Jake Gyllenhaal is Lou Bloom, a petty thief in the Los Angeles dark whose shamelessness — specifically his lack of anything like a moral compass — becomes an enormous asset when he manages to get a foothold in the straight world. Pawning a fancy bicycle (was it stolen?) in exchange for a camcorder and a police scanner, he joins the ranks of the video shooters who prowl at night, angling for close-up footage of bloody meat on the city streets.
David Fincher on multiple takes
DAVID FINCHER, responding to Jake Gyllenhaal’s complaints about shooting up to 90 takes per scene for Zodiac:
I hate earnestness in performance. Usually by Take 17 the earnestness is gone.
Excerpted from “Lights, Bogeyman, Action” by David M. Halbfinger, The New York Times, February 18, 2024
Brokeback Mountain
93/100“Y’know, I’m not queer,” growls Heath Ledger. “Me neither,” murmurs Jake Gyllenhaal, only a little less convincingly.
When he makes the gravelly declaration, Ledger, playing ranch hand Ennis Del Mar, has just clambered out of the tent where he spent a cozy night after roughly shagging his cowboy companion Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal), with whom he’s sharing a sheep-ranching gig — the kind of job you only take for a guaranteed pay-out when prospects elsewhere seem dim. Gyllenhaal’s quiet complacency contrasts with Ledger’s stern declaration. Having satisfied what may be transitory needs, the two of them are operating at emotional cross-purposes — Ennis trying to assert the encounter as a drunken aberration, and Jack balancing that discomfort against his own desires. He seems happy to say whatever’s most likely to keep his new lover close to him the longest.