Jacob's Pillow

Updated with Jake's appearance on Regis:

Jake on Regis:



And Good Morning America:



And The Daily Show:

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

"What a wonderful face to wake up to!"

That's a quote from Jake Gyllenhaal regarding a prop from Source Code. The discussion of it veers into spoiler territory, so I'm going to put it at the end of the post. Don't scroll all the way down if you don't want to be spoiled! Pictures of Jake leaving his hotel and at the Daily Show interspersed throughout the post.

The pillow talk comes from an interesting Independent interview. Jake talks about love and time and making movies.




In his private life, he's dated Kirsten Dunst and Reese Witherspoon, followed by a brief fling with country singer Taylor Swift late last year, although he prefers to discuss love in the abstract offering instead. "What I believe about love is that, whether it's with your family, whether it's with somebody you fall in love with and have a relationship with, your partner or whatever, it's all about being seen. It's all about someone saying, 'I see you. I see who you are. I love who you are. I appreciate who you are'," says the actor whose status is currently single.



Having bonded with Ledger on Brokeback Mountain, he reflects on their experience working together without rose-coloured glasses, saying, "A lot of times, the most wonderful, interesting movies are not exactly fun to make. One of the hardest processes I went through – and I'd say that every actor would agree on this – and which wasn't a tonne of fun was Brokeback Mountain. Yet we loved each other on that movie so much that we are all still close and we will be for the rest of our lives. Also if that movie would have been successful or not, financially or whatever, there was still something special about it, even though it didn't feel good at the time.

"So in accepting this role, working with Duncan, I wasn't sure if it would be fun but I knew it was gonna be rad! There's a mystery about Duncan that is totally original."

---

It's not a post these days without a video. This is a fun look at Jake doing one of those roundtables. The video information says it was made yesterday, 3/30:



Also, Jake, Michelle and Vera talk to TV Guide. Vera and Michelle kind of gush about Jake.

---

Spoiler Alert! From the Independent story:




One of the perks – or pitfalls – of being an actor is that you never quite know what you'll be called upon to portray, thus it was with great consternation that Gyllenhaal peered upon the Source Code replica of himself, torso severed in half, his partially exposed brain hooked up to a computer with electrodes.

"It was pretty creepy to behold," he admits. "They had my eyes moving and my lips, it was quite freaky. The process of doing those things, making the cast and everything, is often even weirder than when you see the result of it because its so suffocating and strange.

"But I've never seen something that looked so much like me and I even took a picture of it with me with my thumb up and then got really paranoid because I didn't want anyone to like steal my phone and find my picture and be like 'that's the end of the source code!' The brilliance of the artistry of how they did it is what blew me away more than anything."

Asked what became of his life-like torso after filming, he quips. "It's now my pillow. I wake up every morning and go 'Aaah, what a wonderful face to wake up to!' "

that was just too funny/creepy not to post!




(Photos courtesy of Pablo Tomatis, Twitter and Faded Youth.)

Jake in motion

Jake Gyllenhaal arrived in NYC last night. Is that an imaginary baby he's carrying?

---

More Source Code videos. IMDb did an original interview with Jake. He gives a nice answer about Paul Newman, then has to shill for the site:



Jake talks to PopSugar about regrets and cooking. For a change!



Jake on comedy, drama and family:



Another interview with the gang, care of MovieWeb. Jake is at the beginning and end:



MTV Rough Cut videos with Jake and Duncan. No Josh Horowitz interview, sadly. At least, not yet.

---

Some premiere night choreography:

Okay, onto the next block.

Now you want me to go back there?

Make up your mind!

You're kidding, right?

I can't be in both places at once. This isn't actually the Source Code!

I'm staying right here. Try to move me!

(Some photos courtesy of IHJ.)

Post premiere post

Yay -presents!

Monday night saw the Source Code premiere at the Arclight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. Jake Gyllenhaal, Duncan Jones, Michelle Monaghan and the rest of the SC gang were in attendance. (This is a long post, so get some popcorn!)

