“With Don Jon, it started with the theme of objectification, where a person treats another person as a thing,” said writer/director Joseph Gordon-Levitt. “That manifests with him being addicted to pornography, and hot it affects all of these other aspects of his life. Both Don Jon and Mr. Corman are very much character studies.”
In Mr. Corman, his new series on Apple TV+, the story follows the life of Josh Corman (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) a public school teacher in San Fernando Valley.
As a writer, Joseph thinks about the one thing that rules everything else for his main characters. On Don Jon’s objectivity,“What would that mean for his family? What would that mean for his friends? What would that mean for his religion or spirituality? What would that mean in his love life?”
“With Mr. Corman, the underlying theme came from this question of luck versus choice. How do you end up living the life that you live? And, how do you feel about that life you’re living?” For the show, this is most present in the pilot episode “Good Luck” when Mr. Corman asks his young students about luck, and then again in “Many Worlds” when we see alternative life plans for Josh Corman (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).
For the actor, this came from thinking about his own life during the pandemic. “I think that theme arrived, but it started with me writing something about myself. I usually gravitate towards characters different from myself, but for Mr. Corman, I had recently become a dad and was thinking a lot about my own life. I was feeling grateful for my partner, my kids, my parents, my health, but all of that gratitude begged the question, ‘Did I just get lucky?’ How much of this did I earn and how much did I just luck into?”
Among Joseph’s “lucky” breaks and “earned” roles, he’s best known for his original starring role as Tommy on 3rd Rock from the Sun, and movies like 500 Days of Summer, Inception, 50/50, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, Lincoln, and Snowden.
Josh Corman (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)
“So, [for Mr. Corman], I started taking the things in my life and changing them. What if I hadn’t met my wife? What if I wasn’t so lucky to have two positive, healthy, nourishing parents? Or, what if in my work life, I hadn’t had the lucky breaks to be an artist?” This led to Josh Corman having rocky relationships, one role model parent, and a longing to be a musician while working as a teacher. “That was the beginning of that character.”
Themes for Television
Some critics have called this a return to television for the actor.
“This is not a conventional TV show. Certainly not a sitcom. It’s more cinematic in how we shot it, but it is a series and it’s episodic. Features generally have one thing to say. They have one central idea and all the other ideas ladder up to this one idea. In a television series, I enjoy tangents. The show isn’t about masculinity, but in Episode 5, we talk about masculinity.”
Another major theme in the series is anxiety. In one of the early episodes, Mr. Corman’s chalkboard reads August, 2019 so modern audiences are aware we may be headed towards the pandemic, and how this character is going to deal with anxiety during quarantine, which we do see in the last three episodes of the first season.
“The first script I wrote was in 2018, so it wasn’t conceived that there would always be a pandemic, but we were three weeks into production in March of 2020 when we shut down. We ended up doing some rewriting and the conclusion we arrived at was that it was really relevant to what we were telling.”
Specifically, Joseph said Mr. Corman is a “character that catastrophizes” so it makes sense to show how he would deal with a massive, real catastrophe. Without giving too much away in terms of the plot, this leads to some unique moments on screen, fantastical backgrounds, and even some dance numbers and alternate timelines.
“We’ve done a bunch of those green screen short films on Hit Record,” he said, referencing the artistic backgrounds in the show. “We shoot actors in front of a green screen and then lots of animated images are collaged together to form the background. So we got to do that in a more refined and less DIY sort of way. I’ve got a really eclectic taste in the things I like to do and I enjoy playing around in these different areas.”
“Hit Record has been an outlet for me to do creative things that I wouldn’t normally do in conventional entertainment.” The company he founded is described online as “an open online community for creative collaboration.” The idea is that creatives worldwide can upload work and have other creatives all over the world enhance the work, be it art or music or film or anything else in between.
“That created a feedback loop for me because I’ve been in this community so long my own tastes bounce off this wide, diverse variety of perspectives, tastes, and creations. It’s evolved into me liking to do all of these things, and Mr. Corman is, in many ways, an amalgamation of these creative urges.”
The TV Writers’ Room
With over 25 years in the industry, Joseph has undoubtedly read thousands of screenplays; an experience that helped him pick a staff for his writers’ room. For Mr. Corman, additional staff writers include Roja Gashtili, Julia Lerman, Rosa Handelman, and Bruce Kaplan. “This isn’t the most useful answer, but it does come down to intuition,” he said of choosing his team.
