Joseph Gordon-Levitt

The "Looper" Interview with Kam Williams

In the Loop!

Joseph Gordon-Levitt was born on February 17, 1981 in Los Angeles where he began acting at the age of 4 when he played the Scarecrow in a community theater production of The Wizard of Oz. He subsequently grew up in front of the camera, appearing in television commercials for Pop Tarts and Cocoa Puffs and on such shows as Family Ties, Murder She Wrote, L.A. Law, Roseanne and Dark Shadows.

Joseph first enjoyed widespread fame on TV playing Tommy Solomon on 3rd Rock from the Sun which led to his breakout role on the big screen in 10 Things I Hate about You. He has since blossomed from a teen heartthrob into a truly talented thespian with both big box-office and art house appeal.

That versatility is reflected in a resume with acting credits ranging from sleepers such as 500 Days of Summer, The Lookout, Brick and Uncertainty to bona fide blockbusters like The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, Premium Rush and Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, which is set to be released in November.

Here, Joseph talks about Looper, a mind-bending sci-fi thriller where he and Bruce Willis play the same character. The story revolves around a hit man who has no problem traveling 30 years into the future to murder for the mob until the day he is ordered to assassinate his future self.

 

Kam Williams: Hi Joseph, I'm honored to have this opportunity to interview you. I think of you as the best actor never to have been nominated for an Oscar.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Thanks, Kam. That's very kind of you.

KW: I love a lot of your artsy films that many people might have missed. Movies like 500 Days of Summer, Uncertainty and The Lookout.

JGL: Why, thank you!

KW: What interested you in doing Looper?

JGL: First of all, having a chance to work with Rian [director Rian Johnson] again. He's a dear friend of mine. We've known each other since making Brick [2005]. I also found the story incredibly intriguing, as well as the role.

KW: Alison Kruse was wondering what attracted you to the role?

JGL: It posed a unique challenge to me as an actor, to have to play the same character as another actor. It was a challenge that required a real transformation, and my favorite thing about acting is becoming somebody else different from me.

 

KW: Watching the movie, I kept wondering whether that was you, because you looked and sounded so different.

JGL: Well, thanks. To me, the highest compliment you can really pay to an actor is saying, "I didn't recognize you." My favorite acting performances are the ones where the actor disappears and you just see the actor onscreen.

 

KW: Laz Lyles says: You are one of my favorite actors. I'm curious to know how much you adapted to Bruce Willis' physicality and looks for the role, and how much he was made up to look like you.

JGL: It was me basing my character on him. It only felt proper to me for the junior actor to defer to the senior actor. So, I studied Bruce. I watched his movies. I ripped the audio off his films so I could listen to him on my iPod. And Bruce even recorded himself doing some of my character's voiceover monologues, so I could hear what they would sound like in his voice.

 

KW: Editor/legist Patricia Turnier asks: What was the most challenging aspect of doing Looper?

JGL: The biggest challenge was being somebody other than myself. And not only was the character different, but he was specifically connected to another actor, and Bruce Willis was sitting across the table from me.

 

KW: Patricia also says that since you speak French and are a Francophile, she'd like to know if you have any plans to do a film in French?

JGL: I would love to! That would be a dream come true.

 

KW: Harriet Pakula-Teweles says: You've played such an array of characters. Which one was the biggest stretch and which one comes closest to how you see yourself?
JGL: I try to make something different from myself in every character I play. I don't think I've ever played a character that's all that similar to me. But this one was possibly the most transformative of all, partially because of the make-up. I actually have a different face. But also because I was making myself move and sound like Bruce Willis.

 

KW: Alex says that you have a big fan base at the Brooklyn Friends School. He would like to know, if you still support the Occupy Wall Street Movement?

JGL: Absolutely! And the 99%. In fact, I think that Looper offers a really subtly but powerful warning about what the future could look like, if the rich keep getting richer without any regard for everybody else. You might eventually have tents lining the streets of Kansas City.

 

KW: Alex also asks: What is the biggest misperception about you?

JGL: [Chuckles] Uhh... I don't know. I try to not pay attention to stuff like that, I guess.

 

KW: Alex has one more: What do you do to relax between films?

JGL: I go to the movies.

 

KW: Larry Greenberg says: I know I am going to love this film either way but are there any comedic moments in the non-stop, sci-fi time travel action?

JGL: Yes, there are. It's actually quite a funny movie. Rian's a funny guy with a great sense of humor. So, my answer would definitely be "Yes!"