First up, the red carpet: Jake interviewed by Ben Lyons. Awkward at the beginning and end, as always. But in between, we find out that Adam Levine is a better bowler and Jake might be looking at NYC real estate:



Interview with AP:



Jake upclose with the LA Times:



For Entertainment Tonight, Jake, Michelle and Vera respond to the classic SC question about what they'd do if they could go back in time. Vera has the best answer yet:



Video of Jake signing autographs. We get to hear Mr. B do his thing:



I can't believe those poor people were there for four hours!

Some further red carpet video of the SC stars and other celebs in attendance.

---

Post-premiere-party photos!

---

Before the big premiere, Jake stopped by Conan:



Some Jake-with-strangers backstage:

---

Another Jake junket interview, this time with the Guardian.

And an interesting story about Jake. I love the kudos to Jake's acting but don't like the dismissive tone of much of Jake's work. Nor do I think of Jake as not grown up:



His portrayal of a pumped-up, acrobatic hero in the summer popcorn pic Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time forced him to talk more about his rock-hard abs than his performance, while his romantic-drama Love and Other Drugs had viewers applauding his (and Anne Hathaway’s) appealing nude bits rather than the film itself.

It’s time the 30-year-old actor gets dressed and gets back to acting — something the son of a screenwriter-mother and director-father does exceedingly well. ...

Gyllenhaal’s angry, desperate and poignant performance reminds you how good an actor he is when he’s fully clothed.



Some of Gyllenhaal's best work has been in films in which he plays a military man, or that focus on the role of the military in people's lives — Jarhead, Rendition, Brothers — and it's a topic that piques his interest.

"You hear it many times, the military will make a man out of you because it teaches responsibility, community and following certain orders you might not necessarily agree with, and that's what fascinates me about it.

"But you can challenge the cliché. When we did Jarhead, I remember Bill Broyles, who wrote the script and who was in the Marines, and whose son is in the Marines, he said after our first read-through, 'I just love that you’re playing this part because you're so like the guys I served with, and not the way the movies portray those guys normally.' This idea of a tough guy is a very interesting thing."

Whether it's playing a tortured soldier or a gay cowboy or a videogame prince, Gyllenhaal deals with a common dilemma; even at 30 he seems not-quite-grown-up. In his case perhaps it's also because he's a bachelor who won't be pinned down — he recently ended relationships with Reese Witherspoon and Taylor Swift. That manchild vibe is something his hero Paul Newman — who was a family friend and gave the young Gyllenhaal career advice — never faced.

"[Paul Newman] was a mentor in my life. I'm looking for mentors like that to show me things all the time. What is it to be a good person? And what is it to be a good man? That's a very important question, and it's not something you can perform, it's something you can sense. I feel I'm moving towards knowing myself, and being confident in myself."

And another junket interview. Hirsute is the word of the day:

Premiere prepare

It's Source Code premiere day in Hollywood. We will update the post tonight as photos and tweets come in.











Omg Craziness!!!! The yelling for Jake Gyllenhaal is nuts... "I wanna have your baby!" seems to be the general consensus among yellers...

---

But to get ready, we have Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan in a Moviefone Unscripted interview.



It's definitely not as much fun as the Brothers Unscripted, but Michelle gets a good question in for Jake:



Very interesting about the ear bud. And I think you can see that they have a good rapport.

Also while waiting, you can read some more Jake interviews. It feels like we've gotten better print interviews from SC than we did with L&OD. Here's one from the Hamilton Spectator:



“I have a relatively strange mind,” Gyllenhaal says. “Some strange things are going to come from it.”

While there has been the occasional payday, like “Prince of Persia” (“Even there I tried to throw in a little bit of something,” he countered), he’s also done “The Good Girl,” “Lovely & Amazing,” the grossly underappreciated “Zodiac” and, more recently, “Brothers,” the Jim Sheridan’s adaptation of the Susanne Bier’s Danish film.

