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

Dark Side of the Moon

I see the bad moon arisin'
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today


Bad Moon? Bad Math? or Just Bad Work?

The current story that is spun back up is about Jake and Ellen Pompeo, but it's roots all the way back to 2002.

(And you wondered where they get the 10 years ago line)
The original version of this story came from an interview that was published way back in September 2002, and which according to Pompeo the “meeting” took place in March 2002, in a parking lot behind Joan's on Third. That was when Jake supposedly knocked on her car window in the parking lot, all nervous and shy. Then according to Pompeo he blurted out, "I just want to tell you that you're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my entire life." At that point, Jake tried to run away. Of course Perez Hilton has a twist on it "

Three weeks later they met at the audition for Moonlight Mile.

But guess what ... the whole thing... the whole story could not have happened. Why?Because Moonlight Mile (then called Baby's in Black, and later Hello, Goodbye before officially becoming Moonlight Mile) was filmed in Massachusetts March and April of 2001!

How do we know? It was all over the local papers in MA. And Pompero being a local from Everett (MA) there were additional tie-ins for all the stories.

"In April and May 2001, you couldn't walk down the street on the North Shore without hearing about the latest Dustin Hoffman or Susan Sarandon sighting. Hollywood had come to the North Shore to shoot a movie, and for a short period it seemed as though every neighbor knew someone who had met one of the stars. " (Boston Globe October 3, 2002)

There were stories in the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, and the Patriot Ledger about the movie production between March and the beginning of May that primarily took place in the North Shore towns of Gloucester, Marblehead, and Swampscott , with a few scenes shot in the South Shore coastal town of Cohasset.

"Murderous times: Dustin Hoffman will star opposite Sarandon and Jake....." in 'Baby's in Black' Set in the 1970s, the drama centers on ....a young man grieving over the death of his slain fiancee. Living with her parents (Hoffman and Sarandon), he causes concern when he is newly smitten by a woman who works in a bar owned by her boyfriend, who has disappeared. . . . " (Boston Globe March 11, 2001)

Including this one where Jake "popped by Salon Mario Russo at Louis, Boston the other day for a coiffing before being snapped for the June/July issue of Flaunt maggie. Jake was groomed by Mario himself and then was outfitted in Louis designer duds." [He] "is Flaunt-ing his stuff in the Disney flick with Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon, which continues to shoot all over the North Shore and Cohasset." (Inside Track, Boston Herald May 3, 2001.)

You want video? Here it is, with a cartwheel and a "ta-da"

If you go to You Tube and read the description they too say the filming was in 2001.

Need more proof?

Well remember the story of Dustin Hoffman encouraging Jake to go on the stage? Well that had to happen BEFORE he did. And when did Jake debut on the professional stage? March 2002 in London, where he joined Hayden Christensen and Anna Pacquin for This is Our Youth. Previews for the play were Mar 2nd -14th, and the play opened March15th and ran (with that cast) until April 20th. (Another tidbit you might not have known, Hoffman bought Jake a book on acting from a Marblehead (MA) bookstore, while they were filming. The book? `Stanislofsky on Acting'

So if Jake was in London March and April 2002 how did he knock on Pompeo's window?

Hmmmm.....

Now why create a story like that in the fall of 2002? Well maybe to boost up the love story in the movie that debuted that September.

But what else happened in 2002? Jake met Austin, and while things had been casual about Jake prior to that, 2002 was the beginning of a more concerted effort to give him romantic stories that were far from the real romance that was happening in his life.

Why? Maybe because it looked obvious from the get go with the guys, this was different, this was something serious, this was no flirtation and those around them knew it.

Why is it being re-tread now? Because Pompeo is with WME and Jake is still with Austin? Or is it easier and less complicated to link back to the past , and avoid the situation of a complicated faux in the present and future?

And you gotta wonder what Austin wrote in his movie journal about this movie.

Thanks to M&M, Boston Public Library, Minuteman Library Network, Old Colony Library network for assistance in research & access to free newsbanks. And IHJ for pictures.

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?

Might have missed it

It was mini - Moonlight Mile reunion at Game 7.

Not just Jake and Dustin


But Ellen Pompeo too.


Just need Susan.

Makes you look back and revisit




Moonlight is loss and grief and love and humor and friendship and family. It captures the truth about that extremely delicate human experience — losing someone you love. It was the very personal story of writer/director Brad Silberling brought to screen about the senseless murder of his girlfriend actress Rebecca Schaeffer by a stalker.



Set in the '70s, it's the story of the aftermath of a young woman's sudden, senseless murder. Her surviving fiancé, Joe (Jake), ends up living in her house with her parents, Ben and JoJo (Dustin and Susan). Together, they struggle with her loss and attempt to move on with their lives. In the meantime, Joe, who harbors a secret about his relationship that he feels too guilty to reveal, finds himself falling for a young local woman, Bertie (Ellen).



Joe, Ben and JoJo a family formed in grief. It's real and honest, and sometimes a little messy just like life. Joe finding himself caught up in something he didn't expect, now living with them who consider him a son, grieving a different person than one he knew and them looking to him for something, their last connection to the daughter. Constantly trying to figure out what he should or shouldn't be say or do, who he is and what it all means.







Way back when in People.

Susan Sarandon digs his "dreamy eyes." Ellen Pompeo loves his lips. And his hair. "He's just delious," says his 33-year-old Moonlight Mile costar. But perhaps the best thing about hunk Jake Gyllenhaal is the fact that he blushed when praised for arranging a surprise birthday party for his driver on the set. "We just brought him a cake," he demurs. "That was all."


While shooting the romantic drama Moonlight Mile, Gyllenhaal sets hearts ablaze behind the scenes: "Everyone had crushes on him – wardrobe, makeup, everybody," his costar Aleksia Landeau tells PEOPLE. "He's not like those actors who are like, 'Look at me!' He has a poetic soul. He lets people come to him."


Hard to imagine it was just 9 years ago.

Still agree with Ebert, Jake should have gotten a Oscar nom for it.

LL Cool J

Don't know what it is but there is something about Jake for several of his leading ladies. There some kind of magic something there. Clearly theses ladies love their Jake.

An interview that begins in the ladies room of Man Ray restaurant in NYC actually talks about working with these three leading ladies. Older, successful and smitten by our guy Jake, Susan Sarandon, Catherine Keener and Jen Anniston.
When Susan got her star on the Walk of Fame, Jake was there to help celebrate with her and her family. He looks like a part of the family.
Catherine talked about Jake's natural charm in the extras for Lovely and Amazing, and how he was the main man in the female dominated film, and you can tell he won them all over and not just her. Catherine and Jake's connection on screen was completely believable in terms of their feelings in what is now popularly called a cougar and her much younger man.

Catherine got the chance to work with Jake again in Nailed, maybe one day we get to chance to see their second project and if that wink is still there.

And then there's Catherine's friend Jen, who refers to herself as his Mrs. Robinson. Just like with the others, there is a honest affection and love for each other, but there is something different with Jen. Totally at ease with each other and a sparkle to that just happens when together.





What is it about his connection with these co-stars? It is that feeling of safety which allows this affection to bubble up? Is the affirmations? The approval? The what?