Staff Writer
That little boy from 3rd Rock from the Sun is long over his little boy days, with films like Looper and Inception under his belt. Joseph Gordon-Levitt now stars as the title character in the Sundance film festival favourite and critically acclaimed, Don Jon. This is also his writing and directorial debut.
He plays a New Jersey play boy always on the prowl for a one night stand, but struggles with his addiction to pornography. Things become shaky for him as he begins a new relationship with Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), a seductive and calculating woman obsessed with Hollywood romantic comedies, who slowly starts to change him.
Gordon-Levitt has recently insisted in an interview with Listen to the Story that he is nothing like his pornography addicted character and continued to speak about why he took on the lead in a film written and directed by him:
“I like putting myself in the shoes of somebody who has a different upbringing from me – who has a different perspective from me, who maybe views the world in ways that I would knee-jerk consider wrong – and trying to empathize.”
He commented and then further admitted that his parents raised him to question dominant cultural gender roles and his Jon character is exactly the opposite of that.
His co-star, Johansson, recently commented on the porn aspect of the film in an interview with Entertainment Weekly saying: “It’s less of a faux pas now than it was before,” she said.
“But oddly in other ways we’re quite conservative [as a society]. You can’t even show a boob on the screen without being totally rejected by the [ratings] board, making it basically impossible for anyone to see your film. It’s a subject that might be less of a hot topic, something we can talk about in some ways. But in other ways, we live in a very conservative society.”
Gordon-Levitt also admitted that working on the film helped change the way that he perceives the media, “I think that it’s worth recognizing that the media that we all choose to consume, that actually does make a difference. That is us participating in a larger cultural conversation.”
Don Jon is definitely the film to see, if not only for JGL who is certainly the star of the film as he gives a dominant performance.
Don Jon is currently out in the US and will open in the UK on November 15.
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