Stephen Gyllenhaal

I'm not sure I need to explain why I'm hoping my comedy about grassroots politics will have an interesting life during this 2012 election cycle of super PACs, super media and super political spin. When I started the movie, Grassroots, I couldn't have predicted an Occupy Wall Street...

How does one process what's happened these last two week? Forget about Romney, Obama, super PACs, the sputtering economy. Something else unfolded that I suspect will be noted by historians as ushering in the real paradigms of our incoming millennium. (Millennia are long, so we're still at the very beginning...

It sounds trite, even naïve. But it isn't. It's a brutal concept. It demands discipline, concentration, humility and courage. And honesty. Our leaders were supposed to be our servants. They were elected "to serve". We call it "service". It's one of the primary reasons our forefathers spilt all that blood....

When did it happen? How? A small gathering in Zuccotti Park? Ten sleeping bags? Or was it Cairo? A different language. Same problem. Even worse. Was it the 2008 Crash? Or the hope of Obama, dashed as the Geithners and Summers swept in after the swearing in? Or was it...

In these deeply troubling times, we need to now face a hard reality and stop worrying about convincing President Obama of anything. We need to convince his bosses, Goldman Sachs and a few others on Wall Street that what's good for the republic is good for them. We need to...

What has happened in Egypt and is happening in other parts of the Middle East is (of course) profoundly important for that region, but it also brings lessons to the so-called First World, struggling with it's reworking of financial structures (both in Europe and in the U.S.). As we watch...

Why not?

Why can't I ask that? This graceful phrase has rung in my head ever since the dazzling JFK spoke it (I remember he did it with the white-haired poet Robert Frost by his side). Who could argue with those elegiac words? Except, what about those other words?

I was deep in a bad traffic jam last night, wondering how many of us nowadays just work too damn hard -- lemmings -- barely having time to breathe -- too much coffee -- that strange buzz that settles into one's head like a small, seemingly harmless hive of bees...

At 3am last night a stereo blasted out from one of the other neighbors' apartments in our little Spanish style courtyard here. It's a lovely little place here. Very faded and worn -- pretty cheap to get a place to rent in the middle of Hollywood. A fountain bubbles at...

As I sit on the set of GrassRoots -- our comedy about a small city council race in Seattle back in 2001 -- there are so many images that float through my mind. The extras getting ready, sure. The crew setting up the lights and our RED camera (some of...

It's a kind of a strange feeling now to have watched the unfolding of the Goldman Sachs drama in Congress (and the White House), the rising rage in the country towards Goldman Sachs' blithe multi-billion dollar bonuses. It's been over a year now that I've been raging against this company...

I completely understood (pretty much) all my friends when they explained to me (around the Wall Street and Banking bailout led by the Goldman Sachs people running the government under the newly elected Obama) that Obama had no choice but to spend those taxpayer's trillions. They made it clear that...

I'm sitting in a little café-bar in Orvieto, Italy right now, ruminating on an argument that has kept rattling around in my head for about a week now. The supposition -- I think it was Saint Augustine that various folks on the right wing have been referencing recently -- is...

"Our Representatives are struggling hard with this Health Care Issue."

That's a lie.

Every single Right Wing Senator whole-heartedly supports single payer Health Care coverage wholly paid for by the Federal Government because he has it. His whole family has it. Obama has it. Dick Cheney has it. All...

It's been almost a week now and I still remain haunted by the images of that Health Care Summit that was called by the White House last week. Thankfully the images have faded a bit -- the massive tables with all those important representatives. The blue and yellow bunting. Who...

I was having coffee with a friend, who finally opened up and admitted she was in dire financial straits, hadn't worked in over a year. Her features were equal parts relief and misery, for she had spoken to almost no one about this. Yes, she had heard rumblings of others...

Who could have imagined six months ago that a Republican vowing to stop Health Care in its tracks would become Kennedy's successor? Do we remember, at Kennedy's funeral, how everyone spoke of his death being a rallying point for health care? Then came the chaos, brutality and hilarity of all...

It's not going to happen here in the United States -- peace -- not in this coming year, not in my lifetime. I have to face the fact that no matter how many well-meaning cards I receive embossed with "peace," I still have a President, much lauded, for delivering one...

This is a despicable Health Bill, a stain on the soul of anyone who has worked on it, who supports it, who believes they have done anything right in birthing it. If there is a hell I would want everyone involved with this bill to end up in it, nonetheless...

On Monday the important banking CEOs were to attend a Presidential meeting at which it was billed Obama (getting slammed in the polls for his entanglements with Wall Street) would dress them down for their unrepentant behavior since receiving hundreds of billions of taxpayer's cash.

But the biggest CEOs...