Entertainment Weekly Story on ‘HITRECORD ON TV’ Sundance Premiere

Sundance 2014: Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives stirring tribute to late brother at HitRECord event

By Jeff Labrecque on Jan 18, 2014 at 5:01AM

Joseph Gordon-Levitt screened the first three episodes of his new Pivot television series, HitRECord on TV, at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday night. Gordon-Levitt has become a Sundance fixture, ever since he starred in Manic in 2001. His Internet production company, HitRECord—founded in 2005 to showcase videos Gordon-Levitt made in his free time—made its festival debut in 2009. “When we launched the third version of the site that my brother and I made together,” said Gordon-Levitt, whose older brother and creative partner, Dan, passed away in 2010, “we pushed the button here in the snow at Sundance 2009 on Jan. 20.”

Dan, better known as Burning Dan for his many appearances at the Burning Man arts festival in Nevada, was clearly on Gordon-Levitt’s mind as the little website grew into a formidable enterprise with a new TV show. On Friday night in Park City, when an audience member at the post-screening Q+A asked Gordon-Levitt about Dan’s impact and legacy at HitRECord, the 32-year-old choked back tears and gave a stirring tribute:

“So my brother is named Burning Dan and he helped me set up this first website, and he and I ran HitRECord together for the first several years before it became a professional anything. What Dan was all about was getting people to try something that they didn’t think they could do. His favorite book was Green Eggs and Ham. … HitRECord to him — and to me too, but really even more to him — was about somebody who was like, ‘I want to be a writer and I sometimes write but I don’t show it anybody.’ Or, ‘I want to be a singer but I’m too afraid to sing in front of anybody.’ And when he could get people … to do that, that was his… I’m sorry… that was his favorite. And it didn’t matter to him so much how it turned out. It didn’t matter to him so much how it turned out or what the finished product was. He just wanted people to do it and what you’ll find when you come to our site is, even though there’s all this professional production going on and we’re making a tevleision show, there’s a lot of stuff going on besides that. Stuff that won’t make it onto the show — because I’m too brutal a director — but nonetheless, is received with such warmth and encouragement, and that always makes me think of him because that’s what he did, more than I did. … He would be so f–king happy to see all of you guys here, so thanks so much.”

HitRECord on TV, which premieres tomorrow night on Pivot, a new cable venture launched in August by Jeff Skoll’s Participant Media, is the latest and most ambitious venture from Gordon-Levitt’s collaborative production company, in which member contributors share, adapt, and enhance each others’ artistic work into eclectic and unusual finished products. Pivot will air eight episodes and recently ordered a second season.