THE BLACK SHEEP INTERVIEW: ANNA KENDRICK

GET THIS GIRL A BUCKET!
An interview with Anna Kendrick.

If you’re like me, you first fell in love with Anna Kendrick when you caught her Oscar nominated turn in Jason Reitman’s UP IN THE AIR, opposite George Clooney. Over the last year, she has starred in four separate movies, including the cop thriller, END OF WATCH, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal, and PARANORMAN, in which case she voices a vapid teenager. Kendrick also shows no signs of stopping either with four more films expected this year, including a small part in Robert Redford’s THE COMPANY YOU KEEP. And the audience shows no signs of getting sick of her either.

Kendrick’s biggest gamble in the last year would have to be PITCH PERFECT. It is her first starring role so not only did she have to prove she could carry a movie but she had to sing her way through it too. “Well, my first lead in a film anyone’s going to fucking see anyway,” Kendrick quips, when we sit down at the Toronto International Film Festival, just weeks before the film’s release. “I’m nervous about it. And I’m singing in it too, which makes it doubly nerve wracking.”

She needn’t have been so frantic about it. PITCH PERFECT became a sleeper hit at the box office, pulling in over $100 million globally. And as for the singing, she was over thinking that too. The soundtrack to PITCH PERFECT has been a permanent fixture in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart ever since the film was released on DVD in December. Still, I understand her apprehension at the time.

“Singing is something I’m comfortable with but it’s like anything. Doing it on screen, the stakes are a little bit higher.”

Kendrick’s role in END OF WATCH is small but pivotal. In the hands of another actress, she may have disappeared into the background, but Kendrick was sure there was something she could do with the part when she read the script. “I wish I could put into words what is great about the screenplay, what’s great about the characters, but I knew reading it, that if you had described it to me, I would have felt like it sounds just like a wife/girlfriend role. It doesn’t sound like something that would be that interesting. When I read it though, even though Janet isn’t in it a lot, it felt like she was incredibly important in rounding out this world, for creating a world in which it really feels like there is something at stake and there is something on the line.”

End of Watch

Kendrick plays Gyllenhaal’s girlfriend in END OF WATCH and one of their most endearing scenes comes when they dance at a wedding. “Wait, what are you talking about? That was not in the script.” This was Kendrick’s first reaction when writer/director, David Ayer, informed her that she and Gyllenhaal would not be just dancing together but dancing a piece of choreography in fact. “It said ‘They do a cheesy dance.’ I don’t know what we thought that was going to be but when we saw what it was, we were confused,” she explains. All the same, Kendrick thinks that, as seemingly simple as this scene is, it was one she really needed her director for. “That was one of those moments. In a movie like this, there are so many big emotional moments where you really feel like you have to trust your director, but doing the wedding dance was the moment that we really needed to trust our director.”

And how did Mr. Gyllenhaal fare at this dance? “Uh, Jake was not great at learning it. Sometimes, he was watching me just to keep up.” (END OF WATCH is now available on DVD and you can read more about it in my interview with Gyllenhaal himself.)

Kendrick’s time on THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, in theatres in April, was even shorter than her time on END OF WATCH, just three days. “I would have delivered his coffee if he had asked me to so I was just really happy to have that opportunity,” Kendrick reveals of her desire to work with Redford. “It was really interesting working with a director who is such a fantastic actor and such an experienced actor. He is a very intimate director. It was a very brief experience for me but a truly fascinating process.”

Pitch Perfect

Kendrick is always learning and growing and, at just 27 years old, this Maine native still has plenty of time to do both of these things. Now, she just has to calm her nerves and enjoy the ride. “It’s going to be awesome but I’m still nervous,” she jokes when asked about the prospect of her future. “I kind of feel like I’m on the verge of throwing up all the time.”

Did I mention that Kendrick is absolutely adorable in person?

THE BLACK SHEEP INTERVIEW: JAKE GYLLENHAAL (END OF WATCH)

HE IS NOT HIS HAIR.
An interview with Jake Gyllenhaal, for END OF WATCH.

“And what was that other question you asked?” I heard a very relaxed and a very handsome, Jake Gyllenhaal, say to me early one morning during the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. A very tired and a very frazzled me, sheepishly replied, “Uh, I was wondering if it was difficult for you to grow your hair back out after the shoot.” He smiles directly at me with those big, blue eyes and says, “Yeah, I just had to make you repeat that one.” Wow. Jake Gyllenhaal had just messed with me. Heaven.

