Jake Gyllenhaal goes into ‘the suck’ to talk Jarhead

It was January, 1991 - a lot of change happened for me that past year, but nothing was more memorable than watching the war in the Middle East. I can remember sitting by the television with my family waiting for the US to capture Saddam Hussein and help the Kuwaiti’s.

I didn’t really comprehend much, but I couldn’t imagine what our soldiers went through during that time. Tony Swofford was in the Marines during Desert Storm and when he got out, he wrote the book Jarhead about his experience. Universal made that book into a film, and after watching it, I think my eyes were opened a little more, it kind of made sense, like it was too real. No one really wanted to be there, but they were.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Tony Swofford in the Sam Mendes movie, he sat down with Latino Review to talk about that experience, and about getting so into character, he cracked his tooth with a rifle.

Here’s what he had to say:

What was the journey like of making this movie for you?

Jake Gyllenhaal: Well, the main difference is I started the movie with no hair on my body, and then I didn’t have anymore. For me, I think with Sam, I wouldn't say rigorous, but it was a long process of him casting me. It wasn't really rigorous necessarily, but at least in my mind, I went through a lot of things in that I really wanted the part from the beginning, so I was into it. Along the way, I thought at times I wasn't gonna get it; he put me through a long process, and by the time he cast me, I think he was pretty sure that he wanted me to play the part. In wanting me to play the part, I think he accepted that he wanted me, for me, and for the things I had inside of me. He saw that there were things probably that other people, other directors, hadn't seen before, that he wanted to push. And just the idea of letting me, wanting me, for everything I could give and that I could kind of just do whatever I want and not be wrong, gave me the opportunity to go to a place where I think, in knowing that you're stable enough of a human being that if you make whatever choice you make, it’s gonna be okay, I feel like that's part of what being or becoming a man is. That made me grow up immediately, and on top of all that, there was the physical stuff, of just pushing my body to a limit where it had never been pushed before, and then there was also just being around a lot of people who I really respect and look up to, people like Jamie Foxx and Peter Sarsgaard, who are, in my opinion, really admirable men. And also our military advisors who are, to me, people have been and seen some really incredible and awful things, and are still kind, caring, really cool people and particular grownups, and so I just looked up to all them, and things they did, I tried to emulate at times, and it just was a process of growing up. Sam opened me up to that, and it's weird, because I think on movie sets people tend to act immaturely or they're allowed to, and Sam was actually asking for the opposite, so we just, that's how it went.

Why were you so passionate about this role; was it easy to relate to this guy?

Jake Gyllenhaal: I first read the book, and the prose in the book are just extraordinary; the way Tony writes sentence after sentence - even when I write them in the book, the opening quotes of the movie over black are Tony's words; they're a message from the book directly. We were in the last day of shooting, Sam brought me up to the ADR stage, we read some excerpts from the book, we read the voiceover that had already been written in the script. The book itself, it just spoke to me somehow, it was like a generation of people, a style in the same way that like Dave Eggers has defined a generation of writers, defined a generation of writers, it's a kind of deconstructing, structure as you know it in books. Jarhead, the book didn't have that much of it and I just related to it somehow; it wasn't like a clear through line, I don't think the movie really has that either. You're looking forward to war most of the time, but if I were 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, and then just in the character, I think, I just hit it at a perfect time, where I was just the right age - that's the age that all the guys who are going over there now and went over there in the Desert Shield and Desert Storm time, that's the - there's something about the aggression and harnessing that aggression, being able to have a part where you don't have to do your hair or have wardrobe, you know what I mean, you didn't have to deal with any of that stuff, it's just like, you're in - you basically have no wardrobe or anything, you're just basically you. That, to me, seemed like it could have either been a place where you weren't allowed to do anything, you were controlled, or some place where you could do anything, whatever, and it ended up being the latter, so that's what I was into, it was like none of the strappings of going to a place where you could really just deal with a lot of feelings that I think are in me, but that I hadn't really paid a lot of attention to. And Tony's book really expressed those feelings pretty passionately, so I was just down to get angry and shoot at people.

What kind of respect did you gain for the military?

