tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. a conversation with former white house adviser van jones. \ he launched a new campaign aimed at rebuilding the dream. also joseph gordon-levitt is here. he is now a rising film star the following projects like inception and 500 days of summer. his latest is called "50/50." we're glad you how to join us. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where

wal-mart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> nationwide insurance supports tavis smiley. with every question and answer, help tavis improve financial literacy and remove obstacles to economic empowerment one conversation at a time. nationwide is on your side. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning made possible by kcet public television] tavis: a quick programming note. tomorrow we will pay tribute to the life -- and revisited conversation with her on this program.

she was the first african woma n to work the peace prize with her work with kenya and beyond. tonight we begin with someone else on for his work with the environment, van jones. he served in the obama white house as an advisor on screen jobs and is an advisor behind rebuilding the dream. next week he will host a forum of ideas around this movement called take back the american dream. >> not only did i know her, i named my second son after her. the last time i saw her i said you know i named my son after you. we laughed and cried. i had not seen her since new york. tavis: shechem on the show a few times. the last time it was for her

but. we will rebroadcast the show again tomorrow night. pleased to have van jones here. i respect and love the work you do. i want to challenge you. the first is, i read with interest your mission statements. the word or does not appear one time. there is references to the middle class. am i missing something? is it about the middle-class tax i think the poor are being left behind. >> it does appear in the preamble. sometimes people do not look petioles thing. -- the whole thing. here is what is going on. we have the traditional port.

-- poor. folks nobody wants to hire. we have the traditionally impoverished and then, thanks to the malfeasance of wall street and both parties, we have a 20 million more people out of the middle class down into poverty. what we have to be able to do is rebuild the middle class. we have to create pathways out of poverty so that the people who used to be in the middle class can get back in there. the people who have been running away with all of the benefits of america have to pay american back. we have the corporate elite. they are the ones who benefited from the tax breaks and the bailout. the bankers would be homeless. but the american people build them out and now they will not return phone calls from homeowners asking for a break on their mortgage. that kind of thing has got to

stop. the middle class and everybody who wants to be in the middle class needs a voice. nobody has stood up for the newly poor. we have to creep -- be clear about the black middle class. so much of bias in the private sector. my parents were schoolteachers. my dad was a cop. the public sector is how we grow our middle class. when they sit public workers and cutting back, that is a double blow to our community. you are hurting the people who need the services. we have to mount a big fight for the economically anxious to get justice. tavis: i'm glad you answered in that way. my impression was is that the new poor are the former middle

class, and we do not address the needs of them, how do we get people back into that class? >> one of the things i was appreciative of of your tour, hold on a second, let's make sure that just because we have new people hurting we do not forget the people who have been hurting the whole time. it is a canary in the coal mine. we did not respond where people were hurting, apple last year, watts, detroit. we allowed the pain to accumulate in the game meant to accumulate on roster. at a certain point -- gain to accumulate on wall street. it is a dream rooted in the american dream. he was not caught -- talking

about consumerism. this is a country where everybody was supposed to campus. you do not out to be from a certain part of town to earn a living and paying the page at to your child. people came from around the world based on that idea. people did not choose to come here, we chose to stay. we wanted to make good on that promise. you want to help people kill that off. that is wrong. you have people who are willing to have every pillar of the middle class smashed down. you have the key party movements who wants to take a wrecking ball and smashed down every american institution, a public schools, everything we've built to make this a great country. they want to smash it down. did they are the patriots. if you love america, don't

repeal the 20th century. don't knock out the things that we did after blood, sweat and tears. tavis: let me press again because we're having these debates about where we have to come down on these. when you reference doctor king, i regard him as the greatest american this country has produced. i sometimes wonder as much as i love and revere him whether or not in the early part of his life even he was too sentimental about the american dream. the sermon he was going to preach had been made it to that sunday was why america may go to hell. around issues of poverty, i think he became less sentimental and more realistic about whether the american dream was all it was crafted to be.