“Some advice I could give to any writer is to act. That’s how I write. When I write, I don’t sit and type. I walk around this room and act,” he said (sitting in front of a drum set and a few shelves of music and camera gear during this interview). “I act out the characters, do takes, and there’s a lot of acting before there’s any writing. When I end up saying something that sounds right to me, I run back and write that down. Then get up and keep acting.”
The actor admits this approach isn’t for everybody, but these are his instincts based on many roles and many lessons from other writers and directors. “This will make them laugh. This won’t make them laugh. You have to time it like this. It’s hard to put into words, but it comes from having done it. Even if you haven’t acted, if you watch enough movies and read enough books, you’ll build up your own tastes and your own instincts. I think the human mind is an incredible thing that will deliver those intuitions if you feed it enough input.”
Natalie (Tess Jamieson-Karaha), Josh Corman (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Megan (Juno Temple) and Bassist (Sam Nakamura)
During any lulls in his work, Joseph leans into physical activities. “The drums are great because they’re very physical. I also find running or walking really helps. It’s almost funny how often that helps. You don’t see how running helps you solve problems, but it does. Work up a sweat, get your heart rate up, and new ideas come in. The drums do that too.”
Joseph joked that he’s not an extravagant person, but this is one room packed with gear where he’s spent a little money and is able to nourish his creativity. “It’s nice just to sing a song that no one is going to hear. It’s not for that. It’s just how it shakes up my head.”
The Collaborative Process
Over the years, Joseph has worked with iconic writers and directors like Robert Redford, Rian Johnson, Marc Webb, Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, and Oliver Stone. “Writing is inexplicably tied up with acting and directing. When I’m writing, it doesn’t feel like I’m writing a piece of writing. It feels like I’m making a plan for a show or a movie.”
“A screenplay is not literature. It can be literary. It can be a beautiful thing to read, but as an actor, I always find it a telling sign of a less experienced writer if it feels like I’m reading a book where the writer is very pleased with their prose or stage direction. A screenplay is a plan. The actors are going to make it their own. The directors are going to make it their own.”
“That’s not meant to diminish what a screenwriter does. It is the blueprint, but it’s not what the audience is going to experience. So if you want to write for your audience, don’t write screenplays, write novels. This is a collaborative process. Have the other creative people in mind when you write.”
With this trust in mind, in the scripts of Mr. Corman, there are very little details on the page in terms of the fantastical, collage-like background in certain scenes. “Not very much detail at all,” he clarified. “I just said, ‘We enter a fantastical world made of various imagery.’ I didn’t know the walkway up to Josh’s mom’s house was going to be made up of a crossword puzzle. That’s not the screenwriter’s job to know that. That’s where you have to be collaborative with these other artists.”
In terms of career longevity, Joseph joked, “Usually when I think about that, it makes me nervous and nothing comes out of that train of thought. I more think of what’s in front of me now and try to follow something honest about what I’m feeling.”
In some cases, the opposite role of a past role is most appealing, such as doing the indie film Brick after 3rd Rock and 10 Things I Hate About You. “I had voices saying, ‘Get on another sitcom. You can make a lot of money.’ I don’t think I was thinking about longevity. I just wasn’t inspired to do these things. I wanted to challenge myself in other ways and do Sundance movies. No one saw me that way, so it took quite a while. Out of that rejection, that actually led to Hit Record.”
“When I read Brick, it was just so weird. I remember reading it in this apartment in New York, lying on this cheap-ass futon. It was such a strange world. I read it and read it again right away. It said ‘A Detective Story by Rian Johnson’ right on the cover, but when things are out of the box, it takes a second to register. I loved it so much. Loved the dialogue. It instantly made me want to stand up and start saying the words. That’s the type of intuition I like to try and follow.”
As for writerly advice, Joseph would advise screenwriters not to have a goal of getting noticed. “If your goal is to break in and get noticed, to me, that is going to lead to something less than honest. I would more advise any artist to do your best to ignore any of those voices and go as deep as you can into yourself. This is a long and arduous process that takes patience, but to try and find what it is you want to say and why you want to say it.”
“What would make you feel like you are being the most you, regardless of what anybody else might think about that? Forget Hollywood. Forget your dad. Forget everybody and just try to be alone there. If you honestly do that, you will probably produce something more unique and compelling, which audiences are drawn to, but you’ll also make yourself happier and have a more fulfilling experience as an artist.”
“The brutal truth is that most of it comes down to luck. I say that knowing full well that I’ve been lucky enough to have some success. I’ve worked hard, but a lot of people work hard and not everybody gets the lucky breaks. It’s a bit of a cursed road if you’re staking your worth on external rewards from success in show business. If you want to be an artist, be an artist.”
This interview has been condensed. Listen to the full audio version here.
