MakingOf: Joe, thank you so much for sitting down and talking with us.

(Joseph Gordon-Levitt): My pleasure.

MO: So my first question for you is kind of your path into the industry. I remember last year, at Sundance, I saw you at the Closing Night Party walking around and you were so happy. And you know what struck me? As someone whose seen your movies and loves your movies, is that he loves what he does, he loves this.

(JGL): Well that’s about the highest compliment you could pay me. Thank you. And its true! I’m really lucky, I’m really grateful, and I do, I love it and I’ve always loved it. I’ve been doing it since I was 6 years old, when I started acting and I always did it because I love it. You hear stories, many of which are unfortunately true, about parents pressuring their kids into doing this stuff and that was never the case with me. I just really liked doing it and my parents always said: ‘you don’t have to do this, you can quit whenever you want to quit.’ So I just really loved it so I kept doing it.

MO: What really draws you to a project

(JGL): Well it often starts with writing for me. If I’m reading something and I feel like reading it aloud and I kind of get up and want to try and say this… its very hard to pinpoint why, but its pretty sure when it happens. And I take that as a sign, and no matter what other intellectual reasons I can come up not to be attracted to this material or to be attracted to this material I try to put second in priority. If I have that desire to… Oh this is fun to read, I want to read this I want to try to do this, then I try to follow that. That’s how ‘Morgan [and Destiny’s Eleventh Date: The Zeppelin Zoo]’ started and its really how I decide most of the acting jobs I take, in fact all of the action jobs I take. It starts with some sort of material, and I’m like: ‘yeah, yeah, yeah I want to try that.’ And then of course, you want to see who’s involved, and that’s the other thing. Who are the people that I’m going to be doing this with.

MO: What would you say to someone who’s aspiring?… I mean, I think hitRECord gives great opportunity to aspiring artists.

(JGL): People ask me a lot: ‘Hey I wan to do what you do, what should I do? I want to get an agent I wan to blah blah blah.’ And look, if you want to try to get an agent and move to LA I’m not going to say don’t do that, but to be honest, if what you really car about is making things and being creative and getting your art seen by people… not to be famous, but just making things, then that’s not really the way to go. HitRECords is a really great example of this, I’m working with people like this visual effects guy from Scotland or the writer from Ireland, and they didn’t have to move to LA, they don’t have any agents, and they’re work is going to screen at Sundance. And that, I think, is the future of how things are going to go, and I think that’s a really good thing for artists and creative people

MO: I often ask a lot of the filmmakers we interview this question because I think its really interested to know what are they’re favorite scenes that just stand out in their mind that they love…

(JGL): There’s the beginning of this movie ‘F for Fake,’ which if I’m not mistaken was Orson Welles’ last movie. And he begins it, he’s sort of a magician, and he says: ‘ladies and gentlemen, for my next experiment blah blah blah.’ And I don’t know, he just has me right away and I always admire that. What else? Actually that’s a cool movie to bring up for a community like this at MakingOf. ‘F for Fake’ I think is one of the more interesting movies about story telling itself. Its all about fakery and art-forgers and con-artists. Orson Welles himself is arguably one of the greatest fakers of all time because he came from the radio, Mercury Radio Company, and he did that stunt where he literally convinced the entire nation of people that earth was being invaded by aliens from outer space. I mean they were really convinced and people went nuts and stuff. And movies of course are, well, they feel real but they’re fake. They’re cellular, they’re ones and zeros, but it looks like your looking at something real. So I love that movie. Its kind of all about, well what is real? And in fact, its all just a story that your telling yourself in your mind, because its not just the eyes that make me see you its actually more my brain that’s doing it even more than my eyes. The eyes just read some light but its my brain that’s telling me: okay that means that there’s a person here and she’s about this and whatever else and we’re all kind of storytellers and con-artists. I don’t know why I just thought of that one but when you ask of a good scene that I love, that’s a good one.