They say you should strike while the iron’s hot, which may well be why two of Hollywood’s most in-demand men, the Oscar-nominated Bradley Cooper and Star Wars director J.J. Abrams, are reportedly in talks to film a biopic about Lance Armstrong.
Paramount Pictures and Bad Robot (Abrams’ production company) had already secured the rights to Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong, a forthcoming book by the New York Times’ Juliet Macur, which stems from Armstrong publicly admitting to using banned drugs and blood doping during his seven Tour de France wins.
(MORE: How Lance Armstrong Came Clean to Oprah)
When asked about the rumor at this past weekend’s Producers Guild Awards (PGA), Abrams told Entertainment Tonight that “[Cooper] sent me an email and we’ve been talking.”
The 38-year-old Cooper, who just received his first Oscar nomination for Silver Linings Playbook, has already spoken about his interest in the topical subject matter. He recently told the BBC he’d “love” to play Armstrong, who he considers “a fascinating character.” But it appears Cooper isn’t the only actor with a curiosity towards the disgraced cyclist, as the likes of Matt Damon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Fassbender and Christian Bale have all been named in relation to the role.
(OSCAR NOMINATIONS: Lincoln Leads, Bigelow and Affleck Bleed)
“I remember Matt Damon was going to do his autobiography at one point years ago,” Cooper told the British broadcaster. “I remember thinking, that would be a great character, I’d love to play that character. I would love to do something, I think he’s pretty fascinating.”
But when Cooper was asked for a comment by Access Hollywood at Sunday’s Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG) awards, he laughed it off. “Oh my God, that’s so nuts!” he said before explaining that “I didn’t even know that J.J. has the rights, I had no idea. I don’t know anything about it.”
(MORE: J.J. Abrams to Direct Next Star Wars Movie?)
If and when the movie gets made, much as with the Armstrong scandal, the truth surrounding the cast will eventually emerge.
Jake Gyllenhaal got a little more perfect during a tribute to
composer Leonard Bernstein at Lincoln Center in New York City Tuesday
night, when he took the stage and flexed his musical theater muscle with
a rendition of Bernstein’s “Maria” from West Side Story.
The shaky video taken from the audience below doesn’t provide the
best visual of the performance, but all you really need here is audio,
which is crystal clear.
We imagine critics would give the performance an 8 out of 10, but if
we’re counting face and appearance in his overall score, we’d say he
deserves a 12.
Check it out below, as well as another of Jake’s iconic musical theater performances — his rendition of the Dreamgirls classic “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” on Saturday Night Live in 2006.
"What are we doing, again?" "We're taking apart my marriage." Fox Searchlight has debuted a new trailer for Jean-Marc Vallée's Demolition, starring Jake Gyllenhaal
as a depressed man struggling to put his life together after his wife
dies in a car accident. This film premiered at TIFF last year (read Marco's review) and has been awaiting release until April this year. Aside from Gyllenhaal, the cast includes Naomi Watts, Chris Cooper, Heather Lind and Judah Lewis. With all the footage from this trailer, and the footage from the first trailer last year,
I feel like I've seen pretty much most of the movie and I'm not sure
what else there is to this. In all honesty, it looks good but not great,
with only so much to offer. Give it a watch below.
Here's the second trailer for Jean-Marc Vallée's Demolition, found on YouTube (via The Film Stage):
A successful investment banker, Davis (Gyllenhaal), struggles
after losing his wife in a tragic car crash. Despite pressure from his
father-in-law (Cooper) to pull it together, Davis continues to unravel.
What starts as a complaint letter to a vending machine company turns
into a series of letters revealing startling personal admissions. Davis’
letters catch the attention of customer service rep Karen (Watts) and,
amidst emotional and financial burdens of her own, the two strangers
form an unlikely connection. With the help of Karen and her son (Lewis),
Davis starts to rebuild, beginning with the demolition of the life he
once knew.Demolition is directed by Jean-Marc Vallée (The Young Victoria, Dallas Buyers Club, Wild), from a screenplay by Bryan Sipe. After debuting at TIFF, this will open in theaters April 8th, 2016 this spring.
