Oli Davis chats to director Jean-Marc Vallée about his movie Demolition, and the difficulties of shooting in New York City rush-hour with Jake Gyllenhaal…

Jean-Marc Vallée is the director of Wild and the Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers Club. His film Demolition is similarly affective. Not only were my eyes a little leaky on leaving the screening room, the security guard who had stayed in to watch the film had visibly puffy eyes.

“It makes me feel great and that I’m not alone,” Vallée admitted about making grown men cry. “That’s how I reacted when I finished reading Bryan [Sipe’s] script. And when I was cutting the film, I had the same emotion.”

This marks Vallée’s first collaboration with actor Jake Gyllenhaal. “I’ll work with him again. We’re looking for a project to attack.”

One of Demolition’s most striking scenes is when Gyllenhaal dances around New York City like a mad man during rush hour. It’s the culmination of months of pent up emotion. This sequence was his release. And Jake’s fellow commuters didn’t even care.

“It’s all accidental extras,” Vallée remembers of shooting that day. He had taken the camera and was just following Jake through the crowds.

“It’s funny how in New York City, 90% of the people in the streets never looked at us. I could wear a mask of a strange extra terrestrial and they wouldn’t even look at me. It was hilarious. But 10% – they took some time and went, ‘wait, is that Jake Gyllenhaal? Am I on film?’ And sometimes their reactions were so big that I had to use visual effects to get rid of their reaction.”

It’s an oddly appropriate behind-the-scenes story for the film. Much of Demolition is about rediscovering everyday life around you.

Vallée is unique in the way he operates. He works with a skeleton crew to allow for maximum improvisation. Sometimes, like in the New York scene described above, he eschews them altogether, just journeying out with his actors and a camera.

“It’s all about capturing, like a documentary. This is the space, we know this is the intention of the scene – let’s see how it goes. Like the the demolition scene. We built an extension to this expensive house that we knew we could smash with a bulldozer. And then I gave [Gyllenhaal and Judah Lewis] the sledgehammers and I asked the crew to get out of there. I said ‘action’ and an hour later they had demolished the shit out of everything. I tried to shoot it like a documentary.”

Demolition has a real find in Gyllenhaal’s co-star Lewis. He made it to the final six actors considered to play Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War, before Marvel opted for Tom Holland.

“Judah is a rockstar. This kid is the next Leo. This kid in the next Jake. He’s a phenomenon. There is something so charismatic/sexy about him. Jake [Gyllenhaal] was just reacting to this kid, trying to follow his instinct. Jake was trying to be as in the moment as this kid was.”

As both music and dancing are so essential to Demolition’s theme, Vallée asked the young actors to dance when auditioning for the role of Chris. Lewis was one of the only actors to go for it.

“When I first met him, he wasn’t afraid to dance in the auditioning room. But most of the kids his age were like, ‘What? I have to dance? I don’t want to dance.’ So I was like, ‘GET OUT OF HERE, YOU DON’T HAVE THE PART!’

“It’s challenging for them to dance. It’s too feminine. I realised that when I was in the cutting room: ‘When I was 14, was I afraid to dance?’

It’s sometimes difficult to tell whether Lewis is a boy or a girl, appearing almost androgynous, and the film explores this through his character’s sexuality. But with Lewis’ age (he was just 14 during filming), Vallée wrestled with this portrayal.

“There’s some David Bowie there, where you ask, ‘is he a guy? Is he a girl?’ And it was challenging. I thought, ‘am I pushing this too far?‘ Because he’s not at an age where he would do this. But there’s the line where his mother says: ‘He’s 15, looks like 12 but acts like 21.’ It’s such a beautiful description of the character, that allows this behaviour.”

Read my interview with Judah Lewis here, and our ★ ★ ★ ★ review of Demolition here.

Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal), a successful investment banker, struggles after losing his wife in a tragic car crash. Despite pressure from his father in law Phil (Chris Cooper) to pull it together, Davis continues to unravel. What starts as a complaint letter to a vending machine company turns into a series of letters revealing startling personal admissions. Davis’ letters catch the attention of customer service rep Karen (Naomi Watts) and, amidst emotional and financial burdens of her own, the two form an unlikely connection. With the help of Karen and her son Chris (Judah Lewis), Davis starts to rebuild, beginning with the demolition of the life he once knew.

Demolition is out now in the States and on April 29th in the UK.

Oli Davis is Co-Editor of Flickering Myth, curator of its Super Newsletter and Lead Producer of Flickering Myth TV. You can follow him on Twitter @OliDavis.

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