Celebrity German Magazine - Interview
Translated by: Mongkut and Nass (from the IHJ Community)

Why did you choose the part of a gay cowboy? In parts of America you started a controversy.

It may sound strange, but I knew that my choice was risky. On one hand I had a lot of respect about this film project and on the other I like being risky. As I learned that Ang Lee will be the director I felt much more save. I knew that I could do this together with him. Ang Lee is a very sensitive human being, absolutely the right one to tell a love story between men in the 60s. With my partner Heath Ledger I got along very well and you realize this in the movie. The chemistry between us did fit.

You kiss a man in front of a camera, you have passionate sex with him - how far would you go for a movie part?

The borders depend how beautiful and convincing I think the script is. If a story moves me and I think that the story is more important than me with my existential orientation, then I would do everything to melt together with the movie part. Bodily and external changes are quite easy - more difficult is to live yourself into a new emotion a new world. But Brokeback Mountain is not a movie about a gay obsession but about obsession in general. One of the aims of this movie was to redefine the imagination of love. The movie makes it to look on love from a totally new perspective. This ist big cinema for me.

Do you think you could play the part already when you are only 18?

No, never. Only the thought would be absurd. This has something to do with maturity and that you yourself already had the experience of love. I learned in the meantime how complicated love is. With 18 I would be scared all the time that people will think that I am really gay. Today with 25 I am sure about my sexuality and about my sight towards the world so that I can say I totally committed to the movie.

The numerous awards that you won for Brokeback Mountain demonstrate that you made the right choice - you even got an Oscar nomination.

That's so mad, isn't it? While it happened, I felt like a kid in Christmas. Or at his birthday. I didn't hope for much and got a lot. All these awards comforted me in the thought that I had made the right choice. And besides, there's a wonderful footnote: my godfathers are both gay and still have to hold back a lot in public. Maybe this film and its numerous awards will help bring more understanding and tolerance for gay people.

You were yourself together with Kirsten Dunst for two years. Did love change you?

I don't think so. But I learnt things that showed me that there's much more love around than I believed before. Birth and Death make people much closer. I got to know it with both in my family circle.

You'll have to explain yourself further...

I recently saw people dying and being born. I saw how many people react by building a thicker skin instead of opening up, but also how much other can give in extreme situations. The one who opens their heart will find love - as easy as that. The difficult thing is for each person to find the right one. It's a fight we're all fighting, aren't we? When someone has finally found love, they should hold on it with all their strength. Love must be fought for. I did it and I know: it's worth the fight. That's something I have learned early from my family.

Your father is a director, your mother a scriptwriter - and there's this rumor that Paul Newman gave you a driving lesson...

Yes - it's funny, you wake up with someone who's only 'uncle Paul' for you. When you're fifteen, you get told 'by the way, Uncle Paul is an international star'. And soon your girlfriends tell you: 'wow, Uncle Paul is so sexy!' And you only think: 'please?' That's more or less how the realization came up. Yes, Paul Newman was the one who gave me my first driving lesson. Okay, it was only this one time. My father had to teach me the rest. Dad is the one I owe the most for my driving license - but Uncle Paul got the biggest publicity from it (laughs).

Will there be 'Gyllenhaal's Own' salad dressing after 'Newman's Own'?

It's amusing, that's how I first encountered Paul Newman as a youngster. My mother would work with him at the time and once told me: 'I'm going now, I have to meet Paul Newman'. And I asked: 'but why are you meeting that salad-dressing man?' I was so naive, I only knew him from the sauce bottles. It would be great to see my own sauce beside his in the stores!

Do you see yourself as a part of a new generation of actors that could replace such great ones as Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman or Clint Eastwood?

I don't want to sound arrogant, because you're talking of such important names - but I do feel like that. The feeling is so strong when I see, for example, my sister Maggie and her fiancé Peter Sarsgaard taking this path. I admire them so much. I'm quite a latecomer compared to them. A lot of my friends, including Heath Ledger, belong to this generation. We're bringing in a new style but we're still looking up at these older role models. I believe that we're trying to put something new together, and that's a lot of work. I don't have any idea if that's going to get us doing something as talented and powerful as did older guys such as Hoffman, Newman or Redford - but we're young and fresh, and for what it's worth, ready to set ourselves to work. And that's what matters.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Celebrity Magazine 
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In Style Germany - May 2006 Interview
Translated by: Mongkut (from the IHJ Community)

Venice, Hotel Des Bain. With his jeans, boots, grey t-shirt and woolen cap, Jake Gyllenhaal does not quite fit into the luxury atmosphere of the 5-star hotel.

