Questions and answers

Jake Gyllenhaal, Melissa Leo and writer Aaron Guzikowski attended a Prisoners screening, as part of the :A Times Envelope series. You can watch the Q&A here. The moderator, Steven Zeitchik, teases Jake about his hand injury. It's fun to watch the interplay among the participants.

Go to the bottom of the post for a clip on the movie's themes with a funny exchange between Melissa and Jake over their first collaboration on Homicide.





In more Prisoners awards promotion, Jake and Melissa will take part in a live chat on Gold Derby today:
Jake Gyllenhaal ("Prisoners") Thursday, Nov. 21, 9:50 a.m. PT / 12:50 p.m. ET
Melissa Leo ("Prisoners") Thursday, Nov. 21, 12:00 p.m. PT / 3:00 p.m. ET

I found a new/old Youtube video from the Prisoners Toronto premiere, with some funny post-movie stage talk:

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Variety's annual SAG preview features actors discussing awards-worthy performances. Here's Richard Jenkins on Jake in Prisoners:

Richard Jenkins on Jake Gyllenhaal as Detective Loki in “Prisoners” Jake Gyllenhaal in “Prisoners” was simply a cop doing his job, and it was a beautiful thing to watch. I didn't know anything about his character, where he was from, if he was married, had any kids, what the tattoo on his neck meant or why he buttoned the top button of his shirt. Nothing. And he wasn't interested in telling me. He was too busy being a cop. But by the movie's end, I knew him. Totally. Completely. And he was never interested in helping me, as an audience member, understand him, or like him, or sympathize with him. He was only interested in doing his job. It's always thrilling to watch a living, breathing human being on the screen. That's Jake. He takes you with him on this journey. Doesn't ask you to come along, doesn't even know you're there, because he's too busy being a cop doing his job. It's the case of a lifetime for this guy and he's working it alone. No other cops to talk about it with. It's internalized, lived, and I could watch all day. Simply a great performance.

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The Melissa/Jake exchange:

The look of Love

Love & Other Drugs is almost upon us. As the reviews come in, we still have some promotional stuff to enjoy. Here are portraits of Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway from the Los Angeles Times. Taken in New York on November 18:

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Some new videos. Here's Jake and Anne with Moviefone talking about working together again after BBM:



From MTV, more harassing of the interviewer:

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

I think this has been seen before but can't remember, so here it is again. On the Nudity:

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

A quick clip from MyFox:



Repeated from the end of yesterday's post: a red carpet interview from the NY premiere, for a change of pace. Jake makes a Viagra pun!

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This interviewer did a longer piece for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. That article is more of the same stuff we've read. But in her conversation with Jake, we get some of the usual questions but also some new material:

Do you wanna give any other shoutouts to the cast?

Josh Gad [who plays Jamie's brother] is the engine in this film. Josh Gad will be and is becoming a force to be reckoned with. He brought all the humor and energy to the movie, and was a huge influence on me, and an inspiration in terms of comedy. He's a great actor. Working with Oliver Platt and Hank Azaria, they're comedic geniuses but also really great actors.

What was it like to work with real Parkinson's patients in the film?

That was a hard day. It was moving in so many ways, but also really funny. Two of the women who helped Anne were at the [LA premiere] the other night and they're wonderful women, so funny and lighthearted. And with the passing of Jill Clayburgh [who played my mother in the film], I was just thinking, some people live healthy long lives and don't really ever live. And some people's lives are shorter and they live it to the fullest extent possible, in sickness and in health. Those are the people I admire and would love to mimic my life after. You can be some slick ol' pharmaceutical salesman who's #2 in the country and financially stable and got it all together, or, you know, you can have love. Which would you pick?

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The reviews are coming in and they are decidedly mixed. Though most have great praise for both Jake and Anne. But this was a nice one, from the San Jose Mercury News:

So let's give thanks for, and bestow a big smooch on, the risk-taking ways of "Love & Other Drugs." The passionate dramedy about the combustible relationship between pharmaceutical salesman Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) and artist/cafe worker Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway) is just the antidote the romantic comedy has desperately needed.

It's sexy, it's funny, it's sexy, it's sad, and, oh my, is it ever sexy.

Fit for a Prince

Update: The LA Times has a story about Jake's move into potential franchise territory. There's some good stuff:

On a recent trip to promote the Disney adventure film, Gyllenhaal seemed wide-eyed but also amused by his career detour into blockbuster madness. He grinned at more than 4,000 fans who cheered him at a pop-culture expo called WonderCon but also kept an ironic detachment from the scene; during a question-and-answer session, a fan asked the actor what moment in history he would visit if he could turn back time (as his character in the move can do), and after a pause he answered with a straight face: "I would go back and watch my birth."



Clearly, Gyllenhaal is not taking himself or his new movie too seriously, although he gushes about the movie's dazzle, adrenaline and vintage movie-serial soul. "I actually jump out of a window and land on the back of my horse, just like in the old movie, Zorro-style," he said with the expression of a teenager who just hopped off, like, the best roller coaster ever. It's no surprise that the athletic actor, who was nominated for an Oscar for "Brokeback Mountain," finds himself going from indie-spirited work into the Comic-Con cinema zone; that's the template after the success of Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr., Christian Bale and Tobey Maguire in summer franchises.



Newell, who has known Gyllenhaal since he was a youngster, said the actor is ideal for the role because he has an aura of effortless charm around him and an almost boyish sense of wonder. "He puts a human heart in the middle of a movie that will absolutely need one to connect with the audience," he said.



He says his time in the desert was, on one level, really just a wardrobe experiment. "I grew up with filmmakers and I consider myself a filmmaker, sort of, but as an actor taking on a role I know that I'm just a piece of a situation. What I mean by that is you become part of the story that will be up there on the screen and that makes you want to try a really wide variety of situations. You try on a coat, you wear it for a while and you give it back. That's what acting is.... Sometimes as an actor you just want to try something on."

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Or take something off :) These photos of a shirtless Jake Gyllenhaal filming a scene for Prince of Persia have made their way around the internet. But even if you've already seen them, I think they deserve a post of their own!

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Found some photos of Jake at the post-WonderCon party. More of Jake and his bevy of admirers here:

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Posted this in the last post, but if you haven't read this Daily Beast story on Nailed, it's definitely worth a look. Depressing but informative. In other non-uplifting news, an early and middling PoP review. Good words about Jake, at least, though some of this could be seen as faint praise:

Of the cast, Jake Gyllenhaal does an admirable job as the titular Prince Dastan. To avoid the furore that would doubtless have enveloped the film had this Persian Prince spoken in an American accent, Gyllenhaal delivers his lines in an accomplished (if equally out of place) English one. As an action hero he neither fits the type of the muscle-bound bore (like say, Sam Worthington or Gerard “charisma vacuum” Butler) nor the weedy, pretty-boy (like Orlando Bloom) and therefore manages to avoid being hateful as the film’s conventional, in-offensive protagonist figure.