The Hollywood Reporter has posted the transcript of Jake Gyllenhaal's Hollywood Masters conversation. And there is some Grade A Gyllenbabble in it. Like all conversations that are transcribed, some things just don't translate. And sometimes, Jake's mind doesn't, either. It's a great read. And I hope someday we can see the whole thing. But we do at least have the part where he tales about Brokeback Mountain and Heath Ledger:
Some excerpts:
GALLOWAY: How did you prepare for that?GYLLENHAAL: Heath and I spent a lot of time, a lot of things were just about... The biggest thing, and this is going to sound odd, but the biggest thing that I did was: I had not spent a ton of time around animals as a kid. It wasn't a connection that I had that was just in me. Heath, you know, would walk up to a horse and could like silence the horse. [LAUGHTER] Do you know what I mean? Just literally he'd be like, "Shh shh." And he'd be like [MAKES HORSE SOUND]. [LAUGHTER] And then he'd be like, "I'm going to get on you now." [MAKES HORSE SOUND]. And then he'd get on the horse. I'd be like, "I'm going to get on you." They'd be like “Pfft, f—k off!”
... sometimes there are very simple things that are enough. You know? Sometimes you can be in a scene and you can start literally moving your body in the way that you would emotionally, and it will access that feeling. You don't have to go back and think about how this person yelled at you when you were a baby, and blah, blah, blah. You just have to hunch over and all of a sudden. When you hold, particularly for me in that scene, when you hold a woman in your arms who's saying "what's going on?" That's enough for me. You know? And I can't give her an answer. That's enough for me.
Again, I would again bring up Amy, but there was this moment last night, it was like 3 a.m. and we were exhausted. She had done two super-brutal scenes, very hard emotional scenes, and she was just spent. And sometimes, when you’re in that space, you’re trying to find anything you can — like coffee or running down the street — to get motivation. And she just said, “That was too perfect. Can we just do it again, just one more?” And there was something about her not wanting to have regret, wanting to know when she walked home back to her trailer — she went home at 5 a.m. — that, “All right, I left as much as I could on the table.”
There are lots of great parts to the interview. And some poignant moments.