To be fair, I preceded that hair question with a serious one about whether his time on END OF WATCH, his new badass cop film co-starring Michael Pena and written and directer by David Ayer (TRAINING DAY), was any more difficult to shake off at the end of each day.

“I’m just happy being in Toronto promoting this movie and having made this movie,” Gyllenhaal continues. “To me, honestly, this movie was not about vanity. I totally respect the intention of the question but it’s very hard for me to talk about hair when I feel like the police officers I worked with have much more important issues to think about. I feel like I’d be doing them a disservice.”

The great thing about Gyllenhaal, or what I can assess of him from the scant fifteen minutes we shared a room together, is that his earnestness is as plain as the nose on his face. Well, there’s nothing really plain about his nose but you get where I’m going with this. And it’s not like he didn’t give me a wealth of great material for my previous question.

Gyllenhaal with co-star, Pena, in END OF WATCH

“The process of making the movie, 22 day shoot in all, was probably the least intense part of the whole journey,” Gyllenhaal explains. He and on-screen partner, Pena, spent two to three nights a week for five months riding along with Los Angeles Police Department officers in preparation for the part, a lengthy prep period by any Hollywood standard. “When I would be driving home at 5:00 in the morning, having worked in South Central, it would take me a couple of hours just to get to sleep. I would also think, it’s not my job but i’m observing it and i’m continuously observing it. And yet you’re not really involved so there is this strange middle ground where you exist. This can make you weirdly feel even more alone.”

Aside from exposing Gyllenhaal, an Oscar nominee and Los Angeles native, to the harsh reality of the unfamiliar streets in South Central, the purpose of the ride alongs was to bond him to Pena. Ayer’s script called for Gyllenhaal and Pena to be so much more than mere partners; the script specifically refers to them as brothers.

Gyllenhaal in a recent Details spread

“You have to have that brotherhood in order for the movie to work,” Pena explains, when asked about his chemistry with Gyllenhaal. “We didn’t get along like brothers instantaneously but after all that time together, I knew that Jake had my back.”

In Gyllenhaal’s mind, if they didn’t get this camaraderie just right, then END OF WATCH would not have worked at all. “To me, the movie is about a relationship, the movie is about a friendship, the movie or the reason I wanted to do the movie is not because it was about cops,” Gyllenhaal exclaims. For him, the buddy cop genre is entirely irrelevant in this case. “I think you can take these two guys out of uniform and put them in another context and it would still be an interesting movie to watch.”

Of course, if it were an entirely different movie, like if Gyllenhaal and Pena were playing say, I don’t know, extreme cupcake partners, or something just as equally ridiculous, I’m not sure END OF WATCH would have had the same impact on his life.

Gyllenhaal with END OF WATCH co-star, Anna Kendrick

“I had never approached a film or a character in this way. It was really informative to me as an actor and really as a person,” a very appreciated and seemingly genuine Gyllenhaal reveals. “The relationships we made along those five months, the experiences we had together, they changed my life as a person. The movie for me almost feels like an after thought. It was a very special process for me. Michael and I will always share that and always be close because of that.”

Gyllenhaal is a self-professed actor’s actor, having worked opposite some of the best of them, from Heath Ledger (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN) to Natalie Portman (BROTHERS). “I love actors!” I have no issue presuming an exclamation point there; he was that enthusiastic when he said. “I love watching them work. I love seeing somebody just kill it. It is the biggest joy that I have weirdly as an actor, that I get to be inside that process.”

Perhaps my favourite shot of Gyllenhaal, from BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

At just 31 years of age, and with upcoming projects as varied as Oscar-nominee, Denis Villeneuve’s follow-up to INCENDIES, AN ENEMY, in which he plays two polar opposite characters, to appearing an original off-Broadway play called, “If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet”, Gyllenhaal shows no signs of slowing or easing into simpler roles. This not only bodes well for his future but it means there will be plenty more opportunities for him to mess with me again. Either way, as long as he continues, Gyllenhaal will be happy.

“To me, playing a character and making relationships with people, really learning about their stories, is what I love to do. And hopefully that’s what will be it for the rest of my life.”

END OF WATCH

END OF WATCH

Written and Directed by David Ayer

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Pena and Anna Kendrick

Officer Zavala: Comfortable footwear. Police work is all about comfortable footwear.

David Ayer knows a thing or two about writing cop movies. Unfortunately, directing them is bit more of a struggle for him. With his latest police drama, END OF WATCH, he decides that, in order for him to keep the genre fresh, he must leave the crookedness that he wrote so well in TRAINING DAY behind him, and tell the story of two earnest Los Angeles police officers. The approach isn’t necessarily novel but it is at the very least valiant. It’s how he decides this story should be told that we should call the cops on him for.