>> here is the thing. even at the moment of the soundings, there is a contradiction. the founding reality is ugly and unequal. even the founders lamented. jefferson said i tremble when i think that -- even thinking about slavery. even though it met how ugly the reality is. but was also the founding dream which was about quality. we hold these truths to be self- evident. the story of america is imperfect people struggling to drag that unequal reality closer and closer to the duty of the dream. that is who we are. if you reduce america only to the dream, and say we are -- that said, look at the last century.

every cost you and i care about is in the garbage can. people of color have no rights. the environment is in the trash. there is no weekend or middle class. it is horrible. there are some people who look around and say, this is fine. let's conserve this. we are conservative. other people said we are not perfect. we can be a more perfect union. they fought week after week to build a middle-class, to build equal opportunity. not to win all of it but to get back the norm. in 2000, the country is different. we you on the last century. progressive patriots who fought for the dream. my concern is that we know -- we need to win the next century and we are letting other people define what love of country is. tavis: president obama invoked

the civil rights movement. he invoked it in his speech days ago at the congressional black caucus. what is your read on that infamous phrase, stop complaining, how did you read what he was sent to the people? >> here is what i know. the president is sounding a more populist tone. he is starting to talk different. the base of the democratic party and folks who believe in justice first, opportunity first, a party later, are starting to stand up. we organized 10 times more protest activities by progressive than the tea party. we organized people into the american dream movement. 600,000 people joined. they began to raise hell about a

facts that d.c. is off the rails. -- the fact that d.c. is off the rails. we have got them to act different. let's keep walking./ this is going to be a moment where you hear from regular people. we're not going to wait for the white house. america works great when the people stand up. tavis: van jones, backward he started, among every day people. my time is up tonight but more of my conversation with him is at our website at pbs.org. glad to have you here. >>, joseph gordon-levitt -- next, joseph gordon-levitt. tavis: joseph gordon-levitt is a

talented actor with credits like inception and third rock from the sun. next summer you can catch him in the latest installment of the batman series. he stars in the new some "50/50 -- new film "50/50." >> some rare kind of cancer. >> what is it called? >> it means a tumor basically. >> what are your odds? >> it said 50-50 bet that is the internet. so. >> that's not that bad. that is better than i thought. you are going to be fine. celebrities beat cancer. the guy from "dexter," you are going to be fine.

50/50. if you're a casino game you would have the best odds. tavis: one of the things that makes this thing work is the levity that is applied to a serious subject matter. when one is diagnosed with cancer, this is based on a true story. when one is diagnosed in your 20's, a little levity helps. >> more than anything it is inspired by nature story. the guy who wrote the script is named will. when he got better from cancer he decided to write a comedy about it. i think a lot of people are timid to laugh in serious situations but i think it is healthy. not everything is funny but sometimes there are those funny moments. it is ok. laughter is the best medicine. tavis: 1 and the i have about

actors, i get a chance to talk about all kinds of folks and learned different things every day. i go to bed feeling smarter when i watched this show. it feels good. actors get a chance to play different roles and to learn different things every time they play a different road. what to you take away? what do you learn when you play a character who is diagnosed with cancer? >> it means that i spend all day shooting a movie thinking, what would it be like if i had the same chances? even if i'm not diagnosed now, one day i am going to die. what does that mean? am i happy with that? in the end, if i had to isolate what i take way is gratitude for every day.

i'm thankful i am alive. you never know -- you could did hit by a bus tomorrow. you had better be at peace with every have going at the moment. working on "50/50" brought my head in that direction. tavis: what to do stink when you read the script text people can have a certain a motion about the script? >> it felt real to me. that is always a pleasure. normally you read a screenplay and the characters do not feel like people. they feel like a plot devices or stereotypes. to read a script for the people feel like real human beings and the things that are happening to not feel like excuses for big set pieces or pandering to an ad campaign, that is inspiring to

me. and i get to inhabit one of those characters. tavis: when i see serious movies, often times they miss the mark. they come across as being preachy. or they go the other direction, trying to get this thing right where you revel in celebrating the humanity of the person can be a tricky undertaking. >> very tricky. i was helped by the fact that it came from a real guy. he was there onset. he was there everyday. this is a collaborative group of people. seth rogen was head honcho. we know who he is.