“I loved that story and I loved that character,” he said. “In fact, I loved that character maybe more than any I’ve played; I’d like to bring him back in some kind of incarnation again ‘cause I just loved what he was struggling with.

“But yeah,” he added. “I think things work the best when I listen to my own instincts.



Roger Moore interviewed Jake for the Orlando Sentinel:

At 30, he’s a little young to be carrying Sinatra’s no-regrets “My Way” as an ethos. But that’s sort of who Gyllenhaal is. He makes no apologies for trying his hand at last summer’s flop, “Prince of Persia.” There’s no looking back longingly at ex-girlfriends (Reese Witherspoon and Taylor Swift, among them).

Revisit his two years at Columbia University for a clue about why that is.



“Every choice I’ve ever made is probably informed by my interest in Eastern religions and philosophies,” he says of his college courses. “’Source Code’ explores a ton of different philosophical ideas, that there is no real linearity to life, that time and space are flexible — all things that aren’t just about science but that concern religion and philosophy, particularly Buddhism.” ...

“What would you change if you had the chance? Not much. Not in my life. I’ve been blessed,” Gyllenhaal says.

“But what I learn from this movie is it’s not what you do, it’s how you respond. It’s not going out and never making a mistake. It’s how you respond afterwards. That determines who we are.

“The ultimate goal is to help others, not yourself.”

---

Another cast interview:



In case you missed it from the last post, a video of Jake onstage at the Harvard Westlake Film Festival.

Catching Up

Many news outlets have interviews with Jake Gyllenhaal and/or Duncan Jones this weekend, leading up to Friday's release of Source Code. We'll include a few snippets and links, as well as some Jake pics that have popped up. First up, Jake out and about in Los Angeles on Friday, apparently checking out a bike shop.

From The Gyllenhaal Code in the Boston Herald:

Perhaps Gyllenhaal’s gut feeling about the “Source Code” script can be chalked up to maturity — the actor who played the troubled teen in 2001’s “Donnie Darko” is now 30 years old.

“I feel like I’m lucky to have gotten to 30. There’s a great confidence that comes with it, a real security in understanding myself,” he said.

“This movie is actually a nice representation of that, because there’s a lot of trusting my instinct, trusting that I love this story and that I was going to go with it and never second-guessing it.”



Gyllenhaal hopes moviegoers will respond to his love story with Michelle Monaghan, set on a speeding train bound for destruction.

“In the end, it’s romantic. The choice for this guy is not like, ‘Oh, am I really going to save the world?’ The choice is that he starts as a guy essentially in someone else’s body who is nervous to ask this girl to get a cup of coffee and then has to get blown up eight times to realize that maybe he’s got to ask this girl out for a cup of coffee. So I do relate to that.

“Sometimes it feels like when you walk up to somebody and you’re intrigued by them, to gather up the gumption, to ask someone a question like that, feels like you’re blowing up inside eight times.”



From London Free Press:

Reflecting on his own career -- and putting it in context -- he observes, "As Donnie Darko was a metaphor for childhood into adolescence, I think this is a metaphor for adolescence into adulthood."

Besides, it's not like he has the option to stay young -- whether he's on or off-screen.

"If there's one thing I've learned from turning 30 it's that I really don't have a choice as to whether I'm going to get older or not. I have no intention of pretending I'm 15 when I'm 40. But, please, be aware there may be some mistakes along the way." ...

Regardless of the conceits of the plot, in his own life, Gyllenhaal describes regret as "a great teacher if you listen to it. I wouldn't redo anything."

Including, it turns out, some of his recent films. Both the romantic drama Love & Other Drugs, in which he co-starred with Anne Hathaway, and the video game-inspired Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time underperformed at the box office despite high commercial expectations.

