Coop'd up

Jake has spoken about his former co-star Chris Cooper before and the advice he gave him when Jake was just starting out as in actor,

Chris Cooper once told me to never have any regrets. After Chris said that to me, I walk into every scene thinking, 'exhaust every possibility.' Once you get to a certain place, it's like you just deliver everything you've got. Don't have any regrets. It pops up in my mind over and over and over again.

Even this year at TIFF Jake mentioned the advice the man who once played his father gave him.

Most thought Jake was just reminiscing but actually it might have been a little hint about his new movie.

Deadline has exclusively confirmed that Chris Cooper has now joined the cast of Demolition. No word on who Cooper's character is or his relationship to Jake's character. The Jean-Marc Vallee movie begins film in New York next week.

Demolition will be the third time Jake and Chris have worked together.  Most remember Cooper as Jake's dad in October Sky,  while some may have forgotten that Cooper played Lt. Col. Kazinski in Jarhead. 

Will "Jake" tweet about his new co-star?  Well someone might, but not Jake.  Here's Jake at TIFF talking to Vanity Fair about how he doesn't have a clue who is tweeting as him.

Fibble Wiggle Wobble

Southpaw is continuing to create the story of (The Great White) Billy Hope  by recreating a downtown Pittsburgh location into Madison Square Garden.

But behind the scenes there was some story telling too.   US Magazine was reporting that Jake, Rachel, director Antoine Fuqua and the cast and crew finished up shooting in Indiana PA with letting loose and getting a little wobbly.
  
The costars let loose at Brenda & Ken of Wolfies Pub with about 60 others following a private dinner at Donatellos Restaurant.

"The owner of Donatellos bought them all a round of shots when they first walked in the door to get the party started. Rachel and Jake, along with the director and crew, were on the dance floor and mixing it up," the source tells Us.

McAdams, 35, sipped on a Grey Goose martini and later switched to a Maker's Mark on the rocks during the fun night out. Gyllenhaal, for his part, stuck to Guinness -- that is, when he wasn't doing Trey Songz's Wobble Dance! "He wasn't bad at all," the source notes.

Also curious is the last line of the story:

McAdams is currently dating boyfriend Patrick Sambrook. As Us exclusively revealed, Gyllenhaal got back together with ex-girlfriend Alyssa Miller in February after a brief split.

Weren't they just trying to sell Jake and Rachel dating? At the beginning of their own article?

But there is more fiction than fact to this story.

 Southpaw finished up filming in Indiana, PA before the film's 4th of July break.

 While it is good press for the movie, it is also timely to run this story due to the recent announcement of Rachel's ex Ryan Gosling is about to become a father with girlfriend Eva Mendes who is 7 months pregnant. Rachel is not going to be seen sitting at home upset that she wasn't the Mother Goose for Ryan's goslings, she wants to be seen to have moved on, on, on, on.  And it's not bad for Jake either because it sounds like he was around in Pittsburgh this whole time ( The Vineyard?  What??? What Vineyard trip?)

And about Jake's Wobble, there was this comment left on Just Jared that covered that and the date issue too.

They were with other people from the movie at Donatello’s. Then Fabio, the owner of Donatello’s brought them to Wolfie’s. There’s even a picture of Jake standing around at Wolfie’s in his hoodie and baggy gym shorts. Not dancing. They had a wrap party for the extras who worked at the location in Indiana, PA. The movie crew and cast has moved to Pittsburgh as of June 30th. . So all this happened before the 4th of July.

I think the movie people wants to hype Jake & Rachel as a couple and make it look like something is going on, but this is old news if you are from Pittsburgh and follow the movie shooting. They are doing this because they don’t want Rachel to look bad now that Ryan is having a baby with Eva.

But as for  Jake drinking Guinness, and doing the Wobble. Jakey - we know you have the moves, we've seen your moves in Jarhead.



Then again - maybe you  just prefer doing The Wiggle and having your Grey Goose in  private.

