Jake's body around his Mom is always negative IMO, just like here. It's like he doesn't want to be there.His body language with his Father is the total opposite.
He's got his arms folded which is classic "I don't want to be here" body language. He looks like he'd rather be anywhere else. He's so funny. Hmm...a gun in his pocket...I dunno but his shorts do look a little bulgy. I think it's just the material. But what a pleasant view. :)
First picture: Looks like Mrs. G. is rummaging in her purse for $20 to give to Jake, and that she's about to say, quite benignly: "Here, you and your little friend can go have some fun at the mall." While Jake's little friend is pointing toward us, the onlookers, sort of like: "Can't you fix this, or make it all go away?" Jake just looks skeptical, resigned to his fate, and also as if he's about to tell Mrs. G. that $20 isn't going very far at the mall these days.
Second picture: Jake thoughtfully chews his finger, looking straight at us, the papparazzi, or whatever is happening outside of our view. Whatever the little female friend is telling him, he's going to shrug off, with a sort of fatalistic, "Can't be helped, babe."
I'm with you on the body language when he's with mom. He always looks like just gritted his teeth through the obligatory once-a-week lunch with mom in which she picked at him incessantly. He's leaning so far away from her in one pic that I don't know how he doesn't fall over. And the finger-to-mouth bit looks extremely kid-like, like he is reduced to being an insecure teen around her.
He's wearing the same outfit as the parking garage pics, in which he looks really happy! If that is really the same day, before meeting up with Mom, that makes the difference from his usual stance and demeanor even more striking.
I have heard him allude to a less-than-happy childhood, although I have tried to find the article again and haven't been able to. Why do I have a feeling it has to do with his relationship with Naomi?
maybe he's just looking a tad bored with all the paparazzi again....and again...and again..... but yeah, he does look really funny, like a 12 year old!
thanx cina! I love the little boy pose intepretation kokodee. But I'm not sure i get all this negative body language talk, or maybe i don't like overanalyzing pap photos He smiles into his momma's face in another photo just a couple of posts down so why all this *there's more too it than meets the eye* talk.
On another note the gyllengaard look fantastic in fantastic! when's the still-in-production finally released?
Tetine, There was an interview with Jake after the Baftas at http://www.netribution.co.uk by Stephen Applebaum, dated Jan. 27, 2006. In it Jake says he doesn't think anyone has a great childhood, that everyone endures pain at some time as a child, even though he realizes how people can spin his specific situation to make it sound like he's had this golden Hollywood upbringing. He doesn't say anything more specific than that.
Also, on the commentary for "Moonlight Mile" he states that a scene reminds him of when his parents fought all the time. Dustin Hoffman jumps in with "Your parents are going to hear this, you know." And Jake replies, "Oh, I love them. They don't fight anymore."
The girl: "I'm so sorry, so sorry. I think I just backed into your car. That is your BMW right over there, right? Man, I am so bummed. I am having a very bad, bad day. You would not believe it."
Jake: [Thinks: Does this chick realize who I am yet? but says] "Ummm, that's my mom's car, not mine."
Mrs. G.: "Let me get my insurance card."
Picture No. 2
The girl says: "Uh, I've had some trouble with my insurance lately, so I was just hoping I can give you my name & address, and a couple hundred bucks, and we can pretend this didn't happen."
Jake: [Thinks: Jeez, this girl doesn't realize there are papparazzi everywhere. I really, really hope her insurance people don't read JakeWatch and IHeartJake.] "Ummm, sorry, but the bumper's sort of, ah, dangling there. And that's a pretty bad scrape. I don't know anything about auto body work, but ...."
Mrs. G: "Maybe we should all go for a cupcake & coffee & discuss this a little bit more. Do you mind my asking, dear -- how old are you? Where did you go to school? Are you Jewish? Do you have a boyfriend? Because ---"
I agree about the body language. He usually looks uncomfortable with his Mom. He does look very "regressed" there, but it doesn't take much to turn me into an 8 year old around my mother either. It looks like there's some tension in the relationship. Maybe just normal Mom-type nitpicking? Or maybe something deeper, it's got to be strange to have a kid who's a more powerful player in your chosen business than you are.