Police officers, Taylor and Zavala (Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena), are back at work after a month’s leave, while one of their on the job shootings was being investigated. They were naturally exonerated and being the eager, young lads that they are, they are almost giddy to be getting back to work. Taylor is capturing this momentous occasion, and all subsequent police dealings, with his digital camera, which he explains as necessary to fulfill his law school elective film component. Not only are we asked to buy into this flimsy justification for the camera’s presence, but then we are subjected to watch the actual footage he gets. Ayer then cuts back and forth between Taylor’s camera and his own omniscient point of view whenever he needs to, occasionally cutting in other video camera footage that has mysteriously been obtained by gang members who thought it was a smart idea to capture their drive-by’s for prosperity. It is jarring, to say the least, and at times, so nonsensical in terms of perspective, that it becomes very difficult to stay in the film.

END OF WATCH does have two things going for it and, for cop flick fans, they may even be enough to make the experience enjoyable. These two things are Gylenhaal and Pena. Together, these partners feel like genuine partners, the kind who will always have each others’ back, no matter what. They are forceful and violent when they need to be and relaxed and supportive when that’s what called for. Their believability elevates the overall believability of the film, which, between the perspective issues and the horribly amateurish acting from the supposedly frightening Mexican gang members, this film desperately needs. At least Ayer succeeds in bringing one great cinematic truth to light; Police officers in South Central Los Angeles have it rougher than any other ... Wait. You knew that already? Never mind then. End of review.

Best Supporting Actor 2005: Results

5. George Clooney in Syriana- Clooney never is believable as a world weary CIA operative, but worse than that he fails to act as the anchor to for the audience he is suppose to be.

4. Paul Giamatti in Cinderella Man- Giamatti gives a good performance even if his character is limited. He shows both the friend in his boxing manager character as well as the furious promoter and showman.

3. Matt Dillon in Crash- Dillon is actually quite effective, and realistic in the role as a racist police officer who still manages to pull through when needed. The only problem is the nature of the film leaves his character with too little to do to make the impact Dillon indicates he could have made in the scenes he does have.

2. Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain- Although his characterization at the beginning of the film is a bit shaky and inconsistent Gyllenhaal certainly makes up for it later as he realizes the frustrations and pain in his character that lead him down a road to bitterness.

1. William Hurt in A History Violence- Good Prediction RatedRStar. Although he most certainly has the least amount of screen time for me he has the most impact. He makes an effective antagonist and actually turns his one scene role into an actual character particularly in Hurt's realization of his character's peculiar relationship with his brother.

Deserving Performances:
Ed Harris in A History of Violence
Mickey Rourke in Sin City

Best Supporting Actor 2005: Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain

Jake Gyllenhaal received his first Oscar nomination for portraying Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain.

Jake Gyllenhaal really is co-lead with Heath Ledger in this film. It tells the story of both men and he should have been in the lead category. It seem though we will never have two nominees from the same film in lead category as if there is any reason to put them in supporting they will, in this case I would say what landed Gyllenhaal in supporting is Ledger gets to reflect at the end where Gyllenhall does not. Nevertheless his role does have just as much importance as Ledger's as it follows both Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar through both their own relationship together and what they do when they are apart.

Watching the film again I must say I was quite disappointed by Gyllenhaal's performance as Jack Twist early in the film when Jack and Ennis first are given their job shepherding. Early on when Jack is rather aggressively trying to pursue a relationship with Ennis, while Ennis is rather confused about it. Gyllenhaal almost tries to be too stoic in the role as Jack early on. He wants to make him a man who is all about what lies beneath, but really is conveying of what lies beneath is a bit lacking early on. Frankly for these early scenes Ledger consistently stays far more interesting and effective than Gyllenhaal who seems a little confused on how to portray his character at first.

I say confused because in between his moments of stoicism he throws in some moments of rather wild extroversion. This could be taken as a more wild of a man on the inside of stoicism, but it never plays this way. There is a most certainly a disconnect in these moments and Gyllenhaal really does not meld them together in an effective fashion. He does not really find exactly the way he should portray Jack, he tries several different ways to try to find his way for Jack but none of them really work here. Also except for a few longing looks Gyllenhaal frankly could have done much more to really show that to Jack that his relationship with Ennis must happen, but Gyllenhaal does not find the right way to get it across.

