Still more L&OD

Update: New picture and article from the Sydney Morning Herald. Jake talks about the conflict between health and profit, and the irony of a movie that is about love and Viagra:

The pharmaceutical representatives sell this idea of health that is much more about business and sales. There is something a little cold and cut off about that." ...

"I spent a lot of time with Jamie and he had some funny stories and some disturbing ones about the things people do to create sales," he says. "These are the kind of things that happen when you mix the issue of someone's health with making a quota."

Despite this research, Love and Other Drugs is less severe on the drug industry than Reidy's book. Some critics have suggested the film is a free publicity kick for Viagra. Not so, Gyllenhaal says.

"I don't think those criticisms of the pharmaceutical industry were softened," he says. "What happened was we decided it was a love story and the comment became more about love . . . I don't think there's an avoidance of the drug issues but it's not blatantly political.

"What it's about is comparing real love with the drug.

"It's asking what really turns you on . . . The love story was fascinating in relation to this drug that is supposed to create intimacy."



Jake Gyllenhaal is back in the States after a whirlwind promotional tour to Sydney for Love & Other Drugs. We've gotten a lot of photos and videos from the trip. Now the print press kicks in. Some highlights, sprinkled with a fresh dose of new L&OD stills. I sure hope the scene above scene is on the DVD:



The Herald Sun talked to Jake and Anne:

Unlike Jamie, Gyllenhaal never felt any pressure to join the family business - sister Maggie is an actor, father Stephen is a director and mother Naomi is a screenwriter.

"I felt always supported in whatever I wanted to do. I think whatever pressures were put on me were put on me by me," says the actor, who made his movie debut at the age of 11 in City Slickers.



Love and Other Drugs might be the first film to cast Gyllenhaal as a ladies' man, but the actor had no doubts about his ability to play an incorrigible flirt.

"It just comes naturally. If you put a charming, beautiful young woman in front of me, it's hard not to try and flirt."



When it came to casting Hathaway, who had previously played Gyllenhaal's wife in Brokeback Mountain, neither actor nor director had a moment's hesitation.

"I have wanted to work with Annie again ever since we did Brokeback, because even though we didn't have much together in it, we just really connected as actors," says Gyllenhaal.



Love and Other Drugs capitalises on the screen chemistry between the pair who reveal a surprising amount of flesh in the film's cheeky promotional campaign.

After posing for a risque bedroom shot for the Love and Other Drugs poster, Gyllenhaal and Hathaway went even further for a series of nude shots for the cover of Entertainment Weekly magazine.

"It's always a bit awkward, but there is no one I would rather have movie sex with than Annie," says Gyllenhaal.

Jake reacts to the nudity question

"When people get married, the vows say 'in sickness and in health', and these are the questions that a real relationship needs to ask," says Gyllenhaal, suddenly becoming serious.

"You need to have the courage to ask them."



"Would I describe myself as a romantic? Yes, yes I would. What else is anyone supposed to be? How can you be in a relationship and not be a romantic?"



From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Gyllenhaal says he based much of his schtick on advice from Jamie Reidy, who wrote the book about his experience selling Viagra, which was one of the inspirations for the film.

In rehearsal he practised using everyone's name constantly, prefacing almost every sentence with "honestly" and countering every objection in improvised sales with a friendly, "Really?"



Gyllenhaal is 30 years old next week. He feels at a point of transition. "I don't know if it's to do with turning 30 but I do feel like there's a big sea change with who I am and what I want to do, what I care about," he says. "I do feel that."

In one respect, at least, he feels something in common with his character — a kind of tranquillity. "When I was younger I always wanted to be ahead of where I was," he says. "Whereas now I feel that this is where I am. And I feel good about that." You can't get cooler than that.

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But that doesn't mean we don't have more videos! From a Finnish site:



And this old interview from PoP. I think we saw it before but maybe not this much of it.

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Yet more stills. And even more at IHJ.