"My experience has been the movies I'm most proud of always get found," he says when asked about Source Code's box office chances. "And with a movie similar in tone to this, Donnie Darko, it's become something more than it initially started as "¦ I believe Source Code will be discovered regardless. All you can do is movies you believe in and trust your instinct. If it's good, people will find it."



From Denton Record-Chronicle:

Jones said Gyllenhaal was instrumental in developing his character behind the scenes, and also in getting Jones involved with the project. The director said he read the script by newcomer Ben Ripley at Gyllenhaal’s request, and the two collaborated while fine-tuning the film after that.

“Jake and I had a very good shorthand as to how we wanted to approach this. We were able to be very improvisational,” Jones said. “We wanted to lighten the tone of the script, and Jake himself had an idea for what he wanted to do in each iteration. My job was to really make sure that we captured that, and to push Jake to do something a little bit more than what he was planning on doing, so we could really go to extremes at times. We had a lot of fun with that.”

Jones, 39, credits Gyllenhaal for helping to ease his transition from independent filmmaking to the Hollywood system, where directors must answer to a host of producers and studio executives that can sometimes threaten creative control. For example, when Jones made a decision to inject more humor into Ripley’s more straightforward script, Gyllenhaal was the first to back him.

---

Here's Jake at the Harvard Westlake Film Festival:



At the conclusion of the film screenings, Gyllenhaal took the stage and shared his memory of Harvard-Westlake’s first film festival in Rugby Auditorium as well as his admiration for the filmmakers.

"Promise me you’ll all hire me for your movies," he said.

A brief video of Jake onstage with the students:



Jake at the Hoyle Jackson launch party:



Jake with Sam Asi, one of the Source Code press junketeers:

He's not painful to look at!

More video and print interviews with Jake Gyllenhaal promoting Source Code. First up, a "generic" interview that's spiced up by some off-camera swearing at the beginning.



This second part didn't work for me - hope it's fixed now:



Jake and Duncan Jones talk to Fandango:



The Chicago Sun Times has a nice piece on Jake, starting out with a description of the crowd that came to watch Jake and company film at The Bean:

His fans call themselves Gyllenhaalics and there is no intervention. They just need to have their fix of those pecs and that sweet smile.

In Chicago, they gathered early in the morning at Millennium Park. Their ages ranged from 5 to 65, and they were on a mission to find the object of their addiction: Jake Gyllenhaal.



The 30-year-old heartthrob was filming a scene for his new movie “Source Code” in the park, and pandemonium ensued.

“Chicago is so cool in my book,” Gyllenhaal said. “We shot in the early morning hours and we had the whole park, but without giving too much away, we were filming in front of a statue that was very reflective. You could see the faces of the fans in the background going nuts and waving. It didn’t exactly fit into the plot about a guy who is hiding out.

“So I asked the ladies to shift a little to the left. It was pretty funny because the crowd moved together like one big dance step. It was everybody to the left in a few big steps. Then everybody to the right. I love my fans. They were so cooperative.”



Director Duncan Jones said Gyllenhaal was the only man for the role.

“I’m a huge fan of Jake Gyllenhaal,” Jones said. “He’s an incredibly talented actor and he’s not painful on the eyes. He’s also incredibly brave. He’s an actor who is always willing to take a risk.”



He became an international sensation playing a gay cowboy in Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain.” His memories of working with co-star Heath Ledger are precious to him.

“I remember seeing him after we were both cast. We were at this party and we didn’t have real space to talk. But somehow we found a little corner and we started doing some of the lines,” he said. “We both thought the story was so beautiful and we wanted to service that story in whatever way possible.

“We had no time to waste.”



Gyllenhaal said his next film is “a beautiful screenplay about two Los Angeles police department officers. It’s about the nature of duty and friendship, and about the reasons why young guys put their lives in danger.”

There's also another spoilery account of one of the roundtable interviews from the junket. I think this one has more detailed answers from Jake. There's a major spoiler of sorts in the article, so hold off if you don't want to be teased!