Director Rian Johnson’s Looper is shaping up to be one this years most-anticipated films. The flick sees present-day hitmen known as Loopers, working for a future mob who use time-travel as a way of getting rid of their problems. In the upcoming sci-fi, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Joe, a Looper enjoying the rewards of the profession – until the day everything changes.
When the future targets arrive in the designated location for execution, the Looper wastes no time in dispatching them with the “Looper Gun”. Things are going well for Joe until one day his future self arrives for termination (played by Bruce Willis) and in a moment of hesitation, the older Joe escapes and the chase is on.
Gordon-Levitt plays the younger version of Bruce Willis, and to complete the transformation the actor had to spend almost three hours a day in a make-up chair and wear practical prosthetics to resemble the older actor.
Here’s the synopsis:
In the futuristic action thriller Looper, time travel will be invented – but it will be illegal and only available on the black market. When the mob wants to get rid of someone, they will send their target 30 years into the past, where a “looper” – a hired gun, like Joe – is waiting to mop up. Joe is getting rich and life is good… until the day the mob decides to “close the loop,” sending back Joe’s future self for assassination.
Check out the images which include the director and the ‘Looper’ Time Machine, plus Gordon-Levitt and Willis playing the same character in the upcoming movie here:
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The film also stars Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, and Jeff Daniels.
At WonderCon 2012, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and filmmaker Rian Johnson met members of the with press about Looper.
Christina Radish got to speak with the two and talked about the challenges of making this unique time travel / action film.
Here’s some of what they had to say:
Q: Did you and Bruce Willis meet and talk about how you were going to play the same character?
GORDON-LEVITT: I based my character on him. I watched his movies, and I would take the audio out of his movies and put it on my iPod, so I could listen to him. But, most of all, I just got to hang out with him, have dinner, have conversations and get to know him. It was a fascinating challenge because I didn’t want to do an impression of him. First of all, I’m not a good impersonator. Second of all, I just didn’t think that would be appropriate. It’s not a comedy. But, creating a character that was more him than me was fascinating. Then, we had this special effects makeup, every morning, for three hours, so my face is not my face. To look in the mirror every day and see someone else’s face was a trip. It was sort of a dream. As an actor, what I get off on most is becoming someone else.
Q: Was the plan always to have two different actors for the older and younger versions of this character?
JOHNSON: Initially, when I cast Joe and we were talking about it before we had cast Bruce, we were talking about the option of just doing make-up or something else.
GORDON-LEVITT: The egotistical actor in me was like, “Let me do both!,” but I’m so glad that’s not what we did.
JOHNSON: The reason that I actually came down against it was twofold. First, I think with aging make-up on younger actors, I don’t feel like I’ve ever seen it completely work. There’s been some tremendous work that’s been done, but I feel like, if you know what an actor looks like who’s young, as a movie-goer, I can usually see right through it. The bigger thing for me, and what emotionally pulled me into the movie, was the idea of a young man sitting across from an older man, who’s himself. You can make someone up. Joe is a fantastic actor. But, there’s something about a span of 25 years between two people that you can’t fake. That just buys you something that’s intangible and very essential to what this movie is basically about. And so, I thought it was really important to have two actors actually sitting across from each other, with that age gap between them.
GORDON-LEVITT: And there’s no way that I could have delivered the character that Bruce did. Bruce is magnificent in this movie. He gives a really strong performance. That’s not something I could have done, at all.
Q: Since the role was written for Joe, how did you decide that Bruce Willis would be the right actor to play the older version of the character?
JOHNSON: I had already written it for Joe, and then we cast Bruce in it, and then we dealt with, “Okay, how do we figure this out?” As our ingenious make-up designer pointed out, they actually look very dissimilar. They don’t look alike, at all. So, our approach was to pick a couple key features and alter those. When Joe showed up on set and started shooting, I was still very, very nervous ‘cause we had committed to this extreme make-up and it’s not like we had totally transformed him, so that he looked like Bruce in Moonlighting, or something. It was a hybrid. But, when Joe kicked in the performance, I knew that was going to take it a long way. It was amazing how much of a transformation there was, once Joe started doing the voice. The other thrilling thing about it, for me, was that it wasn’t imitation. He created a character, but it was a character that could be a young Bruce Willis. It was an amazing high-wire act that Joe was pulling off, every day. For me, it was just really fun to watch.
Q: Rian, was science fiction something you had always wanted to do?
JOHNSON: Yeah, I love sci-fi, and I’ve always wanted to do a sci-fi film. Sci-fi is fun because it always goes with another genre. I don’t know what a straight sci-fi film would be. Blade Runner was a sci-fi noir. Alien was a sci-fi monster movie. I love the genre so much. In terms of switching it up, it’s because I write these things too and I’m a very slow writer. By the time I’m done, I’ve spent three or four years on each of these movies and I just want to do something totally different because I’m so sick of that previous one.
Q: With time travel comes rules. Did you start from scratch to create your own idea of how time travel works, or were you influenced by other methods?
JOHNSON: The biggest influence, in terms of how to handle it from a storytelling point of view, was the first Terminator movie. I loved that film, for so many reasons. The genius thing about how it uses time travel was how it set up the premise and then got out of the way, so you’re not spending the whole movie explaining things on chalkboards. I also love time travel movies that do that. Primer is one of my favorite films. But, for this specifically, it’s really the characters and the action that drives it through. For me, it was about, “How do we use time travel without making the audience think about time travel, the entire time?”
Q: Have you thought about this film as a franchise or possible sequels, or are you just focusing on this film?
JOHNSON: I don’t think about it. I don’t think in those terms. Storytelling wise, you’ve gotta take it as far as you can possibly take it with each individual movie. If you’re holding out something for a sequel or some cliff-hanger, that’s not how I think of a satisfying story.
GORDON-LEVITT: It’s a very complete story. Rian doesn’t write stuff with money in mind. It’s not that kind of process.
Q: Could you see the character continuing to grow, in additional stories?
JOHNSON: I’d be curious to hear your answer to that, once you see the film.
Looper opens September 28th, 2012.
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