“Spotlight” and “The Martian” emerged as contenders, though “The Danish Girl” didn’t fare quite as well
As the Toronto International Film Festival winds down, TheWrap looks back on the week that was.
Acquisitions have been slow but Oscar buzz circulated quickly for films such as “Spotlight” and “The Martian.”
Like any festival, TIFF had some hiccups but made up for them with
exciting programming. Let’s take a look and see what worked and what
didn’t north of the border.
1. Winners: Jake Gyllenhaal and Judah Lewis The “Demolition” stars dominated Opening Night at TIFF, where
Oscar buzz was palpable despite the film’s April 2016 release date.
Gyllenhaal continued his streak of winning performances following “End
of Watch,” “Prisoners” and “Nightcrawler,” while Lewis established
himself as a young actor to watch with his charming turn as Naomi Watts‘ sexually confused son. Like that, a star is born.
2. Loser: “The Danish Girl”
I didn’t have a chance to see Tom Hooper‘s hot-button drama starring Eddie Redmayne
as a man who undergoes gender reassignment surgery and becomes a woman,
but the response out of Toronto was fairly cool. Critics were once
again impressed by Redmayne, who won an Oscar last year for “The Theory
of Everything,” but the repeat win that was once theorized is now
considered unlikely, especially after his co-star Alicia Vikander
earned better reviews. While both rising stars are likely Oscar
nominees along with the film itself, the “Danish Girl’s” hopes of
winning any major prizes took a blow.
3. Winner: Matt Damon “In your face, Neil Armstrong” is right! Damon was excellent as abandoned astronaut Mark Watney, with Ridley Scott
provoking the actor’s best work since “The Informant!” The strong
response to the film bodes well for Damon’s chances of scoring an Oscar
nomination for Best Actor.
4. Loser: Tom Hiddleston
The “Avengers” star had a rough festival, between the lukewarm reception
for his Hank Williams biopic “I Saw the Light” and the demented and
divisive “High-Rise,” which prompted no less than 40 walkouts. He sure
has a lot riding on next month’s release of Guillermo del Toro‘s “Crimson Peak.”
5. Winner: The Movies TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey and his team of
programmers do a hell of a job each year picking a slate of films and
the 40th edition of the festival was no exception — even if sales have
been slower than usual. It may not be as fancy-shmancy as Cannes but it
has plenty of class.
6. Loser: The Princess of Wales Theatre What the hell was up with the sound system this year at one of
the festival’s top venues? I was hardly the only journalist to have a
hard time making out certain lines of dialogue. Perhaps it depends on
your seat? The beginning of “Demolition” forced my ears to bring their
A-game, while others with normally good hearing complained that Tom Hardy — both of them — was all but unintelligible during “Legend,” and not just because of his accent.
7. Winner: Netflix The streaming giant earned exceptional reviews for “Beasts of No Nation.” Everyone I spoke to who had the guts to see Cary Fukunaga‘s
tough-to-watch drama about the making of a child soldier was left
devastated. Everyone agreed that it’s a tough sit, but if you can bring
yourself to watch those kinds of harrowing horrors, you won’t be able to
forget them.
8. Loser: Stephen Frears The director of “The Queen” pulled another “Lay the Favorite” with this underwhelming drama starring Ben Foster as disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong. Everything about this movie feels a little off except for maybe Jesse Plemons
as Floyd Landis. eOne-owned Momentum Pictures closed its deal to
acquire “The Program,” which has a great trailer that made the
mediocrity of the film all the more disappointing.
9. Winner: Festival Street
Cab drivers will complain, but I love that the City of Toronto shots
down King St. for the first weekend of the festival. This year,
“festival street” hosted several cool interactive exhibits and while I
didn’t have time to check any of them out, kids seemed to dig it.