Curious some italian girls are looking from the pool to him.

The 25 old Hollywood star who can be seen from May 4th on together wirh Gwynet Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins in the drama "Proof" friendly says "hello", takes off the cap and goes through his densely hair. His smiling eyes are looking a bit tired - since the breakup with Kirsten Dunst he is known for celebrating parties.

Did you celebrate yesterday?

Would be nice! No, I came from L.A. yesterday afternoon and I feel like a train rolled over me. Jetlag.

At the moment you are making movies non stop, when do you have a break?

The last 2 years were very had, but I am proud that I could work together with such wonderful directors: Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain), Sam Mendes (Jarhead), David Fincher (Zodiac) and John Madden (The Proof). I notice that I reach my borders. But it is like exercising, I create "acting muscles" I am able to do more every time, I am surprised to see what I am able to do.

Regarding exercising, in Jarhead you got muscles like a playgirl model. You are handsome, do you feel like a sex symbol?

(Laughs) No, and it will get very disappointing for you female readers but I already lost my muscles. Zodiac director David Fincher asked me to lose 10 pounds muscles on my arms. I did not carry paper bags because I thought my muscles would never go. But for Jarhead it was important to be well exercised. Because of the nude scenes. With an exercised body I feel in this case more comfortable.

How is it like to undress in front of a camera?

There are moments more impressive. But to be nude in front of a camera means nothing in regard to a mental nudity I do show me to the audience. But for wonderful movies like Brokeback Mountain or Jarhead I like to drop my trousers.

Brokeback Mountain was a very sad lovestory. Did this appeal to you?

Yes. Normal Lovestorys are haveing usually a happy end. Everybody knows that life is not like this. Classical lovestories made like this did never happen in my life. In my life nothing went even. The interesting thing about love is the anarchical touch, the wilderness, the incalculability. Therefore we never stop believing in love. No matter how many disappointments we have to cope with.


- posted by Ally 
- credits: In Style Germany - May 2006 
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The 50 Greatest Independant Films - Empire's Ultimate Indie Line-Up

# 2 - Donnie Darko (2001)
Was Donnie schizophrenic? Is he, in fact, a supernaturally empowered avatar chosen by unknown forces? Did any of the film's events even happen? Such are the questions that sent people running to the pub to debate just what the hell Kelly had in mind when he wrote this story. That of a teenager who's warned about the end of the world by a six foot, talking rabbit after a jet engine falls on his house. Part supernatural chiller, part '80s teen drama and part philosophical musing on wormhole theory and the transience of human existence. Donnie Darko is not a film that lends itself to easy categorization and, unwilling to compromise his convoluted vision for studio palates, 27-year-old writer/director Richard Kelly almost had to launch his debute on cable television. Luckily, though, this exquisite slice of sci-fi surrealism was rescued from the precipice of DTV and went on to become a cult hit while simultaneously placing Jake Gyllenhaal on the road to stardom. A bizarre concoction it undoubtedly is but Donnie Darko raised the bar for independent thinking and reinvented the teen genre for the new Millennium. Utter genius.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: EmpireOnline.Com
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"Zodiac" Script Review
By Jeffrey Wells

***MINOR SPOILERS****

The last truly exceptional hunt-for-a-serial-killer movie was David Fincher's Se7en. And the next one, I'm fairly convinced, is going to be Fincher's Zodiac (Paramount, 11.10).

I'm basing this on a recent read of James Vanderbilt's script, which runs 150-plus pages. This persuades me that what I heard last week is true: Zodiac is going to be a three-hour movie, or close to it.

Scripts never really tell you that much, but reading Zodiac planted an idea that Fincher is again pushing the thriller boundary. Not just in the tradition of Se7en but also Alan Parker's Angel Heart, another chasing-a-monster film that ended with something pretty startling.

Zodiac is based on two best-sellers by Robert Graysmith, "Zodiac" and "Zodiac Unmasked: The Identity of America's Most Elusive Serial Killer Revealed", which are first-hand accounts about the hunt for the Zodiac killer who terrified the San Francisco area in 1968 and '69.

The chief Zodiac hunters in Fincher's film (as they were in actual life) are Gray- smith, a San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist at the time (Jake Gyllenhaal), and a blunt-spoken, never-say-die San Francisco detective named Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo).

