When I hear the name “Jake” these days, I think of Jake Tapper, and not Jake Gyllenhaal because, for months, CNN has been the most-watched network in my home. My husband, Jacek, calls Jake Tapper his “news hero”. Mostly because he loves Jake’s varied expressions of disgust whenever the camera cuts back to him after some kind of Donald Trump footage. There was no disgust on Jake’s face yesterday and he seemed to have gotten 15 years younger too now that he no longer has to talk about that piece of sh-t every day. Which means we can go back to focusing on Jake Gyllenhaal as the First Jake.
We haven’t heard much from Jake during the pandemic. I think I posted about him in quarantine with his girlfriend, Jeanne Cadieu, but that was early on. Here he is on the set of Ambulance yesterday in LA also starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, fresh off his Emmy win, and Eiza Gonzalez. Yahya has a supporting role as Bobby Seale in The Trial of the Chicago 7, one of the movies expected to contend during award season, and while he really doesn’t show up much in the second half, he steals every scene whenever he’s on screen. I can’t wait to see what he does in Furiosa, the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road.
For now, though, Yahya, Eiza, and Jake are working on Ambulance …directed by … Michael Bay. From what I’ve seen, there are no story details yet but, you know, does story really matter in a Michael Bay movie? It’s not a stretch to say that a Michael Bay movie is basically “things go boom”, which is why I was like, huh?, when I read that Jake especially was going to be in one because he’s been so story-focused for years. Working on Spider-Man: Far From Home, however, brought him back to Big Movies, after he’d been attached to smaller budget and independent films for a while. And maybe there’s a Ryan Reynolds connection? Ryan starred in Michael Bay’s 6 Underground last year for Netflix and he and Jake are tight so maybe Ryan told Jake he enjoyed the experience?
In other Jake news, yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Donnie Darko. Jake isn’t all that active on Instagram but he made his first feed post of 2021 yesterday to commemorate the movie:
Donnie Darko is a superhero movie, right?
