How did Jake Gyllenhaal destroy a house in 'Demolition'? With a sledgehammer, naturally.

How do you make it look as though Jake Gyllenhaal destroyed a house for a movie? The short answer: You actually film the actor destroying a house.

In Demolition, which hits theaters today, Gyllenhaal plays Davis Mitchell, a widower who turns destructive while coping with the loss of his wife (Heather Lind). He neatly breaks down a few objects into their smallest nuts and bolts (a fridge, a cappuccino maker, a bathroom door) before savagely destroying his house and then bulldozing the place.

To shoot the home-wrecking sequence, director Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club, Wild) had his crew hide out of frame so he could film his actors “like a documentary,” he says, with a handheld camera that shot 360 degrees.

“I don’t rehearse,” says Vallée. “We shoot the rehearsal. We get creative as we go.”

That meant Gyllenhaal hammered away at a real marble counter — an extremely difficult task, mind you — and his young co-star Judah Lewis threw a crowbar at a flat-screen TV. Vallée offered small suggestions, like "Give another hit of sledgehammer on the counter, please," but let the actors decide on their own which walls to bludgeon, vases to break and frames to smash. Most of the scene was shot in one take.

“It took an hour and 15 minutes, and the house was destructed,” said Vallée.

Fortunately for the property owners, the destroyed space was an addition built by production designer John Paino and his team.

“We segmented off part of the house (to keep it out of the danger zone) and created our own kitchen,” says Paino. The addition was constructed with real wall installation and glass (instead of the safer tempered glass) to make for an authentic scene.

“We covered things like gas lines and water lines so Jean-Marc had absolute freedom to smash anything within eyesight,” Paino says. “If this was a Michael Bay movie, there’d be big explosions of dust, flames and sparks. We didn’t want that.”​

Don’t worry: Medics were on the scene, goggles were used and no injuries were sustained during the filming of Demolition. 

“It was cathartic to watch (the set) being destroyed, because it was such a long process: lots of complicated wheelings and dealings with the homeowners and making sure no one died,” Paino says.

Today, he uses a chunk of chipped marble from Gyllenhaal's tirade as a paperweight.