Connection reflections

JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT went to Van Nuys High School. He played Tommy Solomon on “Third Rock From the Sun,” later did the indie films “Mysterious Skin” and “Brick” and stars in Scott Frank’s “The Lookout,” which opened this weekend. He keeps a website at

HitRecord.org.

What made you go off to school at Columbia?

It was always something I wanted to do, to go to college. I was in the middle of working on “Third Rock From the Sun” -- they were really generous and let me out a year early. I was already a year late for school. So I moved away and quit acting for a while. It was probably the smartest thing I’ve ever done. I highly recommend it to everybody, to move someplace where you don’t know anybody.

But you did three years at Columbia and then you left.

I was not so concerned with getting a degree. I did want to start working again. And I mostly had been refusing to pay any attention to acting. But after a couple of years I think I grew up a little bit. I came to a different realization of why I wanted to act. Growing up, I did it because it was fun. It was a pleasure to do! Then once I moved to New York City, out of my parents’ house, I grew to not only care about my own fun but I started feeling connected to the world as a whole and how I fit into that. How I could be connected.

Poking around your website a bit -- you seem to want to experiment with how things get made and shown. You’re up to something that has to do with distribution.

They say the medium is the message. It’s true, I love making movies, and I love acting in movies. But it can be frustrating, because I get no say in how the work I do is presented to people. A lot of times when someone sits in the movie theater, they’ve already received so many signs as to what the movie is. And those signs are important. They totally have an effect, they have quite an impact on someone’s experience of the work that I did. So the website is really gratifying, that I have total control over it. “The Lookout” -- I love that movie -- but I shot it a year ago. So I can make something and put it up that day! And someone can get it and e-mail me about it!

Does that lead you to larger ideas about that format, or process?

I’m definitely curious, and I have a lot of wonder about what the future holds about how people see movies, or how people play their records. Play and/or make. Which is what HitRecord.org is all about.

Well, so many of us work in these situations where what we do is in an overdetermined, or at least strictly hierarchical, system of production. It happens a lot in bigger movies -- there is a filmmaker, but their power gets curtailed by a corporate committee. These are the spineless movies that have a good five-minute sequence but are kind of boring.

That’s why I’m in love with “The Lookout” -- the producers let Scott Frank make the movie he wanted to make. Oftentimes a filmmaker will get handed a list of actors, and they have to cast the movie off that list, that’s off a mathematical system of box office and foreign sales. But Scott wasn’t handed one of those lists. If he had, he wouldn’t have been able to cast me. I’m really grateful for that. That same thing happens over and over again. They’ll kick the director out of the editing room and cut it themselves.

And then doesn’t that put film critics in an odd position -- because how can they write about the director’s work if it isn’t?

I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that the reviews are really good for this movie.

What will you do if and when you get married? What are the children of hyphenates to do?

I don’t know! I asked my mom that question once. And she said, “Oh, I dunno!” ... I like having both my mom’s name and my dad’s name. And is my wife’s name also going to be in there? I’ll have to figure out.

Well, this generation has to work it out -- they’re everywhere. You’ll be a test case!

I’ll do my best.