After these shaky early scenes, actually more of the early half of the picture Gyllenhaal finds his ways with Jack Twist after Jack has gotten married himself into to a life that he hates. Gyllenhaal does become effective when he brings out the bitterness in Jack over his life. In his married life scenes Gyllenhaal effectively conveys the facade his character puts on at all times. Gyllenhaal though shows that really Jack is not the best at it showing a constant anger that is always clearly underneath from his frustrations over never getting what he really wants. Gyllenhaal always shows a constant pain within Jack during these scenes even when the occasion should be pleasant there is always an unpleasantness in Jack.

The pivotal moments of his performance are with Heath Ledger though. There later scenes are very well handled by both actors as they find the right sort of dynamic between the two. Although these scenes certainly can be categorized as romantic they are defined as the problems between the two as much as the love between them. With Ennis more of confused by the whole matter, and completely unsure of what to do exactly, where as Gyllenhaal shows a passion in Jack that desperately wants them to be together always, and with that there is always a bitterness in Gyllenhaal portrayal over just the pain Jack feels whenever he is not with Ennis frankly.

The path of his character really is a negative one. Where Ledger's Ennis moves further and further to try to understand the relationship all Jack does is become increasingly tired, and almost hate filled over not getting what he wants. Gyllenhaal is quite strong in showing this path of Jack's as he slowly moves along it through almost the entire film. Gyllenhaal shows it something that takes time but does make Jack into far less of a man than his former self, into a brooding and almost cold man in some regards. This transformation is what really makes his performance. This is not a perfect performance by any means it is far too shaky early on, but Gyllenhaal does create a compelling character in the end.

Best Supporting Actor 2005

 And the Nominees Were:

William Hurt in A History of Violence

Jack Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain

George Clooney in Syriana

Paul Giamatti in Cinderella Man

Matt Dillon in Crash

Belated Birthday of Heath Ledger

April 4^th was Heath Ledger’s birthday.  He would have been 32.  This anniversary serves as a reminder of just how sad his passing was three years ago, and how many more great performances he had in store.  After he stared in the critically-acclaimed Brokeback Mountain, he was hailed as the next Marlon Brando.  Unfortunately, his story took a James Dean-esque twist instead.

I knew and understood the Brando comparison back in 2005, when I was still in high school.  It you watch any Brando film—On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Fugitive Kind, etc.—you see how much he disappeared into a role, how much of his body he committed to the part.  In lieu of making dialog work for him, he made the space in between the lines marks of brilliance.  Brando never hid behind lines; rather he internalized them, making it appear his character would burst if the line wasn’t spoken.  Think of “Stelllllaaaaa!” think of the scene where he opens the bottle of champagne in Streetcar, think of him trying on Eva Marie Saint’s glove in Waterfront.  Brando discovered the small things within a role, and used them to define the part.  Ledger did this too.

Look no further than his two most honored performances, that of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain and The Joker in The Dark Knight.  Rarely do you see a multiple Oscar nominee represented with two such vastly different roles.  But Ledger managed it.  Say what you want about his posthumous success with The Joker, but we all know he deserved the praise and would have won had he been alive.  Look at him in Brokeback.  Minimalism at its finest.  He mumbles through his lines like a man trying to find himself, simply lost.  He’s hiding from himself, so he hides what he says.  Each of his lines in that film is delivered with such a painful hint of self-loathing, and of fear, not of society, but of himself—of the truth.  The final scene where he cradles Jake Gyllenhaal’s bloody shirt is something of pure wonder; an actor so clearly understanding what the character is going though, and delivering on the demanding cathartic moment.  So much in the body, so much character study, so much devotion.

The same can be said for his instant-classic turn as The Joker.  Actors reinvent characters all the time, but never before had it been done to this magnitude.  Sparing some of the ad nauseum details about the role, it was perfect.  Like Brando, he took small things and made them powerful.  For instance, when another actor would have sat quietly in the jail cell, Ledger began applauding—something that wasn’t in the script—and suddenly that’s a memorable scene from the movie.  His slithery devouring of lines is nothing short of genius, even changing throwaway lines into unintended punchlines (“Very poor choice of words” anyone?)

I was already a huge fan of Ledger when he passed, and like most of America, probably more so after seeing The Dark Knight.  Seeing his performance acknowledged with an Academy Award win was my proudest moment as an Oscar fan.  It showed that sometimes, just sometimes, they do award the best performance of the year, regardless of genre.  

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THE SOURCE CODE

Written by Ben Ripley

Directed by Duncan Jones

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright

Colter Stevens: It's the same train but it's different.

