Joseph Gordon-Levitt Making Feature Directing Debut On Comedy With Scarlett Johansson

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a busy 2012. The actor will be seen in The Dark Knight Rises, Premium Rush, Looper, and Lincoln. He is also set to make his feature directing debut. Deadline reports that the actor penned the script and will star alongside Scarlett Johansson in a comedy being financed by Nicolas Chartier’s Voltage Pictures. Filming is slated to start April 16 on the project being produced by Ram Bergman Productions in association with Gordon-Levitt’s hitRecord Films. 

The film is described as "a sexy comedy about about a modern-day Don Juan, and his quest to become less of a 'selfish dick.'” Gordon-Levitt will play the lead character, and there is another female lead role that will be filled soon. The actor said that he has always been interested in directing:

I was a child actor for years and quit at 19, went to school awhile, and a big part of why I came back was that I ultimately wanted to make movies. I spent a year working with Chris Nolan, Rian Johnson, Steven Spielberg, and I did my best to pay attention. I’ve also been making short films for a long time now, I’ve directed a ton of them, and that is a huge part of why I feel comfortable and confident in this.

Until now, he has only directed short films that include an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s short story Sparks, and Destiny’s Eleventeenth Date: The Zeppelin Zoo. He worked on the feature script for three years.

This is the first time I finished a feature film I thought was good enough to make into a movie. I’ve written others, including one mammothy huge sprawling thing that encompasses my entire point of view of everything since I was 20 years old.

He went on to say what he thinks it will be like to direct himself in the film:

I wrote myself a helluva role, one that people wouldn’t necessarily thought of me for. I’ve thought about that a lot, but that’s a big part of what I’ve learned making and appearing in short films. It takes practice to get used to seeing yourself and not being freaked out and self conscious by the sound of your own voice.

The big question right now is if Gordon-Levitt will be able to follow through on the idea of playing a small role in Django Unchained for Quentin Tarantino. “It will be tricky schedule-wise, but I was honest with Quentin upfront,” Gordon-Levitt said. “He was so cool and encouraging. He said, ‘You strike me as the kind of guy who would want to direct,’ and I took that as high praise.”

 

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