Namely Nostalgic : From Rock To Record

Tommy Solomon was the youngest member in human form of the Solomon family. He was, however, the oldest in alien form. The show was 3rd Rock From The Sun and the actor who played Tommy was Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The show lasted for six seasons and during its run, Gordon-Levitt picked up a number of award nominations and a couple victories. Before 3rd Rock, he kept busy on various sitcoms and movies as a child actor. In the nine years since 3rd Rock went off the air, he has continued to keep busy working mostly in film.

Not too long ago I came across a project that Gordon-Levitt has been working on for a number of years now. It's an online site called hitRECord (http://hitrecord.org) where he deals with joint ventures in creative productions of original content. It's a fully interactive, ongoing site with a community of regular, everyday people contributing short length video and animation, story ideas, pictures and music with the ambition to have other viewers watch and listen and then collaborate on everyone's ideas. It's an impressive, adventurous web site that Gordon-Levitt runs and what I like about it is that whenever a great idea comes to the surface and Gordon-Levitt sees real potential in it, he then personally gets involved with the project and begins the process of turning it into a money-making creation.

The most popular production so far is a series called "Morgan M. Morganson." Gordon-Levitt both narrates and acts in what has now become two different short films. The short titled "Morgan M. Morganson's Date With Destiny" was shown at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The finished, collaborative film is artistic both visually and verbally and I really enjoyed it. If it's any indication as to the quality of ideas and production of future projects, I can certainly say that I look forward to more and more of what Gordon-Levitt and his community can come up with.

Gabe is a contributor to Just My Show and a blogger at Down In The Attic