I enjoy the comments on this page nearly as much as the pics themselves. The girl looks like a far less attractive family member. Something in the cheeks I think. Jake looks adorale. I do wonder why he seems to have a high time with pops and does seem a bit more pinched around mom. None of my business I guess, but then none of anything he does or who he does it in, uh...on... I mean with is any of my business. So there's that.
Oh yah and *squeee* because you can see his amazing steel blue eyes and *squee* for that bulge whether it's just material or something more delicious, it's simply terrific. That boy's got some purdy legs.
Girl in sweater is telling the Gyllenhaals she overheard that the valet parking attendant had tipped off the paps, who are clearly INSIDE the parking garage.
Momma G is rethinking the tip to the valet parking attendant.
Jake is mulling over whether he'll ever park in this parking garage again.
wtbgirl, you're so right about moms:) But moms do this because they're worried about their kids, to be worried is their life time mission. And he might be a sex god,a powerful Hollywood player,a world-famous actor, etc. but for her he's her little boy she rocked to sleep when he had bad dreams and cried. He always will be. You just can't help that.
I'm fascinated by all this mum conflict stuff. I agree it could be that he's fed up with the paps chasing him around, and that previous pics where he's looking not so happy with mamma are pure coincidence. I must admit from what I'd read and seen I had assumed they were the perfect family - right mixture strict upbringing peppered with the right amount of liberal values, right mixture of family warmth and cleverness/intellectualism, right mixture of famous Hollywood friends and family privacy...
Aww that is so sweet anon 2:20! And it's so true. It doesn't matter how old you are, you will always be mommy's little boy/girl. It just can't be helped. And I don't think Naomi is jealous of Jake FOR ONE SECOND! I'm absolutely sure she is simply bursting with pride over both Jake and Maggie.
Maybe Jake is just really protective of his mum when the paparazzi are around, therefore he looks uncomfortable or defensive. Maybe Gyllenmummy isn't a fan of the whole celebrity bull that surrounds being an actor.
I have read some of Naoni's interviews and she sounds intelligent and insightful. I doubt she would be jealous of Jake.
Some of the comments made here about the nature of Jake's relationship with his mom are cruel. I don't think there's enough information coming from the pictures posted on this blog, or elsewhere, to come to the conclusion that he feels unconfortable around her. Obviously, no relationship is flawless but that doesn't give anyone the right to judge Jake's mother and her relationship with her son.
How would you feel if Jake Gyllenhaal makes unwelcome comments about your mother and your relationship with her? Not too good, I'm sure.
I apologize for the long article but I could not publish the link. Interview with Naomi from January 06 re her work and her family. Perhaps that answers some of the questions.
Journal Gazette, The (Fort Wayne, IN) January 22, 2006
Hollywood matriarch renews writing career Mary McNamara Los Angeles Times
The exit off Highway 101 you take to get to Naomi Foner's house is marked by a billboard for "Jarhead," and that is a little weird. It's hard to drive very far these days without passing a billboard for a Jake Gyllenhaal movie, but still, it's surprising to see one looming above the turnoff for his parents' house.
Foner, at this point, is used to it. An Oscar-nominated screenwriter with a director husband and two actor children, she understands the nature of the business. She and her husband, Stephen Gyllenhaal ("Paris Trout," "Waterland"), named their production company Rollercoaster Films, and together they have ridden Hollywood's highs and lows. For a while, Foner chose to get off entirely, in part, she says, because she could not find a healthy balance between work and parenting. "The pull between the selflessness required for real parenting and the selfishness you need to have in this work became too much I think," she says. "I wasn't ready to do it."
But when your kid has his own billboard, it's probably safe to assume that the heavy lifting of parenthood is over. So now, Foner is back in the game, and it's just as strange and unpredictable as she remembers. Her recent adaptation of "Bee Season," starring Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche, came and went in an instant, leaving behind a trail of reviews that either loved it or absolutely hated it.
