Creative Processing with Joseph Gordon-Levitt

“You have to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. You have to allow yourself to fail. Once you get over the fear of failure, then you will start to find where your happiness lies, and if ‘good enough’ is sufficient or not.” - Jessica Alba

This is the last episode of the season! I've really enjoyed the podcast medium, and I appreciate the audience that this show has gathered, so thank you for listening....

“From an actor's perspective...you have to be prepared for it to be really hard because there's so many factors that are influencing why you get a role and why you don't get a role. When you go into an audition, leave it in the room— otherwise it's too hard on your heart. And getting into those rooms is also tough, but you should try every avenue you can find and think of.” -Mary Vernieu

This week’s guest is...

“Making things ‘easy’ always has a downside...To pretend that you can make something easy without losing some of your focus and discipline is always a fallacy. There's always going to be a tradeoff.” -Jaron Lanier

This week’s guest is Jaron Lanier, who I’ve been fortunate to become friends with over the last number of years. He’s a technologist, computer scientist, musician, writer, and art...

“When you're an artist, it's not a button you can push on or off. You're always an actor. I sleep as an actor. I wake up as an actor.... I always think about art and creativity, and that's all I want to do.” -Omid Memar

This week’s guest is Omid Memar. He’s a fantastic actor who I recently was able to work with for an upcoming movie called 7500 (we actually recorded this episode at the movie’s premiere...

“A lot of people often think of rationality as actually about removing your emotions entirely, but I disagree with that because emotions are what ultimately make us human...To be truly rational, we have to learn to work with our emotions— not completely eradicate them.’” -Liv Boeree

My guest this week is Liv Boeree— a magnificent thinker, writer, and speaker. Liv is one of the most successful professio...

“There’s times before my mom and I are about to go onstage to play together, and maybe we just argued right before going on. But there’s something about that moment... where I give her a kiss on the cheek and say, ‘Hey, this started with you and me. Let’s go out there and do this.’” -Madisen Ward

My guests this week are Madisen and Ruth Ward, who together are known as the mother-and-son fol...

For this episode, I’m going to do something a little different. I recently did a TED Talk, and there was something really distinct and special about it. I’m pretty used to performing on stage in front of people as a character or for a show, but it felt different to be on stage delivering in-depth thoughts of my own about an idea that’s important to me.

I’m putting this TED Talk on my podcast because it’...

“At the end of the day, I’d rather make stuff period than make stuff how I want to make stuff. And specific to us, I’d rather make stuff together even than stuff alone.” -Evan Goldberg

My guests this week are the comedy duo Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. You've probably heard of their movies Pineapple Express, This Is The End, Neighbors, Superbad, Sausage Party, and most recently Good Boys. They’ve also ...

“To me, it's not about really external/internal. It's about a pipe between me and others...I have all these thoughts and I want to express them all, but people are not always ready to receive them. Then when you get together and express something...sometimes I can find a pipe where we can connect.” -Yuka Honda

My guest this week is Yuka Honda- a musician, composer, producer and all around fantastic artist. She’s on...

“I want to be transparent that any image with an agenda (which is actually most images) is a form of propaganda. It’s just whether you try to hide that fact or whether you’re honest about it.”-Shepard Fairey

My guest this week is Shepard Fairey- he is an artist and a self-titled propagandist who is perhaps most known for his HOPE Obama Poster or for his Andre the Giant Has A Posse OBEY Campaign. If you’...

“You have to be kind of angry about something to write a script...and if the thing that you're angry about is not something that you identify in yourself, I'm always wary of that.” -Rian Johnson

This is the very first episode! My guest is THE Rian Johnson- he is a writer, director, filmmaker extraordinaire. I was in his very first movie, Brick. He then went on to make The Brothers Bloom, Looper, and Star Wars: The Last ...

Here’s a little snippet from the very first episode of Creative Processing featuring writer/director extraordinaire Rian Johnson! I was in his very first movie, Brick as well as his third movie Looper. He also made The Brothers Bloom, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi. He’s an extraordinary thinker, artist, and human being. I always love conversations with him, and hopefully you’ll enjoy hearing this one.

So, check it ...

In his new podcast, "Creative Processing," Joseph Gordon-Levitt wants to explore all aspects of creativity and artistic collaboration. Each episode will focus on a single question contributed by the audience. Questions can be about any aspect of the creative process: from writing your first screenplay, to dealing with procrastination; from an actor's relationship with their character, to a musician's relationship with their instrum...