Showing posts with label Jake Gyllenhaal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jake Gyllenhaal. Show all posts

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Soon to be a Major Motion Picture?





Or not.

But I can see it.

Do I harp on this? Oh God. So I apologize to my three or so really loyal, die-hard readers who will soon peel off because they're sick of reading this.

EVERY author wants a movie version, and it's not just so they can move a few copies. If it's "literary fiction" - the kind nobody reads - the need is even more imperative. Otherwise our publishers will just sigh over us and get very depressed. But I swear to you, I swear to you, in this case it's different.

The Glass Character, my third published novel, revolves around the life and times of one Harold Lloyd, the silent movie guy who hangs off the clock in his most famous film, Safety Last! Though it isn't a Lloyd biography and isn't even "about" him, strictly speaking, without him the novel would have no heart, no soul or even a core. What it's really about is fandom in its more extreme form, the story of a young woman who will do anything, anything at all to get close to her idol, even to the point of tossing her life into the fire.





And she does, but even that isn't enough. As she hurtles through one incarnation after another, as bit-player, secretary, waitress in a speakeasy, high-class hostess, screenwriter, and (finally!) novelist, Harold dances in and out of her life, maddening, intoxicating, irresistable.

Almost daily, I have to tell myself: this story has legs. It not only has legs, it has wings. Though I'm the only one who thinks this, at this point, I try to keep the door of possibility open. Why? Because I am an utter lunatic.

I fell in love with Harold watching The Freshman on Turner Classics. I tuned in halfway through, during the disastrous dance sequence where, piece by piece, his cheaply-sewn suit falls apart: the dream we all have of being naked in public, but done in an awful, slow-motion striptease.





I began to realize I was watching a genius who made you laugh till you cried, but in truth, what he was doing was about as funny as a dental cleaning: one slip and the hygienist is going to hit a nerve and you will be in agony. But because he is just so exquisitely good at what he does, that jab never quite happens. It threatens, and we watch his suit, and Harold, fall apart (though never in a way that cries for sympathy). But we're just this side of it, and not just laughing but going "ohhhhhhhhh" in that way you do when you're watching something that plays very skillfully around the edges of social humiliation.

Which, of course, we all love to watch.

So that was it. I needed MORE, more, more MORE Harold Lloyd.

I had to find out more about Harold Lloyd. It was piecemeal at first: whatever far-out-of-print books I could get from Amazon (hardly any), YouTube snippets, internet and Wikipedia entries (slipshod and contradictory). When I found an old VHS tape of Kevin Brownlow's superb two-hour documentary The Third Genius (now, FINALLY, available on DVD with the Bluray of Safety Last!), I was in Harold heaven. The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection, a boxed set with most of his stuff after about 1919, rounded out my knowledge, but it only made me hungrier.

For.

More

Harold.

Lloyd.




One day I was sitting in my office downstairs (we now call it the Cat Room because our new cat eats in there), and it hit me like a brick to the head. Harold Lloyd. I HAD to write about him, had to had had had to, and I had no idea what to write. But with the typical idealism of the mentally ill, I pulled myself up to the computer and began to write.

Three hours later, I looked up, looked down, and realized I had started my novel.

I can't and won't spill the rest of it here, except to say - God, my gut, my soul - it took THREE YEARS to get a book contract, and it was flukey. I had sent out so many dead-end queries that I was ready to give up (not: I never give up), but there were a few I hadn't heard back from. I sent out three emails, and only one came back: "Oh! Yes! We'd like to see it, please."





Just like that, except trying to sell a book now is just about as pleasant as a root canal. I just don't know how to do this any more. But with a certain stupid doggedness, I still believe Harold deserves another shot at the big screen.