Jake Gyllenhaal: I started off, without a doubt, I started off with a judgment, as probably anybody does who hasn't had any experience, but has a point of view of it, and I think I always connected military with the administration. After being involved with a lot of guys, and I'd only speak to the Marines really, because that's who we played, so to give you an example, now if anyone's like ‘Oh I can't really see you playing you were in the Army,’ I'm like ‘No, I wasn't in the Army.’ It really makes me upset. Before I would've been ‘Yeah, whatever,’ and now it really, really gets to me. I'm automatically like ‘I played a Marine.’ And there's a difference, and to me, that's where I came from and where I went to. I guess I just thought there was a sort of innocence or like a non choice, and it's very clear that there really isn't, that there is a choice in it, and that it's actually a pretty extraordinary place. The things that I learned just from the peripheral of it, just being near to people who'd 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, 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.

It’s been a great year for you; do you feel you’re in the Oscar race with this film or Brokeback Mountain?

Jake Gyllenhaal: There's a lot of talk about things that when you're working with a director like Ang Lee, or when you're working with a director like Sam Mendes, because they are inevitably two Oscar winning directors, do you know what I mean? And when you're working with Jamie Foxx, when you're working with Chris Cooper, it's inevitable that people attach those things to those projects. But for me, I feel that as an actor, it’s a process, and it's hard for me to realize that somewhere, because as an actor you go through and this is all exciting, talking about the movie and being proud of it, but all that we have, it's kind of odd. Peter said something to me after we finished the movie, he said ‘It's a very odd profession, the profession where people - you give a performance and then a year later, people commend you on the performance.’ But it's odd to separate yourself from that, because it's so far from what you've done, but all I can speak of is the process; and in that, both Sam and Ang have changed my life, regardless of the result of any of these films. I'm so happy the response that's happened with Brokeback Mountain so far, and we're just sort of beginning how people are responding to this movie, just because you guys are, I think, the only people who have really seen it so far. The processes of both movies, have changed my life, and that's what I take away with me and everything else is just fun and just it's a laugh kind of sometimes.

Can you tell us about the day you lost your tooth?

Jake Gyllenhaal: Fell off, actually, a month ago, and I had to get it put back on, really a very weird experience. Well, the day that I lost my tooth was - it sounds like a children's book. The day that I lost my tooth was a really interesting day. It was a point at which I realized that I had told Sam before we started ‘I'll throw up in the sand for you, I'm gonna do anything I can for you,’ but I never thought I would chip off my tooth for him. Because that's permanent, like vamoose vomit, but your tooth's gone, and yeah, the scene was the scene with Fergus in the tent, where I put the gun up to my - the rifle up to my mouth, and I asked Brian on one take, the last take, if he could not hold the rifle so tight, because I really felt like he didn't want to. And he was really holding on to it tight, and I really had to pull at him to get the rifle, and I just said ‘can you not pull?’ I forgot, because the scene is a long scene, I asked at the beginning of the scene, and it just went ‘bam’ into my mouth when I pulled it, and I felt my – I remember, I looked down, and I saw that my tooth had come off; I had it in my hand. And I thought first, I could stop this scene, or I could keep going, and I should probably keep going. Sam told me before we did the take ‘this isn't one of the close up takes,’ he said ‘think about boot camp in this take, or just think about boot camp.’ And, for some reason, somewhere it just started hitting him, and I just got so angry that he had chipped my tooth. And I just started hitting him, and we didn't talk for a month actually after that; yeah, we didn't talk for a while, Brian and I. It's actually a testament to Brian, because Brian is nothing like the character he plays, and if you meet him in person, and I'm sure you'll all meet him at some point because he is a fantastic actor. He's just, that scene, he's just amazing in that scene, and we didn't talk. Sam actually, after that scene, said ‘we hadn't had a scene where I apologized to him,’ and after that scene, Sam said we need to make a scene where he apologizes to him, where he says he's sorry, because we didn't see that.

Why did you choose to do Brokeback Mountain?

Jake Gyllenhaal: I did Brokeback Mountain before I did this movie, and 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, whether you're wearing a sand cap over your dick, or whether you're making love to Heath Ledger, you just don't say ‘no’ to them - that was why. I think that both stories are written by - the short stories, the short story of Brokeback Mountain and the book of Jarhead are just two of the most kind of extraordinary pieces of literature.