 

KW: The Teri Emerson question: When was the last time you had a good laugh?

JGL: Last night, while Rian and I were having dinner together.

 

KW: Is there any question no one ever asks you, that you wish someone would?

JGL: No, I don't think so.

 

KW: What is your guiltiest pleasure?

JGL: I don't know, and I probably wouldn't tell you, if I did.

 

KW: The bookworm Troy Johnson question: What was the last book you read?

JGL: I was just reading this really cool book of poetry called "Euonia." The author, Christian Bok, takes a fascinating approach to writing where each chapter only uses one vowel. Putting limits on creativity like that forces the artist to figure a way around any limitations.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1552452255/ref%3dnosim/thslfofire-20

 

KW: When you look in the mirror, what do you see?

JGL: When I was doing Looper, it was a bizarre experience looking into the mirror and seeing a face other than your own. And it was also weirdly inspiring.

 

KW: The Kerry Washington question: If you were an animal, what animal would you be?

JGL: A human being.

 

KW: The Judyth Piazza question: What key quality do you believe all successful people share?

JGL: Humility.

 

KW: What advice do you have for anyone who wants to follow in your footsteps?

JGL: First of all, you have to be yourself. You can't imitate anybody. The most important thing is focusing on what you love. As for me, I love movies, and that's what I focus on. There are a lot of other accoutrements that come with success, and if you start to focus on those trappings, I think you're doomed.

 

KW: Have you ever wished you could have your anonymity back?

JGL: Yes.

 

KW: What would make your life easier?

JGL: [Laughs] I don't know.

 

KW: What are some of your favorite films and directors of all time?

JGL: I think Walt Disney was a fantastic filmmaker. I love Dumbo, Mary Poppins, The Matrix trilogy, Lysistrata and Sunset Boulevard. I also like Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, Michel Gondry, Edgar Wright and Jacques Audiard who's a really good French director.

 

KW: What's it like to try to assess yourself on the big screen.

JGL: It's a skill you have to acquire, because at first it just feels weird. When I was younger, it was really hard because you get self-conscious. It's almost disturbing to hear your own voice and to see your own face. But, if you practice, you can get used to it, and learn to be critical and productive. I've always played with video cameras and made little movies with myself in them.

 

KW: Well, you'll be making your directorial debut next year with Don Jon's Addiction. And you wrote it, too. How did that go?

JGL: It went great. I wrote a part for Scarlett Johansson, she agreed to do it, and was fantastic and very funny in it, playing a character very different from anything she's done before. Julianne Moore, one of the greatest actresses alive, is also in it.

 

KW: How hard was it to act and direct at the same time. I think of directors as disciplinarians who have to keep a lot of balls in the air at the same time.

JGL: It is a bit of a juggling act, but I think it turned out pretty well.

 

KW: Attorney Bernadette Beekman asks: What is your favorite charity?

JGL: I like to give to public media, like PBS and NPR.

 

KW: The Tavis Smiley question: How do you want to be remembered?

JGL: [Chuckles] I don't know. That's not up to me.

 

KW: Thanks again for the time, Joseph, best of luck with Looper, and I hope to speak to you again when Don Jon's Addiction is released.

JGL: I look forward to it. Thanks so much, Kam.

 

To see a trailer for Looper, visit

 

IFC Midnight
Ashley Hinshaw and James Franco star in “About Cherry.”

About Cherry
Film Review by Kam Williams

Naive Runaway Turns Porn Star in Cautionary Tale of Survival

Angelina (Ashley Hinshaw) is a naïve, 18 year-old with a blossoming body but a horrible home situation. Between a predatory stepfather (Stephen Wiig) with a creepy agenda and an alcoholic mother (Lili Taylor) too inebriated to protect her, it's just a matter of time before the poor girl has to vacate the premises.

Unfortunately, she proceeds to follow a lot of bad advice, starting with her boyfriend's (Jonny Weston) pressure to pose naked for pay. Although initially hesitant, the clueless coed goes along with the idea, unaware that nude photo spreads are apparently the adult entertainment industry's equivalent of a gateway drug to utter depravity.

The next thing you now, she's dropping out of high school and running away from L.A. to San Francisco with a Platonic pal (Dev Patel) who worships her. They rent an apartment together, with him landing a legitimate job at a bookstore while she finds work at a seedy strip club.