Far from being cowed, Foner shrugs it off. Even before the film opened, she discussed its limitations with unusual candor, saying publicly that it didn't turn out to be quite the movie she had in mind when she began writing it.
"It has flaws, fine," she says now. "Everyone tried to do their best. Many people were moved by it, which is what I wanted in the first place.
"The terrible reviews," she adds, "I take as a compliment; the film was about things that make people uncomfortable."
"Things" being the roiling politics of family, including the push-pull of marriage and the unexpressed but undeniable pressure parents put on children to follow paths they themselves were not brave enough to trod. These are issues Foner has been exploring since she joined the Children's Television Workshop way back in the '70s when political activism was still considered a viable career choice. Issues she feels she has only just become mature enough to truly understand.
"I had some inkling when I wrote `Running on Empty,' " she says. "But the best thing about getting older is you learn how to write better. And you have life experiences you can draw on; you aren't confined to just referencing other movies."
The Gyllenhaals are New York transplants on their way to becoming a Hollywood dynasty. Her best friend is Jamie Lee Curtis, her children grew up surrounded by the likes of Billy Crystal and Martin Short. (From the time he could talk, Foner says, Jake didn't have a chance. "We knew he was going to be an actor since the time he was tiny," she says. "We figured he would just run away and join `Saturday Night Live.' "
Foner finds the idea of being the matriarch of a Hollywood Family amusing and a little frightening. Both her children are successful actors - Maggie achieved her breakthrough in 2002's "Secretary"; Jake is having an extraordinary year with three big films out, including the acclaimed "Brokeback Mountain" - and she is very proud of them and the choices they have made. But like every mother, she worries about whether the environment she and her husband created funneled the children into the acting world, about whether her own feelings of frustration with the industry made the kids feel they somehow had to make it big for Mom.
Jump-starting her career now is, she thinks, not only a way to avoid the temptation to live vicariously through them but also to carry the message she has learned over the years - that there are many ways to lead a successful life.
"I made a lot of mistakes," she says, "Believe me, I was not a perfect mother, as they will tell you. But I do think that a gift I can give them is the idea that it's never too late to do the work. Because life doesn't only go in one direction."
In 1985, her first feature film, "Violets Are Blue," got made, which she found astonishing. "I had been making a lot of money, writing for big stars - Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman - but nothing ever got made. I thought my job was to throw scripts down a big hole somewhere," she says.
"Violets Are Blue" was a completely different experience - it taught Foner the great lesson of screenwriting: "That things don't get made anywhere near the way you write them."
Her next film was "Running on Empty," the story of a couple on the lam because of their politically subversive past and their son who must choose between their lives and his. Starring Judd Hirsch, Christine Lahti and River Phoenix, it earned Foner and Phoenix Oscar nominations and is now a cult classic.
Family, in all its lacerating, liberating complexity, became the driving force of Foner's work, both thematically and tangibly. And the roller coaster cranked into high gear.
She and Stephen decided it would be fun to work on a film together; he directed her adaptation of "A Dangerous Woman," which starred Debra Winger. They discovered that marriage does not necessarily translate into an easy working relationship, yet undeterred, they tried it again with "Losing Isaiah," starring Jessica Lange. It was an original script and, Foner says now, a really big mistake. "Stephen would agree, and the kids would definitely tell you that this was a mistake."
"Losing Isaiah," she says, suffered from the tension between the two, tension that brought their marriage to the brink and caused her to pull back from her career.
"I had to repair some damage," she says.
Her children launched themselves into their own Hollywood careers.
She knew, if nothing else, her children had no unrealistic expectations of the Hollywood life. "They grew up around this, all of our friends did this."
In a way, she feels like she is at the same stage as her children now, finding her real voice as they find theirs. Having overcome some fears both tangible - her fear of flying almost kept her from doing "Violets Are Blue" - and more subtle, Foner feels ready to begin again, to revisit projects she left stranded, to direct the movie she promised she would direct all those years ago.
She is working on several scripts, including "Pilgrims Progress" about actors who fall in love during their work at a reenactment of the community at Plymouth, and another about suffragette Victoria Woodhull.
