Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the indie feature "Hesher." (Associated Press photo)

By Colin Covert
Park City, Utah

Joseph Gordon-Levitt straddles a lot of boundaries, and pushes them, too. He's a TV actor turned movie star. He's a child actor turned adult performer in cutting-edge movies like "Mysterious Skin" and "Brick." He's a mainstream star in romantic comedy ("500 Days of Summer") and popcorn action flicks ("G.I. Joe.")
He's at the Sundance Film Festival as a performer (playing a greasy-haired Unibomber type with a heart of gold in the indie feature "Hesher") and as an innovative internet producer. Surrounded by gallery video screens percolating with avant-garde imagery, Gordon-Levitt amiably discussed the future of studio moviemaking in the multimedia age and his own prospects as a star of traditional studio blockbusters.
His production company/collaborative filmmaking website Hitrecord.org is pushing the convergence of the art world and film world, finding new ways of telling stories on the web. Over the last five years it has evolved from an informal, noncommercial art-sharing hobby website to a full-fledged professional production company. "We can pay artists to make art," sharing profits with web collaborators who contribute to the work. It's one of the multimedia experiments showcased at the Sundance New Frontier exhibition space.
After 22 years as an actor, he said, "I decided it was time to start a production company. Rather than doing it the old fashioned way where it was me and people that I might know through the industry, I'd open up and say everybody in the world can come collaborate with me. It's really exciting the kind of art that can organically blossom when you invite everyone to come play."
Anyone can upload video to the site where it becomes the raw material for surrealistic short films created by Gordon-Levitt and his partners. It's a model of creativity that was unthinkable a few years ago, which is exactly why it appealed to him.
"In the 20th century media was an object which an industry would produce and the rest of the world would passively consume. And now it's become an action. It's communication among everybody in the world. I think that's a really, really good thing. I think it's going to result in unprecedentedly cool works of art."
Whenever technology changes, art changes, he said. "Compare it to when movies got sound. For a while everybody said, 'Oh, it's a fad, these talkies.' It really always comes down to the creative spirit. We'll always use progressing technology and we'll always use bits of the oldest technology. So of course it's still worthwhile to make a movie and it's still worthwhile to paint a painting. It's also worthwhile to make crazy internet art."
Besides, change is inevitable. He foresees an era when cinema becomes a one-on-one interaction between those who make it and those who consume it, just as digital piracy has made live touring the lifeblood of the music industry.
"It's something that in the traditional film industry everyone's talking about. The truth is that what happened to music is happening to film. The only difference between the music industry and the film industry is megabytes and gigabytes. As artists who want to support ourselves, one of the main things we should be looking at is site-specific stuff. Films are digital information that can travel anywhere. To be honest they're going to be free whether we like it or not. I don't think you're going to get people to pay for digital information they can download on their own computer. But I think people will be happy to pay $10 or something to walk into your place where you're presenting your art. So the stuff that goes onto the internet becomes what we technically call marketing, which is sort of a cold word for it; but it's just the art that goes out and can be copied an infinite amount of times. The stuff that you can use then to support yourself, maybe one of te best ways we can do it is say, 'Come to our place. Buy a ticket, buy a drink'"
That's not to say there's no room for tradition. "I love going to the movies. I love sitting in a dark room and being totally passive and watching the story unfold. But if that's all I got to do, I'd get bored," he said. "I like variety, I like to create things. What a time to be alive," he said. "We have the option to do both."
Gordon-Levitt is starring with Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page in the mystery-shrouded psychological suspense story "Inception." It's a classical studio blockbuster, he said, but different.
"It's interesting you ask me about it at Sundance because the thing about huge budget Hollywood blockbusters like 'Inception' is they tend to lack a certain je ne sais quoi. That kind of indie spirit. Christopher Nolan, who made 'Inception,' and also made 'The Dark Knight,' he also came through Sundance. He made a movie called 'Memento,' which broke him out and came through Sundance. And even though he's working on this enormous movie he maintains that same artistic integrity. I think that's what's so good about 'The Dark Knight,' and I guarantee that's what's going to make you enjoy 'Inception.'"
There has been a lot of chatter recently about Gordon-Levitt stepping up to the ranks of superhero stars. His "500 Days of Summer" director Marc Webb has been tapped to direct the upcoming "Spider-Man" reboot.
"Isn't that great?" he beamed about Webb's assignment. Pressed about whether he might be pulling on a spandex suit anytime soon, he laughed "I really don't know."