Soon thereafter, Angelina not only starts dating a customer (James Franco) but is recruited to appear in X-rated movies by a very-reassuring, retired porn star (Heather Graham). She adopts a stage name, "Cherry," and takes to performing sex acts in front of the camera like a fish to water, gradually graduating from soft porn to ever-increasingly salacious fare.

Not surprisingly, this development takes a toll on her personal relationships, as both her new beau ("What you do is disgusting!") and secret admirer roommate ("I'm just a foreigner you keep around to run errands!") eventually express their displeasure. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the trajectory of Angelina/Cherry's life has to turn tragic, especially when there's an empathetic lipstick lesbian waiting in the wings on the set of her latest explicit adventure.

Directed by Stephen Elliott, About Cherry's optimistic arc might be explained by the fact that he co-wrote the script with Lorelei Lee, a popular porn star-turned-NYU college lecturer. Lorelei's literary imprimatur lends considerable credibility to this presumably semi-autobiographical soap opera, since it would otherwise be impossible to fathom how the picture's terminally-suggestible protagonist wasn't left devastated by such a self-destructive string of degrading choices.

Pollyanna does ‘Frisco!

Very Good (3 stars)

Rated R for sexuality, nudity, profanity and drug use.

Running time: 102 minutes

Distributor: IFC Films

 

To see a trailer for About Cherry, visit

The Words
Film Review by Kam Williams

Plagiarism Exacts Emotional Toll in Tale of Overwhelming Regret

The latest stop on Clayton Hammond's (Dennis Quaid) whirlwind book tour has the renowned author in New York City to promote his latest opus. It's a cautionary tale of overwhelming regret recounting the rise and fall of a presumably fictional character called Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper).

At the story's point of departure, he's an aspiring novelist under pressure to find a day job after years of relying on handouts from his father (J.K. Simmons). The young man grudgingly capitulates by taking a lowly 9 to 5 gig in the mailroom of a leading literary agency.

The steady pay does enable Rory to save enough money to propose to his longtime girlfriend (Zoe Saldana) who has been patiently waiting to start a family. Soon enough, they're newlyweds and honeymooning in Paris where the grateful bride impulsively buys her hubby a weather-beaten briefcase lying around a dusty antique shop.

Upon returning to the States, Rory opens the valise and discovers that it isn't empty but contains a yellowed, handwritten manuscript by someone far more talented than he. However, instead of trying to locate the owner, he succumbs to the temptation to submit the novel to publishers under his own name.

And lo and behold, the book, "The Window Tears," becomes a runaway best-seller, thereby belatedly launching the literary career he'd always dreamed of. But because of the possibility of the real author's (Jeremy Irons) stepping forward to expose the fraud, Rory faces the prospect of having to spend his life looking over his shoulder.

Co-written and co-directed by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, The Words is constructed as a series of flashbacks narrated by a visibly-haunted Hammond as he reads excerpts from his new book. It gradually becomes obvious that he is emotionally agonizing over the material on the pages as the tension mounts around whether what his audience is hearing might be autobiographical rather than fictional.

Unfortunately, the problems with this glacial-paced production are plentiful. First, it's hard to swallow the film's farfetched premise, and harder still to fathom how its protagonist has managed to maintain the charade for so long, especially given his guilty conscience and being confronted by the aggrieved party he's impersonated.

Secondly, neither of the parallel plotlines is particularly engaging, the only issue of interest being whether Hammond's new book constitutes a confession that his debut novel had been purloined. For this reason, the film's biggest flaw rests in its ultimately ending on a cliffhanger, and thereby failing to resolve if Rory Jansen is indeed a thinly-veiled version of the author.

That anticlimactic conclusion proves to be quite unsatisfying after an investment of what feels like an eternity awaiting the resolution of the specific question "Did he or didn't he?" The only thing worse than a movie without an ending, is a ninety-minute endurance test without an ending.

Fair (1 star)

Rated PG-13 for smoking, sensuality and brief profanity.

Running time: 96 minutes

Distributor: CBS Films

To see a trailer for The Words, visit

Lawless
Film Review by Kam Williams

Prohibition Era Crime Saga Revisits Real-Life Exploits of the Bootlegging Bondurant Brothers

It is Franklin County, Virginia during Prohibition, which is where we find the bootlegging Bondurant brothers, Jack (Shia LaBeouf), Forrest (Tom Hardy) and Howard (Jason Clarke), running a thriving moonshining business with the help of a pal with colorful name Cricket (Dane DeHaan). But the siblings' blissful existence starts to crumble the day Jack sees Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman), a coldblooded gangster from Chicago, shoot one of their competitors dead with a Tommy gun.

