14 DAY TRIAL // While Joseph Gordon-Levitt is winning over critics and fans with his directorial debut “Don Jon,” which he also wrote the script for and starred in opposite Scarlett Johansson, the Italian American ONE VOICE Coalition is calling it racist and urging fans to boycott it.
As the group’s founder Dr. Emanuele “Manny” Alfano sees it, far from portraying the reality of everyday life in Italian American communities, the film does them a great injustice by presenting and pushing the same age-old stereotypes.
“Here we go again with the same shop-worn, racist stereotypes of Italian Americans in movies. It never ends. Levitt, himself the son of proud parents who once founded the Jewish Progressive Alliance and fought for social justice causes, should be ashamed of himself for the negative portrayal of Italians and Jews in his movie,” Alfano says.
Joe isn’t the only one who comes under fire from Alfano either, because Tony Danza, who plays the father in the film, also gets a few choice words.
Alfano thinks that Gordon-Levitt “needs an intervention and should go into serious therapy for his ethnic denigration of Italian Americans” and that he “ought to quit now, take this trite garbage out of movie theaters and donate his profits to charity.”
Meanwhile, Alfano is encouraging Italian Americans to skip on the “garbage” and see something else instead of “Don Jon.”
So far, no word from Joseph Gordon-Levitt on this.