After working with big-hit directors Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan and Rian Johnson as well as acting in “Inception” and “(500) Days of Summer,” Joseph Gordon-Levitt decided to tackle his own project. His new film “Don Jon” focuses on sex addiction, skewed perceptions of love and weightlifting.
Levitt sat down with The Eagle to talk about his directorial debut, influences and the nature of relationships.
David Kahen-Kashi: How did the initial idea for the film develop?
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: The initial idea was I wanted to tell a story about how people oftentimes treat each other more like things than like people and how the media can play into that. So I guess that comes from personal experience to a degree [since] I grew up working in TV and movies and actors often do get treated often like objects on a shelf. But I don’t think it’s just actors. I think everyone experiences this. We have a tendency to pigeonhole each other and I do think the media contributes to that. I thought a story about a young man who watches too much pornography going out with a woman who watches too many romantic hollywood movies would be a funny way at getting at those themes.
DKK: How do the characters of “Don Jon” deal directly with the correlation between porn and its effect on relationships and sex?
JGL: I think that for both Jon and Barbara, Jon was watching too much pornographiy and Barbara was watching too many romantic Hollywood movies [so] they are buying into these overly simplified fantasies that they see on the screen. And then comparing their real life to these fantasies and they’ve got these sort of static expectations, these checklists of things they expect. There’s a sequence early on in the movie where Jon has brought a young lady home from the bar and he’s comparing her to what he wants. He’s applying the same checklist that he has on his pornography videos to this real person. Real people are not that simple. Every human being is unique. Every relationship is unique. Every moment of every day is unique. You can’t compare it to a static set of expectations. Life is way more complicated than that. It’s really more beautiful. There’s nuances and details that you’ll miss. You will miss if you’re too busy comparing your real life to these expectations that you’ve gathered from whatever media you’re used to. So that’s what I was trying to satirize and make fun of with this movie.
DKK: There’s a lot of actor-directors such as Sylvester Stallone, Angelina Jolie, Clint Eastwood. What does a typical day look like for an actor-director?
JGL: There’s so much that goes into a movie and even so much that goes into a performance. What you see, a character’s portrayal on a screen, is the result of so much more work than just what the actor did. What the camera is doing or what the editing is doing has a huge impact on the audiences perception for the character. So when I came up with the story, I was thinking about ways to shoot it and ways to cut it and ways to score it. So I figured well I should direct this. I’ve done a ton of short films and little videos and stuff over the last ten years. I know how I want it to be, I should just do it.
DKK: Who were your directional influences for “Don Jon?” You’ve mentioned Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg and Rian Johnson in the past as influential people in your films.
JGL: Yeah, those were the three directors I worked with in 2011, the year before we shot in 2012 and they were, all three of them very encouraging and supportive. I couldn’t ask for a better film school as well as a ton of other directors that I’ve worked with throughout my whole life. The first person that I ever showed my first draft of a script to was Rian and getting the positive feedback from him, which isn’t to say he didn’t have any constructive criticism as well, he did, but overall he was encouraging. He said this is a movie. I can see it. You’ve got a story to tell here. This is good. Keep going. And that was huge for me.
“Don Jon” will debut Sept. 27 in theaters everywhere.
dkahen-kashi@theeagleonline.com
