No, I am not obsessed with Jake Gyllenhaal. Admiring of, is more like it.
But if you read these blogs, both subjects pop up, quite a bit, as it were. Okay, yes. I have a man-crush on Jake. I Gyllenhaalucinate (Pat. Pend. TM Registered).
Jake and I share the same birthday, December 19th. We're both Sagittarians. I guess I feel a kinship. Like, I would totally take selfies of myself in a hotel room in my socks and underwear. Now, as to who would want to seem them? That's a question you'll have to ask yourself.
But I digress...
So anyways, as I venture further out onto the thin ice of dirty-old-man-perviness; in my defense, I must say that Mr. Gyllenhaal has a smokin' hot body and he knows it. As well he should. He's proud of it and he should be and he's certainly not been shy about showing skin in many of his projects. And blasting his physique into the spheres of unbelievability. And who is he doing this for, if not moviegoers like me, who are not just buying tickets to see his sensitive portrayals of disillusioned, yet fiercely intelligent young men with ineffable sadness and existential angst twinkling in their baby-blues; but his eat-lunch-off-able slab of six pack abs?
Anyhow...
I am thrilled to report that Jake has actually portrayed a Reidy on the silver screen! Technically, anyways.
You see, back in 2010, Jake starred in a movie called Love & Other Drugs. It was based on a book by a Mr. Jamie Reidy. It's sort of the adventures of a Viagra salesman. I Netflixed and chilled it many moons ago. The only images I can conjure are Jake maneuvering a rolling suitcase full of pharmaceuticals and a rollicking love scene between him and Anne Hathaway that had both thespians revealing scads of skin between the sheets. Anne maybe even more than Jake. I'm guessing the conversation went a little like this:
Anne: So, I read the script Ari. I love it; but this love scene...it reads like I'm gonna be not just topless but everything else-less...the leading man too...
Ari: Yeah, they're only reading for actors willing to do the full Monty.
Anne: Bush?
Ari: Probably...
Anne: I don't know...I just don't know...
Ari: Jake Gyllenhaal is a lock--
Anne: I'm in!
Hey, she's no fool!
So, how many degrees of separation, based on this intel, are there between me and Jake? Well, if I'm related to Jamie (and I'd have to be, somehow, right?): then it's three degrees. However, I've actually been within five feet of Oliver Platt and Patrick Swayze, who were both at the Los Angeles premiere party of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Blvd. The black-tie affair was held on a soundstage at the Paramount lot and I was a page at the time, working the event. At one point I went inside and Oliver Platt was dancing. I remember it because it was something that can't be unseen. He's in Love & Other Drugs with Jake:
Love & Other Drugs made 103 million against a 30 million dollar budget, which would make it a hit. How about a sequel? Love & Other Drugs: Still Naked After All These Years.
Anyways, at the risk of seeming like a creeper, I will offer up the following photo in a gesture of kindred spirituality; but I won't lie and say I didn't break a sweat getting this picture.
Ciao
CFR 9/3/22