They just think he’s a great guy
by CarolineMarty linked me to this Grantland interview with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, one of my favorite actors. He makes some welcome and thoughtful comments about (500) Days of Summer, a movie I loved but a lot of people hated.
no responsesIt’s sometimes possible to lose sight of who the person is that you’re actually with instead of who you imagine them to be.
I did a movie about that called (500) Days of Summer.
Yeah, with Zooey Deschanel. I thought it was really effective in communicating that notion.
It was a widely misinterpreted movie, I think.
Really? How so?
Well, people tend to say, “Why didn’t she end up with him? He was so nice!” But I think that he was really quite guilty of projecting a fantasy onto this girl that she didn’t necessarily deserve, and that, honestly, he was pretty wrapped up in his own selfish point of view.
[Laughing.] I’ve been there many times myself, and the movie sort of spoke to me because over the years I’ve often been guilty of projecting a fantasy onto girls.
We’ve all been guilty of it. I’m sure I’ve done the same. And we all do it to one degree or another in every relationship. But it’s just funny to me, because I felt like the point of that movie was illuminating this guy who is basically delusional, who keeps projecting all these things onto this girl, and how that’s a problem for him, and how he then sort of grows out of it. But it seems like a lot of the people that see the movie don’t quite catch that. They just think he’s a great guy.