Whaddya Say....

More interviews for Enemy and new insights from Jake

From IndieWire:

I know you had a backstory for Detective Loki when you and Denis worked together on “Prisoners.” What kind of backstory did you have for Adam and Anthony?

Denis always wanted it to be two different people, and I always felt it more easy to play the people that we are in different contexts. Like you go to a party and you’re a different person when you come home. But who is that person at the party? What were you playing? Were you playing somebody? Were you aware of that? And I just think it’s a fascinating question. So to me it wasn’t about a backstory as much as observing in this case all the many kinds of parts of a personality that we meld into one––their feelings, their emotions, their interactions with people. Those are the personality things I was trying to ask myself. It was always subtle. It wasn’t like all of a sudden he’s wearing a blond wig. 

And who knew Jake was a little arty- as in the paint sense

 You say it’s easier to play the people we are in different contexts, but I feel like it would be harder. Isn’t there more of a chance to mix up their personalities?

I found it to be like watercolors, where it would easily bleed into the other area. But if I was working in oils or something, you could define the lines a lot more clearly; when you make a statement it’s there. I would constantly ask Denis if he could feel the difference. I could feel the difference and I didn’t know if he could see it, so he would be like Woah, too much! So I don’t know about harder or easier, it was just different. It’s the same medium but you’re working with a different composite material.

Speaking with Salon.com  he shared this:

And then I decided, because of what he talked about, the idea of identity, the idea of sort of the exploration of intimacy, sexuality, connections of all kinds with yourself, with other people, commitment — all these things — to yourself, to a relationship. I decided not read the the book because I felt like it would somehow hinder this exploration. Sometimes the literary form makes it hard to interpret something cinematically because you get caught up in the things you love so much about the words and I really actually didn’t want to get caught up and I knew I would because I knew the script was already different from the book.

Talking about the technical aspect of movie making:


Right, a lot of people complain about that in other movies.

Yeah, a lot of people say, “I don’t like that. I want to really interact with someone.” And I do like interacting with other people so much, other actors. Watching another actor do amazing work, for me, is my other favorite thing. But I never realized how much I love the technical aspects of moviemaking. You feel like you’re helping make a movie even more when you’re doing those things because so much of moviemaking — the filmmaking process — is so technical.

Funny how the son of a directors and screenwriters has never mentioned this before - may be it's that other fella who write and directs that might have made the difference.

Jake also sat down to talk with the Screen Actors Guild in a 90 minute Q & A back in November


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Check out all the interviews for more about Enemy and Jake.