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July 2009 

Return to Table of Contents July 2009

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Interview: Zooey Deschanel & Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Summer Lovin'

Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt team up for (500) Days of Summer, a movie that pokes fun at the conventions of typical romantic comedies, becoming a sweet little rom-com in the process


By Kevin Williamson

To borrow a line from another romantic comedy, Zooey Deschanel had Joseph Gordon-Levitt at hello.

 

“I love working with Zooey,” enthuses Gordon-Levitt, the 28-year-old star of indie favourites Brick and The Lookout. “She’s one of my favourite artists today. She’s so honest and genuine, you can see it in her acting and you can see it in her songs. She’s artistic integrity embodied. I hope to do a third movie with her — and a fourth and a fifth.”

 

For the time being, let’s focus on the second film Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel have collaborated on (following the little-seen 2001 indie drama Manic), shall we?

 

Buoyantly directed by music video helmer Marc Webb, (500) Days of Summer — which unspooled to the raucous approval of crowds at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where these interviews took place — casts Gordon-Levitt as Tom, a greeting-card copywriter who falls headlong in love with the office’s newest employee, Summer, played by Deschanel at her adorable, bewitching best. Problem is, while he’s a hopeless romantic (blamed on his pre-adolescent misreading of The Graduate), she’s a cast-iron cynic who doesn’t believe true love exists (a by-product of her parents’ divorce when she was a child). Can their attraction — and mutual admiration of The Smiths — overcome their clash of ideals?

 

If this sounds like a variation on any number of cookie-cutter romantic comedies (or “rom-coms”), from When Harry Met Sally to the above-referenced Jerry Maguire, that’s the point. Instead of merely fulfilling the sentimental demands of the genre, this non-linear charmer — which leaps back and forth in time to showcase various chapters in the duo’s 500-day-long relationship — happily detonates clichés and subverts expectations. That alone was enough to attract Deschanel.

 

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in (500) Days of Summer

“It was a combination of things,” remembers the 29-year-old who most recently appeared in Yes Man and The Happening. “I liked Marc’s sensibilities and I just felt his enthusiasm for the project and the script was great; it was funny and charming. I hadn’t seen a story done in that way exactly before. I had seen similar things, but it was unique and it was really well-written.”

 

Gordon-Levitt echoes that sentiment. “What I want in a movie, and it doesn’t matter what genre it is, is something sincere. I feel like I can always tell when it’s not. It’s not just because I work in movies. I think my generation is probably a more sophisticated and literate generation when it comes to movies and the media. The whole pandering to an ignorant public is, I think, on the outs. You can see it in the President we just elected; I believe he’s a sincere guy. And not to compare our little movie to Barack Obama, but I really think (500) Days of Summer is, beyond anything else, heartfelt.

   

“You can attribute various labels to it, but it comes down to an honest human experience, which is falling in love,” continues Gordon-Levitt. “It’s not a simple thing. You can’t reduce it down to a formula. And while it plays with certain clichés that exist in formulas, in the end, I don’t think it boxes itself into anything of them. It’s about finding the subtlety between those clichés…. It’s a pop movie; everyone will like it.”

 

Of course, if everyone does indeed like it, it could translate to greater mainstream recognition for both stars, who, despite being beloved and respected in indie circles, aren’t exactly household names. Then again, that’s as much by design as chance. Throughout their careers, both Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel have managed to shun the obvious trappings of fame in pursuit of their passions.

 

He, of course, is probably still recognized from his tenure on the 1990s sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun. Then, after a sabbatical from the spotlight, Gordon-Levitt emerged on the indie scene in such fare as Mysterious Skin and the aforementioned Brick. Bigger things, however, appear in the offing. If the potential breakout of (500) Days of Summer wasn’t enough, in August he co-stars as the evil Cobra Commander in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, a big-budget action-adventure that screams sequel. And he’s currently shooting Inception, the latest thriller from director Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight), opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page. Given all of this, is Gordon-Levitt braced for the possible onslaught of celebrity?

 

“I don’t think about that stuff. What I am excited about is if a lot of people like the movie. Then that gives me the power to do other cool things I like. I make a website, hitrecord.org, so it’s exciting for me to think more people will come see that. A lot of our culture sees movies as disposable entertainment and that’s not how I see it. So it’s all positive. The other stuff doesn’t have anything to do with me, so I don’t consider it that much.”

 

Deschanel, too, has augmented her acting with a burgeoning career as a singer and songwriter. Shortly after her big-screen debut in 1999’s Mumford and subsequent breakthrough in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous in 2000, she began performing in the jazz cabaret act If All the Stars Were Pretty Babies. Then she showcased her vocal talents on the big screen in the Will Ferrell hit Elf. Most recently, Deschanel, who also plays the piano and ukulele, collaborated on an album entitled Volume One with M. Ward — together they call themselves She and Him. The album garnered critical acclaim, suggesting her dual path may continue for some time. “It’s really wonderful. I think of it all as storytelling,” says Deschanel.

 

“I love music. Music’s the most immediate thing for me, just in terms of taking hold of me. If I watch a movie, it takes a little while longer to affect me, whereas a song can get me instantly,” she says. “It’s nice to work in two different mediums. And the songwriting is so satisfying for me and to see it through fruition I consider a real privilege.”


Kevin Williamson is a Calgary-based movie columnist for Sun Media.

 

 

On the record

In our interview, Joseph Gordon-Levitt says one of the cool things about becoming well known is that more people will find his website, hitrecord.org. So, we went to the site to see what’s there.

 

Still fairly rudimentary in its style and content, hitrecord.org is a meeting place for creative types where they can post “records” of any type — movies, songs, drawings, poems — and, in the best-case scenario, collaborate on projects with other users. Or, as Gordon-Levitt puts it in his intro to the site, it’s “a mass collaborative RECording arts project in progress.”

 

On the day we visited, the main piece was a collection of black and white photographs showing three girls wandering around Paris’s Père-Lachaise Cemetery while an emo folk song plays in the background. Bien sûr.

 

—Marni Weisz


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