Was it intentional that you didn’t meet with Tony much?

Jake Gyllenhaal: It had nothing to do with time; I went back and forth in my head about do I want to - I'm playing a real person in the movie I'm doing right now, and I went back and forth with that too. Every time, I recognized that Bill had written it, the part, as Swoff in the script, it wasn't Anthony Swofford. I knew that this was a story about someone who – a period of time, it wasn't specifically about Tony, but it was Tony who had the courage to bring his story out. So I thought I didn't really want to be him, I was terrified that I was gonna realize, and I did when I met him. I thought ‘Oh, I'm nothing like him, I'm nothing like him, I'm never gonna, Sam's gonna realize when we meet that I'm nothing like him.’ And then I was going through all, I was thinking some of the other actors look like him; they all look like him, and when we met, Sam sort of - we were in the middle of rehearsals, and Sam was like, ‘we're going to lunch with Tony.’ And I'm like ‘with Tony who?’ ‘Tony Swofford.’ And I'm like ‘okay great, cool,’ and he really popped it on me. We went to lunch, I couldn't say a word, I had a panic attack immediately, because we had been rehearsing for two weeks, and I was just getting into a rhythm of, ‘oh cool,’ figuring this out, and it was like ‘I'm nothing like him again!’ But it was a very conscious choice, and I told Tony when he came, I said we both recognize this, because he's such a really magnificent writer, and it's not the only book he's ever gonna write; I think he recognizes like that artifice. I think he recognized that piece of myth, and I think he really respects actors and I think it's pretty extraordinary that he did, I mean, that he said ‘oh okay, he's not asking me, he's not asking me to videotape him and see what his like twitches are, and where he's shy and this and that;’ I wanted to present the closest thing to me as I could, and I didn't want to wear a mask, or try and imitate somebody. And I don't think that's hopefully not what Tony would want either.

Who is the real person you’re playing right now?

Jake Gyllenhaal: His name is Robert Graysmith, he's a cartoonist, he was a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle, and he sort of wormed his way onto the Zodiac case, in San Francisco in the late '60s and '70s, and ended up sort of solving the case for everybody who had not, and whose lives had been kind of ruined by the case. He just out of pure obsession and oddness, really, and passion, solved that case. I actually am videotaping him right now, and that was a choice of mine, so I think it just depends on the story.

Do you think it’s fair to say that boredom is as great an enemy to the soldiers as the bullets?

Jake Gyllenhaal: I think a soldier's mind is as great of an enemy as enemy in the field, bombs or bullets. I think that's probably what I feel the movie was about, that when you use these techniques and you teach them, you harness a period of time or instance, and then they're not allowed to express that. I think their mind is confused by that, and yeah, the boredom, when the boredom sets in, when you realize we've been here for a hundred and twenty two days, and we've been sitting in the same tent, and I've been - I've done a little bit too much masturbating, it's true, sad, but true. There, I think that it's more about the soldier's mind, it's how Sergeant Major Dever, our military advisor, would say ‘smooth is best, smooth is best,’ he would say it all the time ‘smooth is best.’ Because you always rush, your mind will always be - you'd be putting together our rifles, and we'd be cleaning them and putting them back together, and cleaning them and putting them back together, and I have to prepare for the scene where I have to put the rifle together, so I have to really get fast, and he came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder he said ‘smooth is best, smooth is best.’ And there's that mentality of, it's not about letting you mind get like caught up in all of it, as soon as you're clear, then you'll get it right when you're not over thinking it; but when you're given the time to think, I think it probably can be as dangerous of an enemy.

How was it working with Jamie Foxx

Jake Gyllenhaal: It was fantastic, I totally look up to him, and it's so hard to say that and not sound so stupid, but I really do; I think he's extraordinary.

How’s working with David Fincher?

Jake Gyllenhaal: He's extraordinary in his own separate very different way, very different way. It's a totally different universe, it's a universe of - I mean the movie looks extraordinary, I've never seen a movie that looks like even the technical things he's doing on this film are all new and never been done before. I think that it's also a different movie for him because it's performance driven too, not to say that the other ones haven't been, but there's lots of dialogue and all the stuff that he's dealing with, and it's definitely a different universe.

Jarhead Opens November 4th