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Jake Gyllenhaal’s House Destruction Scene In ‘Demolition’ Was Filmed In One Take

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 03:07 PST, Apr 13, 2016

Jake Gyllenhaal says he was deeply affected by the death of his Brokeback Mountain co-star Heath Ledger, according to People. And the 35-year-old actor wasn’t the only one who mourned the death of the actor who died back in 2008.

In his interview with People and Entertainment Weekly editorial director Jess Cagle, Jake Gyllenhaal said Ledger’s death had an impact on his acting career and personal life.

“Personally, it affected me in ways I can’t necessarily put in words or even would want to talk about publicly.”

Jake Gyllenhaal also revealed that at that time, when the actor had just turned 27, he didn’t really understand mortality. Ledger died of acute intoxication as the result of the abuse of prescribed medications on January 22, 2008, in his bed in Manhattan.

Until Ledger’s death, Jake Gyllenhaal hadn’t really experienced true loss. He said that the loss of Ledger was heart-wrenching because when you live in the movie industry, it’s like you live in a “bubble,” with real friends and a real community.

“There is also that [new Macklemore song] where he says, ‘The curtain closes and nobody notices’… I think that’s true, and I think that’s okay. But I think at the time, I assumed everyone would notice – and they did with Heath dying, but I think it [gave me] the experience of, ‘This is fleeting.'”

But what Jake Gyllenhaal realized is that it’s not the success of a movie or box office numbers that matters, it’s the relationships you make when you make that movie, as well as the people you learn from when working on the movie. And this revelation changed “a lot” for Gyllenhaal, the actor revealed.

Brokeback Mountain was a breakthrough point in the life of both Jake Gyllenhaal and Ledger, as they both were nominated for their first Oscar that year. It was also the success of the movie that made Christopher Nolan notice Ledger’s talent and invite him to play the role of Joker in The Dark Knight.

Speaking about Brokeback Mountain, Jake Gyllenhaal said he and Ledger were “super young” at that time, saying that they had no idea the movie could become so successful.

Gyllenhaal’s upcoming movie, Demolition, opens in theaters this Friday.

It appears that Jake Gyllenhaal actually destroyed a real house while filming for Demolition, according to USA Today. What forced Gyllenhaal’s character, Davis Mitchell, to destroy houses was the loss of his wife, played by Heather Lind.

Critics have said that the entire movie is worth watching if only to get to the scene in which Jake Gyllenhaal is bulldozing his house. But before actually bulldozing the place, Gyllenhaal’s characters directs his destructive force toward smaller things such as a cappuccino maker.

And in order to shoot a destructive scene such as this one, Demolition director Jean-Marc Vallée had his cameramen hiding out of frame to capture Jake Gyllenhaal on camera as if they were shooting a documentary. Speaking to USA Today, Vallée revealed they shot such scenes with a handheld camera that shot 360 degrees.

“I don’t rehearse. We shoot the rehearsal. We get creative as we go.”

So it appears that Jake Gyllenhaal had full freedom of action when destroying that house. And even though Vallée gave the actor suggestions throughout the process, Gyllenhaal pretty much relied on his own desire to break and destroy things. And the outstanding part of that home-wrecking sequence is that most of the scene was shot in one take.

“It took an hour and 15 minutes, and the house was destructed.”

The destroyed house was just an additional house built by the film’s production designer John Paino and his crew.

[Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images]

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