Director's Cut

Prisoners broke it's award nominee shut-out with a Critics Choice nominee for Best Cinematography for Roger Deakins while it looks like one of Jake's previous director is finding another full award season. David O. Russell has been on an award roll since Nailed with The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook, and now American Hustle.  It make you want to watch Nailed as least the version Russell created just to see what kind of performance he capture with Jake. 

Early in his career Jake seemed to pick movies even more by the director than the screenplay.  It looked like he was creating his own film school working with some of the best directors in the business.  Each brought a difference to the screen,  then seem to be change - an evolution perhaps? Jake started working with "young" directors - those with only a few movie under their belt or those directors who had success outside of mainstream Hollywood, with a sprinkle here and there of a bigger name.

So here's the question:  Which director do you think had

Had best Director/Actor relationship with him?

Seem to have the best off screen rapport?

 Captured the best performance from Jake?

Who influenced Jake the most?

Who was the most challenging?

Who do you think Jake respected the most?

Didn't work as an actor director?


October Sky - Joe Johnston

Donnie Darko - Richard Kelly

Bubble Boy -  Blaire Hayes

Lovely & Amazing - Nicole Holofcener

The Good Girl - Miguel Arteta

Highway - James Cox

Moonlight Mile - Brad Silberling

The Day After Tomorrow - Roland Emmerich

Proof - John Madden

Jarhead - Sam Mendes

Brokeback Mountain  - Ang Lee

Zodiac - David Fincher

Rendition -  Gavin Hood

Brothers - Jim Sheridan

Prince of Persia - Mike Newell 

Love & Other Drugs - Ed Zwick

Source Code - Duncan Jones

End of Watch - David Ayer

Prisoners - Denis Villeneuve

And including two not seen on screen but based on off screen:

Nailed - David O. Russell

An Enemy - Denis Villeneuve

Punch and Jakey

The news of Jake cutting his hand after punching a mirror during filming a scene for Nightcrawler shows there was an intensity on set, be it from the script or just Jake having a moment, but this isn't the first time there has been something like this to happen with Jake and his movies.

Some might remember the very intense scene in Jarhead between Jake and Brian Geraghty  when Jake's character Swofford snaps first holding his gun up  to Brian's character and then grabbing Brian's gun and pointing it at his own mouth screaming to pull the trigger.  During the filming of the scene Brian accidentally chipped Jake's tooth and with Jake so into the moment found him literally beating up his co-star. "And so I, for some reason, just started hitting him, and I just got so angry that he had chipped my tooth. And I just started hitting him. And we didn't talk for like a month, actually, after that. It's actually a testament to Brian because Brian is nothing like the character he plays. He's just amazing in that scene." Brian described it as: "Well we had a little time apart from ourselves but I mean, it was a very intense scene where he almost kills my character. ...Everything was fine. We took it to the limit. Hopefully when you see the film you’ll acknowledge that. We’re better for it."

Jake was so intense during the whole shoot he also had issues with his future brother-in-law Peter, who he also didn't speak to for a month and ended up breaking a rib of Peter's during a scene. So intensity is nothing new for Jake.

But it's not the accident itself that set the bells off  here,  is some of the other details that has OMG asking questions.

 Like -

Nightcrawler was supposed to be a a 28 day shoot in Oct. why is Jake still filming two weeks later?

How far behind must they be if they had a filming schedule that lasted 18 hours?

What happened in October that set them back so much?  Schedules? Days off? Budgets? Darkness? Too many rainy days in Southern California?

Is Nightcrawler the real reason that Everest isn't set to start shooting until January 5th?

Where do you come up with the money to pay for going over schedule for this many days? Especially on a movie that they have said is being made on a very small tight budget?

And with Jake being one of the executive producers for Nightcrawler, doesn't he have a little more control over the schedule and the run over? Or is that part of the reason it's running over?



Just one more thing - Jake, bud,  if you didn't want to "teach her" how to make Thanksgiving dinner there are other ways of getting out of it.

Close enough for government work.....

As we celebrate President's Day here in the US, thought about all the ways Jake's government connections and patriotism on screen.