The dreamy Jake Gyllenhaal is doing a little dreaming of his own, his head resting against the glass as he rides a commuter train into Chicago, one seemingly random morning. This is the onset of THE SOURCE CODE and when he wakes up, it is pretty clear to everyone around him that something is just not right. Just like his fellow commuters though, Gyllenhaal has no idea what exactly it is that isn’t right. You can tell from the look on his face that he feels like he has been on this train before. It isn’t until he looks in a mirror that he questions whether he is even on the train at all. And it all just blows up after that.

Gyllenhaal is Captain Colter Stevens, an American soldier who is an integral part of an experimental and classified army mission meant to prevent terrorist attacks. The trouble is that Captain Stevens doesn’t seem to have any recollection of his being assigned to this mission; the last thing he remembers is flying in an air strike unit. His problems are only magnified when he realizes that the man he is on the train isn’t even him. Stevens, as it is explained to him, and subsequently us, at frustrating length, is part of the source code when he is on the train. What is the source code, you ask? Well, the source code is eight minutes of recereated or alternate time in which Stevens is transported into another commuter’s body in an effort to find the man who has planted a bomb on the train. This not only makes the source code experimental; it also makes it pretty far fetched.

The train has already blown up in reality. There is nothing that can be done to stop it from happening. The man who blows it up though has bigger designs for the city of Chicago itself and this can still be prevented if only Colter could focus on the task at hand. He cannot focus at first though because he cannot get his footing. It is as if he has had no formal training for this mission and his contacts at the base (Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright) are oddly cold and uncooperative whenever he inquires about anything outside his mission. The purpose is later explained but the blatant attempt to disorient the viewer comes off as more manipulative than revealing. Colter does get the hang of things eventually though and then it all becomes about the puzzle, with every object in plain sight becoming a potential clue. Numerous erratic shakedowns ensue.

Director, Duncan Jones, created a quiet and contemplative work of science fiction with his debut, MOON, and has naturally graduated to the big(ger) leagues with THE SOURCE CODE. While he is efficient with his extra funds, the larger cast and more convoluted story are too much for him to grasp all at once. With a repeated loop of eight minutes and a train that blows up every time those eight minutes elapse, Jones has a very specific frame to work within but there isn’t enough growth between loops to keep people engaged. The other passengers, including Michelle Monaghan, might as well be cardboard cutouts for how much they bring to the experience and they look even more lost than Gyllenhaal did at the start. In the end, the code itself is just too complicated - it requires constant explanation, the effect of which only serves to highlight how ludicrous it is.

LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS

Written by Charles Randolph, Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz

Directed by Edward Zwick

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway and Oliver Platt

Jamie Randall: You're my little blue pill.

Ordinarily, I would say that any film that starts with The Spin Doctors’ “Two Princes” is destined to be a disaster. LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS takes place is 1996 though so I guess I can be reasonable. The catchy ditty that consumed the airwaves that year is blasting in a high-end stereo store, where Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) is using his charms to make the sales and get the ladies while he’s at it. He hasn’t a care in the world until he meets a girl (Anne Hathaway) who has no choice but to take life seriously. The twosome are charming together and so disaster is averted but sadly, only so far as to achieve disappointment.

Director Edward Zwick (DEFIANCE) often makes socially conscious films and LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS is no different (although arguably much less serious than say, BLOOD DIAMOND, as far as issues go). Jamie is a pharmaceutical representative for Pfizer at just the right time to cash in on the Viagra explosion. This allows Zwick to explore supposedly scandalous themes like the evils of the drug companies and how they’re ruining our immune systems while getting disgustingly rich. Zwick is never really interested in the matter at hand though. He just uses hot topic scenarios as backdrops for the real story - in this case, the reluctant love between Jamie and Hathaway’s Maggie Murdoch. To make matters worse, and of course much more poignant, Maggie has early on-set Parkinson’s. And so the real question is how life can be so terribly unfair as to give these two people a transformative love that will only get harder and harder to hold.

My answer to that is pretty simple. That’s life, folks. For all of Zwick’s fascination with serious subjects, he rarely seems to comprehend the actual impact of these hardships on the people involved. Maggie pushes people away because she doesn’t think its fair for anyone to have to deal with her condition. Meanwhile, Jamie is frustrated that he can’t fix her with a pill like everything else and has to accept that love is hard. While these are real struggles, the tone is kept pretty light while both of them accept that love is a drug all unto itself. Fortunately for LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS, Gyllenhaal and Hathaway get along brilliantly. They are playful and sharp, like lovers should be, and thanks to Zwick’s somewhat voyeuristic gaze, they are hot and naked a whole heck of a lot too. They are certainly the only addictive element to the film though and when the buzz wears off, there is no withdrawal at all.