Check out Joe’s interview at the governors ball at the Oscars yesterday with On The Red Carpet.

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Happy Birthday Joseph Gordon-Levitt! Joe turns 32 years old today! Make sure to wish @hitRecordJoe a happy birthday!

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Check out Joe on Sesame Street to discuss the word, Reinforce with Murray.

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I have added pics of Joe at 63rd Berlinale International Film Festival for Don Jon’s Addiction photocall and press conference yesterday!

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Check out Joe’s interview about Don Jon’s Addiction with The Hollywood Reporter for 63rd Berlinale International Film Festival.

THR: What was the genesis of 
this project?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: I wanted to tell kind of a love story, and what I’ve noticed is when it comes to sex, people objectify each other. It becomes this thing, this object of consumption and acquisition, and I think both males and females do it. I felt that having a story that was centered around a woman who watches too many romantic Hollywood movies and a young man who watches too much pornography would be a really hilarious way to get at this theme of objectification. We learn to objectify things and each other from all sorts of places. We learn it from our family, we learn it from friends, we get it from church, and we also learn it from different kinds of media. And that fascinates me.

THR: Why did you choose to take a more humorous approach?

Gordon-Levitt: I find comedy is oftentimes the most effective way to make commentary. I wouldn’t exactly call it “movie light;” it’s more of a dark comedy, and I very much did want it to connect with a really broad audience. It’s funny how all sorts of people have responded to the movie. My mom really likes it, which means a lot to me since I was brought up on a lot of the ideals that she was active in, the feminist movement of the ’60s and ’70s. But I think a fun, entertaining and funny movie oftentimes is the most effective way to try to say something. Like one of my favorite movies ever is Dr. Strangelove. It makes me howl with laughter, and yet it’s so smart.

THR: Where else have you drawn inspiration?

Gordon-Levitt: I love the Coen brothers. I love Tarantino. I thought Django Unchained was a really brilliant, hilarious and extremely entertaining, popularly appealing movie about some really substantial issues like race and class and brutality in America.

THR: Have you picked your next project?

Gordon-Levitt: No. Right now, I’m doing a part for Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, which is so much fun. I just admire Robert so much. He has created this whole world and a way of doing things that is so custom-tailored to his taste and his abilities.

THR: Did you ever second-guess the extremes that Don Jon went to, or did anybody try and talk you out of some of the more sexually graphic sequences?

Gordon-Levitt: It has been a process figuring out the best way to do it, and I imagine it will continue to be a process. Most of the movies that I’ve been in that played at Sundance and were acquired continued to evolve until either the filmmaker or the distributor or both hopefully considered it ready for wide distribution. In this case, dealing with Relativity has been excellent. They really believe in the movie and believe in me and won’t force me to do anything I don’t want to do. So it will be worth figuring out the right balance because I think it is important to have the visceral reaction you can get out of an audience with real snippets and samples of these actual pornography clips. What we do is select them extremely carefully, and we cut them meticulously. It’s all very quick shots that are specifically worked into the editing and the voice-over and the music to achieve a particular effect and make a specific point in 
the story.

THR: So is there a mandate from 
Relativity that you have to bring this film in with an R rating rather than NC-17?

Gordon-Levitt: I have a mandate for myself for that. In fact, there was a director’s note at the very beginning of the script that said, “This will be a rated-R movie.” [This could even] be a PG-13 movie. I believe we’ll get rated R because of its mature themes and language. With the Sundance cut, everything was cropped very carefully so you don’t see anything explicit, even though you sort of feel like you’re seeing explicit things.

THR: Do you expect an even more enthusiastic reception in Berlin given that Europeans are generally less uptight about sexuality?

Gordon-Levitt: I think people everywhere have been really receptive to it. When people hear what the movie is about, they assume it’s going to be much more scandalous than I think it is. In fact, I think the movie is actually sort of wholesome. There is a wholesomeness in the moral of the story. There was one article I read in a Salt Lake City magazine that said it was a more compelling anti-porn argument than your standard moralist argument. I really appreciated that.

