Danza, Moore praise Gordon-Levitt's directorial skills in “Don Jon”

PanARMENIAN.Net - A violent thunderstorm attracted a lot of attention at the New York premiere of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Don Jon, with the extreme weather starting just as the stars were arriving at the School of Visual Arts Theatre in Manhattan, The Hollywood Reporter said.

But while the storm was raging, Gordon-Levitt was cultivating his now multi-faceted film career. The former child star does triple duty in his upcoming film, Don Jon, about a man addicted to porn who's trying to manage being in a real relationship, which he wrote, directed and stars in. Gordon-Levitt told The Hollywood Reporter that he always thought he'd be intensely involved in the project.

"When I was coming up with the story, I was always thinking, it would be cool to shoot this part like this or it would be cool if the music did this right here, so I always envisioned putting all the pieces together," he said.

Co-star Jeremy Luke says Gordon-Levitt's years as an actor helped him with his directorial debut, in which the cast members rehearsed and marked out scenes before shooting.

Gordon-Levitt even reunited with his former Angels in the Outfield co-star Tony Danza, who plays his father in Don Jon. Danza gave his younger colleague high praise for his work as a director. "He creates an atmosphere on the set that's very, very comfortable and secure so you're not worried about exposing yourself and he gives you a real good idea about what he wants, and yet, he's very flexible that you may have something to add to it," the former Who's the Boss? star told THR. Julianne Moore, who plays an older love interest for Gordon-Levitt's character, added: "He was so prepared, very, very prepared and really assured. He really knew what he wanted to communicate and how he wanted to communicate it." Gordon-Levitt, meanwhile, praised Relativity Media, which bought the film at Sundance for roughly $4 million, for believing in his movie and vision. "There's a risk to this movie. It doesn't fit into a standard formula," he explained. "It's hard to come up with a lot of examples of, 'Well this movie is just like these three other movies that came out in the last three years that made a ton of money,' and they believe in it anyway and I believe in it too. They haven't made me change anything about the movie. They've just been completely supportive of what it is and I give them a lot of credit." He said the same was true of the movie's initial backer, Voltage Pictures, which previously financed The Hurt Locker.

"I give a lot of credit to Voltage for just trusting me. It was me and [co-star] Scarlett [Johansson] and a script and they gave us enough of a budget and then they left us alone," he said.

Relativity president Tucker Tooley also said they largely left the film alone, apart from changing the opening title and credit sequences and making necessary MPAA edits, which one might expect with a movie that, understandably, contains a lot of porn.