I’ll be publishing a big interview with “50/50” star Joseph Gordon-Levitt tomorrow, and believe it or not, it’ll be about “50/50.” Much like Michael Shannon and “Man of Steel,” Gordon-Levitt has found himself hit up for any and everything about “The Dark Knight Rises” — his second collaboration with director Christopher Nolan and the third in one of the most anticipated series of films of all time — while trying to promote his new film. Again, it was ever thus.
With “The Dark Knight Rises,” though, the fever pitch is deafening. As discussed recently, every morsel to float out of that production has made its way to the net and been devoured. We’re all guilty of spectatorship, and really, take your own council on that. But when it gets in the way of promoting something else, it has to be frustrating.
And please, I’m not claiming white tower innocence here. In the fall of 2009 I published the first plot breakdown of “Inception,” but outside of one considerable spoiler (which was labeled as such), there was nothing in that material that wouldn’t have had to come out in the marketing of the film eventually. And, indeed, it was pretty much outed by the first major trailer a few months later. But this stuff has gotten more and more out of hand.
With the film in question, we’ve seen Anne Hathaway and Christian Bale getting into a cab via riveting YouTube video, images of the Batmobile crawling down snow-covered streets, footage of Tom Hardy filming a scene as bane at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh and Batman in whatever his flying machine happens to be in this film (horribly out of context both narratively and practically, naturally). Even the first still that made it out from the production (of Catwoman on the Batpod) was actually a bit of preemption on the part of the studio because they knew footage of those scenes would leak in the days that followed.
Gordon-Levitt himself has been filmed doing a few takes of — get this — crossing a street. It has to be a head trip when this kind of stuff causes such a fervor, so I asked him to comment on that. Here’s what he had to say:
“It’s cool that people are excited about the movie. I’m excited about the movie. And I would be really excited if I weren’t in it. I get why people are interested. But sometimes it can be a little weird because we try really hard to get the details right and make a great experience for the audience. And then when other shots that aren’t, like, how we want to present them, or shots that we wouldn’t want to be presented to the audience sort of get out there, it can be a little, ‘Oh well.’ The truth is I feel like audience members will probably enjoy the movie a lot more if they avoid those types of spoilers.”
The diplomatic answer.
Check back tomorrow for our full interview with the “50/50” star.