Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Good Vibrations

Although Maggie Gyllenhaal was acting as a young girl for many years, most people remember her first from her role in “Donnie Darko”, and soon thereafter in “Secretary”.  Since then she’s proven that she can take on leading and supporting roles in a wide range of movies from independent small films like “Sherry Baby” to blockbusters like “The Dark Knight” and of course she was nominated for an Oscar for her work in “Crazy Heart”.   She recently stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about her new movie, “Hysteria”.  Excerpts of the interview appear below.

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Ron Bennington: The new film, Hysteria. Now I saw this film and I was trying to explain it but it’s almost hard to believe.

Maggie Gyllenhaal: Yeah. I can explain it, I’ve had lots of practice. So, it’s about the invention of the vibrator in Victorian England.

Ron Bennington: Now no one would’ve expected that it happened so early on.

Maggie Gyllenhaal: Right, right. So long ago. Basically it started because that was a time when there were a lot of unhappy women, understandably. They weren’t allowed to work, they weren’t allowed to decide when they had children or express themselves really, and so that’s when the whole idea of hysteria started. Hysteria was basically like really deep anxiety, I think, and so women who were “hysterical” would sometimes go to their doctor’s office and their doctor would give them an orgasm as a cure for the hysteria which, I imagine, helped a little bit.

Ron Bennington: It settles people down, there is some truth to that.

Maggie Gyllenhaal: Yeah, but maybe it’s not your doctor who you want to be administering that cure.

Ron Bennington: Right – and yet it was really done fairly commonly then.

Maggie Gyllenhaal: You know, the truth is I really don’t know how common it was, but that is what led to the inadvertent invention of the vibrator.

Ron Bennington: In other words too, this was kind of a rich woman’s disease. Like, this would’ve been, if it was here in New York now, an Upper East Side thing.

Maggie Gyllenhaal: You know, I don’t know. I mean, probably going to see a doctor to be cured for it was probably just for rich women, but I think women from all classes were suffering from similar symptoms. Look, if you were having 10 kids over 12, 13 years, I think you’d be freaked out. You know, if you weren’t allowed to get any kind of an education or if you were just working all day inside your house I think it would freak you out. It would freak me out.

Ron Bennington: But your character is almost like this leap ahead. She’s almost like a modern woman in a lot of ways and everything she says – obviously this is the way the future is going to go.

Maggie Gyllenhaal: Exactly. This is a romantic comedy and so her politics are very very simple in the movie – and also things we’re really used to – so she says look women need to have the right to vote, women need to have an education, women need to be able to express themselves emotionally, sexually. We’re kind of good with all that now, so I thought she wouldn’t seem revolutionary and unusual if that was the only expression of how she was wild so I just thought I wanted her to be from any time. From the Moon even. And to make her as wild as possible even if it wasn’t historically accurate so that she would feel wild to people who are watching it now.

Ron Bennington: And yet, the things she was talking about then, we still struggle with that. I mean, it seems like we’ve never found our balance.

Maggie Gyllenhaal: We haven’t yet. I agree. In particular there’s this one scene in the movie where I say I know that one day women are going to have the right to vote, are going to have access to education, are going to have rights over our own bodies and I thought when I watched, well yes, of course we can vote and we can go to college but we don’t have rights over our own bodies, or at least that’s still something that we’re struggling with. You know, I was hearing about that bill that they were trying to pass about equal pay for the sexes and how women are paid 70% of what men are paid in a lot of huge corporations, and how it wasn’t going to pass to equalize it. I thought what, I had no idea.

Ron Bennington: Yeah, just when you think we’re at that point – there’s a documentary out right now about the armed forces and what it’s like for women in the armed forces and the sexual harassment and even unreported rapes, and you look back at it and you think, man, I thought we were 2012 and every once in a while another light shows on a dark corner that we haven’t taken care of yet.

Maggie Gyllenhaal: You know, at the same time things are a lot better. And the one thing to know is that I don’t think that Hysteria the movie can hold a really deep complicated conversation about gender politics. It’s a romantic comedy and there are sparks of this flying all around it. For me it’s like, I can go see a movie that’s a good time, but not if it’s not about anything. Not if it doesn’t make me think about anything at all. Then I feel like it’s a waste of time and it’s a waste of my money. But this one, it’s a good time, and it’s about vibrators, but it also has sparks of things that you really can take some time and think about after you go and see the movie. You can go to dinner and there’s something to talk about which is kind of the perfect bedtime movie if you’re asking me.

Ron Bennington: So you’re always looking for that? Because your career is kind of funky. I think if you were a musician you’d be playing funk because we never know what we’re going to get with you. Sometimes you’ll go in one direction, and the next direction, but there is a quirkiness I think to a lot of the roles that you’ll pick.

