'3rd Rock' Guy is Psyched about 'Manic' It's hardly unusual for a star to go out into the boondocks - Boston, Seattle, Philadelphia - to tub-thump for his or her latest movie. But it's rare for an actor to do so on his own dime - which is what Joseph Gordon-Levitt says he's been doing to stir up interest in a little indie called Manic. Although the distributor, IFC Films, has been paying for a good part of Gordon-Levitt's current tour, the young actor - best known as the wisenheimer alien-disguised-as-teenager Tommy Solomon in the 1996-2001 NBC sitcom 3rd Rock From the Sun - has been paying his own way, too. And doing guerrilla marketing, such as sneaking around New York, plastering Manic stickers on construction-site walls and subway platforms. ("They go really well over Lizzie McGuire's eyes," he says, adding that he and his brother were busted for putting the stickers on East Village film posters.) "This movie is so dear to me," says Gordon-Levitt, 22, who stars as a kid whose anger-management issues get him thrown into a psychiatric facility with a bunch of other troubled teens. The R-rated release, costarring Zooey Deschanel, Cody Lightning and Don Cheadle, comes from first-time director Jordan Melamed. It opened Friday at the Ritz Five. "I'm really proud of this movie. Most scripts that you see are really bad - especially scripts about teenagers... . A lot of people don't want to see Manic because it's [got] a cast of teenagers, and they have every right to feel that way, because most movies with a cast full of teenagers are bad - and I would know, because I read them all. They sound like some middle-aged man who's out of touch with his kid is writing them, and maybe [he] reads Rolling Stone... to try to catch up on the slang. "The guys who wrote Manic" - that would be Michael Bacall and Blayne Weaver - "are both in the movie, and they're both the right age. This dialogue is how people really talk." Gordon-Levitt, born and raised in L.A. and immersed in showbiz since he was a grade-schooler, has lately become a diehard New Yorker. He's among the celebrity contingent (Julia Stiles, Anna Paquin) of the Columbia University student body (although he took the spring semester off), and thrives on the energy and intensity of the place. "It's all made of concrete," he says between slurps of tomato soup at a Philadelphia restaurant. "There's nothing to break the conduction of electricity. It moves so fast. Walk outside and you feel like you have to be doing something, and that's scary. I think that's what repels a lot of people about New York City, but I'm certainly attracted to it." Gordon-Levitt has been trying to put distance between the role that made him famous, as well as financially secure, and his ambitions and interests. He's studying French literature and film, he's carrying a digital video camera around, making movies. He did another small indie drama a few years back, Sweet Jane, costarring Samantha Mathis and Bud Cort, that he's happy to talk about. And Latter Days, in which he has a smaller role as a Mormon missionary, is set for release in the fall. Jacqueline Bisset and Mary Kay Place are in that one. "My freshman year was the longest break I'd taken from acting since I was 6 years old, since I started in the business. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do [with his life] when I left L.A. Manic was the last thing I did, and I was almost thinking, well, that could be a good closing note. "Then after I was away from it for nine months, I found myself dressing up as characters and speaking with a British accent or something - I was so eager to act." So he did an Off-Broadway play, and signed up for Latter Days. The 3rd Rock refugee says that he's often recognized and that getting parts in the kind of indie pics he wants to do has proved challenging given his mainstream, hit-sitcom resume. But he's not complaining. "It's funny... when I was younger it would really ruin my day if somebody came up to me and said, 'You're that dude from TV.' And even recently, it was never something I really enjoyed, until Manic. But now I'm happy to talk, because there's something that I actually want to tell people about."

