I remember the first day I met Jake Gyllenhaal. It was one of those crisp spring days of 2005 when anything felt possible and the blooming trees waft a faint smell of cotton candy into the air, assuming cotton candy has been lodged in their braches beforehand. I was working for Rolling Stone and Mr. Gyllenhaal was to be my first big break, so I wanted to make a good impression. Applying nothing short of a handful of my girlfriend’s cologne, I matched my white tuxedo and black tie with a pair of matching zebra print bath slippers. They gave the message of professionalism disguised within a casual demeanor, which was close enough to what I was trying to convey. This was going to be a standard, feel-good profile piece, barely a step above a gossip column or medical textbook.
When I arrived at Mr. Gyllenhaal’s tasteful fifteen-floor tudor outside the greater Los Angeles area, I noticed his doorbell played a symphonic arrangement of George Michael’s “Careless Whisper”. And almost as soon as that soothing sax line began, the door swung open with a great ‘Ftang!’ and there was Jake, handsome as the day he was born, gleaming with joy, perspiration, and more joy, coincidentally holding a human placenta. “My dear boy, I’ve been expecting you for…” he abruptly checked each of the nine and a half watches which formed a metallic sleeve along his right arm, “Nearly twenty one seconds now! No matter, come along. How exciting this must be for you!” Gesturing towards my chic bath slippers, Mr. Gyllenhaal said rather flippantly, “Please, take your shoes off. This is a place of business,” grasping the left slipper out of my hand. With a swish of his cape he gave me a good natured pat on the back, which ejected the wad of Big Red from my mouth and into his extended right hand. Using the gum, he affixed my slipper to the ceiling of the long, serrated anteroom in which we stood. “You won’t be needing that anymore,” he chuckled.
“So you’ve come to see my murder machine?” Jake queried half-rhetorically, leading me deeper into his inner sanctum. Having no idea whatsoever of what he was referring to but not wanted to seem un-hip I replied, “Yes of course. I’ll have the grand tour,” extending my pocket-sized notebook and trusty Papermate Elite with a well-oiled click. The pen began to leak the aforementioned oil—Castrol GTX3 to be exact—all over my notebook, and I abandoned the idea of note-taking. As a homeless man named Kwaidea once said to me, “the human mind is the greatest notebook”. Granted, I had told him to say that, as quoting myself would violate my sense of journalistic integrity. He was paid handsomely with a McChicken sandwich and a kick in the ribs.
“This is where the magic begins,” Mr. Gyllenhaal said, leading me into a kitchen which featured what appeared to be a mailbox. He dropped the placenta into the mailbox, and a terrible screeching was heard from below. “Follow me,” he said, opening the refrigerator door to reveal a flight of stairs into the basement. As we rollerbladed down the stairs, I wondered if I had accidentally left the oven on, or if my girlfriend would notice that I had replaced the cologne I had used with Windex.
The basement, nothing short of expansive, was allegedly a football stadium which had sunk several miles underground, as a result of soft, peaty soil of Los Angeles. The chandeliers were never cleared up. Somewhere along the 20 yard line were a series of monolithic grinders and rollers which led to a factory line culminating at the end zone for the Los Angeles Xtreme, the official team of Los Angeles X Football League. Pointing with a jeweled cane which he often leaned on between the hours of 7 and 9:30pm for dramatic effect, Mr. Gyllenhaal alerted me to the thousands of workers who were apparently shackled to the machines, working furiously at forming, inspecting, and processing what this underground industrial complex was producing. “Homeless people,” he said, sorting through a massive stack of paychecks in one of his three bottomless coat pockets, “I gave them all food, shelter, and most importantly, employment.” He began handing out the paychecks, and I recognized Kwaidea, who was at a fitting station somewhere mid-field. I called him James, so he would know not to strike up any friendly conversation—I was working after all, and apparently so was he. “But what is it you have them doing?” I asked the illustrious Mr. Gyllenhaal, who has starred in such films as October Sky, Jarhead, and Source Code. “They’re making people into food,” he whispered, which immediately made me spit out the coffee I was not drinking, “although for the purpose of keeping up a pleasant work environment, we prefer to call the people ‘resources’.”
He led me back up the stairs to the refrigerator, this time using reverse-rollerblades to show me the roof of his home. Mr. Gyllenhaal explained where he got his resources’. “Don’t worry—it’s not like anyone will miss these people. I basically just abduct anyone who has ever been rude to someone working a minimum wage job.” We took the elevator in the microwave to a massive battery of solar cells on the roof. Mr. Gyllenhaal removed one of his hands and, using a silicone key inside his wrist, unlocked the roof hatch. I noticed the roof had a similar color scheme to an airport terminal. “The bones are ground into a renewable plastic substitute, while the meat is turned into food—think soylent green, but a little spicier—and non-digestables, like hair, are turned into fancy coats for dogs. I am, after all, a humanitarian.” Mr. Gyllenhaal replaced his hand and, pointing to the solar cells, exclaimed, “and it’s all green! Based on my projections, by the year 2015, everyone in this city will be fed, clothed, employed, and reasonably well mannered, or dead.” He cackled and then stopped abruptly in a way that made me need to sneeze. “Isn’t it marvelous?” Mr. Gyllenhaal asked.
“We should go inside,” I advised Jake (since he had become familiar on a first name basis since his last meaningful quote), “It’s raining pretty hard.” He stared directly upward, not blinking. He seemed to agree with my conclusion about the weather by opening his mouth, gargling loudly, and spitting the rainwater onto his shoes. “I’m really not bothered by it,” Jake said, although I noticed sparks jumping from his fingertips, “I probably should have mentioned that I’m a cyborg.”
——
I went home to watch Zodiac with a lingering feeling of both confusion and overwhelming respect. I also thought it best to drink heavily. My dog had finished all of my vodka, so I chose to take shots of my girlfriend’s cologne and lavish in the familiar taste of Windex. At the 7-11 across the street from my apartment which I frequently visit to buy candy bars and hobby magazines, I overheard a portly mime berating a sales associate and immediately became hungry. God bless you, Jake Gyllenhaal.