Maggie Gyllenhaal: Well, so far I’ve mostly been lucky enough to just choose things that are interesting to me. And things can be interesting to me for all sorts of reasons, and also what’s interesting to me has changed over the 10 years that I’ve been acting. Especially, you know, in your 20s you change so much. I haven’t very often chosen things just because I thought they would make a lot of money or Appeal to the most people. That’s not really my thing. So I guess it’s funky, as you say, because I’m that way. You know what I mean, I like what I like.

Ron Bennington: Have you ever looked back later and thought, god, I should’ve committed to that, my head wasn’t in the right place when I read the script?

Maggie Gyllenhaal: It’s funny, there are things where I’ve thought, oh wow, that turned into something really interesting, but the reasons that I didn’t want to do them I can still stand by.

Ron Bennington: But I think the tough thing about what you do, as you said, as an artist – if you’re a songwriter you can go play a little club or something, or if you’re an artist you can sit there and paint, but to be in the film business it takes a lot to happen before you even get to do what you do.

Maggie Gyllenhaal: That’s true. At this point, my husband and I have a movie that we’re developing that we want to make that could cost half a million dollars. We can get that money. We can find an investor to give us half a million dollars. I mean, there are movies being made for $200 million now. You know, a tiny movie is often one and a half, so we can get half a million and we can make that movie. But it’s true, there are lots and lots of people out there who are incredibly talented who can’t. I remember Jeff Bridges said – I was walking with him and someone came up and said do you have any advice for me, I want to make movies, I don’t know how to break in, and he said, save up whatever money you have, get a little camera and start making them. Start shooting them, there are venues for them now, get your friends together, find people who you think are talented and just start making them. And I think that’s really good advice too.

Ron Bennington: So you think this is something that you and Peter [Sarsgaard] are going to do from time to time, just go off and make small things on your own?

Maggie Gyllenhaal: You know, we did these two plays together in New York in this tiny theater CSC (Classic Stage Company) which is an off-Broadway theater which maybe has 400 seats, and we did two wild, unusual versions of [Anton] Chekhov, we did Uncle Vanya and we did Three Sisters. They were not for everybody, but it didn’t matter because it wasn’t on Broadway and we could fill that house easily for our short run all the time. So we could do it how we like, and I’m realizing more and more, my taste is unusual. Just my natural taste – I don’t gravitate, I don’t think, toward – I mean, I don’t know, I often like different things than everyone else seems to like. And so if the scale is small enough, and if the investment is small enough, then it’s fine. And so if you really do make a movie for nothing and there are those few people out there that like what I like, you know, really truly, truly truly, I mean, I don’t compromise at all, then it will make its money back.

Ron Bennington: Do you remember when you first started to see films where you’re like, I’m seeing something different, there’s something going on here?

Maggie Gyllenhaal: You know, I saw some maybe when I was growing up, but it had a lot to do with meeting my husband. He knew all of these unbelievable unusual movies, and what I found was, you know, I meet him after I made Secretary and I remember reading the script for Secretary and just going I want to make this. You know, I wasn’t into S&M, I wasn’t into like, getting spanked or anything, it had nothing to do with that. I just went like, this speaks to me, I get it. And nobody else who worked with me got it really, and I had to go and audition and audition and audition – I was a jobbing actress you know – but I got it. But that just came from me, just who I am as a human, and then my husband went and showed me all of these other movies. I went like…wow, I actually like that, that movie, I love it. And I’d never heard of it before, I’d never seen it before, I didn’t know that that was even a possibility.

Ron Bennington: And he could’ve definitely made a lot more commercial turns in his life. There’s been so many times that you’ll see him do something commercial and then the next thing he does you’re like, wait what?

Maggie Gyllenhaal: I know. You know what, there’s more of a tradition of that with men I think. Like, really good actors who are men get to go and play the bad guy in commercial movies and so that’s what he does, and it’s lucrative and awesome. But really his soul, his heart – I mean he just made a movie actually, he directed a short film, based on this guy, his name is Scott Jurek, who ran a 24-hour race where he ran for 24 hours around a quarter-mile track and Peter made this movie about it. I had no idea what to expect. I thought, what’s he going to make? A documentary, will there be interviews? And when I saw it, I mean it’s so wild and unusual. Nobody speaks in the whole thing, it’s so Peter. And that’s what I mean. People are hungry for stuff like that – that’s unusual that comes from someone’s heart and mind.

Ron Bennington: The film is Hysteria, you can check it out on Twitter too at @SonyClassics or go to HysteriaTheFilm.com. Maggie Gyllenhaal, thank you so much. I’ll see you next time through.

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFy6cfPmjd4]

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You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.  Not yet a subscriber?  Click here for a free trial subscription.

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You can learn more about Ron Bennington’s two interview shows, Unmasked and Ron Bennington Interviews at RonBenningtonInterviews.com.

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