October Sky - National Science Winner and future NASA employee

Moonlight Mile - Lending a helping hand at the Post Office

TDAT - Inspirational story for Presidential speech

Jarhead - Marine

Brokeback - Sheepherder - Forestry Service



Rendition - CIA Analyst

Source Code - Soldier/Experimental Government Program



And of course Bubble Boy.

Bubble Boy?!?!?!? How?

Love & War

From today's Northwestern's daily newspaper, who had a chance to speak with Zwick, who is continuing his one man promotional band for his not your average rom-com.

In one answer you find out how Jarhead was one of the connections for Zwick thinking of Jake.

Q: What went into the casting decision of Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal?

EZ: Part of my job is to be aware of what actors are out there and what they're doing, look at their work. I'd seen Annie do Jonathan Demme's movie ("Rachel Getting Married") and I'd seen her do Shakespeare in the Park, and she was really fantastic and brave and ambitious artistically. And Jake had done this movie a friend of mine wrote called "Jarhead," and I'd seen his work before that. I got to know him a little bit and realized that to know him was to have (witnessed) something that movie audiences hadn't necessarily seen, which is the depth of his charm and his humor and this very attractive male romantic... and I felt, "Oh hey, you know what? I'm going to show that to people." Because it's there.

Don't think Jarhead was what showed Zwick the male romantic in Jake, but you wonder if if it was more like he knew that Jake could do the whole naked truth. Because with a few alterations a Santa hat could make a festive merkin. ; )

Ok maybe it was the hair.

“All's fair in love and war.”

And Jake's going back to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre for the AFI Fest 2010 which LaOD has a gala premiere to open the film festival on November 4.

Government Approved

Yeah I know. But sometimes Twitter can be inspiring.

Like this one:

Two hours into the conference and one thing is clear, people working for the US government love Jake Gyllenhaal- Funkier

Reasons the US Government Loves Jake Gyllenhaal

Made Santa a hot Marine. Hooah!
Al Gore might have brought the Powerpoint but Jake brought the sexy back to global warming.
He's the pin up boy in the CIA analyst offices
He's the face of the new "Protect Yourself against H1N1" campaign.
We all wanted to make out with Jen Aniston too.
He's the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad we can reason with.
Getting a little more governmental:

And it looks like other countries' government might get a chance to fall for him too. The G20 Summit is meeting in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh? G20? What the heck? Well President Obama said Pittsburgh because it has transformed itself from the city of steel to a center for high-tech innovation – including green technology, education and training, and research and development. But still thinking it's "the government just love Jake."

Having that many world leaders in one place means security. And in a city that has 3 rivers, 59 river bridges (of the 2000 bridges in Allegheny Co) and 6 major tunnels that cut through surrounding mountains, it means no one is getting anywhere anytime soon, and that's even before the protesters. There was mention that production of LaOD was moving 3o miles out of Pittsburgh to shoot the next couple of days.

It may also mean that Jake finds a bike or puts on the kicks and takes transportation matters into his own hands. Talk about a work out. Although looking like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on a bike might not be the best idea.

G. I. Jake

The end of 2005 found Jake starring in three films. Most will say the triumph was Brokeback. With no one knowing what the unknown potential was for Brokeback, the buzz for Jake that fall was on his role in Jarhead. It was that Jarhead buzz early in the fall, that was saying a leading actor nomination for Jake for his role as Tony Swofford.

Rolling Stone said, "It's the best acting Gyllenhaal has ever done (and he triumphs in the upcoming Brokeback Mountain). Gyllenhaal is the heart and soul of a darkly intense and ferociously funny movie that sets its sights on soldiers under the gun of doing nothing."

Jarhead had a stellar cast including Oscar winners Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper. Peter again brought an incredible performance and it make you wonder when will he be finally recognized for his work. Jarhead was the supposed Jake's Oscar vehicle. No one expected Brokeback to be the phenomenon it became.

It wasn't the lack of Oscar worthy performances that held Jarhead back for nominations, it was more of the overall theme of the film. Jarhead never took a position on the war, Sam Mendes did this intentionally, leaving it up the audience, but the audience it seemed was looking for a statement one way or the other.

Unfortunately Jarhead sometimes gets overlooked while it is yet another great performance from Jake on his growing list of credits.