WEIRDLAND: Jake Gyllenhaal joins Stand Up to Cancer telethon

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Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Jake Gyllenhaal joins Stand Up to Cancer telethon

Jake Gyllenhaal in 'Stand Up To Cancer' Public Service Announcement

"Fox and Jake Gyllenhaal are among the latest to join the upcoming TV fundraiser Stand Up to Cancer.

On Tuesday, Gyllenhaal will appear in a "Stand Up to Cancer" PSA that is scheduled to premiere during the Major League Baseball's All-Star Game on Fox, airing at 8/7c.

CBS Evening News' Katie Couric, NBC Nightly News' Brian Williams and Diane Sawyer of ABC's World News will host Stand Up to Cancer, which will be overseen by producer and cancer survivor Laura Ziskin (Spider-Man).


Major League Baseball and Jake Gyllenhaal Stand up to Cancer. Clip courtesy of Entertainment Tonight and SU2C: http://www.standup2cancer.org/



Jake Gyllenhaal and director Scott Cooper talk about their connection to cancer and why they teamed up.

Ziskin also produced the 2008 telethon, which raised more than $100 million. More than $83 million has since been committed to five "dream teams" of researchers and to 13 scientists working against cancer, the Stand Up to Cancer project said.

"Cancer is a crisis and we want to convey that ALL Americans can play a role in helping the scientists who are working to end it," she said in a statement. "We're delighted that the entertainment community is banding together in such a big way to help us get that word out."
Source: www.tvguide.com

R.I.P. Harvey Pekar ("American Splendor"'s hero)

"Harvey Pekar's life was not an open book. It was an open comic book.
Pekar chronicled his life and times in the acclaimed autobiographical comic book series, "American Splendor", portraying himself as a rumpled, depressed, obsessive-compulsive "flunky file clerk" engaged in a constant battle with loneliness and anxiety.
Pekar, 70, was found dead shortly before 1 a.m. Monday by his wife, Joyce Brabner, in their Cleveland Heights home, said Powell Caesar, spokesman for Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller. An autopsy will be conducted to determine the cause of death.
Pekar and Brabner wrote "Our Cancer Year", a book-length comic, after Pekar was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1990 and underwent a grueling treatment. He was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, and also suffered high blood pressure, asthma and clinical depression, which fueled his art but often made his life painful."American Splendor" carried the subtitle, "From Off the Streets of Cleveland," and just like Superman, the other comic-book hero born in Cleveland, Pekar wore something of a disguise. He never stepped into a phone booth to change, but underneath his persona of aggravated, disaffected file clerk, he was an erudite book and jazz critic, and a writer of short stories that many observers compared to Chekhov, despite their comic-book form.
Hope Davis and Paul Giammatti in "American Splendor" (2003)

Unlike the superheroes who ordinarily inhabit the pages of comic books, Pekar could neither leap tall buildings in a single bound, nor move faster than a speeding bullet. Yet his comics suggested a different sort of heroism: The working-class, everyman heroics of simply making it through another day, with soul -- if not dignity -- intact".
Source: blog.cleveland.com

4 comments :

Gail said...

I missed the baseball game last night my man goes to bed early to get up at 4 AM so he didn't get to watch so neither did I.

Weirdland said...

well, Gail, obviously I didn't watch that baseball game on Fox either, but at least we have the video, good for Jake who keeps worthy causes adding on his public profile :)

Amatrix said...

Great post Kendra~!
I saw the baseball game, and also this commercial. At the stadium they had some banners in the field for this cause. I kept talking about how Jake is a major supporter of this cause- and BAM he was on my tv.
Also American Splendor is awesome.

Weirdland said...

lucky of you, Amatrix, seeing this commercial with Jake during the baseball game, I love baseball movies, although I cannot play it!

I'm glad you are fan of American Splendor (I've watched that movie dozens of times, it's one of my fav films. We'll miss an important artist and thinker: Harvey Pekar)