photos!

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PopSugar is running a shirtless contest, and Jake is in the Final Four. Click to vote or just to ogle.