| By Fred Topel
In Theaters November 4
|
There comes a time for every young actor where he has to become a man. Not to say that he has to turn 18, but after years of roles exploiting his youth, the actor must show the world that they can take him seriously as an adult. For Jake Gyllenhaal, that movie is Jarhead.
No more college kids or small town boys, although he may begin the film as that. But in Jarhead, we see Gyllenhaal transform into a hardcore marine. He credits director Sam Mendes with encouraging him to go all out in his performance.
“By the time Sam Mendes cast me, I think he accepted that he wanted me for me and for the things I had inside of me,” Gyllenhaal said. “He saw that there were things that probably other people, other directors hadn’t seen before and he wanted to push. And just the idea of wanting me for everything that I could give, that I could just do what ever I want and not be wrong, gave me the opportunity to go to a place in knowing that you’re stable enough a human being that whatever choice you make is going to be okay. I feel that’s part of what being or becoming a man is, in knowing that the choices that you make, you have a good enough conscious behind you that whatever you do will be alright. And that’s what Sam sort of like ushered me into. I think he kind of ushered me into not pretending to be something that I wasn’t or putting on something that I thought I should be.”
Based on the memoirs of Anthony Swofford, Gyllenhaal portrays the author from basic training through four months of Desert Shield/Desert Storm activity in Iraq. An avid reader, the book Jarhead connected with Gyllenhaal on many levels.
“I first read the book and I was like, well the prose in the book is just extraordinary. The way Tony writes sentence after sentence is just, even when I read them in the book, the opening quotes of the movie over black are Tony’s words. They’re lifted from the book directly. We were in the last day of shooting, Sam brought me into the ADR stage, we read some excerpts from the book and we read the voiceover that had already been written in the script, so the book itself just spoke to me somehow. Jarhead the book didn’t have that much structure and I just related to it somehow, that idea of it wasn’t like a clear through line. I don’t think the movie really has that either. I mean you’re looking forth to war most of the time, but if I was to ask you what scene came before another scene you probably wouldn’t be able to tell me, as I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you and I’ve seen the movie now three or four times and I’ve shot the movie for five months and there’s a style to that that I really responded to.”
That said, Gyllenhaal resisted playing a specific imitation of the real Tony Swofford. “I went back and forth in my head about that. I recognized that [screenwriter] Bill [Broyles] had written the part as “Swoff” in the script and it wasn’t Anthony Swofford. I knew that this was a story about someone in a period of time, it wasn’t specifically about Tony but it was Tony who had the courage to like bring the story out. So I didn’t really want to meet him. I was terrified that I was going to realize that, and I did when I met him, that I thought, ‘Oh, I’m nothing like him, I’m nothing like Anthony and Sam’s going to realize when we meet that I’m nothing like him.’ And when we met, we were in the middle of rehearsals. We went to lunch and I couldn’t say a word and I was like panic attack immediately because we had been rehearsing for like two weeks and I was just like getting into a rhythm of like ‘cool, I’m figuring this out’ and I was like ‘I’m nothing like him’ again but it was a very conscious choice and I told Tony when he came. We both recognized this because he’s such a really magnificent writer and it’s not the only book he’s ever going to write, I think he recognizes that artifice and recognizes it as that piece of myth and I think he really respects actors and he’s pretty extraordinary that he did. He said, ‘Oh, okay,’ that he’s not asking me to video tape him and see what his twitches are and where he’s shy and this and that. I wanted to present the closest thing to me as I could in parts and I didn’t want to wear a mask of, or try and imitate somebody and I don’t think that’s, hopefully not what Tony would want either.”
Between the book, the movie and his training, Gyllenhaal has gained a new respect for the Marine Corps. “Without a doubt, I started off with a judgment as probably anybody does who hasn’t had any experience in anything but has a point of view of it, and I think I always connected the military with the administration. After being involved with a lot of guys, and I only speak for the Marines really because that’s who we played, I realized that I guess I just thought there was a kind of innocence or like a non choice and it’s very clear that there really isn’t and there is a choice in it. It’s a pretty extraordinary place and the things that I learned just from the periphery of it, just being near the people who have been involved in the military of any kind, just what I learned from that and how it made me realize things about myself. I can’t imagine what really happens when you’re in it so just a profound respect in the end and I think it’s a shock to my mother who has her own judgments and I think rightfully so as everybody should and does, you know.”
Jarhead opens November 4. |