Anything that gets kids excited about movies and how they’re made is
cool in my book. This was a big win for TIFF, and the best part was, I
was never really got fed up with the foot traffic on King. Go figure.
10. Loser: Late Start Times
I don’t expect movies to start on time at a film festival, but maybe we
can start loading the theater a little earlier? For “The Martian,” no
one had even been admitted inside the theater at 9:30 p.m., when it was
scheduled to start. A 10-minute delay is to be expected, but 30 minutes
is a lot of extra red carpet time. Plus you’ve gotta deal with
introductions from festival personnel, filmmakers who introduce the cast
for a quickie photo op, and then 10 minutes of ads and logos for
everything from Dolby Sound and Christie Digital Projectors to Revlon
and an Andy Warhol exhibit, not to mention volunteers appreciation
videos and piracy warnings. I know TIFF’s gotta pay ‘dem bills, but
wowzer!
11. Winner: Johnny Depp and Joel Edgerton The stars of “Black Mass” made a great onscreen team despite
being on opposite sites of the law. Depp is excellent as Whitey Bulger
and projects real menace, but somehow, Egerton’s corrupt FBI agent John
Connolly seems even scarier and the Australian actor ends up stealing
the movie. Say what you will about the movie, but these two shine like
the stars they are.
12. Winners: Ilya Naishuller and Sharlto Copley The young Russian director behind “Hardcore” made sure
the ultra-violent action movie lived up to its title, and he couldn’t
have done it without Copley, who has a blast with his role(s).
Naishuller proves to be as adept and inventive at staging brutal action
sequences as anyone else out there, and we imagine he has a bright
future ahead of him so long as he continues to push the envelope.
13. Winner: “Spotlight”
Director Tom McCarthy, writer Josh Singer and the entire cast should
take a bow for their across-the-board excellent examination of the
Boston Globe’s investigation into the Catholic Church priestly sex
scandal and its subsequent cover-up. Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Stanley Tucci make the strongest impressions, though Liev Schreiber, Rachel McAdams, Brian d’Arcy James and John Slattery
all do invaluable supporting work. “Spotlight” is a true triumph and
cemented itself as a force to be reckoned with this awards season. Open
Road has a major Oscar contender on its hands.
14. Winner/Loser: Cate Blanchett
“Spotlight” wasn’t the only movie about journalism to make a splash in Toronto, as Sony Pictures Classics unveiled James Vanderbilt‘s
directorial debut, “Truth,” which works terrifically thanks to
Blanchett’s formidable turn as Dan Rather’s “60 Minutes” producer Mary Mapes. The film explores Rathergate from all angles, and while Robert Redford, Topher Grace
and David Lyons shine in supporting roles, the film belongs to
Blanchett in every way. Between “Truth” and “Carol,” Blanchett could
merit two Oscar nominations for Best Actress. Which means that her
biggest competition might be… Cate Blanchett.
15. Winner: Bryan Cranston
The “Breaking Bad” alum delivers the best feature performance of his career as blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in Jay Roach‘s
“Trumbo.” A nomination may be a long shot given how comedic the role
is. But he’s definitely in the awards conversation following Toronto,
where the film received mostly positive notices.
16. Loser: Arrrrr! Is anyone actually amused by shouting a pirate’s cry to the
pre-movie antipiracy message? Has it simply become a social obligation
at festival screenings? I mean, it’s not like you hear that at your
local Regal Cinemas. Are TIFF (and Sundance) audiences going to be doing
that 20 years from now? I don’t get it. Can we stop this next year?
17. Winner: Barkhad Abdi
Abdi scored on Oscar nomination for his very first film, “Captain
Phillips,” but many Hollywood insiders doubted he’d have much of a
career afterward. Well, judging by his turn as a Somali spy working in
the Kenyan Special Forces in Gavin Hood‘s
drone thriller “Eye in the Sky,” it’s safe to say he’s not going
anywhere anytime soon. Abdi steals the movie from Oscar winner Helen Mirren and his more established co-stars Aaron Paul and Alan Rickman. I guess he’s still the captain now.