I've gone through several casting sessions, and I won't tell you the exact details of this except to say we have a fold-out bed in the cat room. Jake Gyllenhaal was a front-runner for a while because he has the same head-shape, hairline, jaw, and bow-shaped lips, though the nose is wrong and the eyes are more dreamy than piercing (Harold had an unsettling gaze). But somehow it wasn't a good-enough match, and as he beefed up and became more of a jock, I became restless and discontented.

I took on Zachary Quinto next, mainly because he was so damn dishy in Star Trek. He had a sort of Mediterranean quality which didn't quite work however, and a sort of gravitas that didn't match the mercurial Harold.





Then I hit on - very recently - Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and bing bing. Bing! He could do this, even if the physical resemblance isn't too strong. He has the compact body type, the lovely big head, the charismatic eyes, and the fizzy frisson I am looking for. And the energy. Oh, the energy.

Why do I do this, when it does me absolutely no good? Any movie people who ever see this might say, "God, she's so naive she thinks she can cast a movie that will never exist." Probably true. But it's not that, not that at all.

This movie is here already, it's made. It exists. It only has to be put up there. Don't tell me I'm crazy, please. I am convinced that, no matter how hard Harold worked on his movies, piecing them together gag by polished gag, they were born in his heart and head first, and it was a whole thing and it only had to be actualized. That's what a good workman does, and hell, he was one of the best.

The Glass Character exists as a movie already. It is there, it's a whole thing, and it only has to be actualized. Just put it up there, please. Harold needs to live again.







  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!



Monday, August 31, 2015

A serious contender for Harold?




For that small-but-loyal band of followers and merry men/women who have been patient with my Harold-rants for the past few years, let me at last present something dizzy, sunny, fizzy and funny and fine. 

I just figured out who's going to play Harold Lloyd in the movie version of my novel, The Glass Character. (A movie version that doesn't exist yet - that lives only in my imagination. So far.) This is a game that's gone on for several years now, and until Jake Gyllenhaal beefed up a little too much, he was a front-runner, being just awfully good-looking, not to mention a very fine actor.

For a while I was transfixed by Zachary Quinto, but to be honest I wonder if he has enough movie experience, being mostly a TV guy. And he's perhaps a little too Mediterranean, though very handsome, with that movie star big head. But his innate gravitas kind of eliminates him from the running.

But listen up, something just happened. A while ago I read an interview with Suzanne Lloyd, Harold Lloyd's granddaughter. The usual question came up: so who would play Harold in "the movie version"? (which did not exist at all then, except as an extremely abstract concept). She mentioned Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and when I quickly looked up pictures of him I thought: uh-uh. Doesn't really look like him.

I had to go away for a while. 


            

There's such a thing as a "quality", and it goes far beyond physical resemblance. In Harold's case it's a kind of mercurial energy, along with charm and boyish sweetness, but with an underlying intensity. When I started looking at clips, looking at pictures, looking at his track record, watching his movies, I started to think that this at last was a true contender.

A contender for what? A movie based on my novel? Preposterous idea, and I have been severely sniped at a few times for even daring to think of it. "Thank you very much for the opportunity to look at your 'movie-ready' manuscript. Unfortunately, this is an idea that we believe would have no mass-market appeal." Canadians love to shame each other for daring to have enthusiasm or (worse!) ambition, and believe me, I've been through the mill. 










But like in some monster picture, the dream just keeps on resurrecting itself, the Thing that Wouldn't Die. Who knows. Who knows? Could be, I think, and though I have no idea what the next step is, if there even IS one, it all has to start in my head and heart, where Harold has lived since that fateful day in 2007 when I pulled myself up to my computer and began to write.




Could be! 
Who knows? 
There's something due any day; 
I will know right away, 
Soon as it shows. 
It may come cannonballing down through the sky, 
Gleam in its eye, 
Bright as a rose! 




Who knows? 
It's only just out of reach, 
Down the block, on a beach, 
Under a tree. 
I got a feeling there's a miracle due, 
Gonna come true, 
Coming to me! 