Manic actor, director take time to speak about film by Sean Reid May 18, 2003 Why did it take so long for this to hit theaters? Director Jordan Melamed: We finished in October of 2001 and our original date was March of 2002. It’s about a year from the date. I think IFC films was having some trouble. They lost the head of distribution–he left for another company–and they had about five films for 2002 that were all getting released in 2003 and we were in that pack. Joseph Gordon-Levitt: They also had a stellar year last year. They made s– loads of money with Y Tu Mama Tambien and others. Manic is not a sales executive’s delight, you know, because it’s new and it doesn’t have a gimmick or any explosions or anything like that. Was that a concern for you guys? Were you afraid the studio wouldn’t know how to push the film? Jordan: Well, frankly after 9/11, the idea that any film that takes on a serious subject…people don’t want to see, because now people turn their minds off. They can’t see films that are both entertaining and meaningful, that is sort of an idea, I think, in the distribution world. Joseph: Which I think is insulting (laughs). Jordan: Yeah, people are smarter than that. Joseph: IFC did delay us, but they are putting us out. If you’re talking about corporate America big studios…that’s the notion they have, that people are dumb. If you think people are dumb and you make dumb movies, then you make dumb people. (pauses) I went to a festival in Philadelphia and this one kid who was like 16 or something, he came up to me and said, "Well I’ve been there, I’ve been in that hospital, I’ve been you." He said, "I just saw this movie two days ago when it screened and I came back to see it again." So, you know, people that see it…I’m so proud of it. I’ve never had the opportunity to promote something where to this degree I’m proud of it. There’s no smoke and mirrors here–this is a good movie. Did you speak a lot with those types of kids? Joseph: Yeah, we spent about three weeks rehearsing. But they (motions to Jordan) had been like researching for years before I got involved. I spent a lot of time that had been in hospitals. We went to support groups and halfway houses and we just hung out. Was it awkward at first? Joseph: It depended on the people. That’s definitely one thing we’re trying to say about this movie, ‘Is it awkward with these kids?’ Well, everyone’s different and you can’t compartmentalize them anymore than you can compartmentalize anybody. They maybe slipped a little farther and it landed them in these hospitals, but everybody’s got their problems, everybody’s got their pain. If you go see this movie, you will see people that you know in the characters, if not yourself. Definitely. It’s not like they’re some extreme version of humanity or an alien. There’s an extreme amount of rage in some of the characters, particularly yours. Did you have to go to a very dark place to get that? Joseph: Yeah. That’s the simple answer. Yeah, man, I was a wreck during that whole filming process. Jordan: They stayed in character, almost the all cast did. And it was three weeks of filming. It was pretty intense. And sometimes we’d film moments just spontaneously on the set when they felt they did something that their character would do. Everyone got so into it that it became something that they could tell you at some point, ‘No, no my character wouldn’t say that.’ Everyone was committed to being more real than most "good" performances are. What was it that you guys considered real? Joseph: To me real was…I was having nightmares every night. This was not an external movie, where the story was told by technical cinematic devices or anything. This movie was told by us getting into the emotions of it and capturing it. Thank God that I’ve never had an abusive father that I’ve never had to experience some of the things that that character had to. But, emotionally, it was painful. Making this movie hurt because it was real. Not that it wasn’t also incredibly fulfilling the whole time, because I was finally doing something that meant something. We were doing it for the love of it and the passion for it. Joseph: But you made a good point before about what is real, because it is drama. It’s written. And yes, some improvisation, but that was off of the story that was created so it’s not like it’s so real. It’s not a documentary. So what we try to do is make a film that combined the kind of truth you can get in documentary, because you can get human moments yet with the power of the story and bring those together. And digital allows you to do that in a way that film would never. It has everything to do with digital’s ability to take you away from the trappings of dollies and tripods and lighting and allow you to have the actors to be in the moment. Like not hitting your mark. We wanted to dispense with that. What about a movie that captures a deeper human truth? We used lighting, we used color–we went for a look that fit with the story we were telling. And digital, which may not be right for certain movies, was very right for Manic. What kind of clichés did you try and avoid while filming? Jordan: The biggest cliché we tried to avoid was the idea that you’re suffering from mental illness or any kind of trauma and that Robin Williams is gonna come along and hug you and tell you it’s ok and you’re going to be better for the rest of your life. And that you’re going to go to Harvard. That was it. To tell a real story about what it’s like to get better, and you can get better. But that it takes work and that it takes time. Those things will probably live with you, but you can get better.

GROWING PAINS? NOT FOR THESE TEENS; THOUGH THE ROAD FROM TV TO FILM ISN'T ALWAYS AS SMOOTH AS LEONARDO DICAPRIO'S, THESE ACTORS TRY TO AVOID POTHOLES. Several teen TV stars, such as Fred and Ben Savage, Claire Danes, Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Jessica Biel, have put their careers on hold while they attend college. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, late of the Emmy Award-winning NBC comedy series "3rd Rock From the Sun," had to overcome his TV image to land a role in the low-budget, indie drama "Manic," which opens May 9 after premiering at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. In an about-face from his role as the glib outer-space teen in "3rd Rock," Gordon-Levitt plays a surly young man committed to the juvenile wing of a mental institution because he keeps breaking out into sudden and violent rages. "I had never seen '3rd Rock' other than clicking the station and you see it for a millisecond," says the film's director, Jordan Melamed. "Of course I know about it and knew he was on the show. So I was very concerned." It was casting director Mali Finn who brought Gordon-Levitt to Melamed' s attention. When Gordon-Levitt came in for a meeting, he told Finn and the director he had prepared a scene. "He gets into Mali's face and he expressed a level of anger that was really, really shocking, " Melamed says. Although he was impressed, he didn't cast Gordon-Levitt immediately. "The instinct was all there," the director says. "But then the realization set in, oh my God, this kid is on TV. He's a comic actor. We had him come in a lot. He did a lot of auditions. I think I probably gave him a bad time. But thank God I cast him." Gordon-Levitt, now 22, made "Manic" when he was 19. He began "3rd Rock" when he was 13, and after completing "Manic" he left Los Angeles and headed for New York and Columbia University. His first two semesters at school, he says, "were by far the largest break I had taken from acting since I was 6." But after his first year at Columbia, Gordon-Levitt realized he still wanted and needed to act. He's since dropped out of Columbia, done a play off-Broadway and another indie film, and hopes that more doors will open after "Manic" premieres. Gordon-Levitt says the time off wasn't an issue. "I had been doing it for 13 years, so I wasn't scared that I would be able to come back. I knew ... I wouldn't have the same level of momentum. And I am glad for that because I wasn't frankly into the momentum. When I was on the show, I would see scripts that were really interesting to me, but then someone would say to me, 'That is way too dark, why don't you do a nice romantic something or other?' That was never all that interesting to me."

Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Manic May 20, 2003 by Lynn Barker You might know him as the “teen” alien from “Third Rock From the Sun”. She has been in lots of films, including Big Trouble and the upcoming Eulogy. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 22 and Zooey Deschanel, 23 are “serious” actors, often passing up roles in “fluff” or popcorn actioners in favor of the meaty character part in an indie film for a much smaller paycheck. Such was the case when they chose Manic, an intense film dealing with troubled teens in a rehab unit. Zooey’s character Tracey is terribly introverted whereas Joe’s Lyle uses violence to solve his problems. When we spoke with the young actors in a retro-50’s style L.A. hotel recently, they looked spiffy and far from “troubled”. Zooey was retro ‘50’s herself in poofy, full white circular skirt, white heels and striped jacket. Joe was looking collegiate in slacks, shirt and letterman-style jacket. The three of us chatted about the actors’ experiences with spooky “vibes” while shooting in the long-abandoned Camarillo Mental facility in California. Both expressed their distaste for the typical, mindless teen-aimed scripts they are asked to consider and we touched on more serious subjects while Zooey, who believes in eating several small meals each day, munched on an apple and string cheese. TeenHollywood: These characters are going through some intense stuff. Did you have to stay in character to achieve that? Zooey: Well, Joe stayed in character. Joe: Yeah. I was kind of a wreck the whole time. I couldn’t just be in pain and anger twelve hours a day, six days a week and then just go home and not be. Zooey: I had to kind of leave her (Tracey, her character) there. To continue to be that insecure throughout the day…. I just needed like eight hours where I could say ‘okay, now I can talk and be myself, recharge myself. Because this is a person who is so insecure and so introverted and holding so much inside, I kind of needed to release it and bring it all back at the beginning of the next day. We were all affected by it. Joe: I wasn’t going and beating anyone after work or anything. TeenHollywood: Given a choice would either of you rather be in a really meaty indie film or a big popcorn flick? Joe: Big budget corporate films can just be boring because you’re going to work, doing a job. Zooey: Unless you have some big budget director you want to work with but it’s hard in that context to bring people closer together because you don’t have the conditions that you’re working under like indie films; no trailers. It’s not like we wanted to hang out in our dressing rooms making Manic because they were people’s rooms at the Camarillo Mental Institution and there’s like weird bugs. TeenHollywood: Working in an abandoned mental institution sounds pretty creepy. Joe: It used to be the biggest mental institution on the West Coast. Zooey: They only re-did two of the buildings. One of them was our dressing rooms, only slightly cleaned up and the lunch room where they kind of cleaned up but the bathrooms had like cobwebs. Just covered in spider webs and dead rats in the webs. There was an energy, a lot of sadness there. That place had been there for a long time and stuff happened. Joe: It’s the place, I think, where Holden Caulfield is. Zooey: You have a mental institution that’s been around since the ‘50’s, when there were shock treatments and everything. I felt, at times like it was a typical teen horror movie. At lunch we went exploring and found this abandoned pool and there’s one person making jokes and you’re like ‘that person dies’. Group of crazy teens going off exploring the mental institution. TeenHollywood: Joe, when you first read the script, what made you decide this was your break-out role? Joe: You read a lot of scripts and basically, everything written for teenagers is insulting. You can either be the nice girl or the slut or the fat girl or you can be the nice guy, the hot guy or the nerd. There’s like six different people you can be and they’re all on the posters of every teen movie. It’s beyond insulting. It’s a damaging way to portray humanity and I didn’t want to be a part of it anymore. How can you people be so repetitive and with Manic immediately, I saw complicated human beings that didn’t fit into any stereotype. Just as you think they are fitting into a stereotype they do something that doesn’t fit in. That’s the thing where a studio executive would say, ‘What’s this? This doesn’t fit’. But that’s what Manic is all about. It’s realistic. Zooey: Yeah. I was at the Beverly Hills library reading it and I was like ‘this is really interesting’. I have never had to go in and try out so much as I did for this movie (Joe admits he did too). He and I didn’t read together. But, by the end of the process I was just drained and I almost said ‘no’ to the movie. They’d spent so many weeks going ‘oh, we don’t know’. I think they were trying to find the right mix. Then I read it again and thought