Tuesday, September 2, 2014

The Hunger Games

Before the premiere of Nightcrawler at TIFF this Friday, Jake has spoken to the Bible of the entertainment industry,  Variety, about the movie and about the journey of becoming Lou Bloom, "a fast-talking sleazeball who chases ambulances to catch footage of accident victims on his camcorder. Like Michael Douglas in “Wall Street,” he’s a self-starter who will do anything to succeed."

As OMG has seen over the years there has been a new direction for Jake, and the new narrative is that he made a "professional U-turn",  leaving "behind popcorn movies like “Prince of Persia” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” and decided he wanted to work only with directors who pushed him out of his comfort zone".
Tom Ortenberg, CEO of Open Road Films comment that “one of the interesting things about these roles that Jake has taken is that they are darker, but still commercial”.

Nightcrawler fits right into this new imaging,  the dark thriller of the seedy world of after dark journalism in LA found Jake taking on Lou Bloom and dropping the pounds to do so.   When interviewed on the red carpet last year while promoting Prisoners Jake mentioned he dropped about 20 lbs to but this year it's 30.  (Who knew those last 10 were that easy! Just change the 2 to the 3, thanks Jake!)

 Whatever the number Jake did whatever it took  to make himself capture the lean hunger. “I would try to eat as few calories as possible,” he says. “I knew if I was hungry that I was in the right spot. Physically, it showed itself, but chemically and mentally, I think it was even a more fascinating journey. It became a struggle for me.”

On some nights, he wouldn’t eat at all, or he’d only nibble on small pieces of meat, crackers or kale salad."  Jake  "would run 15 miles from his house to the set in the evenings to stay lanky. The inspiration for the fast-talking character came from the animal world. “There was a general sense that he was a coyote, I just wanted to live that way.”

 What is even more interest is that during this Nightcrawler process,  Austin tweeted he found his spirit animal too.  


I found my spirit animal. - 27 August 2013

Wonder how a leopard and coyote would work.  Maybe it would be call a pack. A brood, a bunch, a gaggle.

It could work with the semantics that Jake plays in his interviews.

In a comment about Jake returning to his indie roots with his latest roles, "even if it means taking smaller paychecks."  “I don’t have my own family right now, I have an opportunity to make those choices.”  (Yet he does have his own family, the one pops up in interviews, is said to have relocated for, the family that he chooses to talk about - his mom and his sister's.  You don't think Jake wouldn't play the difference of  "family of my own" and "own family" )

Jake goes on to speak more about creating the creepy photojournalist, working with writer/director Gilroy and his off screen wife Rene Russo and his current work with Antoine Fuqua on Southpaw. 

You can read the whole interview at Variety


7 comments:

  1. This $ from this shirt goes to our Oceans!! Please buy it now at whosay.com/l/sKA99aq. @Oceana @Nautica whosay.com/l/gGU99ar

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  2. Oh my dog. That was his tweet? That's the first time I've seen/read that tweet.

    That is awful. That isn't him.

    Look at the first 5 words/characters. That makes me cringe like someone's raking their fingers down a chalkboard. "This $ from this shirt?"

    Austin Nichols knows way better than that. He has a degree in English - he is not going to write that. His hand would have a spasm writing that incorrect grammar. LOL - it makes me shudder.

    And then what was this? "Please buy it now at..."

    Geez louise. All I did was look at his whosay, I didn't see the tweet until now. Very, very shoddy work by somebody, I don't know who, but that wasn't Austin.

    You know why someone had to assume his position? Because Austin is still holed up with Jake and the kids.

    Man. That was just bad. smh.

    And I'm not even going to go into that whole Oceana is the new Two Wheel Tuesday.

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  3. If you remember the first Oceana event in the late spring they said that Austin was going to design a t-shirt for Oceana. This must be it, because who else would put a fish in a diving bell...with a mustache.

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  4. One thing this picture does do is give us an idea what Austin is looking like right now. Which is good to compare with other "pictures" that get tweeted and floated that he's here or there.

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  5. I came across this intriguing comment on a Harry and Louis tumblr site today and I immediately thought of Jake. I have no doubt that this is how he moves about without being "seen." Particularly, when he's in California. In fact, this is how he moves about with the family. On call flights. Private customs. Small, private planes. Non-disclosure agreements. Check. Check. And, check.

    Flying beneath the radar

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  6. That was a great account, M&M. And another way you know this happens is that these guys manage to get from Point A to Point B 8 times out of 10 with little or no fanfare. All of a sudden, pfft! There they are.

    But then there are times, when there are all kinds of clangs and bells, look at me's!!! and camera flashes.

    Nope, this doesn't surprise me at all. Great find, M&M

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  7. Just to save a click, here's the Tumblr post that M&M provided the link for:



    3rd Sep 2014 | 398 notes

    tenderkisssays asked: It's the same thing every time he goes to LA. I do think he's there a lot, so I get the questioning(a little), but I don't' get the whole Jeff thing. Anyway, like you said the weather is beautiful & he's working. Where do these people think all of these songs he's credited to were written? Plus Louis may visit him there. Just cause we don't see something, doesn't mean it's not taking place.



    Gather around folks and let me tell you a story. A friend of mine is a pilot. He works for a company flying private planes. He is based out of San Francisco. Here is how his job works. He is “on-call” for 2 weeks at a time, then off for a week. When he is on-call he must be able to arrive at the airport within 1 hour of being called. This means he can’t drink at all or be farther from the airport than that. Why is this important, you ask? Well, he flies 2 types of people: Business folk and entertainment folk. He, and everyone in the company sign a non-disclosure so don’t ask but…… celebrities who fly internationally will land at the San Fran airport from out of the US, quietly go through the private customs office and then shuttle over to their private plane, where my friend and his crew fly them to one of the private, small airports in Los Angeles, where everyone employed has also signed a non-disclosure. He has seen things that would boggle the mind. He once referred to his job as “Mistress Transport”. So yes, Louis and Harry can fly from anywhere in the world and arrive in LA without being seen.

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