Could it be? Yes, it could. 
Something's coming, something good, 
If I can wait! 
Something's coming, I don't know what it is, 
But it is 
Gonna be great! 





With a click, with a shock, 
Phone'll jingle, door'll knock, 
Open the latch! 
Something's coming, don't know when, but it's soon; 
Catch the moon, 
One-handed catch! 




Around the corner, 
Or whistling down the river, 
Come on, deliver 
To me! 
Will it be? Yes, it will. 
Maybe just by holding still, 
It'll be there! 

Come on, something, come on in, don't be shy, 
Meet a guy, 
Pull up a chair! 
The air is humming, 
And something great is coming! 
Who knows? 
It's only just out of reach, 
Down the block, on a beach, 
Maybe tonight . . .







Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!


Saturday, August 1, 2015

I Wish I Knew How To Quit You





This is the line everyone remembers from Brokeback Mountain. The fact Jake says it with his back to the camera makes it super-effective. I haven't seen this movie since it came out, and that was quite a while ago, a few lifetimes I think. How would it strike me now? Heath Ledger is dead and gone, which is still a gut-wrenching shock. The waste. Success, fame, all that stuff, eats human beings alive.

I used to think Jake would make a pretty good Harold Lloyd, but it's a wet dream of monstrous proportions that now must be hung out to dry. He has just the right world-seducing, fuck-me quality. Well, he does. I might as well say it.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

This is why Jake should play Harold. . .




I've got to go to bed, it's very very late, and this old blog is getting out of hand.

My blog is an anachronism. Looks like a piece of old brown paper. Everyone else is going all slick. Picturesque, even. Mine is butcher paper tied with string. OK.

This is why Jake should play Harold.

At first glance you'd think not. WHAT? People mention Johnny Depp, who's 50, and even Tom Hanks who must be 60 by now.

Jakey is 33, just ripe enough. The shape of his head is perfect. He has a long, clean, handsome jaw, a long narrow nose and bow-shaped lips.

Heartbreaking blue eyes. Little-boy eyes. The eyebrows.

A big head on fairly small shoulders, compact body, wiry, restless, intense. A three-cornered, vulpine smile.

A sense that anything could happen, and is about to. A sense of a storm breaking out, of rain in the air, of horses whinnying along the ridge while clouds go scudding by.

And he's a good-smelling man, I know he is. And I know Harold was. I just know.

That's why he should play Harold.




Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Separated at. . . oh, you know





Yes, I know I've been through this 

(and through this) before. 

But bear with me.





When an actor plays someone famous, 

such as - uh, er, Ashton Kutcher playing 

Steve Jobs - we expect a startling physical 

resemblance and not much else. The 

"oh, doesn't he look like" phenomenon

 lasts for about 15 minutes.







But after a while you need some acting chops to carry it through. 





And it is VERY important not to aim for caricature, or you could ruin the whole thing.






When you look at these two, it gives you the sense of some kind of blood kin, however distant. 

I just find it interesting, is all. 

I do. 

Not that the two of them really have anything to do with each other. Or with me.



Thursday, May 2, 2013

Jake and Harold: could they be blood kin?




Writers love to do this. They love to cast their own movies. The movies that won't be made out of the novels they will never publish. It sustains them, somehow.

I've posted on this before, but it's time to revisit. I have a couple of candidates in mind for the role of Harold Lloyd (and guess how I'm going to audition them. The casting couch is still very much in operation.) One was Zachary Quinto, until I realized his energy is all wrong (just too self-contained and subdued, though he made a marvelous Spock in the latest Trek movie). Then I went and saw something with Jake Gyllenhaal in it - he doesn't look like his photos, you know, but has a sort of a strange, vaguely cockeyed look and in some angles is almost nerdy. He has a much beefier physique than Harold, who did 85% of his own stunts and was made of springs and rubber bands. But he could capture Harold's energy, I know he could, and he has those puppy eyes and that tinge of love-me narcissism (just a tinge).




