A Magic Moment with Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Extended Interview

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GatorLite, with a specialized blend of five electrolytes, was scientifically designed to help move fluids into the body faster for rapid rehydration. Shop now at retailers nationwide. GatorLite hydrates faster than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration, consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist." "So wait, we just appeared? Is that what happened?" "We did, I guess it was, it was like a mellier magic moment right there." "When I was a little boy, I would dream of being able to do special effects like that." "Really? Is there one that you still haven't gotten to do that you really want to do?" "No, I think I've done all of them now." "All of them?" "I know, I might as well." "I might as well just die." "Oh, man. Well, we have the budget, I think. I think Wizards will give us the budget if you just want to incinerate or something." "Okay." "Or if you want to, you know, like Jace Bellerin and. " "Should I?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "Pretty cool." "Magic! This is where the magic happens." "You did that on purpose." "I did! It was a really good transition, I'm very proud of myself." "It was." "You are a long-time magic player and you said that you have something cool." "Yeah, I do, I do. I'm excited. I'm actually really excited to look at this. I just spent yesterday feverishly looking for these and I was actually worried for a couple hours that I'd lost them, but. " "Oh my gosh." "I didn't lose them, thank God. There's another one. And the binder with the nice fancy cards. I haven't opened these boxes or this binder in a while." "And I actually don't know how many years. I have a lot of memories about what's inside of here, but I haven't looked in a long time." "This is such a time capsule." "It's exactly what it is, yeah, yeah." "Right here. I'm surprised that there's no, the S, the little S's that we used to draw." "Yeah, yeah." "It looks like a lot of that sort of writing." "You guys have, I mean, can you see this? It says Joey GL." "Joey GL. Is that how you were addressing your preferred form of address back then, Joey?" "I was Joey, yeah, from age like probably seven to roughly 17, everyone called me Joey." "So you're Joe now, regular Joe right now." "Yeah, yeah, these days I usually say Joe." "So for this one, can, because we're going back in time, can I call you Joey?" "Yes, yes, that's really funny, and yeah, sure." "We're taking it back to Magic playing Joey GL." "I also like that I wrote Magic here, and also just in case that was missed, M colon TG. This is back when I had time to like really, you know, write things on cardboard boxes." "It's like Carter unearthing the tomb of Tutankhamun, and we're like going through the antechamber, and we're looking at the, the rude, the hieroglyphs here." "This is also when K-Rock was really good. No offense to K-Rock nowadays, but I don't even know actually what plays on K-Rock anymore, but back then it would have been like Nirvana, Green Day, Pearl Jam." "Back then you had to have like cassettes of your favorite." "I was more CDs, but yeah." "Oh, okay, so we've set the scene for Joey GL's MTG boxes. Listening that we've got K-Rock on in the background, we probably can't because, uh, you know, licensing, that'd be very expensive." "What's with these homies dissing my girl? Yeah, all right." "Yes." "Is that expensive if I do that?" "It's okay, you just said a couple of words, it's fine, it's fine. Uh, so what is in the boxes?" "If I remember right, I had four decks that were like my creations." "Mm-hmm, you had killer decks." "Yeah, I had one I would call like a really killer deck, like I put most of my effort into like the one kind of very ambitious masterpiece deck, which might or might not have been as effective as the red lightning bolt deck, which is like easier to make but would maybe win more often because it's sort of, it's a red lightning bolt deck. Do they still have lightning bolts?" "For me, I play red because it's very aggro, because that is who I am as a player and probably as a person. I like to strike, strike hard and fast and true, so there is still lightning bolt, but a lot of lightning bolt-like things. A whole lightning bolt party as well. It's really awesome. And so you had a couple of choice decks, as you put it, and you, did you play just with friends? Did you ever go down to your local game store and people playing?" "Yeah, that's the thing, like I became adjacent more recently to the world of comics because I was in a big comic book movie. I never really read a lot of comic books when I was young, but I feel very familial towards that culture because I played D&D and I played magic, and it was the same stores. So you were hanging around with the same people." "Yeah, so when you hang out with the geeks at the local, essentially geek store, they have comics, video games, tabletop games, magic gathering tournaments, and Pokemon, and like D&D." "I remember when Pokemon started coming out and me being like, so it's like magic. So they ripped off magic, is basically what they were doing." "Pretty much. Yeah, because Magic: The Gathering was the sort of trading card game, I think, that like all of the, I thought they were the cool kids were playing. And then all the rest of us would, you know, kind of try and get in on that world with other cards like Yu-Gi-Oh! or Pokemon, or we saw that." "But magic was just starting then. When I would go to comic stores and play magic, it was still pretty new. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't start right at the very beginning. Like there were still the, the storied older sets, the Black Border like beta set, or even the alpha set, or there was Arabian Nights and Legends were the expansion sets that came out before I got into it. And when I got into it, it was the dark was what was out. Well, that was the expansion set that was out. And I guess third edition is what the basic set was. But it was White Border, not as cool as the, as the Black Border." "What, what got you into magic? What made you?" "It was my D&D friends." "Yeah?" "It was D&D that I got into first." "You played D&D? What edition?" "I had different books. I'm sort of, I don't know, my, my take on D&D is that any, um, any official like codification of D&D is outside of the core of what D&D really is. This is one of the things I love about D&D is there is no product." "At the end, it's house rules?" "At the end, it's, it's two or more people basically telling a story together, talking." "Yeah." "With sometimes there, you, you should use probably dice. Like I like that there's dice here." "Right." "So there would usually be like dice like this around when we would play magic. I used to play D&D with a guy who was around, uh, with Gary Gygax. Um, and he like taught a class at like a summer camp, um, at a school in the Valley where, where I, you know, grew up. And he would talk about, uh, D&D before they even made 20 sided dice. And he was like, you had to roll a D6, and a D10. And if the six was even, then you'd add 10 to whatever you got on the D10. So this would be a 12." "Yeah. And it's funny that all the basic mechanics of it can change drastically, but really what the core of it as is, as you said, just telling stories with friends." "This is what I love about D&D." "Yeah." "And magic, I mean, I will admit that as a D&D fan, when I first saw magic, before I really knew what it was, I was resistant because it was new and it was a thing that you had to buy. And I loved that D&D, you didn't really have to buy anything." "Yeah. Well, one person generally knows the rules, uh, and, and maybe it has, has the, has a book and everything, but then it's just everybody else brings their imagination into it." "Once my friends started getting into magic. And once I started getting into it, I was like, actually, there really is something uniquely creative about this. That's different than D&D because the, the structure that the cards land, um, gives you sort of creative, creative constraints. And sometimes when you're trying to be creative, constraints is exactly what you need. If you're just looking at a blank page, you're like, tell the story about anything. Sometimes you can be like, well, I don't know, what should I tell the story about? But when there's cards like that, um, then all sorts of stories start just coming up that you're, you know, inspired to think of from the cards." "Yeah. Is there a character from magic that you would want to play in D&D?" "That's a funny question. I don't think we ever did that. Um, I mean like, you know, the super rare card at that time that you kind of, you would want to be the Royal Assassin because he's such a badass, right?" "Yeah." "But I would say probably I identify more. In fact, I think my, my best My deck was a Tim deck, which I don't know if they still call him Tim, but back then they used to call the Prodigal Sorcerer Tim, which was a Monty Python reference. Right, Tim the Enchanter. There are some who call me Tim. Yeah, okay, so you know the reference. Oh yeah, I'm a huge Python fan. Okay, but did you know that the Prodigal, I don't know if you know what a Prodigal Sorcerer is. I did not know that, no. The Prodigal Sorcerer, everyone used to call him Tim, and you would make a Tim deck. This, my deck was sort of a Tim deck, was an ambitious, extra Tim deck. The core of it, I guess, was a Tim deck, but like, it was a lot, there's a lot going on in it. You could totally translate Tim into a D&D character. For sure, the person who can like remotely just cause you damage without you ever noticing or getting like a chance to take your own shot back at him. It's sort of a passive-aggressive