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Joe will be making a special appearance at the Oscars!

The Oscars awards ceremony has added four more stars to its list of actors making special appearances.

Charlize Theron, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Daniel Radcliffe will all be taking part in the Seth MacFarlane-hosted ceremony, the Academy Awards announced Thursday.

“We are quite excited to have Charlize, Chan, Joe and Dan join us on the show,” said telecast producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron. “We are happy to feature them as special guests in our production.”

Previously announced names signed on for presenting duties include: The Avengers cast members Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo; returning 2011 Oscar-winners Jean Dujardin, Christopher Plummer, Octavia Spencer and Meryl Streep; co-star Mark Wahlberg from host MacFarlane’s Ted; and musical performances by Adele, Norah Jones and Barbra Streisand.

This year’s Oscar ceremony takes place on Feb. 24 at the Dolby Theatre in the Hollywood & Highland Center. It will be broadcast live on ABC – it will also be carried live in more than 225 countries around the world.

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Check out Joe and Tony Danza’s interview to talk about Don Jon’s Addiction with Variety during Sundance Film Festival.

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Joe hosted the award ceremony of Sundance Film Festival! I have added the latest pics of Joe including the ones of Joe around Park City.

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Check out Joe, Tony Danza and Julianne Moore’s interview with The Playlist to discuss Don Jon’s Addiction.

You worked with some of the greatest directors in the world last year. What were some of the biggest takeaways from the ways those guys worked going into directing your first feature?
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Great question. Getting the chance to work with and watch Rian [Johnson] and Chris [Nolan] and Steven [Spielberg] all in one year was a big part of why I felt encouraged to go try. One thing I could say that I noticed that all three of those guys had in common, and they’re all three very different filmmakers, but they all have a great sense of balancing their vision, that they’ve done their homework for, and [being ready for] spontaneous things that arrive on the day.

Julianne Moore: That’s a hard thing to do.

JGL: It is, and that I think is right at the crux of what makes a good director: is knowing when to stick to what you thought it was going to be and when to go with what it’s now sort of coming to be. Rian and Chris and Steven are all really good at that, and it was something I sort of cheated on and kept in mind a lot while I was directing. Oftentimes it would be like, “This is one of those moments! I’m being asked right now if we’re going to do it the way I thought we were going to do it or if we’re going to try something new. All right.” Those are the decisions that I think make up a lot of what a director does.

The film focuses on a man addicted to masturbating to porn. What made you want to tell such a gutsy and risky story for your first directorial feature?
JGL : I mean, I’ll tell you how I got to that subject matter. But…I knew that if I was going to make a movie and be in charge then I wanted to do something that I couldn’t do otherwise. You know? I wanted to do something that would probably have not happened if I wasn’t making it happen. So, you know I made a short film that played here at Sundance called “Sparks,” which I really like and I’m really proud of it. It’s an adaptation of an Elmore Leonard short story and while I think it’s really good, it wasn’t something that could not have happened without me. You know what I mean? If that makes sense.

Tony Danza: [It was] more conventional.

JGL: It was more conventional. I mean, Elmore Leonard is a genre writer that is arguably the best at that crime genre. But I knew if I was going to write and direct a movie I wanted to really try something, and I wanted to try to make a love story. What I’ve noticed about love is what’s always getting in the way — people objectifying each other. Putting expectations on each other that they’ve learned from various places. Whether it’s their family or from friends or from their church or from the media. So I thought a love story about a relationship between a guy who watches too much porn and girl who watches too many romantic Hollywood movies would really bring that theme out. And that was the beginning of it.

TD: You have to wonder what’s harder on relationships, right? Is it the romantic ideal? Or was it the pornography?

JGL: I think it’s really…

TD: Too close to call? [laughing]
(more…)

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