No, I wouldn't say they look alike because Harold's face is much more aquiline, if that's the word - narrow of face and nose, with a classic jaw that kept him handsome until the end of his life. And that three-cornered smile could be a trifle vulpine, evoking a forest faun or perhaps the Great God Pan.





But what about the vulpinosity (or vulpitudinousness) of this shot? There's more than a hint of it there.





Jakey Boy loves to seduce the camera, at least in his still shots. I still think his looks are kind of unorthodox, almost as if one side of his face doesn't quite match the other.




He has that bow-shaped-lips thing going on which can transform a man's face, giving it an appealing androgynous touch. But here it is on someone else.




(Hard to believe this is a goofy comedian, with that super-serious look.)





Somebody's rockin' my dreamboat. . . 




But what could be dreamier than this shot of a very young Harold, looking awfully satisfied about something? In this shot, I think I see a blood-kin kind of resemblance. In fact, it's quite startling.




Yes, the breathtaking Jake can be a bespectacled nerd, reminding you of your Grade 9 Physics teacher. The glasses suit him, somehow.



But they suit him even better.


POSTSCRIPT. Do you think I spent hours finding these? I found these two in fifteen seconds. I am not kidding you. The photos just glom together magnetically. I don't know what's going on here.






'Yeah, I always loved Uncle Harold. . . people used to say I looked like him. . . "

And just one more pair (I promise) just to prove they were both. . .






CROSSEYED!


Tuesday, May 3, 2011

The Glass Character: in person!







































































































































Perhaps I should explain.



Almost every author wants their novel made into a movie. It stands to reason. That way, you might earn more than the $1200.00 the average writer makes for their first book.



My current book, The Glass Character, this magnificent horse I'm trotting out (ahem!), this-here project or product or whatever-it-is, is all about the life and times of silent screen comedian Harold Lloyd.



Harold Lloyd was a looker. If he hadn't been a legendary comedian, he might have been a leading man. He had that wonderful jaw, the nicely-shaped (and big) head, the fine eyes that telegraphed emotion, not to mention intelligence. And a direct line to your heart.



So, I've been looking around for actors to play him in "the movie". The movie that will inevitably be made once this thing hits the stands! The fact that this thing is nowhere near hitting anything like a stand does not deter me. (Well, actually, it does, but I've learned to proceed anyway: I'll have to re-run the e.e. cummings quote about that.)



First it was Zachary Quinto, who did a fine job playing Spock in a remake of Star Trek. He too has the handsome jaw, and beautiful eyes and a heart-melting smile.



But he's a little too - I don't know. Ethnic? He'd sure need an eyebrow-pluck. Then I got onto Jake Gyllenhaal.




He was a bit of a hard sell at first - to me, I mean. I saw him in Brokeback Mountain and thought, what a brat, he knows exactly how gorgeous he is. He also had a renegade quality about him, a wild card feeling, almost as if he's an undiagnosed bipolar (as is half of Hollywood, these days). And just a touch of androgyny: not as much as that wretched sooty-eyed Robert Pattinson, whom I don't like at all, but a touch - and a seductive way of eyeballing the camera.



So. . .




Then I started seeking out photos to see if I could get a match. It was fairly easy, and in some cases (those astonishing tux photos!) eerily close. They could be brothers. They both have that three-cornered vulpine smile, and eyes that you're never quite sure of - there's something behind them, but whatever it is, he ain't talking.


So could Jake play Harold? Call his agent, right now! The movie hasn't been cast yet -well, the screenplay, y'see there's a little problem there, too, in that it hasn't been written yet. And the novel, well. . .



It at least exists on paper. And it's burning a hole in my heart. I have huge dreams for this thing. It's called The Glass Character. Directed by Martin Scorsese. (Just because he's my favorite.) And starring. . . Jake Gyllenhaal, Harold Lloyd's mysterious twin.