More Serious Fun video, a chat with Daniel Wolfe and Ellen Pompeo reminisces about Jake Gyllenhaal ten years on

A day on and there is more coming out of Monday's Paul Newman Dreams celebration in NYC, including a video which features more of Jake Gyllenhaal's onstage speech as well as further interviews behind the scenes. As always, I do admire how Jake thinks on his feet and responds so well to interviewers in this conveyor belt type of arrangement.



Meanwhile, Daniel Wolfe, the director of The Shoes' Time to Dance video has been talking a little about his ideas behind this rather gory video, as well as the reason for its inclusion of Jake, giving Jake his first psychotic serial killer role. 'Jake and I had been discussing a script with a mutual friend, producer Lynette Howell. I knew he was into music videos, so when we wrote up the treatment, I sent it to them. They both responded well to it. And then we just had to sort out dates.'

'The atmosphere on set changed from scene to scene. In the party scenes there was no real distinction between shooting and not shooting, it was just a party so the atmosphere was a party. Then we’d just walk Jake in. We were shooting in the snow quite a bit which was testing. Sally Campbell cooked up Irish stew and turned up on set with that which lifted spirits considerably.' Nothing like a spot of stew in between murderous takes...

And finally...

Every so often, Ellen Pompeo likes to remind us that Jake Gyllenhaal once called her the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. I gave a full account of this back in 2009 but the subject has come up again at a press conference with Ellen, which also coincides with the 10th anniversary of the most wonderful Moonlight Mile. The report's mention of Jake being 12 is clearly not that accurate...

'Before auditioning for the film, "I was... in the waiting room and the director and this guy, Jake Gyllenhaal, who I had never heard of — no one had ever heard of him at that point — walked past me," Pompeo shared. "I [had] my head down... so I didn't get a look at Jake." But when she walked in to read, the 42-year-old actress got the shock of her life. "I had met Jake a couple of weeks prior on the sidewalk," Pomep explained. "I walked into the room and I saw Jake and I said, 'Oh my God, it's you!' We sort of bumped into each other. He told me I was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen."'

Moonlight Mile was such an incredible film, for Jake and Ellen, with the strongest chemistry between Joe and Bertie, and I'm not surprised that these memories have stayed with Ellen. This also gives me the perfect excuse to post here a video of what must be in my top three most favourite moments from any Jake film.

Many thanks to IHJ for the pictures.

My review of Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists is now up at MovieBrit.

Behind the scenes with the Time to Dance video and WDW's Harry Potter Interlude

Daniel Wolfe, director of the video for The Shoes' Time To Dance, has been talking about the reason for its inclusion of a very familiar face, that of Jake Gyllenhaal.: 'Jake Gyllenhaal and I had been talking about working together on something, and I got sent 'Time To Dance' by the Shoes, who are my favorite band, so I wanted to bring Jake in on that . . . I pitched the idea to him, and he liked it, which was great... My brother and I had been chatting about doing a British take on the slasher genre for a while, but as a music video, and instead of seeing it from the victim's perspectives, we wanted to be with the killer, spend some downtime with him."

Meanwhile, The Shoes themselves have been talking about the experience: 'When we released the 'Stay The Same' music video last year with Daniel Wolfe, we were so blown away by his work that we had to bring him back for the 'Time To Dance' video. No other director understood our music like he did. We gave him our track, and today, he gives us the best music video, starring one of our favorite actors, Jake Gyllenhaal. We still can't believe it!"

WDW Harry Potter Interlude

I took a trip to Hogsmeade today (along with a good 33% of the entire world's population), which is a little ironic considering that some of Harry Potter is filmed in my own hometown of Oxford and one of its stars (Hermione) is a local and a familiar face.But Universal Studios has done a fantastic job of recreating some of the most well known places of the books and films in its sun-kissed park. Hogwarts is right there, next to Jurassic Park... The only thing more incredible than the recreation of Hogwarts and its village is the line for its ride - three and a half hours!

 

 

Yesterday, I took a trip to Disney's Animal Kingdom:

 Photos by IHJ and WDW (in WDW).

[Update] Jake Gyllenhaal never left LA after all and is a music video on the cards?

[Update] Well, it looks like Jake may never have been in Sundance after all.... Thanks for everyone putting me straight. I'm particularly grateful to Jeanne for telling me that Jake was at LA Satellite on Saturday, a club in LA, to see a band called Papa. Quit Mumbling is the concert promoter.

Of course this also means that Jake was not at the WME party...The WME party was so rumbustious that it had to be shut down by the police due to what sounds like a gatecrashing issue. Here is the Quit Mumbling tweet and another tweet here.

There have been tweets today from three London models talking about how they were called in for a casting  in a pub by the sound of it) for a music video directed by Daniel Wolfe that would also feature a 'Hollywood star'. It turned out that the star is Jake Gyllenhaal! You can follow the twitter feeds here and here and here. By the sound of it, if this, whatever it is, comes to pass, then it may be filmed, or at least some of it, in the UK. Time will tell. Jake's certainly got the coat for the place. Thanks to Mermon for the links!

Please note how I'm not mentioning The Trousers, nor the fact that they are tucked into the trainers. Harumpf. Very nice jacket though...

If you don't mind watching pap videos, then X17 has a video of last week's sushi outing with Jake, Austin Nichols and Adam Levine.

Many thanks to IHJ for the pictures, there are more there!

My review of Carnage is now up at MovieBrit.