Jake Gyllenhaal Contracted A Staph Infection On The Road House Set And It Sounds Awful

Jake Gyllenhaal is opening up about the challenges he faced while filming the remake of Road House, due out this Thursday.  

Appearing on this weeks episode of the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast, Gyllenhaal recalled cutting his hand while working on a fight scene in the movie, which co-stars Daniela Melchior and Conor McGregor. 

Were fighting on the floor, were fighting around tables. Were fighting around glass, even if its breakaway glass, he explained.

I put my hand on the bar, fucking straight glass. ... I felt the glass go into my hand.

Over time, Gyllenhaal said, his whole arm swelled up, which was the result of a staph infection possibly suffered after cutting his hand or during another physically demanding scene.

There were things like that that happened all the time, he added. But gratefully I was really, really trying to take care of everything that we did and my body while were doing it. I didnt sustain any major injuries, which is a testament to the team I was working with. 

Directed by Doug Liman, Road House is a remake of the 1989 action thriller starring Patrick Swayze . Gyllenhaal portrays Elwood Dalton, a reimagined version of Swayzes character who is a former UFC middleweight fighter. 

The original Road House debuted to mostly negative reviews but, perhaps buoyed by Swayzes star power at the time, turned out to be a surprise hit on home video. 

It remains to be seen if Gyllenhaals version will fare better. The new films rollout has been hit with a number of public snags. 

R. Lance Hill, who wrote the screenplay for the original Road House, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Amazon Studios last month. In it, he alleged that work on the new movie wasnt completed until January, months after the copyright deadline had passed and hed reclaimed the film rights.

In January, Liman announced that he would skip the movies South by Southwest premiere after the distributor, Amazon, opted for a direct-to-streaming release in lieu of a theatrical run. 

Amazon asked me and the film community to trust them and their public statements about supporting cinemas, and then they turned around and are using Road House to sell plumbing fixtures, the director wrote in a Deadline essay published that month. That hurts the filmmakers and stars of Road House who dont share in the upside of a hit movie on a streaming platform. 

By last week, however, Liman appeared to have changed his mind, and he turned up at the SXSW screening anyway.

Listen to Jake Gyllenhaals Armchair Expert interview below. His discussion of his on-set injury begins around 50:51.