move, but. Tim the passive-aggressive Enchanter. He doesn't stand. He doesn't stand directly in front of you and hit you, he's like off somewhere else where you can't reach him. Yeah, he's like, oh you're tagging me, that's fine, that's fine, that's cool, I'll just, let's be over here. So just to linger on history for a second, what I remember most about playing D&D or playing Magic is my friends, right? Because ultimately it's not really about these things, it's about the connection that they can. I would not be playing this in a vacuum, no. Even though once I got into it, I would spend hours by myself putting together decks. But the whole time. I'm like waiting to show my friends. Yeah. I think there's nothing like being creative with your friends and games like this. I think games that are not just skill-based, but games that really require creativity is an opportunity for friends to be creative together and have that. And I think in a certain way that playing these games when I was a teenager, I think that these games really impacted all of my. Creative sensibilities. Yeah, because one thing, I have been a member of Hit Record since about 2012. That's awesome! I know! And I actually. You told me before, that's so cool, thank you. You know, one of my closest friends and collaborators, I did a show with Taliesin Jaffe here. So the idea of Hit Record as a place for people to collaborate and tell stories and create worlds to live in and play in together, it has that same feeling. I bet I wouldn't have made Hit Record if it hadn't been for you. I would have never made Hit Record if it hadn't been for playing D&D and Magic. I bet you. I bet you. Oh my god, that makes me really, really happy. It's probably true though. I mean, yeah, because Hit Record is all about, okay, we're online and we're being creative, but not just for the sake of being like, hey world, look at me, look at my thing that I made, please give me your hearts and your thumbs up because it's all about me and what I made. Because online culture can be that way. Sometimes. Sometimes. But that's the thing is if you choose your tribe online and choose your community, you can choose to be part of something like Hit Record. Or a lot of the Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons community that I know that is aggressively kind and positive and wants new ideas and new voices to come join them and play. And those are exactly the principles that we try to embody on a platform. One of the reasons that I started playing Magic on the show was I was learning actively from a friend and he was like, let me teach you Magic and we streamed it here live, so I made a lot, a lot of mistakes of Magic. I was like, I'm going to play Magic the Gathering live in front of an audience, but then also there's a Magic the Gathering online game and so we were able to take people from our online community and say, okay, here's our screen name, come just play a game with us. That's fun. Yeah. Wow, I've never played it online. There's different barriers to entry. For whatever reason, if you can't sit down with somebody and play this game, you can play with them online and that is, just makes my heart feel good. Yeah, likewise. That's really great. I feel like it's time to crack the seal. Time to open them? Okay, I'm excited. I'm hesitant to open this, but there might be D&D. Greetings, Adventurers. We interrupt this potentially life-changing podcast to bring you a message from our sponsor, Brooklyn Bedding. Now, Adam, of the two of us, you're actually the one who received a brand new mattress from these folks. Correct. And while Dan has been losing sleep over Eldritch Horrors and the terrifying consequences of his own actions, I've been sleeping on a Brooklyn Bedding mattress. So, honest review. How's it been? Honestly, it's pretty great. You can't tell because this is an audio medium, but I'm what you would call a large man. Over six feet tall, over 200 pounds. And that's why I went with the Titan Plus Luxe mattress, which is specifically designed for side sleepers, which I am. 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Should I open it? Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's see how this works. Yes, this is. This is a D&D character right here. Wow. Oh my gosh. Her name is Alanis. She's an elf, a mage thief. She has an 18 dexterity, which means she's fast as hell. Oh, wow. Yeah, that is up there. She has a short sword, +3/+3, and that can cure light. cure light. Cure light wounds? Yeah, I guess cure light wounds. I was abbreviating cure light wounds once a day. But Joey knew what you meant. Joey definitely did. Her alignment was CN, which stands for chaotic nuisance. This is amazing and blows my mind because I also have, like, old notebook paper with characters that I made up. But then I got into magic a lot later. So you're new to magic. I'm new school. And I'm the old school. Okay, so