Brian Graden's Interview with Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Part 3
This interview with Brian Graden and Joseph Gordon-Levitt was conducted at the 2015 ProMax Conference. Content has been edited for clarity. See part two here.
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Yeah, I’ve always found the creative people want you to tell them where the lanes are, then leave them alone to be free within the lanes. Just tell me where to play and I’ll play in that sandbox.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
That’s well said.
I also remember there was a moment where you said “Don’t mistake this for a democracy, this is…” what did you call it?
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
A benevolent dictatorship.
And why was that?
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
My thinking here is how a movie set works. I grew up working on movie sets or television sets. On a movie set, there’s a director and that director works with lots of collaborators. The director couldn’t make the movie alone, and all the collaborators have to bring their own ingenuity and their own unique perspective. A good director is good at inspiring that from the collaborators, but a good director also has to have the forethought and the vision to say like “I’m going to take all of these collaborations, but focus it into something that’s got an individual purpose and voice.”
The best directors I’ve worked with find that balance -- how to be spontaneous and be collaborative and really open it up, then at the same time, stick to their guns and know how to put the limits so that the finished movie can have its individuality.
Right well, it actually does raise an interesting question because if you’re making a film like Don Jon, you’re working with 25-year Hollywood professionals, lighting designers, costume designers, etc. On HitRecord we were very often working with people with no credits from their bedroom in Ohio or Finland. How do you compare the two experiences having lived them?
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Well you know, some of the “professionals” act like children and some of them act like professionals. And some of the kids in Ohio or Finland that you’re talking about act like children and some of them act like professionals. I’ve found it really runs the gamut and it really comes down to the individual.
I’m trying to kind of scrape together any kernels of wisdom in my experience of what it’s like to work with an online community. I don’t think of them as a crowd. The whole term “crowdsource” is I think is a little damaging. You can’t think of people as a crowd. They’re not a crowd, they’re all individual people and that’s actually the strength. Certainly, there are sort of crowdsourced projects you can point to in the world of tech when it’s just a numbers game. But when it comes to the making of our show, it’s really not a numbers game. It’s about finding the individual contributions that come from individual human beings that are excellent.
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Please see part four of the interview here.