With the pressures of motherhood lessened and a clearer understanding of what it is she wants to do, Foner feels as if she has that rare chance - to do what she wanted to do at 20 with the wisdom of 59.
And having had it all yanked out from beneath her once, there really isn't much to fear.
"That's the part I want my kids to know," Foner adds. "That you go up and you go down. The trick is to find flat ground to walk on while the crazy business moves on."
Thanks for posting the interview, Maria. Very interesting to read. She seems to be a very grounded person, and it's easy to see that her attitude has contributed to how her children are today. The Gyllenparents definitely did something right... :D
I heard the Gyllenhaals read this blog sometimes. Well, I'd like to recommend Mrs.Gyllenhaal and her children A World for Julius by peruvian author, Alfredo Bryce Echenique. A beautiful novel about growing up wealthy and making mistakes in parenting. I'm sure they'll love it.
I'm just glad he doesn't stand with his toes turned OUTWARDS! (I hate that!) I love when he chews his fingers! The two combined just make him... Jake. (Jake = totally hot, wonderful, awesome...)
43 comments:
Huh. Jake stands with his toes turned inward.
That's an odd way to stand.
Is that a gun in his pocket or...I mean, it MUST be because he is certainly NOT happy to see her!!!
Is that a gun in his pocket or...I mean, it MUST be because he is certainly NOT happy to see her!!!
Jake's body around his Mom is always negative IMO, just like here. It's like he doesn't want to be there.His body language with his Father is the total opposite.
Aaw..Jake does stand kinda pigeon-toed. That is so cute. Weird but cute. :) Who's the chick?
Lol, he stands like a child!
You know, like a little boy who's stuck between the boring adults and can't wait to get away.
He's got his arms folded which is classic "I don't want to be here" body language. He looks like he'd rather be anywhere else. He's so funny.
Hmm...a gun in his pocket...I dunno but his shorts do look a little bulgy. I think it's just the material. But what a pleasant view. :)
Am I the only one who notices that HE ISN'T WEARING HIS SHADES!! We can ACTUALLY see his eyes for the first time since... the Oscars?!
what a nice, bulge...pic, I mean pic!
when was this taken?
I thought that they would be in cannes suporting Sarsghaal/ Gyllengaard's new film?
First picture: Looks like Mrs. G. is rummaging in her purse for $20 to give to Jake, and that she's about to say, quite benignly: "Here, you and your little friend can go have some fun at the mall." While Jake's little friend is pointing toward us, the onlookers, sort of like: "Can't you fix this, or make it all go away?" Jake just looks skeptical, resigned to his fate, and also as if he's about to tell Mrs. G. that $20 isn't going very far at the mall these days.
Second picture: Jake thoughtfully chews his finger, looking straight at us, the papparazzi, or whatever is happening outside of our view. Whatever the little female friend is telling him, he's going to shrug off, with a sort of fatalistic, "Can't be helped, babe."
twisted fate - the pics were taken on May 18.
I'm with you on the body language when he's with mom. He always looks like just gritted his teeth through the obligatory once-a-week lunch with mom in which she picked at him incessantly. He's leaning so far away from her in one pic that I don't know how he doesn't fall over. And the finger-to-mouth bit looks extremely kid-like, like he is reduced to being an insecure teen around her.
He's wearing the same outfit as the parking garage pics, in which he looks really happy! If that is really the same day, before meeting up with Mom, that makes the difference from his usual stance and demeanor even more striking.
I have heard him allude to a less-than-happy childhood, although I have tried to find the article again and haven't been able to. Why do I have a feeling it has to do with his relationship with Naomi?
Definitely something going on there.
maybe he's just looking a tad bored with all the paparazzi again....and again...and again..... but yeah, he does look really funny, like a 12 year old!
thanx cina!
I love the little boy pose intepretation kokodee.
But I'm not sure i get all this negative body language talk, or maybe i don't like overanalyzing pap photos
He smiles into his momma's face in another photo just a couple of posts down so why all this *there's more too it than meets the eye* talk.
On another note the gyllengaard look fantastic in fantastic! when's the still-in-production finally released?
sorry, that's meant to be the gyllengaard look fantastic!
