By Valerie Turpin

Guests have travelled forward in time to catch the much-anticipated thriller Looper before its release date. Or, they may have simply been members of the SCA Network, which hosted the film on September 16 in Norris Auditorium.

Following the screening, Chair of the Writing Division Jack Epps, Jr. moderated a Q&A with SCA alum Rian Johnson (Brick, The Brother’s Bloom), who both wrote and directed the feature. The event commenced with a private alumni and student mixer in the SCA Courtyard.

On writing a script that not only packs a visual punch but also explores a variety of moral questions, Johnson explains, “To me, entertainment is something that does engage you on multiple levels. It can have the eye candy, it can have the spectacle, it hopefully gets your blood pumping, but it also engages you on a few other levels. To me, that’s true entertainment. I think there’s too often this artificial line drawn between entertaining and interesting, but I think they’re kind of one and the same.”

In the futuristic action thriller Looper, time travel will be invented - but it will be illegal and only available on the black market. When the mob wants to get rid of someone, they will send their target 30 years into the past, where a "looper" - a hired gun, like Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) - is waiting to mop up. Joe is getting rich and life is good... until the day the mob decides to "close the loop," sending back Joe's future self (Bruce Willis) for assassination.

Johnson also discussed overcoming his initial fears with working with actors, saying, “There’s really no mystery to it at all. It’s about knowing your story, it’s about communication, it’s about trust. If you can form a bond of trust with the actors, they’ll take incredible risks for you. It’s not something to be scared of; it’s really organic and incredibly fun.”

Looper opens nationwide on September 28.

For information about the SCA Network, please visit cinema.usc.edu/network

For more information on Looper, visit www.loopermovie.com