Top 202 Quotes & Sayings by Joseph Gordon-Levitt - Page 4

So to compare your real life, or your partner or lover or whoever to a character in a movie, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. They don't map.

I know how to make an audience laugh, 'cause I grew up on Third Rock from the Sun, week after week in front of audiences, making them laugh.

For context, the budget of Don Jon is about half the budget of (500) Days of Summer. And (500) Days of Summer is about a third of the budget of the lowest-budget movies produced at a major studio.

We couldn't afford test screenings. This is a relatively low-budget movie [Don Jon]. But what we did have was the festival circuit.

Everyone has a unique perspective and that's valid. Everyone's perspective is valid. That doesn't mean that everyone has the same degree of skill level as an entertainer, but skill isn't the only important thing. It's also what kind of perspective and feelings you're bringing to it.

That's sort of what I wanted to make fun of a little bit with Don Jon. And I think oftentimes, if you're going to talk about a sort of substantial topic like this, the best way to do it is with a sense of humor.

This movie [Don Jon] played at Sundance and South by Southwest and Berlin. And it just played - well...by the time it played at Toronto recently, it was already done. But getting to watch it with a thousand people is hugely informative.

You see a woman on a screen and you reduce her to just a thing, a sex object.

I want to keep working with people that care about what they're doing. It seems obvious, but it's not. It's sometimes hard to keep on that track.

Nothing is ever finished. It's a funny thing. I actually think that's really the more natural way of stories or songs.

The traditions of Hollywood are grand and great and are going to survive forever, in a way. But they're not going to be the only way for much longer. The technology is such now that you don't have to have millions of dollars to make a movie. You can make one with a computer.

I've always paid a lot of attention to the way that different kinds of media affect how we see the world, probably because I've been an actor since I was a little kid.

The truth is, an actor's performance is the result of work by a lot more people than just the actor. When you see that character portrayed up on screen, there is the work certainly of the actor, but there's the work of the editor, there's the work of what the camera was doing. What the music was doing, all of the above.

I just want to open up the avenues for people to express themselves. That's what the media ought to be. It shouldn't just be a conveyer belt of shiny products to buy. It should be a way that we're all communicating and understanding each other.

Certainly the animation technology is growing like crazy. All media technology is.

I think any time you set out to make something, anybody is going to be confronted by those voices in their head that say "You don't need to do this. Someone else can do this better. You should probably just quit right now."

If you don't stick to your plan enough, and you're too seduced by whimsical notions and new ideas, you can kind of lose your train of thought and end up with something that doesn't have a solid through-line.

I knew that if I wanted to really maintain control, I would have to keep the budget down. And I did. And I feel very fortunate that - y'know, this movie [Don Jon] - frame for frame, line for line - is exactly what I wanted it to be. Nobody made me change anything.

I go through a lot of bad stuff, because most of the stuff that's written is pretty bad. But occasionally something comes along that's good, and I want to do it.

I've always found it sort of hilarious, and occasionally horrifying, how these images [in mass media] impact us, and especially when it comes to love and sex and relationships, I think we sometimes develop unrealistic expectations.

Bikes are clearly a superior form of transportation when it comes to just simple getting around. A car makes sense if you need to carry a bunch of stuff.

I do feel that even though I didn't grow up being a big sci-fi fan or comic books or superhero fan, I felt myself definitely gravitate towards these movies that have a high concept and yet they're giving you a moral dilemma within that.