Toschi is understood to have been the real-life model that Steve McQueen based his tough-nut San Francisco detective on in the 1968 Peter Yates film Bullitt.

And of course, the Zodiac killer was the model for Andy Robinson's psycho killer in Dirty Harry , the 1971 Don Siegel-Clint Eastwood classic...right down to the Zodiac claim about wanting to kill a busload of school children.

Zodiac is partly about the thrill and fascination of the hunt (the scores of hints and clues that pile up are more and more fascinating as the story moves along), and partly about how the complex, seemingly never-ending nature of the case makes Graysmith and Toschi start to go a bit nuts.

Is there such a thing as being too determined to stop evil? At what point do you ease up and say, "I've done all I can." Is it always essential to finish what you've started? Should never-say-die always be the motto, even at great personal cost?

Zodiac isn't just about sleuthing. Deep down I think it's a metaphor piece about obsessions wherever you find them, and how the never-quit theme applies to heavily-driven creative types (novelists, painters, architects, musicians) as much as cops or cartoonists or stamp collectors or baseball-card traders.

Zodiac and Se7en have at least a couple of things in common: both are heavily focused on the bottled-up emotions and personal frustrations of their two main protagonists, and both films end on a note in which the "crime doesn't pay" motto doesn't exactly ring out from the belltower.

Let's just say it: these are two catch-the-bad-guy movies in which the good guys try like hell, but they can't quite manage to be McQueen or Eastwood in the end.

Partly because the up-and-down life of a cop generally isn't that heroic or simple. And because Fincher would probably have trouble staying awake if somebody forced him to direct a Bullitt or a Dirty Harry.

Fincher and screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker ended Se7en with a mind-blowing twist in which the killer won and the good guys lost, and in such a way that the final fate of the killer didn't matter as much as the fact that his vision (which had a certain moral foundation) ended up being fulfilled.

The more I think about Se7en, the more certain I am that it was and is a truly brilliant cop thriller. Not just in the way the story was put together and paid off, but because it echoed a certain clouds-are-forming, it's-all-starting-to-rot-from-within attitude...a kind of geiger-counter reading of the despair in the air in 1994 and '95, when Se7en was made and released.

I attended a Writers Guild event last night that celebrated the 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written, and bless their hearts but the WGA voters were blind as bats for not including Se7en.

I'm not going to spill the Zodiac finale in any detail, but anyone who's read even a little bit about the the hunt for the Zodiac killer knows the culprit was never charged or convicted, although his more ardent pursuers were convinced that he was a pudgy alcoholic and an ex-school teacher named Arthur Leigh Allen, who died in 1992.

The script uses a substitute name instead of Allen's. It wouldn't be that big of a deal to mention it, but I'm trying to go lightly here.

Graysmith is the best part Gyllenhaal has ever had, and I'm including Jack Twist in this equation. If he does it right he'll generate a lot of heat for himself, and I can't see how he wouldn't.

Graysmith is a very strongly written guy with a lot of struggle and frustration inside, and the pressure on him just builds and builds. The coup de grace comes at the end when Graysmith delivers a spellbinding 12-page oratory that ties up all the loose ends. (I was reminded of Simon Oakland's this-is-what-actually-happened speech at the end of Psycho.)

Robert Downey, Jr. has several good scenes as a Chronicle reporter named Avery. It seems at first as if he'll be a prominent costar along with Gyllenhaal and Ruffalo, but nope. Anthony Edwards, as Toschi's partner, has a smaller role than Downey.

Dermot Mulroney, Chloe Sevigny, Ione Skye, Donal Logue and Brian Cox have supporting roles. The IMDB says Cox plays famed San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli, but my script doesn't even have Belli in it.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Hollywood-Elsewhere.Com
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Stop Babbling About Universal Love
MAXIM FASHION GERMANY MAGAZINE - INTERVIEW 
(Thanks Katja and Lauren for translating!)

Jake Gyllenhaal is hungry. That is bad because Hollywood’s it-boy of the moment is said to be a gourmet. The remainings of the guacamole that the Hotel Shutters on the beach in Santa Monica provided as a snack for the interview some hours ago can only be used as a fertilizer now. Gyllenhaal’s stomach is grumbling. His blue eyes are looking covetously at the cookie that is sitting on the saucer of the maxim fashion’s journalist’s latte macchiato glass. “Can I have your cookie?”

