"The Other Side of the War"

Jake Gyllenhaal has made a career out of playing characters that hit you at your core. He's done this in films from October Sky to Donnie Darko to Brokeback Mountain to Jarhead.

His latest role is as Tommy Cahil in the film Brothers, a remake of the 2004 Danish film of the same name, directed by Susanne Bier. The American version is directed by Jim Sheridan, who has directed such Oscar-winning fare as My Left Foot and In The Name Of The Father. The 28 year-old actor talks about what first motivated him to do the film.

"Jim Sheridan attracted me to the movie," Gyllenhaal bluntly states, point blank, "He's made some of the most extraordinary films and has gotten some of the most extraordinary performances out of actors and many of the directors working today. His nature and his thoughts on the film and his inherent trust in me as an actor. When we met, it was like, hey, it's Jim."

"I had seen the original movie actually before I had read the script," he continues, "So I knew the story and I thought it was a beautiful story and I thought David Benioff wrote a really nice, beautiful script. When someone like Jim Sheridan comes up to you and says, you know what, we want you to do this movie with me and we're going to shoot this movie in six weeks. Six weeks of your life to work with someone as extraordinary as him, it's like a Godsent."

Brothers tells a story of a convicted felon, played by Gyllenhaal, who has an affair with his Marine brother Sam's wife Grace, played by Tobey Maguire and Natalie Portman respectively. He shares what it was like to be in Tommy's situation.

"I don't have a brother, thank God!" he says, "I do have a brother-in-law now, but that would be weird. Anyway, I believe that I think that we all have a great ability to move towards 'Our impulse

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is anger' or 'Our impulse is violence'. I think I speak for myself as a married man that there are things that come in what you want to do, what you feel like you should do, and what you should do."

"And then, to me, this movie is about forgiveness ultimately and about somebody who does something unbelievable to get back to the thing that they love," Jake adds, "And to me, I just feel that's all that life's about, like, if you have something that you love that you care for, then I hope that anybody would do anything to get that back then, no matter what. And the complications of what have to be done are unfathomable, it won't compute in any logical sense of even storytelling. Tobey's character particularly is put in a position where there is no right choice."

Despite the situation in the film having to involve the relationship of a military family, Jake insists that the film has little to do with being a commentary on the current conflicts with Afghanistan & Iraq.

"I hate hearing actors talking about politics, but we can have that discussion," he says, "To be honest, I think that, because I haven't been before this moment, but to be clear, there's a tendency for journalists to want to corner a movie like this into a certain corner. This movie, it's hard to separate, for instance, the soldier from the life that that soldier lived. Just like if you see a man in uniform, than the movie is about war. The movie is about a man getting to get back to the things he loves, in my opinion."

"I've made movies about war. I feel like that I can say that and I've answered many questions about that," Gyllenhaal adds, "In that sense, how do I feel about what's happening, I still have great faith in our President and I believe he'll make the right choices, in terms of

"The Other Side of the War"

the current situation. Look, it's complicated. We're human beings. Soldiers are human beings. They have lives. This is a story about someone "¦For me, I didn't approach it like that, I didn't play that part. I played a guy who was in jail at the beginning of the movie and to me, that's an equally interesting aspect politically, which is actually a domestic issue, which I didn't know much about 'till I did research for the movie."

We asked the actor if he had talked with military veterans about the film and how Tobey Maguire's character Sam suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder as he comes home from war.

"No," he replies with a laugh, "For me, I don't think my character, it wasn't about holding a fort or being there for his brother or talking to somebody who's had a brother who's been through something like this. It wasn't about that for me. We tend to fall into those ideas. It's hard to say this without feeling like you're trying to sway from talking about a movie about war, but it's not, it doesn't feel like that to me."

"I can't seem to bring myself to say that that's what this is about," Jake continues, "And, specifically, I don't know because it's just to me, he didn't know his brother was going to come back to that way, he didn't expect that to happen. But he did constantly worry about his brother not coming home."

Gyllenhaal discussed the research he did for the movie, which consisted of going to jails and juvenile halls around California.

"I went to jails all around California," Jake recalls, "I went to Lancaster, I went to L.A. County Jail, I went to juvenile halls. I got involved with the writing program as a result of doing research with these young juveniles 14 to 18 years old who write while they are incarcerated. Some of them have gotten out and I have relationships with some of

"The Other Side of the War"

them and some of them have gone on to serve life sentences in some cases. All of them, strangely, regardless of what has happened to them and their fate, are incredible kids, incredible kids, and I think, to me, that's also an important aspect to this movie."

"Here's this guy who comes into jail, it's not very clear in the movie, after having stuck-up a bank and he ultimately turns his life around to care for two children and to love," he continues, "The great thing about the drama of war is that it outshines everything else that is going on in even certain domestic things that are going on. To learn about this, to meet these kids that are in this system that seems impossible to beat or to redeem themselves, my life changed from making this movie, from meeting those kids."

One particular aspect of the program Gyllenhaal was involved with during his research for Brothers was a writing program.

"I mean, making movies is so much about selling a movie or making it look good for an audience and the great, special moments that happen in movies is every movie has a lesson for anybody involved in it. I didn't know," Jake says, "David Benioff introduced me to Scott Budnick, who is the producer, and he works in Hollywood, but he his off-time and extracurricular often is these boys and this writing program. David called me up and said, 'I need to do some research for this movie.' He introduced me to Scott and he took me through a journey. Look, I don't know how it can't change your life when you meet a kid before the day he was sentenced to life."