I just have to this movie. It’s so good. I was curious to work this way. This was my third movie. I had only done studio movies. I had never done an independent. This was a wonderful experience. I was scared but now that’s all I do. This taught me that it’s really rewarding to stretch yourself and do something that is far from who you are or portray someone who is in pain. It’s cathartic for yourself. Joe: Yeah. Some of those therapy sessions were real in their way. TeenHollywood: You got paired up with actual rehab patients. What did you learn? Joe: I spent a lot of time with kids that had been in hospitals and we went to support groups. Zooey: I thought I had a lot more in common with them than I would have thought. You just go, ‘they’re like me if I were in a different circumstance’. Joe: Manic is not about mental health kids who are some other breed of human. Zooey: It’s about pretty average problems that are sad and far more common than we would ever like to think. Joe: I think everybody knows somebody like Lyle. Everybody is someone like that. The only difference is Lyle slips a little bit and he can’t control his anger so he beats someone up instead of cussing someone out. When I talked to people like Lyle, all I did was hang out with them like I’d hang out with my friends and we’d sit around and talk about music and whatever. Zooey: I talked to several girls and they had a lot of the problems that I saw in high school or that I had, feelings of insecurity, just normal problems that manifested themselves in ways that became unmanageable. TeenHollywood: Why do you think your two characters connect? Joe: Because they’re so damn hot! (Zooey bursts out laughing) Zooey: I think Tracey and Lyle…as much as she has many problems, she’s kind of a wise person, an old soul in a lot of ways. There’s something at peace with her. He’s very violent. They’re very opposite but there’s something magnetic there. She’s attracted to his vivaciousness. He has almost too much life in him. It’s kind of one of those weird relationships but it was wonderful. It’s so sweet. TeenHollywood: Has either of you played anyone this dysfunctional before? Zooey: She’s dysfunctional in a way that no other character I’ve ever played has been. It’s a person that I have inside me but that gets so buried underneath all the talk. I talk, talk forever (Joe nods his agreement here). I can cover every insecurity up and make myself seem like a really happy go lucky person. Underneath all that, there’s a lot of Tracey there; a quiet kind of person. It’s great to be able to express that. Joe: I did an independent movie when I was fifteen. It’s called “Sweet Jane”. You can get it on DVD. He had AIDs. It was another heavy movie but it never came out. I never had the opportunity really before. “Third Rock” and Ten Things I Hate About You are kind of about precision. You have to do it right, over and over again. You have to hit your mark and it’s all got to be perfect. You can’t be emotional because you’ve got to be right on time. Manic was the opposite of that. No marks to hit and we didn’t do it the same way twice. It was all about getting into it and feeling. TeenHollywood: How did you work with director Jordan Melamed? What was the process? Did you improv scenes a lot? Joe: He shot a lot. He has tons of footage. Using little high end video cameras, tapes are cheap so we had the freedom to just leave the camera on so it wasn’t really “cut”. You could just go off. We stuck to the script but in those group therapy scenes we just kept going. Zooey: It was interesting to mix it up. Some people are improvising and telling stories about institutions that they’d been in. They did a wonderful job. They were great kids. Like Lauren was like, ‘my family is like people who live in a hotel’. That was great. TeenHollywood: There is a wild scene in which the kids just go in a big room, turn on music and go basically nuts jumping around. Was that planned at all? Joe: We just put on music real loud and went at it. It was kind of similar to what I would do in my room listening to music but there were cameras there. TeenHollywood: How was working with Don Cheadle as your advisor or shrink at the hospital? Joe: Don was like the anchor. What we tried to do was create a really real world for us to be in. It’s a stretch for me because this character is kind of nothing like me. But, as soon as Don was there, it didn’t feel like a stretch. This is my therapist. He is so unquestionably his character. The character isn’t simplistic. TeenHollywood: What is the most important thing you hope young people will take away from seeing this film? Zooey: That Joe is a great actor. (Laughter) I feel like it’s an important movie to see for everybody, particularly young people. It puts a lot of things into perspective. For me, one of the greatest things about movies, is sometimes I’ll see a character in a movie and I won’t feel so alone. No one likes to talk about it but it’s very true. That’s one of the parts of being human. It’s