Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Joseph Gordon-Levitt:(about the song "I don't want to live on the moon") The original lyric goes, "There's so many strange places that I'd like to be / But none of them permanently." I forgot to sing the word "strange."...So whereas Ernie wants to explore strange places but maintain a sense of permanence at home, I apparently want no permanence at all. That's really not what I meant.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: What does it mean, HIT RECORD? Different things... It can be a noun, a musical recording that sold a lot of copies. It can be a verb, to hit record, to start recording, to make a record, be it musical, visual, textual, or anything else. That moment when you hit the REC button, when the tape starts rolling, or the camera clicks, or even when somebody writes something down, it always makes my heart beat a bit harder.
What do you suppose could change if we all started to HIT RECORD?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: The only thing I want to do is stuff with people who care about what they're doing. A lot of people, most people who are working, they do it for money. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. It so happens that I made a lot of money already, so I don't have to worry that much about it. I wouldn't fault anybody for doing it for the money, but it doesn't interest me right now.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: My freshman year (at Columbia) was the longest break I'd had from acting since I was six years old. When I was a teenager I loved acting, but I really just loved it for myself. I didn't like the fact that anyone else saw the work I was doing. When I moved to New York, I started to realize that I wanted people to see the stuff that I was doing, and I wanted it to mean something to them. A lot of people have told me "Mysterious Skin" meant something to them. And that meant the world to me.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (about the violence in Mysterious Skin): All that violence is there to tell a story that comes from an honest and genuine place, and that's what's important.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (about his role in Mysterious Skin): I didn't read the book till after I read the script, but probably more than any other movie I've ever been a part of, the movie turned out the way I thought it should look based on the script and the book.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: The movies I watch and the music I listen to and the books I read - those are important to me. It's very important to me, and I don't know what I would do without those things.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: One of my favorite movies when I was sixteen was Sling Blade. That whole year actually, right when I turned sixteen, was this spike in indie movies where Pulp Fiction had just come out and made a hundred million dollars, so all the studios said, "S--t, let's go out and find independent movies," or they started making their own "independent movies," and that one year there was Sling Blade, Swingers, Fargo, The Usual Suspects, Big Night, Trees Lounge - these are the ones that I can think of off the top off my head. That particular year had cool movie after cool movie, and I had just turned sixteen and I was so stoked to be able to drive and go see them.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: When I first saw the script for Manic, I was in the midst of reading a lot of scripts for teenagers, because I was a teenager. And basically what people write for teenagers when it comes to studios is just s--t…

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: (about his part in Killshot) It's a really smart, faithful adaptation of the book. The book is such a tight page-turner… The character I play is an extreme guy… He's a killer. He wants to be Jesse James. He grew up watching cowboy and Indian movies and wants to be that. Then he meets Mickey Rourke's character, who's named The Black Bird and he wants to partner up with him and be a criminal and kill people. He's a psychotic and very bad guy…

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: (when asked: If you had your choice of anything for your next film, what would it be?) I would like to portray a cloud and Audrey Tatou can be the rain.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (about his move from TV-comedy to big-screen movies): Well, I was in a horror movie and a teen comedy- (Laughs) I was the first kill in Halloween H20.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: The whole concept of celebrity pisses me off. While I'm not a celebrity, it's such a weird concept that society has cooked up for us. Astronauts and teachers are much more amazing than actors.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Most scripts are bad. I read a lot of them. "Brick" was a good script just to read. It was like, 'Oh my God, these words feel so good in my mouth.' A lot of movies try to set up a world with cool sets, costumes, camera work. In "Brick," the world is born from the words.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: To me, a sex scene in a movie generally means a gratuitous scene that doesn't serve the story but gives a kind of excuse; we've got these two actors, we want to see them naked, so let's bring in the music and the soft light.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Actors didn't use to be celebrities. A hundred years ago, they put the theaters next to the brothels. Actors were poor. Celebrities used to be kings and queens. Then the United States abolished monarchy, and now there's this coming together of show business and celebrity. I don't think it's healthy. I don't want to sound self-important, but all these celebrity shows and magazines - it comes from us, from Hollywood, from our country. We're the ones creating it. And I think it works in close step with a lot of other bad things that are happening in the world. It promotes greed, it promotes being selfish and it promotes this ladder, where you're a better person if you have more money. It's not at all about the work itself. Don't get me wrong. I love movies. But this myth of celebrity has nothing to do with movies.