Tetine, There was an interview with Jake after the Baftas at http://www.netribution.co.uk by Stephen Applebaum, dated Jan. 27, 2006. In it Jake says he doesn't think anyone has a great childhood, that everyone endures pain at some time as a child, even though he realizes how people can spin his specific situation to make it sound like he's had this golden Hollywood upbringing. He doesn't say anything more specific than that.
Also, on the commentary for "Moonlight Mile" he states that a scene reminds him of when his parents fought all the time. Dustin Hoffman jumps in with "Your parents are going to hear this, you know." And Jake replies, "Oh, I love them. They don't fight anymore."
My Interpretation:
Picture No. 1:
The girl: "I'm so sorry, so sorry. I think I just backed into your car. That is your BMW right over there, right? Man, I am so bummed. I am having a very bad, bad day. You would not believe it."
Jake: [Thinks: Does this chick realize who I am yet? but says] "Ummm, that's my mom's car, not mine."
Mrs. G.: "Let me get my insurance card."
Picture No. 2
The girl says: "Uh, I've had some trouble with my insurance lately, so I was just hoping I can give you my name & address, and a couple hundred bucks, and we can pretend this didn't happen."
Jake: [Thinks: Jeez, this girl doesn't realize there are papparazzi everywhere. I really, really hope her insurance people don't read JakeWatch and IHeartJake.] "Ummm, sorry, but the bumper's sort of, ah, dangling there. And that's a pretty bad scrape. I don't know anything about auto body work, but ...."
Mrs. G: "Maybe we should all go for a cupcake & coffee & discuss this a little bit more. Do you mind my asking, dear -- how old are you? Where did you go to school? Are you Jewish? Do you have a boyfriend? Because ---"
Jake: "MOM!"
lmao!!Anonymous 1:51 no offence but that chick is fug, she looks almost as old as mama G!
I agree about the body language. He usually looks uncomfortable with his Mom. He does look very "regressed" there, but it doesn't take much to turn me into an 8 year old around my mother either. It looks like there's some tension in the relationship. Maybe just normal Mom-type nitpicking? Or maybe something deeper, it's got to be strange to have a kid who's a more powerful player in your chosen business than you are.
I hope Momma ain't jealous of Jake.
I enjoy the comments on this page nearly as much as the pics themselves. The girl looks like a far less attractive family member. Something in the cheeks I think. Jake looks adorale. I do wonder why he seems to have a high time with pops and does seem a bit more pinched around mom. None of my business I guess, but then none of anything he does or who he does it in, uh...on... I mean with is any of my business. So there's that.
Oh yah and *squeee* because you can see his amazing steel blue eyes and *squee* for that bulge whether it's just material or something more delicious, it's simply terrific. That boy's got some purdy legs.
That girl isn't a relative.
Heh, there is one picture where Jake is kind of trailing behind his mom on IHJ where it looks like he just got in trouble.
Here's what I get out those pics.
Girl in sweater is telling the Gyllenhaals she overheard that the valet parking attendant had tipped off the paps, who are clearly INSIDE the parking garage.
Momma G is rethinking the tip to the valet parking attendant.
Jake is mulling over whether he'll ever park in this parking garage again.
LMAOOOOO, anon 1:51! Hilarious! That is EXACTLY what these pics look like!
Jake Gyllenhaal is a nail biter :)
1:51
bawahahhahh haaaa :) :) :)
wtbgirl, you're so right about moms:) But moms do this because they're worried about their kids, to be worried is their life time mission. And he might be a sex god,a powerful Hollywood player,a world-famous actor, etc. but for her he's her little boy she rocked to sleep when he had bad dreams and cried. He always will be. You just can't help that.
I'm fascinated by all this mum conflict stuff. I agree it could be that he's fed up with the paps chasing him around, and that previous pics where he's looking not so happy with mamma are pure coincidence. I must admit from what I'd read and seen I had assumed they were the perfect family - right mixture strict upbringing peppered with the right amount of liberal values, right mixture of family warmth and cleverness/intellectualism, right mixture of famous Hollywood friends and family privacy...