For his role as a gay cowboy in ‘Brokeback Mountain’, the 25-year-old was nominated for an Oscar and for approximately every award that Hollywood has to offer. British women declared him second sexiest man on the planet in February (only a canine tooth length behind Brad Pitt) and the American Vogue called him the most stylish celebrity in Hollywood (so simple, so sexy). But the guy is sitting there in his jeans, white t-shirt and sneakers and is chewing on his dry biscuit as if he has just missed his evening meal.

No one would mistake him for a cowboy or for the highly toned marine from Sam Mendes’ ‘Jarhead’. Especially because of the 3 rings he is wearing on his smallest finger. Two of them are golden, with the words ‘create’ and ‘carpe diem’ engraved, the third one with a black diamond is an engagement ring for himself from himself, he says. This way he has nipped all the questions on his on and off relationship with Kirsten Dunst in the bud.

The fact that he is developing a preference for jewellery right after Brokeback Mountain speaks highly of his self assurance. More established leading men than Maggie Gyllenhaal's little brother would have hesitated more before taking off their trousers with Heath Ledger. But Jake is like one of these Japanese fighting fish, which constantly change their colour, says Jarhead director Sam Mendes. If they feel threatened they become a shrill orange colour and if they feel secure they seem to be nearly transparent. “He can play anything, Jake is a natural talent”, confirms Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee, “in the truest sense of the word.”

Lots of praise for someone whose name could not even be pronounced the other day, don’t you think so?

Jake starts laughing at this question. “No, no, my name has rather helped me to stay in people’s minds. More than ever since my sister Maggie has also become known as an actress under the name of Gyllenhaal. The unpronounceable siblings Gyllenhaal (he laughs). Gyllenhaal, like ‘golden hall’ in Swedish.”

Are you of Swedish origin?

According to the legends one of my ancestors caught beetles for the King of Sweden.

A vermin exterminator?

No, he catalogued them. Everything from the rare exotics up to the most common insects. At least that’s what I was told as a child and I’d be devastated if this story wasn’t true.

Your family isn’t bad either. Your Dad is a highly respected director and your Mum almost won an Oscar as a screenplay writer.
Is that the reason why you simply could not refrain from going to Hollywood?

My parents have done their best to keep me away from the insanity called Hollywood. I even majored in Eastern Religions for two terms. Okay, in the end it was only a half-hearted try.

But the fact that you were given your first driving lesson by Paul Newman and that Jamie Lee Curtis is your godmother must have had effect on your life. At the age of 10 you had already scored to the role of Billy Crystal’s son in City Slickers.

Yes, I knew famous people. And I could watch the movies before they even premiered. But as strange as it might sound, that was just normal and unspectacular or me. And no one has ever interfered in my choice of career.

Don’t you sometimes get given good pieces of advice?

If I have ever acted on a piece of advice at all then it’s this one of Eminem’s.

Also a friend of the family?

No, but I like his song which goes like “when you’re in it and you've got it you've got to get as much shit as you can get cause you never know”. This is a kind of philosophy of life.

Apparently Jake is successful with that. He takes what he can get as long as he is hot. He has been doing one movie after another for 3 years, he is praised and presented with awards and he doesn’t seem to be stressed at all, as if he is just playing himself all the time.
In Donnie Darko in 2001 Jake acted brilliantly as a confused teenager who deals with time travelling and meets up with an imaginary rabbit at night. His first blockbuster was The Day after Tomorrow in 2004.

“I really feel good about my career. Although this development has occured in my career, it hasn't yet taken place in my life. At the age of 25 you are still extremely confused. You are still in search of yourself.”

Gossip-blogs take Jake’s ambiguity regarding love and life (“I have never been sexually attracted to a man. But I wouldn’t feel ashamed if it happened”) as an opportunity to question his sexual preferences. No matter if he lived with Kirsten Dunst, someone who talks like that has to be somehow....

Gyllenhaal interrupts: “That’s exactly the problem with our zeitgeist. People are throwing around truisms like “love knows no boundaries”. This is almost the same cliché as the Nike “Just do it” slogan. If you wear Nikes, then you know boundless love - do you know what I mean? People are extremely touched by all the boundless love while they are at the same time condemning love that is unusual.
But if love is unlimited, then it’s unlimited! So just stop babbling about universal love if you don’t mean it! I wouldn’t have minded being naked with Heath on the set (means in front of the cameras). Who cares! Brokeback Mountain is a love story, not a sex movie!

