And after blocking paps from capturing his newly shaved face, Jake stepped out on Sunday to catch Newsies. Here he is with one of the show's actors, David Guzman:
And now the haircut, too:
Here's a brief look at Columbia's Year of James Baldwin, featuring some video of Jake earlier this month at a discussion of Baldwin's "Another Country."
The Year of James Baldwin came to campus on May 1 with an eclectic public conversation between Columbia professor and author Colm Toíbin and actor Jake Gyllenhaal aimed at providing fresh context to Baldwin’s legacy.
“He gave us our messy humanity in all of its vulnerability, fragility, destructive fearfulness and imaginative creativity,” said Farah Jasmine Griffin, the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African American Studies, who introduced the event. Baldwin “dared to suggest that the only way we will ever see each other fully is to reach beyond boundaries of race, gender, sexuality, region and nation,” she said.
As The New York Times recently reported in its coverage of the festival, once a staple of high school classrooms, Baldwin’s works are less frequently taught today. It was the urge to revitalize his legacy that provided the impetus for The Year of James Baldwin.
“Here we are, two white guys talking about James Baldwin. We have to justify our presence,” said Toíbin, the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of English and Comparative Literature, during the conversation with Gyllenhaal. “I was brought up in a very Catholic society in Ireland, and after reading his second novel, Giovanni’s Room, I discovered—hold on, this guy’s gay. And, of course, I’m gay, and I had thought I was the only guy who was like this.”
Gyllenhaal, who read passages from Baldwin’s third novel, Another Country, talked about how the 1962 best seller, which touches on interracial sex, bisexuality and suicide, highlights how “we are bowled over by convention every single day and look for it to define us.” In Toibin’s words, the novel is “about how to become an adult.”
It's a shame Jake didn't make the trip to France, but it seems like his presence is being felt. No video of Nightcrawler, but it is apparently a hot property at Cannes.
From Vulture:
Each year at the Cannes Film Festival, Harvey Weinstein shows the press some clips and trailers from his studio's coming film slate, and this time, he came ready to tout movies like The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, and Tim Burton's Big Eyes, with Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz. The general public will be seeing those trailers soon enough, but there's one bit of footage Weinstein showed today that he likely won't release unless your hashtag campaigns are really on point: a shirtless Jake Gyllenhaal workout video.
Weinstein had hoped to have Gyllenhaal there in the flesh to discuss his upcoming boxing drama Southpaw, but failing that, he presented Gyllenhaal's actual flesh, dimming the lights for a video meant to convey the actor's intense training regimen. We watched a bearded, ponytailed Gyllenhaal throw punches in the gym, grimace through sit-ups, and engage in countless torso twists meant to strengthen his six-pack. There was even a slo-mo pan up Gyllenhaal's heaving, sweaty, hairy torso. Could this minute-long beefcake clip be Weinstein's spoiler for the Academy Awards? Yes, yes it could be. I'm calling it now: Your Best Picture Winner Will Be Jake Gyllenhaal's Shirtless Workout Video.
Can we hope that someone sneaked some video of that video?