you might not even know these cards. No, so I'm really excited to look at them. Okay, okay, okay. I had a weird thing when I was playing because I was already acting. So I had more money than my friends did, but it wouldn't have been fun to just, like, spend tons of money. And, like, be able to beat all my friends with, like, all the fancy cards. And, like, the one time I was like, "But f*ck it. I'm gonna buy the Moxes." And so I did. And so I have, yeah, emerald. But I traded one of them, sapphire, ruby, and jet. So I traded my pearl. I don't remember where or what I got for it. What did you trade it for? Yeah. I don't remember what I got for my Mox pearl. That's too bad. I should remember that. I'm sure I got ripped off. You have all these other Moxes. Icy Manipulator. I mentioned Royal Assassin earlier. That was the killer combo. If you had an Icy Manipulator and a Royal Assassin, you could just pick off anybody. Because an Icy Manipulator taps somebody, and the Royal Assassin can kill anything that's tapped. And so you're just. This, I think, was actually the first rare card that I remember pulling this. So you bought this? Yeah. No, I didn't buy this as a single card. I pulled this out of, yeah, Booster Pack of the Revise of 3rd Edition. And you usually are, like, you can count on getting, like, one really rare card in a whole box of those. And I was like, "What am I gonna get? Am I gonna get a Royal Assassin? Am I gonna get a Sheevan Dragon?" I got a Nightmare, which is dope, and probably why I always, you know, sort of lean towards playing black. Because I had a Nightmare. Which just means that the more swamps you have, the bigger this Nightmare horse gets. And it flies. There is something really magic about acquiring a rare card by chance. As opposed to specifically going out and purchasing it. Yeah. So did you build a deck around that? At that time, I did. think any of my later decks, which are what's in these boxes, revolved around Nightmare. I did have like a big, good black deck for a while with this guy and the Sanger Vampires and the Nether Shadows and Dark Rituals and all that stuff. I wonder if that deck's still in here. That would be, that deck might, can I open this box and see if it's in here actually? Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's see if it's in there. I'm curious if that stayed alive. You think it's in that one? These look like the decks. This looks like, this is just extra stuff. Oh, wow. So, I think these are probably the decks. This is really funny. This is that! Oh, wow. Okay, this is that deck. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Demonic Tutor. I think they took the pentacle off of this guy. This is the- Yeah, they probably want to stay away from imagery that people might get a little spooked by. Yeah, well. I think it's metal. Metal AF. There's nothing that much worse about a pentagram than any other symbol that you might name. Let's see. I agree. Black Knight. Yeah, so the black deck. This is strong. So this is your awesome black deck. I probably have a proxy in here for the nightmare, because the nightmare obviously belongs in here. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stone Throwing Devils. This is from Arabian Nights. These were cool. Oh, right, First Strike. I forgot so much about all these things. First Strike. These are, yeah. That's what I remember, like, figuring out the ratio of it was, you know, one power, one toughness, but it also had a special ability. So to be able to put it out for just one mana was like, that's a strong creature. That's really good. I don't know why. This is like a really common card, but maybe sort of my favorite. I just love the art of it. I love the idea of a ritual is like speaking of like incorporating how I came to think of creativity. Ritual is a big part of it. Repetition, you know, having a ritual around your creativity. And so a dark ritual, which also just allows you to act really fast. If you have this in your opening hand and you can get three mana right away before anybody else has any land out. That's killer. This one too. Did you ever buy or make decks because it was really cool as opposed to building it around strategy? As opposed to it being effective? Yeah. I think this black deck is that. Okay. This is your cool deck. This isn't necessarily the, probably the most winning deck, but this is, it's black. I mean, it's the black deck. Yeah. That's funny. I have two black decks. Wow. I mean, that makes sense. Yeah, sure. Sometimes you're feeling one black deck and some days you're feeling another black deck. That's funny. Okay. Yeah. I think cause this is, this is like a nether shadow deck. This is all about like little black creatures. And I think if I'm not mistaken, this, yeah, this is low energy, unfocused, foggy. You might be dehydrated. Gatorade zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body with a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. 