18. Loser: Poutine
You don’t have to pretend to like poutine just because you’re in Canada.
We all know this dish of fries soaked in cheese curds and gravy. They
serve poutine at the Scotiabank Theater’s concession stand instead of
soft pretzels, which are the only reason I go to the movies sometimes.
19. Winner: The Volunteers
There were more than 3,000 volunteers wearing orange t-shirts and
dutifully answering every question I had all week. They’re the
friendliest, most patient people, and the festival couldn’t succeed
without them. Hats off!
In
his new film Southpaw, Jake Gyllenhaal piles on the muscle to play a
brawling boxer. He talks about his dramatic physical transformation –
and what it means to be a man
'It may have all been a bit reckless’ … Gyllenhaal in Southpaw.
Photograph: Allstar/The Weinstein Company
Jake
Gyllenhaal could be any early-30s urbanite. He is sitting in front of
me wearing a plain white T-shirt and huge pillowy Nikes, and with a
semi-wildman beard and gleaming eyes. He may look normal now, but in his
new film, Southpaw, a boxing movie in which he plays a troubled brawler called Billy Hope, he is a huge and sculpted light-heavyweight, a slab of murderous muscle.
The remaking of his own body is becoming a Gyllenhaal signature. His
physique in Southpaw is a shocking leap from the skeletal Lou Bloom in Nightcrawler,
the sulphurous LA noir about a ghoulish journalist selling footage of
freeway pileups to TV news shows. “This transformation,” declared the
film’s distributor Harvey Weinstein at Cannes, “is amazing.”
Weinstein was appearing onstage with Gyllenhaal to fire the starting
gun for the 2016 Oscars race, telling guests the actor would have his
full support in awards season. Known for his sharp-elbowed campaigning,
the mogul announced: “We’ll get revenge” – the wrong to be righted being
the Academy’s failure this year to recognise Gyllenhaal’s turn in Nightcrawler. Weinstein declined to comment further for this piece. Gyllenhaal smiles when the subject comes up.
A vision of Zen tranquility … Gyllenhaal. Photograph: Andrew H. Walker
“It’s flattering if someone mentions these things, but frankly it’s
also unfortunate because everyone should see a movie and have their own
experience. And I know your job is to create context …” He catches
himself, keen not to get off on the wrong foot. “Look, it’s Harvey. And
Harvey is Harvey. I love him, I really do. But everyone is entitled to
their own opinion. And that’s the best I can say about that.”
For Southpaw,
there were long months of learning to box, dawn runs, skipping,
sparring. The fight scenes still freaked him out. “Even when you’re only
filming a fight, even when it’s a movie, in the ring you feel
totally naked.” He makes it sound like a sex scene, a monstrous test of
nerve. “It’s a strange thing, 700 extras watching.”
Gyllenhaal is likable, inclined to the earnest but self-aware, quick
to grin. “The thing was, whenever I took a real hit, my first thought
was always: ‘Someone better have got a good fucking angle on that.’
That’s an actor.” He pauses, as he often does. “It may have all been a
bit reckless.”
His willingness to get battered may have helped make the part feel like his own. For several years, Southpaw was to have been a vehicle for Eminem;
Gyllenhaal was only cast once the rapper dropped out. In that first
incarnation, the talk was of a parallel between the star’s hard-knocks
youth in Detroit and Billy, a bruiser from a New York orphanage. With
Gyllenhaal, the link is less clear: the son of a successful director and
screenwriter, he grew up in LA, acting as a child. He appeared in his
first film at 11, playing Billy Crystal’s son in City Slickers.
Yet Southpaw is not his first high-profile role as a blue-collar dude in a bad situation. In the Gulf war drama Jarhead, he was a fragile marine; in End of Watch,
a sturdy cop. He says the reason the boxing movie endures is because
the boxer is such a universal figure, while few of us relate to actors.