Aww that is so sweet anon 2:20! And it's so true. It doesn't matter how old you are, you will always be mommy's little boy/girl. It just can't be helped.
And I don't think Naomi is jealous of Jake FOR ONE SECOND! I'm absolutely sure she is simply bursting with pride over both Jake and Maggie.
Maybe Jake is just really protective of his mum when the paparazzi are around, therefore he looks uncomfortable or defensive. Maybe Gyllenmummy isn't a fan of the whole celebrity bull that surrounds being an actor.
I have read some of Naoni's interviews and she sounds intelligent and insightful. I doubt she would be jealous of Jake.
"I had assumed they were the perfect family"
Going by old interviews with Jake, I somehow doubt that. And what is the perfect family? Is there really such a thing anyway?
Some of the comments made here about the nature of Jake's relationship with his mom are cruel. I don't think there's enough information coming from the pictures posted on this blog, or elsewhere, to come to the conclusion that he feels unconfortable around her. Obviously, no relationship is flawless but that doesn't give anyone the right to judge Jake's mother and her relationship with her son.
How would you feel if Jake Gyllenhaal makes unwelcome comments about your mother and your relationship with her? Not too good, I'm sure.
3:54, well put!
I apologize for the long article but I could not publish the link.
Interview with Naomi from January 06 re her work and her family. Perhaps that answers some of the questions.
Journal Gazette, The (Fort Wayne, IN)
January 22, 2006
Hollywood matriarch renews writing career
Mary McNamara Los Angeles Times
The exit off Highway 101 you take to get to Naomi Foner's house is marked by a billboard for "Jarhead," and that is a little weird. It's hard to drive very far these days without passing a billboard for a Jake Gyllenhaal movie, but still, it's surprising to see one looming above the turnoff for his parents' house.
Foner, at this point, is used to it. An Oscar-nominated screenwriter with a director husband and two actor children, she understands the nature of the business. She and her husband, Stephen Gyllenhaal ("Paris Trout," "Waterland"), named their production company Rollercoaster Films, and together they have ridden Hollywood's highs and lows.
For a while, Foner chose to get off entirely, in part, she says, because she could not find a healthy balance between work and parenting. "The pull between the selflessness required for real parenting and the selfishness you need to have in this work became too much I think," she says. "I wasn't ready to do it."
But when your kid has his own billboard, it's probably safe to assume that the heavy lifting of parenthood is over. So now, Foner is back in the game, and it's just as strange and unpredictable as she remembers. Her recent adaptation of "Bee Season," starring Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche, came and went in an instant, leaving behind a trail of reviews that either loved it or absolutely hated it.
Far from being cowed, Foner shrugs it off. Even before the film opened, she discussed its limitations with unusual candor, saying publicly that it didn't turn out to be quite the movie she had in mind when she began writing it.
"It has flaws, fine," she says now. "Everyone tried to do their best. Many people were moved by it, which is what I wanted in the first place.
"The terrible reviews," she adds, "I take as a compliment; the film was about things that make people uncomfortable."
"Things" being the roiling politics of family, including the push-pull of marriage and the unexpressed but undeniable pressure parents put on children to follow paths they themselves were not brave enough to trod. These are issues Foner has been exploring since she joined the Children's Television Workshop way back in the '70s when political activism was still considered a viable career choice. Issues she feels she has only just become mature enough to truly understand.
"I had some inkling when I wrote `Running on Empty,' " she says. "But the best thing about getting older is you learn how to write better. And you have life experiences you can draw on; you aren't confined to just referencing other movies."
The Gyllenhaals are New York transplants on their way to becoming a Hollywood dynasty. Her best friend is Jamie Lee Curtis, her children grew up surrounded by the likes of Billy Crystal and Martin Short. (From the time he could talk, Foner says, Jake didn't have a chance. "We knew he was going to be an actor since the time he was tiny," she says. "We figured he would just run away and join `Saturday Night Live.' "
Foner finds the idea of being the matriarch of a Hollywood Family amusing and a little frightening. Both her children are successful actors - Maggie achieved her breakthrough in 2002's "Secretary"; Jake is having an extraordinary year with three big films out, including the acclaimed "Brokeback Mountain" - and she is very proud of them and the choices they have made. But like every mother, she worries about whether the environment she and her husband created funneled the children into the acting world, about whether her own feelings of frustration with the industry made the kids feel they somehow had to make it big for Mom.
