A Night at the Movies with Joseph Gordon-Levitt

He was in 10 Things I Hate About You. He was in 500 Days of Summer. He was in Inception. And he was in Stamp Student Union.

Students crowded into the Grand Ballroom of Stamp last Tuesday to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s “Night at the Movies,” featuring films created by himself and users of his website, hitRECord.com.

As Gordon-Levitt explains on the site, HitRECord is more “than just exhibiting and admiring each other’s work as isolated individuals, we gather here to collectively work on projects together. Videos, writing, photography, music, anything — we call them all RECords.”

It quickly became clear that the night was not about Gordon-Levitt.  It was about a love for storytelling, art and community. He spoke very little of his acting career, only mentioning once that an “awww” from the audience reminded him of his “sitcom days” and thanking an audience member for a compliment on Inception.

Instead, Gordon-Levitt showcased the work of collaborators on hitRECord.com, and encouraged the audience to get involved as well by taking their own recordings during the show, sending thoughts to Twitter and occasionally coming onstage to read or sing.

At various points throughout the evening, Gordon-Levitt, who goes by the name RegularJOE on the site, invited audience members onstage to elaborate on something they had posted on Twitter, sing with a hitRECord video or read from the “Tiny Book of Tiny Stories,” some of which were only a sentence long.

UMD collegiette

™ Mandisa Henry was one of the chosen.

Gordon-Levitt “asked for good storytellers to volunteer. My friends all pointed at me,” Henry said.  “I was in the second row and I guess he saw because he came down, touched my shoulder and said ‘you go up.’”

Henry was one of a group of people asked to read the same sentence, but in different ways. One read slowly, one in a British accent and Henry chose a “valley girl” voice.

Gordon-Levitt explained that all of the audience participation could end up in a hitRECord video later.

“It was really cool to recite a tiny story,” Henry, who hopes her contribution will end up in a hitRECord, said.

HitRECord.com became a professional production company in 2010. It aims to “create and develop art and media collaboratively here on our site; we use my position in the traditional entertainment industry to turn that creativity into money-making productions; and then we share any profits with the contributing artists,” Gordon-Levitt says on the website, and has about 40,000 registered collaborators.  The site may have more than a few more after the UMD event, which introduced some of the students to the site and its premise for the first time.

Most of the hitRECord films that were shown were the works of non-celebrity participants, but attendees were also treated to some works starring some familiar faces. 

“Morgan M. Morgansen’s Date with Destiny,” a 180-collaborator work, starred Gordon-Levitt and Lexy Hulme (and Channing Tatum in a sequel, “Morgan and Destiny’s Eleventeenth Date: The Zeppelin Zoo”) along with colorful narration using words like “liplifted” instead of “smiled” and “see-globes” in place of “eyes.”

Gordon-Levitt also proudly played the trailer for a new movie, Hesher, in which he plays the title role.  The trailer was joined by several others for new material on hitRECord.com.

“I thought it went well… Hitrecord is like a visual media production company that’s very grassroots and allows everyone to participate and [collaborate] on projects. JGL was just sort of showcasing his company and promoting what they do,” Henry said.  “I’m sure he made a lot of new fans that night.”

Collegiettes™ interested in joining Gordon-Levitt and thousands of others in collaborating on the music, words, animation and other elements of film can visit the site at hitRECord.com.