Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Lame New Twitter Account Isn't Selling His Movie

In the new movie economy, you can't just promote your new movie by releasing a trailer. This year especially, it's been all about gimmicks and Vine trailers. Not one to miss out, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is getting very gimmicky in a very personal way for his directorial debut. He announced today on his Twitter feed (which already operated in part as a promotional account for his "open collaborative production company") that he's started a new account for Jon Martello, the porn-addicted protagonist of his movie Don Jon, which he also wrote. Taking on a fictional persona is by no means anything new on Twitter, but it will be interesting to see how this works as a promotional tool. So far? Not that well, which doesn't necessarily bode well for the film itself. 

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Jon, a Jersey Shore kind of guy, is an against-type character for the manic pixie indie boy turned superhero Gordon-Levitt, and his tweets look like he's frenetically straining in the role. 

Gordon-Levitt is just being too self-referential. He tries to distance himself from the character by calling himself a "pussy ass kid actor" and saying that he was in 30 Rock—when he was in 3rd Rock from the Sun. But that just makes the audience more conscious that Gordon-Levitt himself is playing this for laughs. Are you laughing?

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The film, which also stars Scarlett Johansson, premiered at Sundance to mixed reviews. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "both as a director and actor, Gordon-Levitt is switched on all the time, offering little shading or nuance." The Twitter account indicates that as well. 

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Of course, we'll get a better idea of what this movie looks like tomorrow when the trailer comes out. Oh yeah, Jon let that slip. The movie is due out in October.