By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Indie Hearts Shattered as Gyllenhaal Keeps It Real in NYM Fall Preview
Look–you all know how I feel about Fall Movie Previews, and for better or worse, you are doomed to learn more once The Times gets its own “New Season” forecast on newsstands and I can finally undertake my 2006 Fall Preview Review. In the meantime, I cannot help but bring up New York Magazine’s new Fall Preview Issue, the 2005 version of which pleased me none too much and the current version of which leaves me similarly chilled.
But while I will save the clinical diagnosis for later, Emma Rosenblum’s nifty interview with Maggie Gyllenhaal deserves a nudge into the spotlight for its subject’s candor. I waited 90 minutes at the Sherrybaby premiere last night for a Gyllenhaal chat that never came through, but after reading this, to be honest, I really didn’t have that many more questions:
NYM: There’s a lot of raw sexuality in the film. Was that difficult for you?
MG: When I was shooting it, I was focusing on the pleasure. The scene when she’s fucking that guy in the basement after they just met, I think you could cry through the whole scene, but why? That would be so boring. For me, when I was filming that scene, I was thinking, This is great—pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. I’ve been in prison for three years and I want to have sex with a man! But when I watch it now, I think, Oh, man, that’s horrible, and I feel very disturbed by the sex. …
NYM: Now that you’re doing studio features, do you think you’ll keep doing independent films like Sherrybaby?
MG: With a movie like Sherrybaby, I love it, I’m proud of it, and I believe in it. But it’s so much work to get a little movie like that made, to get it seen, to get it bought, to get it into theaters—it’s almost like you have to be a producer. That makes me look at little independent movies more closely—like, do I really want to spend years, or not? I want people to see the movies I make. I’m not just acting for me.
In other words: Showing up to your premiere seven months pregnant is like having twins two months apart. And I wish Bart Freundlich would lose my number.
Anyway, there’s some other interesting but brief commentary about Gyllenhaal’s notorious 9/11 comments, which I applaud her for not only answering but also not ruling them out in some bold-faced, all-caps preemptive screed-by-publicist. She has not succumbed to A-list antipathy yet, bless her heart.
(Photo: Jeff Vespa/Wireimage)