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Oh yeah, and they redrew Icy Manipulator too, which also pissed me off. No man, change like the things that I grew up with. It's so true. Are far superior to the new stuff. Exactly, exactly. Which is the essence of conservatism. I guess in this, as in life, it doesn't matter if you're old school or new school, you're still playing a game together. Sorry, I came upon the Royal Assassin. This is, I think, a fourth edition Royal Assassin. You can tell it's a little brighter than, yeah, see look, here's my third edition Royal Assassin. Oh, cool. And the colors are a little more saturated and the blacks are a little blacker. But this is the first one I got. This is the third edition Royal Assassin. Oh, Mirror Universe. Wow. Forgot about this. This is the Tim Deck. This was really my masterpiece. This is like my fun black deck. And then I think this, which I didn't even put into sleeves, is my like cheesy lightning bolt deck, which was probably really effective. That's more my style. Right on. Well, this probably won as often if not more often than the Tim Deck. Even though the Tim Deck, I don't know. The Tim Deck, I spent much more time and care on. This would be like making a superhero movie versus making like art house movie. You know, make a superhero movie. You're like, yeah, people are going to like it. You're like, you know people are going to like it. It's easier than it is to make an art house movie. But there's something that still draws you to like make the art house movie. Also actually though, the reverse would be true because this was way cheaper to make and this is very expensive. So it'd be as if you made like a cheap but effective superhero movie. And a really expensive one. A really expensive and perhaps less effective art house movie would be a really bad move in the movie business. But that's what I did. There are considerations to be made in creating all art. The cost, you know, what it means for your soul to make it, whether people like it or not. Who did you play with? I mostly played with a certain friend group. It was Nick and Ian and Jesse. Mostly those three guys. Bobby also. Sometimes Riley. And it would be at sleepovers. And it would be you know involve Pizza Hut and Weezer. Magic and D&D and staying up really late and just playing and playing and playing. That is a hundred percent my high school experience with that. Weezer and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. We would commandeer our friend's living room for this. And the parents were always very understanding. I think they were just happy we weren't getting into too much mischief. Yeah. True enough. You're not out like in danger if you're playing with your imagination. It's true. It's a really good thing. And actually there are a lot of after school clubs and extracurricular programs for D&D and Magic the Gathering now. Full support. Yeah. Full support. Do any of your friends still play Magic? I have some friends who I think do play D&D like over Skype with each other. But they're my friends who I used to play with. My friends who I used to play with, one is doing like crazy confidential tech in the Navy or something like that. One was living in China for a while. I don't know what Jessie or Bobby or Riley are doing. And no, I haven't played with them in forever. It would be crazy. I would love to. I don't get to play D&D with any of my friends that I used to, but yeah. Is that right? Yeah. That would be fun. It's like a reunion. Yeah. Yeah, you should do that. You should do that. You could just do a reunion game of Magic the Gathering. I know. Okay, I'm going to try to do that. Yeah. The last time I played Magic was probably four or five years ago. It wasn't with these cards though. It was someone that worked at HitRecord. Her name's Abigail. And she and I would talk about it at the office. I'd be like, "We have to play sometime." So at Sundance when she had brought her cards and we stayed up and played. Yeah. I remember there was some kind of argument about the behavior of nether shadows and whether you could, you know, the difference between buried and removed from game entirely. And the difference actually made a big impact on who won the game. I hope I wasn't too bossy. But I think I also was right. I love this. There was like the Sundance, the cool Sundance after party is arguing about Magic the Gathering. It was. And the difference between buried and removed from game entirely. I don't know if those are still terms nowadays, but there's a difference. Yeah. No, it's true. Although I have to say that it's really lovely that there's such a great online community for this that you can probably have tweeted it out and somebody would have come out with the answer for you. And they would have said that I was right. 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