Jake Jake Jake!

[serious crayons]

These excerpts are really interesting! Thanks so much for posting them, John.

My two favorite passages are this:

But I was actually really, really proud of myself that I didn't do it. For me, it was a great triumph. You know, there's a pressure that people put themselves to not trust their instincts. You know, show the stunt guys I can do it, prove it to this person, prove it to that person. Who do I need to prove it to? And Heath didn't do it for any of those reasons--he did it because he wanted to jump."

because I think this is actually very wise. It's hard to know where to draw the line between pressuring yourself not to trust your instinct -- my instinct might tell me that I really SHOULD make the jump, or that I should get a quart of Ben & Jerry's and eat it all, but I would pressure myself not to do it, and in either case the pressure would be right. But other times I'd pressure myself not to follow some instinct and it would be wrong the other way. I guess the challenge is instinctively knowing when your instincts are right.

and this:

"No!" she protests. "I love The Brokenback Mountain.  I really did love it. I watched it three times."

Brokenback Mountain. Once she recedes, he turns to me and says, "You don't want to know the the variations of that title."

   

because it's so funny. So what do you think -- she saw the movie three times, but she got the title wrong. Do we issue her a Brokie card? 

[Monika]

I want a list with all the variations!

[Brown Eyes]

Woohoo!  Just came back from buying the GQ.  LOL, I so rarely buy magazines off of news stands anymore... it was kind of a novel experience.  

K... you may be interested to know, that in addition to the Jake content, on p. 65 there's a little article about a forthcoming re-release of the Stones' Exile on Main Street, with a neat vintage pic of Keith and some funny comments by him.

Also, LOL, my living room is quickly filling up with the scents of multiple men's colognes since there are so many cologne sample pages (of various kinds) in this magazine.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

From Jake Is Huge  by Chris Heath, GQ  Magazine, May 2010, pp 110-111:

Between courses at the Ravagh Persian Grill in Manhattan....(continues)

 
 

Afterward, he and Ledger stayed in close touch. "We'd talk a few times a month. I mean, he was a friend. He was like my creative partner." The news of Ledger's death came while Gyllenhaal was filming Brothers.
 
Could you make any sense of it at all?
 
A lengthy pause. "I don't really like talking about it. That period of time was...It was difficult."
 
What effect do you think it had on you?
 
"Even when we did Brokeback  and stuff, it was like my work was the only thing that mattered to me. It was like I could only understand or define myself through doing that. Life, I didn't totally understand. And I think I was afraid of life. And I had success in my work, enough success that you could keep going back there. But after that happened...I think I recognized that it was work. And I recognized that this is for real.

"This" being life?

"It's for real."

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

From Jake Is Huge  by Chris Heath, GQ  Magazine, May 2010, page 111:

Between courses at the Ravagh Persian Grill in Manhattan....(continues)



 
What were you scared of?

"It seems to me that there are some people who go, 'All right, I'm grabbing the bull by the horns. Let's do this...,' and there are some people who it takes a while to figure out. It's an everyday struggle to be able to go, I'm going to follow my own instincts--I'm going to try and hear my own heart, regardless....' We're getting pretty deep here. I mean, there are things that I want in my life. You can hide in your work, I guess I'm saying, or you can be alive and free and live in your work. You can pretend the people that you're going to work with for however many months are going to be the family that's going to be forever. But the truth is, they're not. And no matter what relationships you make along the way--which have been occasionally really, really influential on my life--ultimately I choose all the mishegoss, and all the complication and confusions of life, which takes courage and patience to sift through. Over the temporary moment of 'Oh, I'm comforted in the womb of this family.' I choose the other. I hate to say this, but--" Gyllenhaal smiles--

"It's time to jump."

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Again, get a copy of GQ if you can; the article is quite long, and there are many non-BBM issues mentioned that may be of much interest to people here. There is one fragment I'll copy and add here for obvious reasons--Jake had been describing why actor Brian Geraghty on Jarhead  was very angry with Jake, and why they did not speak (although Jake had attempted to apologize):



From Jake Is Huge  by Chris Heath, GQ  Magazine, May 2010, page 111:



Afterward, did you think that you had done anything wrong?

A long pause. "It's a fine line. I mean, when I did the scene with Heath in Brokeback Mountain  rolling down the hill, he was punching me in the face. We were fighting each other. And he's a scrapper. That was intense.... Sam [Mendes] wanted things from us that were real. Ultimately the scene was about someone who was lost, and I remember feeling very lost. Whether Sam meant to manipulate me there...."

Gyllenhaal tried to apologize to Geraghty. "He wasn't having it. He was like, 'You're crazy. You're a loose cannon.'"
They didn't speak for a month.

[CellarDweller]

Ready for Prince of Persia?

[CellarDweller]

[CellarDweller]

[CellarDweller]