“Believe me, I take acting seriously, I take it more seriously than …”
Again, he reverses his train of thought. “I take it very seriously,
let’s just say that. I do also recognise that it is absurd.”
To Dan Gilroy, the writer and director of Nightcrawler, there will
have been a reason for the role. “I think Jake was probably attracted to
Southpaw as a physical transformation and also as: ‘OK, here’s someone
I’ve never played before, from a certain socio-economic background, a
place of hardship and struggle.” I’m sure those things were the
challenge for him.”
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The film team review Southpaw
By now, Gilroy says, Gyllenhaal could take his pick from any
superhero movie in Hollywood; instead, he makes small, jagged films such
as Nightcrawler. The weight loss was the actor’s idea – two stone in 10
weeks. “And to do that he had to fight the industry logic tooth and
nail. Because their default position is ‘no’.” Gilroy mimics a nervous
executive: “‘What do you mean, you want to lose weight? Don’t lose
weight! People know you as Jake, we’re hiring you as Jake! Let me just
give you a nice haircut so that you look personable and women will like
you.’ That’s the industry. He doesn’t listen. He’s ballsy.”
But there has always been ambition. In 2002, at 21, Gyllenhaal came
to London to do theatre, feeling that he should. He starred in the
quickfire Kenneth Lonergan play This is Our Youth,
at the time the third most famous member of a three-handed cast
including Anna Paquin and Hayden Christiansen, then playing Anakin
Skywalker in George Lucas’s second batch of Star Wars films.
The play’s director Laurence Boswell was alarmed to discover his only
stage experience had been in a school play. He found himself stunned by
how good Gyllenhaal was. “My sense was that he was tough enough,
ruthless enough, ambitious enough and skilled enough to become a big
star.” As well as his talent and his sweetness, Boswell also mentions
his “political and strategic skills”, and the industry nous that comes
from a Hollywood family. (Boswell mentions his older sister, actress
Maggie Gyllenhaal, as a particular influence.)
At 34, having done nothing professionally but act, you wonder if
Gyllenhaal feels the job needs to be gruelling to matter. Does he take
parts and then find he wants to transform physically – or take parts
precisely because they let him stretch and shrink and get weird with his
body?
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“Does
the arrow draw forth the target or vice versa?” He ponders in silence.
“Well, I’ve realised I’m fascinated with what it is to be a man. And as a
man, physicality is important. I’ve gone on searches …” He sees me
squinting uncertainly. “I mean, pushing myself to the limit. With
Nightcrawler, I was searching for a physical, chemical state that would
come from depriving myself. I was interested in what that would bring
out. It wasn’t about losing weight. It was about what happens with a
certain kind of deprivation.”
Gyllenhaal has never had a reputation for hedonism, though his career
has grazed against tragedy; to many he will always be linked with Heath
Ledger, his lover in the pioneering Brokeback Mountain,
who would die of a prescription drug overdose in 2008. His own drive
sounds like a potent species of workaholism. “He pushes himself harder
than I or any director could ever push,” Gilroy says. “He puts more of
himself into his characters than any other actor I’ve heard of.”
Should Weinstein win the day, the lesson will surely be that you get
an Oscar for playing musclebound orphans called Hope, not ghoulish LA
hyper-capitalists. But Gyllenhaal says he thinks Billy might be just as
dark as Lou, chewed up by rage. “That was a big reason for me to do this
movie – I’m fascinated by my own anger, too.”
With Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. Photograph: AP
He smiles, a vision of Zen tranquility. Really? Does he have a lot of
anger? “I would aspire to be someone who is only ever angry at
injustice. But frankly, I’m also angry in traffic. And I seriously
wonder why. But not just that. There are things that …” He stalls as if
there’s something on the tip of his tongue. “I mean, all I can say is:
Look, my work expresses best what I’m trying to explore, and you can see
from the work I’ve done lately the areas where I’m searching. And the
answer to your question is yes, of course, I have anger. Not all the
time. But yes. And I’m very curious about it. Not because I go: ‘Ooh,
what’s angry like?’ It’s something I experience and want to
understand.”I tell him, and it’s true, that as I was sitting with his
people waiting to be ushered in here, I Googled his name. Prominent
among the results was a MailOnline story detailing the lunch he enjoyed
yesterday with a “mystery brunette” in Chelsea. The piece pointed out
Gyllenhaal appearing to scratch his back with his fork. “Uncouth,” it
sniffed, amid the paparazzi shots taken through the restaurant window.
Does any of that make him angry?
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He
takes a moment. “Well, to be frank, that had yet to sail past my
consciousness. But no, I am no longer curious about that stuff. And it
doesn’t make me angry. What does make me angry is how easy it is to
destroy rather than create …” At this, he embarks on a meandering
tangent on the theme of positivity that starts with the flaws of social
media, veers into serving on the Cannes jury with the Coen brothers,
takes in his enjoyment of the Broadway musical Fun Home, and rounds off
with his new film. “Maybe I’m contradicting myself,” he says eventually,
“and I hope I am, because the point here was to confuse you.”
A deeply traditional kind of boxing movie, Southpaw comes with a
modern twist. Although Weinstein was the public face of its production,
much of the finance came from the Chinese entertainment giant Dalian Wanda
– owner of, among many other things, cinema chains across Asia and the
US. For Gyllenhaal, such deals are part of the eternal balancing act
between art and commerce. He was a producer on Nightcrawler, as well as
its star; Gilroy thinks he may end up directing, too. His mood right now
is, he says, less imperial: “At this point, I’m ecstatic if I’m in a
movie that just works, even a little bit. Movies are so hard, just that
is miraculous.”
Still sporting the muscle he amassed for his role in Southpaw, Jake Gyllenhaal heated up the Italian coast while on vacation with his friend, Greta Caruso.
Wearing nothing but shorts and bushy beard, the star was looking ripped as he relaxed by the pool in Amalfi, Italy.
To get in shape for his role in the boxing flick, Gyllenhaal
followed an extreme workout schedule – including 1,000 sit-ups a day,
100 pull-ups, 100 dips, two sets of 100 squats, jumping rope and running
eight miles a day.
"That's what I like to do – immerse myself in the world and soak
up the molecules in the space that I train in, practice in," said
Gyllenhaal, 34. "I feel in general people's fascination is on the
physical, which I understand, but I also feel like it's not why I do
what I do."
Accompanied by Caruso, who a source confirms is Gyllenhaal's "longtime
best friend," the actor was taking some much-deserved time off after
wrapping his next film, Everest.
Like Gyllenhaal, Caruso, 31, comes from a family of actors – she's the daughter of CSI: Miami actor David Caruso and his second wife Rachel Ticotin.
Jake Gyllenhaal is one of Hollywood's most eligible bachelors, but it's a title he's excited to shake.
The "Southpaw" star is hoping to get married, he told Howard Stern during a visit to his Sirius XM radio show.
"There are a lot of beautiful women and there are opportunities," he
acknowledged, "but... I believe in monogamy. I believe in, when you meet
somebody who's right, it'll be right and you'll stay there."
How Jake Gyllenhaal Transformed for Role in 'Southpaw'
Jake Gyllenhaal Did 1,000 Situps, 100 Pullups a Day for 'Southpaw'
How Jake Gyllenhaal Lost 30 Pounds for Latest Movie 'Nightcrawler'
Gyllenhaal, 34, told Stern that he's been in love two or three times in
the past, but he's not in love now. He blames himself for those
relationships not turning into more serious unions.
"I think I probably got scared," he admitted. "But I also think at some point, I think you just decide to grow up."
If and when he does tie the knot, the Oscar nominee said he will look to
the relationship his sister, Maggie, has with her husband, actor Peter Sarsgaard, as a model.
"They're definitely a standard for me... based on their kids and how great they are with their kids," he said.
