WEIRDLAND: Jake Gyllenhaal talks on Election Day

Thursday, November 08, 2012

Jake Gyllenhaal talks on Election Day


Jake Gyllenhaal takes time on Election Day to talk liberally with Stephanie Miller. Gyllenhaal and Stephanie discuss the latest trend of actors speaking out politically. He says that he thinks "it's a strange time when actors act like politicians" and vice versa. Gyllenhaal speaks about the importance of taking the time to say how you feel as an American. He adds that he believes, "deeply in democracy."

Scan of Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña in Total Film UK, November 2012

Jake Gyllenhaal in Esquire (Singapore) magazine, November 2012

Poster of "An Enemy" (2013) directed by Denis Villeneuve


Emmy winner Jake Hamilton travels to the Toronto International Film Festival to talk with Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena about their new film, END OF WATCH


Jake Gyllenhaal talks about End of Watch and Brokeback Mountain

Scan of Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña in "End of Watch", Total Film UK, December 2012

Though the film was shot in just 22 days, Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena, who plays the other cop, elected to first spend five months training, learning, and riding around with real LAPD cops in order to get a real sense of what their lives, work, and relationships are like. (This came with some real drama: on their first ride-along they witnessed a murder, and Gyllenhaal says it wasn't the only one.) Gyllenhaal says that they didn't receive special treatment because they work in the movies; in fact, he jokes, "the cops that we worked with didn't give a shit about us [being famous]." He also chuckles that "there was a lot of joking about movies I've made [a reference to Brokeback] -- endless humor in a cop car." The main thing that attracted Gyllenhaal to End of Watch, he says, was "the dialogue between these guys in the car." For the film to work, Gyllenhaal and Pena's interpretations of those words -- and occasion improvisations -- had to be completely believable, and they are. "I haven't really ever talked about this," Gyllenhaal says, before revealing that their "massive fight" took place after a miscommunication during a tactical training exercise that involved live ammunition nearly caused an accident. Gyllenhaal confronted Pena, who insisted that, because he was wearing ear protection, he hadn't heard Gyllenhaal say to him that he was moving positions. Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com
"The real driving forces of End of Watch are the characters. Taylor and Zavala are fully fleshed out creations, with Gyllenhaal and Peña inhabiting them with an almost uncanny naturalism that makes you feel almost as though the viewer is cruising with them in the patrol car, each back-and-forth between them feeling organic and genuinely funny. The charm of the film is that the two actors take characters that in the wrong hands could have been reduced to two-dimensional Bad Boys clones, and make us truly believe that these two are firm friends, whether that entails larking about in the precinct, getting ranted at by an angry superior or dashing into a burning building to play the hero. There is a possible criticism here, in that the repeated action heroics of the first two thirds feel a touch unwelcome compared to the sequences that just let the two actors go into full flow with their characters. These are not mere one-liner dispensers either, with a number of smaller, more soulful moments proving as touching as the macho banter is amusing – there is ample support here from their partners, played by Natalie Martinez and Anna Kendrick, who despite being given little screen time, both put in very engaging turns, providing a little context to the men’s day jobs. The two leads really do shine here, working off each other so perfectly that it is no exaggeration to say that we see not one, but two awards-worthy performances in End of Watch." Source: www.screengeek.co.uk

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