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Yes, they get asked about the sex a lot. "I'm amazed, really," Gyllenhaal says, laughing. "Everybody is soooo interested in it." And their conversations with journalists have given them fresh insight into straight-male psychology. After seeing the movie, Gyllenhaal says, male reporters will enter a room to interview him and almost always follow the same routine. "They come in and they're all, like, 'I just want you to know I'm straight'," he says, and laughs. If they've been moved by the film, he says, they often rationalize it by saying things like "Well, it's really more of a friendship." No, it isn't. "It's a love story," Gyllenhaal says. "They're two men having sex. There's nothing hidden there." Ledger has a theory about why the movie makes some men uncomfortable. "I suspect it's a fear that they are going to enjoy it," he says. "They don't understand that you are not going to become sexually attracted to men by recognizing the beauty of a love story between two men."

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Anonymous said…
Mountain man
Louis B. Hobson
Calgary Sun
November 13, 2005

HOLLYWOOD — If this acting thing doesn’t work out for Jake Gyllenhaal, which is highly unlikely, he could always be a spokesman for Travel Alberta.

Gyllenhaal, who’s riding high on the box-office and critical success of his war movie Jarhead, stars opposite Heath Ledger in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain.

It’s the story of two Wyoming cowboys in the ’70s who must conceal their love for one another.

The drama, which opens in Calgary on Dec. 23, was shot in Alberta last year, and Gyllenhaal still has vivid memories of the time he spent in the province.

“Heath and I came to Calgary early to rehearse with Ang. The first place he took us was a campground (near Fort Macleod),” recalls Gyllenhaal.

“There was a trailer for me, one for Heath, another for Ang and a fourth for (producer) Michael Houseman.

“We were living in the trailers and it was spectacularly beautiful country, but it was also really lonely.

“It really began to affect Heath and I, but that’s exactly what Ang wanted.

“He wanted us to experience the loneliness our characters felt.

“Just looking at the Alberta landscapes as Ang filmed them, you get a real sense that it’s being so lonely that brings them together.

“Straight or gay, everyone understands the concept of loneliness and how it makes you search out someone to help fill that void for you.”

After two weeks outside Fort Macleod, Lee moved Gyllenhaal and Ledger to Canyon Creek and Sheep Mountain.

“We rehearsed our scenes in these really remote mountain locations when there was still snow on the ground,” says Gyllenhaal.

“I had just got my dog before we did the movie. He was running and jumping through the snow, just loving it.”

Gyllenhaal says “the amazing thing is when we returned to actually film in these locations all the snow had gone. It looked entirely different.”

The actor says these locations were “so remote that we rode our horses up a trail each day.”

Several Alberta towns were used for the film including Cowley, Carsland and Rockyford.

“Cowley is the windiest place I’ve ever been to in my life. The wind never stopped blowing. People told us it’s the windiest place in the province and maybe one of the windiest places in the world. I can vouch for that.”

Gyllenhaal recalls driving from his apartment in Calgary to Rockyford near Drumheller as “the straightest road I’ve ever driven on. There wasn’t even a bend in the road.

“Alberta has remarkable country and remarkable people. Everyone was so good to us from the crew to the people in the towns. You really had the sense everyone wanted us there and that they embraced the story we were trying to tell.”

Brokeback Mountain won the prestigious Golden Lion for Lee at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Gyllenhaal recalls what a powerful experience the screening proved to be.

“My sister (actress Maggie Gyllenhaal) was sitting in the row behind Ang, Heath and I. When I turned around all I could see in her face were two swollen eyes. She’d been crying that hard.

“When the lights came up after the screening in Venice you could sense just how deeply the film had affected people.

“The same was true at the screening at the Toronto Film Festival.”

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