Some time ago you said you would have died if you hadn’t been an actor.

(Jake is shaking his head in disbelief) “God, did I really say that?”

It was then when you were offered roles as torn teenagers. Such as Donnie Darko.

(Jake is laughing) “That’s interesting! I am just wondering how I meant that. Would I drop dead if I stopped working? Would I kill myself?”

So, what would you do? Do you have a better plan now?

I only wanted to emphasize how much I was aching to act. But I also die to cook: I am passionate chef. My porn is my gourmet magazines.

And who is your Pin-Up?

“Alice Waters. She’s a famous chef. I met her on a party in New York and I nearly fainted because I was so excited. That’s never happened to me with any actress before.”

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Maxim Fashion Germany Magazine
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Wal-mart Won't Quit "Brokeback"
By Josh Grossberg

Brokeback Mountain just rode into Red State terrority.

Wal-Mart has begun selling the DVD of Ang Lee's gay cowboy flick this week, despite vehement protests from the ultraconservative American Family Association.

The world's largest retailer announced it will not only carry the Academy Award-winning film in all 3,900 U.S. locations, but the chain will also prominently display posters of Brokeback stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in its storefronts.

Such a decision has prompted the Tupelo, Mississippi-based AFA to launch a campaign accusing Wal-Mart of backing a pro-gay agenda. The organization posted a message on its Website asking "concerned Christians to let their local Wal-Mart managers know how they feel and that they are not pleased over the chain's decision to promote and carry the pro-homosexual movie."

"It wasn't even a blockbuster movie, so if Wal-Mart isn't trying to push an agenda, why would they put it at the front door?" Randy Sharp, director of special projects for the association, told the Los Angeles Times.

Apparently Sharp didn't get the memo that Brokeback was the most critically lauded film of 2005, won three Oscars, lassoed $83 million at the box office and became a cultural touchstone

"Wal-Mart is trying to help normalize homosexuality in society," Sharp said. "But how many copies are they going to have to sell to recruit the losses of customers who they've offended and will no longer shop at Wal-Mart?"

But Wal-Mart rejects that characterization. A rep for the company argued that stocking Brokeback is good business.

"Wal-Mart provides movie selections in our stores and online, recognizing that a broad segment of our customer base wants to buy the latest titles," company spokeswoman Jolanda Stewart said in a statement. "We serve a broad customer base and therefore offer an expansive assortment of movie titles to meet the needs of the diverse consumers that shop our stores."

The American Family Association, which claims a membership of 3 million and is one of the leading conservative Christian watchdogs, has a history of pressuring Wal-Mart.

And the retail chain has often been more than accommodating, refusing to carry funnyman George Carlin's bestseller When Will Jesus Bring the Porkchops? and canceling orders of Daily Show host Jon Stewart's America because both included supposedly offensive images that weren't in line with the chain's family-friendly policies. Wal-Mart has also pulled numerous magazines from its racks deemed too racy by the AFA and doesn't stock CDs and videogames that feature "mature" content.

Last month, the AFA issued an action alert against Ford, urging its members to boycott the car company because the car maker wanted to advertise in gay publications such as The Advocate.

Fighting against the American Family Association's anti-Brokeback initiative, the pro-gay Ultimate Brokeback Forum recently announced a Web-based campaign to place the Brokeback DVDs in 2,000 rural libraries in the U.S. and Canada, and has called on fans around the world to donate copies of the DVD to libraries in their area. Members of the online forum also ran an ad in the Mar. 10 edition of Daily Variety, hailing Brokeback as a work that's "transforming people's lives."

They can now add Wal-Mart to their thank-you list.

In keeping with its founder's vision of offering quality products at great prices, Wal-Mart--one of America's largest DVD retailers--is offering Brokeback at the bargain rate of $16.87.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Yahoo! News
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Jake Voted 6th Hottest Man Alive by ninemsn

The top ten hottest men alive as voted by ninemsn readers are as follows:

1. Johnny Depp
2. George Clooney
3. Matthew McConaughey
4. Brad Pitt
5. Orlando Bloom
6. Jake Gyllenhaal
7. Hugh Jackman
8. Colin Farrell
9. Jude Law
10. Heath Ledger

- posted by Ally 
- credits: NineMSN.Com.Au
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