Not long thereafter, a crooked Federal Agent, Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) pays a little visit to the Bondurants' bar to demand a cut of their ill-gotten gains. But hot-headed Forrest isn't intimidated by the attempted shakedown. In fact, he threatens to kill the corrupt cop with a meat cleaver should the greedy creep ever set foot on the premises again.

Of course, that's not the last the lads see of either Rakes or Banner, which soon proves problematical given that the ruthless newcomers are armed to the teeth and will stop at nothing to get their way. That is the ominous premise which sets in motion the grisly goings-on which ensue in Lawless, a picture dedicated to an almost senseless celebration of gratuitous violence.

Directed by John Hillcoat (The Road), the movie was adapted from "The Wettest County in the World," a supposedly-factual, historical novel by Matt Bondurant (grandson of Jack). The picture opens with a warning that what you're about to witness is "based on a true story," a claim presumably intended to discourage the viewer from questioning the veracity of the screen version, too.

However, what's served up is basically a comical cross of Sam Peckinpah and Looney Tunes so farcical that the audience at the screening this critic attended shared a few hearty laughs at moments when none was intended. An over-the-top indulgence in sadism strictly recommended for folks with a stomach for gangster fare so gruesome as to border on the cartoonish.

Fair (1 star)

Rated R for profanity, sexuality, nudity and graphic violence.

Running time: 115 minutes

Distributor: The Weinstein Company

To see a trailer for Lawless, visit

Elles
DVD Review by Kam Williams

Anne ( is a stressed-out investigative reporter for Elle Magazine, stationed in Paris, who's a good candidate for a lifestyle makeover, given the overwhelming demands of her job and her family. Her boss has been pressuring her to meet the deadline for the article she's currently working on about college students who moonlight as high-priced call girls.

Meanwhile, she has her hands full on the home front because her husband, Patrick (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), shows no interest in bearing his half of the burden. Hence, she has to shoulder the full responsibility of motivating their stoner (Francois Civil) and couch potato (Pablo Beugnet) sons to do more than lounge around the flat with a view.

Although Anne also needs to attend to her bed-ridden father (Jean-Marie Binoche), her hubby still expects her to play the perfect hostess by whipping up a gourmet meal the evening he invites his boss over for dinner. And to add insult to injury, he goes out of his way to warn his wife not to embarrass him by making any unpleasant conversation at the dinner table.

Being married to such a cad, is it any surprise that Anne might start to take a personal interest in Charlotte (Anais Demoustier) and Alicja (Joanna Kulig), the two young prostitutes being profiled in her piece? That is precisely what transpires in Elles, a steamy, midlife crisis drama directed by Malgoska Szumowska.

Initially, Anne interviews her subjects in a professional manner, posing probing questions about whether they enjoy indulging the fetishes of their assorted clients, in the process eliciting very graphic descriptions of their kinky liaisons. But the miserably-married journalist becomes intrigued, once it's apparent that they've taken to the world's oldest profession like fish to water.

Then, against her better judgment, Anne shares shots of vodka with the seductive Charlotte, only to cross another line by experimenting with lesbianism. The glaring juxtaposition of the happy hookers with the pathetic plight of the unappreciated supermom seems to suggest that the wife taken for granted might actually be in a worse predicament.

Reminiscent of the incendiary offerings of the iconoclastic Catherine Breillat like Romance (1999) and Fat Girl (2001), Elles is a thought-provoking immorality play apt to stir up just as much controversy by virtue of its seemingly-gratuitous sex scenes alone. Does the fact that the director's a feminist and the star is an Oscar-winning actress provide sufficient artistic cover for carnal clinches which border on soft porn? Does the explicit eroticism serve to advance the plot or was it included purely for titillation purposes?

Those are questions you'll have to answer for yourself upon screening and introspection, unless you're the Puritanical type that considers any lurid depictions of copulation blasphemous. Let the endless debate begin!

Very Good (3 stars)
Rated NC-17 for nudity and explicit sexuality.
In French, Polish and Arabic with subtitles.
Running time: 99 minutes
Distributor: Kino Lorber
Blu-ray Extras: Edited and unedited trailers; and a stills gallery.

To see a trailer for Elles, visit