craveonline

Joseph Gordon Levitt is going to play Cobra Commander in the live-action G.I. Joe movie. First, you'll see him in a much more realistic sort of war drama, Stop Loss. He plays a soldier dealing with post traumatic stress disorder after a stint in Iraq, while his commander faces getting sent back under the stop loss provision. Levitt was sure to give his current film its due while dropping tidbits about the next one along the way.

---

CraveOnline: What drew you to Stop Loss and what did you relate to most about the character?

Joseph Gordon Levitt: Tommy's just about as different a character to my own personal stuff as I maybe have ever played. I was brought up by peace activists. I was blessed with a family that loved and supported me. Tommy I think was not so fortunate. This isn't in the movie but this is something I spoke about with Kim a lot. That speaks to her strength as a director that she took the time to figure out with me who this guy's dad is, who's this guy's mom, what was his life like before he enlisted, what does that mean, why does he enlist, what are those demons that he left at home that he's trying to cover up and that he has successfully covered up finding a new family of sorts in the military and Texas? How do those demons come back to get him when he returns home and does no longer get to be an outstanding soldier in Iraq because you can't be a soldier when you're back home. There's not people trying to kill you. You don't have a rifle, etc. Those things are all I think implicitly in the movie because I was thinking about them all day long but they're not explicitly addressed. That's Kim for you, that kind of thorough, in depth analysis of a character's psychology and personality is what she's all about, what she's so good at.

CraveOnline: How good a shot are you really?

Joseph Gordon Levitt: Not as good as Chann, I'm better than Vic. Some people took dates [to the firing range], right? It was like a date for some people. Texas. It's a bizarre love/hate relationship I have with guns. Mostly, they're machines designed to kill people and the more you have them around you, the more likely you are to get shot, but I gotta admit, it's an exhilarating thing to shoot a gun. It just is.

CraveOnline: Most of you have worked together before, right?

Joseph Gordon Levitt: Yeah, I worked with Channing before and Rob worked with Channing before.

CraveOnline: Any lasting relationships formed?

Joseph Gordon Levitt: Yeah, it's funny. Normally, the standard drill is you get really close with people when you work on a movie and then you probably don't see them again, or hardly. It's even rare to keep one friend from a movie. I swear to God, I'm good friends with Rob, with Vic, with Channing, with Ryan, with Abbie, with Mamie. I've seen all of them recently and they're all friends of mine. That's extremely, extremely rare and I think it just speaks to the fact that Kim cast a cool bunch of people and we all had an experience that was so intense and so positive together that we're still friends.

CraveOnline: Did you based Tommy on any real soldiers?

Joseph Gordon Levitt: Yeah, it was all based on people. We were hanging out with soldiers before shooting the movie, while shooting the movie. We were just hanging out with a couple of the guys we trained with last night. That was not only did I base my character on that, I couldn't have possibly done this movie without being able to soak up who they were and take all that I admired about them and try to put it into what I was doing.