On Sunday November 18, 2012, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt came to Ithaca, NY to perform live at Cornell University’s Bailey Hall. The sold-out show, hosted by Cornell University Program Board, was part of Gordon-Levitt’s hitRECord on the Road tour.
Although few people could anticipate what the performance would entail, shrieks of excitement still erupted from the predominantly female audience when Gordon-Levitt emerged on stage, SONY camera in hand.
“I feel like Socrates, or something,” he said with a smile, in response to the crowd’s passion. When the cheers subsided, Gordon-Levitt explained what hitRECord’s all about.
The story goes that hitRECord, an “open collaborative production company,” started out just as something Gordon-Levitt would say to himself. As an actor, he felt like he “couldn’t leave it up to other people to let (him) be creative,” so he would tell himself to “hit record.” Eventually, the red record button became a symbol of his need to take action in the creative process.
“The most valiant thing you can do as an artist is to inspire somebody else to express themselves,” explained Gordon-Levitt. And thus emerged hitRECord, a digital community in which artists collaborate together to produce short films, stories, music and other forms of art.
The hitRECord on the Road tour began at Sundance in 2010. “Now we’re doing a whole tour of big-ass theaters!” Gordon-Levitt enthused, noting that Bailey Hall was the most impressive venue that the tour had visited.
The show was a high energy, collaborative performance in which the audience played as large a role as Gordon-Levitt himself. Not only did he emphasize audience participation, but he also encouraged the audience members to record the event on their cameras or smartphones. “Are we recording?” was the evening’s catch-phrase.
To demonstrate what it’s all about, Gordon-Levitt alternated between showing short-films created by hitRECord and allowing the audience to get involved.
One of the short-films, Strawberry Bootlaces, starred Gordon-Levitt himself. The first time he showed this video, it was a nostalgic homage to a favorite childhood candy. The second time he showed this video, it was called Stoner Bootlaces. Although the footage was the same, the voiceovers were vastly and hilariously different. The childlike whimsy of the first viewing was replaced with comical commentary about being high and craving strawberry bootlace candy. The evolution of this short-film from Strawberry Bootlaces to Stoner Bootlaces really showcased what hitRECord is all about: artists feeding off of each others’ creativity to create memorable art together.
Gordon-Levitt enabled the audience to become part of the hitRECord collaborative process in a few ways. He asked people who wrote interesting tweets with the hashtag #hitrecord to come on stage and engage in discussion, which he filmed. At one point in the evening, he even invited audience members to dance for a music video for hitRECord’s website. Much to the delight of fans, Gordon-Levitt jumped into the audience in pursuit of the crowd’s best dancers. And as his finale, he had practically the entire audience come on stage and sing with him.
“He stood at the end of my aisle for like three minutes, and I took 77 pictures,” said Emily Hardin ’16.
Some Cornellians, however, were less enamored by GORDON-LEVITT’s presence. Yasmin Alameddine ’16, who was not in attendance at Sunday’s show, said, “What’s his thing? He just preys on young girls’ hearts.”
While the audience’s infatuation with GORDON-LEVITT was certainly abundant and visible throughout the performance, it was also clear that GORDON-LEVITT is much more than a celebrity crush. Throughout the evening, he focused on the themes of roads, loops, and even Occupy Wall Street. He asked the audience to tweet about these topics using the hashtag #hitrecord. Then he asked the writers of his favorite tweets to have conversations with him on stage.
Jon Zucker ’13 was one of the lucky tweeters invited on stage. “It was awesome!” he exclaimed, “I mean, he’s one of my favorite actors of all time, and he’s just like a regular dude. And I like that what he does is what he believes in.”
This alignment of his personal values with his work has clearly brought Gordon-Levitt tremendous success. He confided to the audience that hitRECord will soon be adapted into a unique variety television show in which the audience will comprise the camera crew.
Great things are surely in store for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a truly special RegularJoe. Even if they aren’t (which is highly doubtful), then at least he’ll still be pretty.