"He was 18 year old and whose girlfriend had to testify against him who was there and watched it," he continues, "I don't know how you could be breathing and not have it change your life, not have it say, 'Look, these kids

"The Other Side of the War"

want, even if it's like it's not this guy, he's an actor and I've seen movies that he's been in, like, hey, we get an hour outside everyday. We're 14 years old and we get to spend an hour outside a week when I first went there. When I went to the first juvenile hall, they had an hour to play outside a week. It's now changed to a day, but it was a week at this one place and it's not to say they haven't done horrific things, but it's to say that it can't not change your life. You meet people."

One kid Jake met impressed director Jim Sheridan so much, he says, that he gave him a cameo role in the film.

"Scott took me to see this another kid and Jim ended up putting him in the movie in the helicopter scene when Tobey goes down, he's in the movie because we went to go see him," he says, "We went to this place called L.A. Conservation Corps, which I have politically gone back to every year to give awards to these kids who come back and change their lives. They do work for the city and plant trees and they learn a trade. With this kid Victor, he went in jail and Jim and I went to go meet him because Scott wanted to say, 'Here's one out. Here's one avenue and then, here's another avenue, and the avenue of being released and having the opportunity to change their lives.'"

"And we met this kid at the L.A. Conservation Corps in downtown in L.A. and told us all the stories, to me, they were unreal," Gyllenhaal adds, "I mean it was like hiding meth in the back of the lamp of a four-wheel drive vehicle like driving over the border. He was 16 years old and he was telling these stories like Homer. I mean, he was literally like how Jim tells stories.

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He tells these stories and there just tails. Jim is sitting there listening to him, hunched over, and he goes, 'He's an actor. He has to be in a movie.' But that kind of thing, he's changed his life. He now in the governor's office in Sacramento. It's those things that you look at a movie and you're like, yeah, it's a movie, but that's just stuff that I care about, but that's at least how it can change your life at least a little bit."

The key, Gyllenhaal says, to the core of what makes Brothers is his chemistry with co-star Tobey Maguire.

"I think our relationship existed even before we started shooting," he says, "With somebody that is your contemporary, there's bound to be. You're kind of brothers-in-arms. There is admiration and confrontation, the mixture of all those things, the fusion of all those things. The belief in yourself over them and the belief of them over you, your love for them, your want for their success, your struggling with their success, all of those things exist. I can go on for a long list of contradictions that exists between two people who do the same kind of job. So we had to kind of show up and it was there. Plus, we look kind of alike. I say this message to every taxicab driver in New York, I'm not Spider-Man. It was just easy, so there you go."

Brothers is known for some particularly intense scenes, including one of Tobey Maguire destroying a kitchen.

"The making of a movie is always full of its odd moments," Jake says, "When somebody breaks a cabinet in a movie and has an intense moment, you then have to go put the breakaway glass back and you have to do other things (chuckles). That's what I love about movies. I was shooting recently late at night a scene where I get into a car and close the door and the

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gas tank kept popping open every single time."

"And the entire crew of 150 people were stopped for 15 minutes because the opening of a gas tank kept popping open in the middle of the scene," he adds, "That's just the great fun irony of movies that people are made to look like idiots who are made to look like idiots. It's called Love And Other Drugs. I'm making it with Anne Hathaway and Edward Zwick is directing it and it's going to be great."

Further adding to that authenticity were the performances of Bailee Madison and Taylor Geare, who play Tommy's nieces in the film.

"There's nothing more wonderful than working with children," Gyllenhaal says, "I think children have given some of the most incredible performances in film on par with some of the great adult performances. Children probably tend to do it at a higher ratio. They are just present and alive. Jim working with them was like, whatever was happening with them. Jim was sitting at this table with them and they were commenting on your hair and their honesty about what shirt they're wearing and if they like it or not and they don't care whether it's going to offend you or not or they aren't going to tell you how beautiful your eyes look. Those types of things Jim brings out and cuts together."

"To work with the two of them, it's great because here you have these three actors who are probably taking themselves way too seriously and you have these two little beings who are so present and so much better than you and it was great," he adds, "They also were really understanding of the dramatic scenes. They weren't these little innocents plucked off the street and put into a film. They were ready for it. When Tobey freaked out and Bailey had her little moment with him and she says Uncle Tommy and the whole situation, she was excited. She

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couldn't wait to tell him, 'Uncle Tommy was fucking her mom,' you know what I mean, because it was like her big moment, it really was. It was great because it was fun. It wasn't really tense. Jim just makes it fun and I think the nature of there being it during the writers' strike, we had kind of a sense of, whatever."

Finally, we asked Gyllenhaal if he felt that doing Brothers released something untapped in his acting range.

"No, I don't think so, just kind of a stillness," Jake answers, "I told Jim what I felt I responded to in the character. I was just like, it's not flashy, but I found Tommy to be so fascinating because he was just still. A lot of people admire actors who have the showy things and I admire those actors, too, but I admire actors who are still."

"My brother-in law, for instance, Peter Sarsgaard, I've watched him give performance after performance where he is just still and extraordinary and if you watch him carefully, there's more going on than the other," he continues, "I just think in terms of the chess that is actors on a set, everybody has to fill different parts, so Jim pushed me because he said you can be still."