By EMILY CHRISTIANSON Special to the Daily Press
Jake Gyllenhaal remembers meeting with a director to discuss “Brokeback Mountain” when he was just a teen, but he wouldn’t go near it.
“It had been introduced to me as the ‘gay cowboy’ movie … no matter how I felt about any of those topics I couldn’t venture into that world,” he confessed. “It freaked me out.”
Fast forward a few years and the 25-year-old is ready to take on the role of Jack Twisp, an aspiring rodeo cowboy. Set against a Wyoming backdrop, Jack spends the summer of 1963 watching over sheep with Ennis Del mar (Heath Ledger), a quiet ranch hand. The epic love story, directed by Oscar winner Ang Lee, follows the two young men through their lifetime of friendship and heartache. Despite the changing times, they are hesitant to pursue their true feelings for each other.
“Heath and I trusted each other enough to take risks,” he said. “It was wonderful creating an intimacy with him. He made me feel comfortable; he made me want to be present, and that’s the best thing you can ask for from someone you’re acting with.”
Gyllenhaal, who describes the movie as a myth that everyone knows but has never been told, said they shot the mountain scenes in a remote area of Alberta, Canada, riding their horses to set and hiking to the camps.
“Before we started shooting, we rehearsed up at all those camps when it was still snowing,” he said. “I remember I had gotten my dog right before I did this movie and he was like jumping through the snow, just having a great time.”
“Brokeback Mountain” is quite the opposite of his last film “Jarhead”, the story of a third generation enlistee on active duty in the Persian Gulf. The film, which hit theaters in early November, was based on a true story and directed by Oscar winner Sam Mendes.
96F,“Frankly, you don’t say ‘no’ to Ang Lee and you don’t say ‘no’ to Sam Mendes and you beg both of them no matter what you’re doing in either of the movies, whether you’re wearing a Santa cap over your (penis) or whether you’re making love to Heath Ledger, you just don’t say ‘no’ to them,” he said. “I think that the short story of ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and the book of ‘Jarhead’ are just two of the most … extraordinary pieces of literature.”
The son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, Jake Gyllenhaal made his debut in “City Slickers” in 1991 at just 11 years old.
“My parents would let me audition for things — with the thought that I wouldn’t get them,” the Los Angeles native told Film Force. “And then I would get them … sometimes, and it would surprise them … When I did, it was like they told me I couldn’t do it. Which now I thank them for more than anything, but I hated them at the time for it. I thought it was everything I wanted to do then.”
Gyllenhaal, who worked as a lifeguard and bus boy as a teen, received praise for his role as Homer Hickam, a real life rocket builder, in “October Sky” and later gained a cult following for his performance in “Donnie Darko” alongside big sister Maggie.
“Bubble Boy” and a stint on the London stage in “This is Our Youth” were followed by the indie films “The Good Girl” and “Lovely and Amazing”. In 2004 he starred in his first Hollywood blockbuster “The Day After Tomorrow” opposite Dennis Quaid.
“The most difficult was running away from wolves that didn’t exist,” he recalls of shooting the action flick. “The hardest sequence I think, we shot like two weeks in a tank full of water with 700 extras which is that scene of the wave that comes over. By the end of week one, people weren’t getting out of the tank to go to bathroom, they were doing it right in the tank so that was in its own ‘special’ way, the most difficult scene that I shot.”
Gyllenhaal is currently filming “Zodiac”, the true story of a northern California serial killer who sends letters to the San Francisco Chronicle in the ’60s and ’70s. He plays a cartoonist obsessed with finding the killer. He continues his search even after the detective and journalist working the case give up.
“I play the cartoonist,” he tells about.com. “And they could never really get the guy, so he’s still out there supposedly, and … I feel very safe making a movie about it.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 9, 2005. Read the original PDF.