Iraq War comes home to Hollywood at Jarhead
Jenny Peters

LOS ANGELES—Just as the American soldier death count in the current Gulf War hit 2000, Hollywood threw a party. That’s not what it sounds like, for the party was the premiere of “Jarhead,” director Sam Mendes’ intense study of a group of Marines and their experiences fighting in the first American-Iraqi conflict, Desert Storm.
Already generating tons of Oscar buzz for Mendes (he already won Best Director for “American Beauty”), star Jake Gyllenhaal, and the film itself, it’s no wonder that everyone at the Arclight Cinema in Hollywood was all smiles last night.
Jake looked great, with all his hair grown back again – he’s got a buzz cut in the movie, of course – and a simple grey suit and white shirt, but there was no sign of his on-again, off-again girlfriend Kirsten Dunst on the crowded red carpet. Actually, everyone was focusing on the movie, as Mendes’ wife, Kate Winslet, stayed home, too. As Gyllenhaal tells it, his “Jarhead” role couldn’t have come along at a better moment for the now 24-year-old actor.
“The character, I think, I just hit it at a perfect time, where I was just the right age, you know?” says Gyllenhaal. “That’s the age that all the guys who are going over there now and went over there in the Desert Shield and Desert Storm time, I was exactly their age,” he said.
But Gyllenhaal comes from an artistic (and liberal, anti-war) family, not a military one, which made the experience all the more interesting to him; and surprising, too. “The things that I learned from it, I mean, just being near to people who’d been involved in the military of any kind, what I learned from that, and how it made me realize things about myself, I have just a profound respect for the military in the end,” he explained, “and I think it’s a shock to my mother!”
His mom, screenwriter Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal (“Bee Season”), didn’t make the gala premiere, but his sister Maggie did. She joined Jake and her boyfriend Peter Sarsgaard, co-stars in the film, along with other cast members including Chris Cooper, Lucas Black, Brian Geraghty, handsome Dennis Haysbert, and pretty newcomer Becky Boxer for the screening and after party, held at the Palladium.
Also on hand to lend their support to the testosterone-packed war drama were Chris Rock, Eric McCormack, Henry Simmons, Mark Ruffalo, and director George Lucas, who earlier in the week joked at the Hollywood Awards that once he saw early footage of “Jarhead” that he knew he had “lost another one to Di-Tech!” His “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith” won Best Picture at those awards, but all signs point to Lucas being right on the money when it comes to the Academy Awards, as “Jarhead” sure looks like the one to beat. To judge for yourself, you’ll have to wait until next week. The film opens Friday, November 4.