Jake Gyllenhaalis looking back on his experience working with late costarHeather Ledgeron their 2005 dramaBrokeback Mountain.
He and Ledger play a cowboy and a ranch hand who carry on a private romantic relationship over the years. Gyllenhaal toldVanity Fairhe admired Ledger’s approach to the subject of the film and its portrayal of two men in love and their complicated feelings for one another.
“One of the things I really remember about the process after the movie came out was Heath never wanting to make a joke,” theAmbulanceactor said. “Even as I think culturally, there were many jokes being made about the movie or poking fun at and things like that. And his consummate devotion to how serious and important the relationship between these two characters was.”
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He continued, “It showed me, I think, how devoted he was as an actor and how devoted he was, and we both were, to the story in the movie. And for us, the experience of the movie, I can say, was a really deep and fun one.”
While filmingBrokeback Mountain, Gyllenhaal said they shot the film over the course of three weeks, during which they would wake up each morning to make coffee, eat breakfast and walk to set.
“It’s a technique of movie-making that I wish we did more of, you know, where we all just powwowed and lived together in a space,” he said.
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Gyllenhaal looked back onBrokeback Mountainas a whole, tellingVanity Fair, “There’s so much to say about this movie. There’s even more for me to say about my experience of it.”
“There’s even more for me to say about the reaction to it and what it meant and what happens when you realize, as a performer in particular, that something has nothing to do with you,” he continued.
Gyllenhaal said stories can have “the power beyond anything that you think you have control over or part of,” explaining that once a story likeBrokeback Mountain"goes out into the world, it becomes everyone else’s."
“And so, you have a short time with it and that’s my job and my honor to do and then it is everyone else’s and it is no longer mine,” he said. “And there is no film that I’ve ever done that has shown that to me more thanBrokeback Mountain.”
source: people.com
