Joseph Gordon-Levitt held a round-table interview with college reporters at the Liberty Hotel to promote the upcoming film “Don Jon.”
The film is about Jon Martello (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who is nicknamed “Don Jon” by his buddies because of all the girls hes’ able to take home. Still, none of the girls are able to re-create the pleasure Jon gets from watching pornography. Jon struggles with the false fantasies media creates and with learning what true intimacy is.
Gordon-Levitt doesn’t just star in the film; he also wrote and directed it. The directing and writing are firsts for him when it comes to a feature. He has written and directed himself in many shorts for his online collaborative production company HitRECord. The experience with the shorts helped make his directing debut into features easier.
He explains, “I don’t think I would have been nearly as well-equipped to direct this movie had I not had the experience directing all kinds of projects on HitRECord.”
Right now, HitRECord is working on a TV show that will air in January and will have Gordon-Levitt hosting, directing, and performing in segments.
One of his favorite parts about working on “Don Jon” was being involved with the music because as an actor, he never gets a say in the music used in his scenes in other movies.
“When you’re an actor that’s just something that happens without you there at all. You’re acting these scenes and then later you see the movie, and it’s like there’s another character in the scene you didn’t know about while you were acting,” said Gordon-Levitt about music in films.
The composer for “Don Jon” is Nathan Johnson. In addition to working on short films produced by Gordon-Levitt, Johnson composed for films “Looper” and “Brick.”
“Really, Nathan was a collaborator beyond music. He’s a very good friend of mine and a brilliant artist. I really wanted the movie to have a rhythm to it. Be sort of a piece of music unto itself. He was really instrumental in making that happen,” said Gordon-Levitt.
He also addressed objectification, which was a focus in the film, and why he think humans are so quick to objectify.
“I think it’s something that has always been around, for sure, because it’s easy and arguably at times useful. Like if you’re living life out on the savannah and you’re going to objectify the lions who might eat you. Even though there is a nice lion now and then, you are not going to give it the time of day. You’re going to be like, ‘That’s a lion, fuck that.’”
He also explained the subject of objectification in today’s world. “We live this more civilized life. This more nuanced thing that can really get in the way of us being happy. To so quickly dismiss or objectify all sorts of things whether it’s our lovers or our family, our friends, our own selves, our own bodies — we still have that residual intention to quickly put it in a box and label it.”
One reporter, who grew up in New Jersey, told Gordon-Levitt he was spot on with the “Guido” character he created in “Don Jon” and asked what kind of research went into the film.
“I lived in New York on and off for ten years, so I’ve definitely been around it. It’s kind of a classic American character at this point. We all watch ‘Rocky’ or ‘Saturday Night Fever’ or ‘Goodfellas’ or ‘Mean Streets,’” he explained.
As far as why he set the film in New Jersey, Gordon-Levitt said, “It’s about a guy who is very concerned about fitting into a mold so I wanted to have a very specific mold for him to fit into. That’s why I thought it was kind of important to have a specific culture, a specific way of talking, a specific way of dressing, a specific way of walking.”
Though the characters are specific to a certain culture, he still sees them as universal: “There are guys like Jon who are so concerned with their masculine image that they really go out of their way to try and fit into that mold, just like there are girls like Barbara who are so concerned with having that traditional feminine image that they go out of their way to fit into that mold, and this is a story about those people.”
At its core, “Don Jon” is a love story, so Gordon-Levitt was asked what his favorite romance movie is. He recalled “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “500 Days of Summer,” and, unexpectedly, The “Matrix” trilogy.
“The love story between Neo and Trinity — I think it’s so great. I just love that they have this connection based on what they are trying to do. They have a mission that is in line with each other, and neither one of them can accomplish their mission without the other, and they love each other,” he said.
The “Matrix” reference prompted the reporter from MIT to ask the last question: What love advice would Levitt give the nerds in the world?
“It would be the same advice I would give to anybody. Everyone is unique, and that’s really important — maybe especially important for maybe like an engineer at MIT who is really good at quantifying things.
“You cannot quantify human relationships. Every relationship is going to be completely different. Pay attention to what is going on in front of you right now, and [don’t] think about the rules, or the past, or the future, but just pay attention to what’s happening right now,” said Gordon-Levitt.