Jump-starting her career now is, she thinks, not only a way to avoid the temptation to live vicariously through them but also to carry the message she has learned over the years - that there are many ways to lead a successful life.
"I made a lot of mistakes," she says, "Believe me, I was not a perfect mother, as they will tell you. But I do think that a gift I can give them is the idea that it's never too late to do the work. Because life doesn't only go in one direction."
In 1985, her first feature film, "Violets Are Blue," got made, which she found astonishing. "I had been making a lot of money, writing for big stars - Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman - but nothing ever got made. I thought my job was to throw scripts down a big hole somewhere," she says.
"Violets Are Blue" was a completely different experience - it taught Foner the great lesson of screenwriting: "That things don't get made anywhere near the way you write them."
Her next film was "Running on Empty," the story of a couple on the lam because of their politically subversive past and their son who must choose between their lives and his. Starring Judd Hirsch, Christine Lahti and River Phoenix, it earned Foner and Phoenix Oscar nominations and is now a cult classic.
Family, in all its lacerating, liberating complexity, became the driving force of Foner's work, both thematically and tangibly. And the roller coaster cranked into high gear.
She and Stephen decided it would be fun to work on a film together; he directed her adaptation of "A Dangerous Woman," which starred Debra Winger. They discovered that marriage does not necessarily translate into an easy working relationship, yet undeterred, they tried it again with "Losing Isaiah," starring Jessica Lange. It was an original script and, Foner says now, a really big mistake. "Stephen would agree, and the kids would definitely tell you that this was a mistake."
"Losing Isaiah," she says, suffered from the tension between the two, tension that brought their marriage to the brink and caused her to pull back from her career.
"I had to repair some damage," she says.
Her children launched themselves into their own Hollywood careers.
She knew, if nothing else, her children had no unrealistic expectations of the Hollywood life. "They grew up around this, all of our friends did this."
In a way, she feels like she is at the same stage as her children now, finding her real voice as they find theirs. Having overcome some fears both tangible - her fear of flying almost kept her from doing "Violets Are Blue" - and more subtle, Foner feels ready to begin again, to revisit projects she left stranded, to direct the movie she promised she would direct all those years ago.
She is working on several scripts, including "Pilgrims Progress" about actors who fall in love during their work at a reenactment of the community at Plymouth, and another about suffragette Victoria Woodhull.
With the pressures of motherhood lessened and a clearer understanding of what it is she wants to do, Foner feels as if she has that rare chance - to do what she wanted to do at 20 with the wisdom of 59.
And having had it all yanked out from beneath her once, there really isn't much to fear.
"That's the part I want my kids to know," Foner adds. "That you go up and you go down. The trick is to find flat ground to walk on while the crazy business moves on."
Thanks for the interview Maria, it's very interesting.
I wonder why cardi lady in the picture doesn't pull it up onto her shoulder - I know I would!
Love Jake's little boy stance.
Wow, i remember reading this article in the LAtimes and have tried unsuccessfully to look for it since. Thanks so much!
What a great interview. Thanks for posting it. It made me want to get to know her. She seems to be such a great woman.
Thanks for posting the interview, Maria. Very interesting to read. She seems to be a very grounded person, and it's easy to see that her attitude has contributed to how her children are today. The Gyllenparents definitely did something right... :D
I heard the Gyllenhaals read this blog sometimes. Well, I'd like to recommend Mrs.Gyllenhaal and her children A World for Julius by peruvian author, Alfredo Bryce Echenique. A beautiful novel about growing up wealthy and making mistakes in parenting. I'm sure they'll love it.
I'm just glad he doesn't stand with his toes turned OUTWARDS! (I hate that!) I love when he chews his fingers! The two combined just make him... Jake. (Jake = totally hot, wonderful, awesome...)
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