[laughter] >> he was in charge. he has a loose approach to creativity. he is created -- collaborative. everybody can have their cake. having will there in the midst of that made it feel like i could take risks. i could push those boundaries. if was not real he would tell me. having their impact -- him there only helped. he is a warm and gentle guy. he was so sweet. it made it feel real. tavis: before i go forward, i want to hear about with whatever you can say about that man. which is probably almost

nothing. before it tends to get something out of you, let me go back. one thing that struck me as interesting about you, and some folks do it and it does not work out, some are afraid to try. you stepped away from the business and went to school. then afterschool you had to find a way to navigate your way back into the business. hopefully you are not forgotten in the process. you have to find a way to sit in. how did that process work? >> it was hard. to be honest, people pigeonhole people. that is evident. i think it is part of our overall culture but it definitely in the business i work in, if you are successful and one thing, people will tend to assume that is the only way

you can be a success. i was on a funny tv show. after that everyone wanted to put me on another funny tv show. it did not interest me very much even though i had a great time. i love all of those people. i did not want to do it again. i quit and i always wanted to go to college. when i came back, i wanted to do things it would challenge me as an actor and some independent movies and stuff. a lot of people did not believe that was something i could do. luckily a few people did. some people took a chance on me. tavis: that is great to step away and get an education and come back and hope it will work the second time around. >> you have to be able to let go. it is not going to go the right way, forcing something never works. tavis: batman, anything you can

tell me? >> well, it is written and directed by christopher nolan. he also made "inception." i'm so happy to be working with him again. he has this whole crew of people, everyone from his cinematographer to the guy who records the sound, he has the whole traveling circus. everybody has in working together for a long time. that is different from a normal movie where everybody is new and the whole first weeks is finding your feet, earning everybody's trust. this time you get to start right off the bat. everybody trusts each other. it is nice to be able to work

like that. you are on a team already. tavis: what we have learned is nothing. >> why is that nothing? tavis: because he knows in joseph's and he told him then. forget the plot. forget the character he plays. we will be waiting when it comes out. something i think you will talk about because this is fascinating. it is called hit record. i will let you explain what this is. >> that is our first anthology of work. it is a production company i started. when i started i did not want to work with in hollywood. that can be an exclusive in the street. there are so many great artists all over the world. i want a chance to work with

everybody. we put our projects up on our website and anybody can come and contribute to that. i direct these collaborations. it is all sorts of things. recollection is our first anthology of the stuff we did. we have a cd of our music and a book and our art and writing. i am so proud of it. 471 people worked on that. we have 50,000 artists on our stuff but we narrowed it down to this mixture of work from four hundred 71 people. -- 471 people. we also share the profit -- profits. half goes to the company and how close to the artists. tavis: what is the take away when you get to work on this project? when you see the kind of creativity that is out there and often those who are making

clear decisions mess? >> be an expected works sometimes. -- the unexpected works sometimes. you put up the work in progress and people work on it together. someone else will take what i wrote and acted out. somebody else will download that video and put their own music to it or do a readmit of it. things like that. sometimes what someone else it does is not what you expected them to do. sometimes it does not work. but sometimes it does. it is like we're talking about letting go. you have to be able to let go of your expectations of what this work is going to turn into. then it has the freedom to return to the things you would have never imagined. extraordinary things can come out of it. tavis: it is called hit record.

you should check it out. i was fascinated to see the work he has done with all of these people around the world. you know him from a tv and movies, he is now the star of "50/50." and the new batman movie. good to see you. that is our shore for tonight. see you next time. thank you for watching. as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with you remember the life and legacy of her movement. that is next time. >> every community has a martin

luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where wal-mart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> nationwide insurance supports tavis smiley. with every question and answer, help tavis improve financial literacy and remove obstacles to economic empowerment one conversation at a time. nationwide is on your side. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. thank you.