Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Interview By: J.P. Mangalindan
JPMangalindan@TheCinemaSource.com

At 25, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is no longer the pre-pubescent sitcom face you may remember, the squeaky-voiced sidekick in 3rd Rock From The Sun. Whether you've kept tabs on his quietly surging career or just come across a recent shot of admittedly handsome actor and scratched your head in surprise, there's that precious disinterment: that wisp of a boy has become a man.

Yes, Gordon-Levitt is all grown up.

Though he dabbled in films after his comedic stint ' he starred in 2001's Manic, leant his voice to the lead character in Treasure Planet ' Gordon Levitt's star portrayal in 2005's Mysterious Skin, which screened at the Tribecca Film Festival, caught people's attention. As a male hustler, he made you believe that underneath a self-confident, brisk fa'ade lay a forlorn and tormented soul, a man-child who never got over his pedophilic relationship with his baseball coach. For audiences, it was an awesome performance from an actor we expected nothing more from, save maybe a 3rd Rock From The Sun 10th Anniversary reunion.

'Greg Arakki [Mysterious Skin's director] changed me for sure, just in instilling his confidence in me,' he says. 'I never really thought of myself as being able to play that kind of role, being able to play the role that everyone's attracted to. Just him casting me as that character just changed my perception of myself. Like, wow, me' I can be the sexy one'! Wow.'

In Brick, Gordon-Levitt plays Brendan Frye, a cerebral adolescent investigating the whereabouts of his missing girlfriend by infiltrating a high school crime ring. It's a mystery that hues closely to the classic trappings of the genre, rife with conflict, spiraling into an unknown abyss with convoluted plot twists. Gordon-Levitt compares digesting a classic mystery, and consequently Brick, to ' candy'

'There are many different ways to eat a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup and there are many different ways to watch a mystery,' he says with a laugh. 'Personally, when I watch mysteries, I never follow all the plot twists the first time. Never. Whether it be Citizen Kane or Chinatown, I don't follow the whole' I never guess whodunit. I just don't. I'm too wrapped in the characters and how people are feeling. Because ultimately, what Brick is about is the plot. The plot is great, especially if you enjoy plots, this is a good one. It's a story about characters, and I don't think it's a deficiency to try to look ahead and maybe not predict it. That's kind of the fun in a mystery and that's what makes it fun. After you watch it, you talk about it with whomever you watched it with. 'But did you catch this part' What about that'' That's the fun of a mystery.'

His performance ' his intensity and his believability ' has already received praise, but the humble actor attributes much of the final product to the director Rian Johnson.

'Before I met Rian, I watched this short clip he made for nothing, this short video that he kind of cut together and did, this kind of creative, weird animation for and used the music so well that that's when I knew he had rhythm' from that short, which is called The Psychology of Dream Analysis. I don't know if you can get that anywhere, but it was a really beautiful short film he made.

'And then we met and we just hit it off. He always inspires me, always makes me feel creative and invigorated, makes me feel like disappearing into St. Petersburg and writing a novel, just made me excited about' I don't know if we're going to be able to pull this off because if we don't get it exactly right, it's going to look silly, but I think it's going to be fun to try it with you and I want to give it a shot.'

For Gordon-Levitt, inhabiting his character was a challenge. He remembers pacing around his New York City apartment dissecting the lyrical dialogue ('Nobody writes like that nowadays. Nobody.'), studying spaghetti westerns, and observing old-school matinee idols like Cary Grant in movies like His Girl Friday for their sharp wit and timing. The actor also admits in some ways, he can identify with Brendan.

'When I was in high school, I had a lot in common with Brendan. I had plenty of friends; Brendan doesn't have any friends ' well, that's not true, he he has one ' but I did have a kind of superiority complex, which I think is a pretty common thing. ' I very much liked to call everybody out on all their phony bullshit and thought I was real smart. But if you're really smart, then you know that nobody is smarter than anybody else, which I eventually figured out when I moved out of my parents' house and moved to New York. I don't know what it was, but that's what Brendan needs to figure out. He's having trouble because he's so thick. He kind of refuses to humble himself and he maintains this self-righteous mentality, ends up alienating his one true love, and then destroying almost everything around him.'

With Mysterious Skin and Brick, it may be easy to peg Gordon-Levitt as an indie actor, but as he points out, upcoming projects like John Madden's thriller Killshot are huge studio flicks that buck that easy label. Though the actor admits it may sound clich', for him, it's all about the script ' whether or not a film is high or low budget means nothing.

'People will see 'em. It'll take more time, but people will see 'em. What's more important is that they remember them. Most people will see X,Y, Z sequel, but they'll forget it the next day. I think a movie like Brick 15 years from now, more people will be talking about it than they will five years from now and that's satisfying to me. That's being optimistic of course, but I believe in the slow dispersal of good movies.'

Yes, he's all grown up.