wonderful when you can see something that makes you feel like you aren’t alone in your problems. Manic is a movie that has a lot for people to relate to. Joe: Really well said. Also, people my age, there’s a big tendency towards a lot of apathy right now. You can look around at the world and there are a lot of problems and the problems look so big and deep seated. It would be easy for a lot of people to just throw up their hands and go see some stupid movie and forget about it. Manic says you can’t do that. You have to struggle against it you have to try to improve yourself and the world around you. Zooey: And go through the nihilism. You have to face the ominous presence that is these everyday tragedies. Joe: And it’s not going to be easy. It’ll be hard and you’re going to fail and you have to try again. Zooey: It’s the truth no matter whether you face it or not and you might as well face it. Then, at least you are aware of yourself. In the end, the film is hopeful. Joe: One thing you can say about not turning to apathy is that it makes a difference what movies you go to. This is kind of my idealism but I think what movies you go see and throw down your money for makes a little difference. Zooey: It’s like voting. Joe: It is like voting. We vote with money. When you go see something like The Real Cancun then there’s going to be more of them. If you go see Manic then there will be more movies like it. Nirvana sold a lot of records and then radio was good for a few years. When I was growing up a bunch of great bands were on the air. So buy good records and see good movies. TeenHollywood: Do you think parental abuse is at the root of a lot of kids’ problems? Zooey: I think it absolutely can start it. It’s not just abuse, but neglect. People not facing things. Not facing problems but denying them. I myself was blessed with incredible parents. I’ve been so lucky (Zooey’s parents are cinematographer Caleb Deschanel and actress Mary Jo Deschanel). But I can see how much it effects people if you don’t have good parenting. Joe: Obviously these characters didn’t have the best relationships with their parents and there are all kinds of circumstances that let them to this hospital but I think the ultimate thing the film has to say is ‘okay what are you going to do about it’? Don’t go pointing fingers and don’t go saying what can I do? It’s not my fault. The world sucks. Lyle has these horrible violent outbreaks where he hurts people really bad and his excuse is they deserved it. Okay, maybe they deserved it but that doesn’t mean you have to go and beat them up. Zooey: I remember when I was eight saying ‘It’s not my fault”. And my mom said ‘Don’t ever say it’s not my fault’. Joe: Even if it isn’t your fault, nobody’s going to fix it for you. It’s not about what you had to do with it but what you’re going to do about it. Zooey: Also, on a personal level, say, ‘okay, I did that’. I have to take responsibility and fix my own problems. It’s hard and you have to keep doing it. *** Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.

TV GUIDE INTERVIEW For six seasons on 3rd Rock from the Sun, Joseph Gordon-Levitt charmed viewers as adorable alien Tommy. After the sitcom wrapped, he took a three-year break from acting to study French literature at Columbia. "I still get recognized almost every day," he tells TV Guide Online. "It's surprising. People are like, 'Hey, you cut your hair.' It was long, but I cut my hair like five years ago, when I was 17. I'm 22 now!" Now that he mentions it, what was up with his Jen Aniston-like coif? "It doesn't strike me as unique," he says. "I really just wanted to headbang to Guns 'n Roses and Nirvana and Pearl Jam. You certainly can't have short hair for that." Just before college, Gordon-Levitt starred in Manic, which traveled the indie festival circuit, and is now in limited release. It's about a violent teen in a mental ward for troubled youth. (Think Boy, Interrupted.) "I've been an actor for 15 years," he admits, "and Manic is the first thing I've been proud of. "Even though I loved the TV show I was on — and it was one of the greatest shows of all time — sitcoms are within a system that's very, very, very governed by money. Manic wasn't just a job for anyone involved." As he earnestly recalls: "A kid came up to me at a film festival and said, 'I've been in an institution just like that, and I've been through what your character has. I just saw this movie Wednesday, and came back to see it again.' It was important to him. I was never involved in something that meaningful before. I think this is exactly the kind of movie that teenagers should watch." Of course, some moviegoers may come less for the film's depth than the chance to see Gordon-Levitt all grown up and buff! "When you're dealing with me with my shirt off," he laughs, "it's hard to think about anything else. But the meaning of this movie shines through even my pectoral muscles, slight as they may be. I go for the skinny little Iggy Pop waif look." — Daniel R. Coleridge