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00:00At that pace too, I want to make a movie a year and that would be, yeah, my dream, like,
00:08you know, the only impediments are that like, you know, sometimes it takes a little longer
00:12to get schedules to align, but that's what I would love to do.
00:14I would say I'm like more interested in people who are prolific as opposed to the people
00:19who would spend 10 years creating something because I just am too worried that the thing
00:24won't be good to justify the 10 years.
00:26But I feel like if I'm prolific enough, then I can kind of go from project to project and
00:29not dwell on the reception of one over the other.
00:32Right.
00:33That's that's that's a great way of looking at it, actually.
00:39You know, Grandma never pitied herself.
00:45In fact, she always told me she was grateful for her struggle.
00:49Well, that's just what she endured.
00:52That gave her hope.
00:53Right.
00:54Yes.
00:55In fact, she used to tell me that, like, you know, first generation immigrants work some
00:57like menial job.
00:58You know, they drive cabs.
00:59They deliver food.
01:00Second generation.
01:01They go to good schools and they become like, you know, a doctor or a lawyer or whatever.
01:04And the third generation lives in their mother's basement and spooks pot all day.
01:09I mean, she said that.
01:16I think she was like just speaking generally about like the immigrant experience.
01:19I lived in my mom's basement.
01:20She was just talking about immigrants.
01:21OK.
01:22That's all.
01:23Yeah.
01:24I got to pee.
01:31I'm going to go to the bathroom.
01:37I'll get that.
01:38Don't worry.
01:39Pee pee time.
01:42Welcome to Behind the Lens.
01:44Well, let's see.
01:45He's a director, a screenwriter, a essayist, a playwright.
01:55A composer.
01:56Oh, you're an actor.
02:00Yeah.
02:01This is Jesse Eisenberg.
02:02Thank you, Pete.
02:03Welcome to Behind the Lens.
02:06Normally, I would have maybe had you on the actor side, but you are now behind the lens
02:11as well on your second film, which is a terrific movie that premiered at Sundance, got critical
02:17raves and picked up by Searchlight and is now in theaters and everyone can see it.
02:23It's called A Real Pain.
02:24And congratulations, writer, director and star of this one.
02:29That's interesting because your first film you did not appear in and you just were behind
02:35the camera.
02:36Yeah, exactly.
02:37And my intention was kind of to do the same thing here.
02:40But it's been my experience writing plays for the last like 20 years that like people
02:47are more likely to produce something if there's an actor attached to it.
02:51And so like I have been signing on to do my own plays almost reluctantly, but just so
02:57I can like get the momentum going.
02:59And so the same thing with this.
03:00So after I finished the script, I was thinking I probably just want to direct this and just
03:04stay behind the camera.
03:06But I knew it would just have more trouble getting some momentum.
03:10Yeah.
03:11So it's much easier just to put yourself in it.
03:13You know, Clint Eastwood went back and forth.
03:15Sometimes he's in his movies, sometimes he's not.
03:17Woody Allen, the same thing.
03:18You obviously worked with Woody a couple of times.
03:21I'm wondering if those kind of experiences of working with directors like that who make
03:26a movie a year, as he had been doing, rubbed off on you and made you more inspired to direct.
03:33Exactly.
03:34And at that pace, too.
03:36I want to make a movie a year.
03:37And that would be my dream.
03:40Like, you know, the only impediments are that like, you know, sometimes it takes a little
03:44longer to get schedules to align.
03:45But that's what I would love to do.
03:47I would say I'm, like, more interested in people who are prolific as opposed to the
03:51people who would spend 10 years creating something.
03:53Because I just am too worried that the thing won't be good to justify the 10 years.
03:58But I feel like if I'm prolific enough, then I can kind of go from project to project and
04:01not dwell on the reception of one over the other.
04:04Right.
04:05That's a great way of looking at it, actually.
04:09Surviving in this business.
04:11Exactly.
04:12Which do you prefer?
04:14Do you have a favorite?
04:15Do you like directing?
04:16Do you still like acting more?
04:18I mean, I love all of it.
04:20I spent the last three months in Budapest and Abu Dhabi doing Now You See Me 3.
04:24Arguably, it's like the thing I would have written and directed the least.
04:28Like, it's so far away from the things that I personally make.
04:31But I just loved it.
04:32I loved the character I played.
04:34I loved, you know, getting to do these cool scenes on big set pieces.
04:37And I just love the whole thing.
04:39I mean, the thing that would scare me the most is kind of like being stuck doing the
04:42same thing for a long time because I just have a short attention span and many interests.
04:46Yeah.
04:47I love the Now You See Me movies.
04:48Yeah, me too.
04:49In fact, when I reviewed the first one, I said they used my quote,
04:53better than oceans 11, 12, and 13 put together.
04:57Really?
04:58And that's what Steven Soderbergh, who made those movies, said to me.
05:02He goes, seriously?
05:03Yeah, really?
05:04That movie?
05:05Wow.
05:06Because I ran into him and he goes, yeah, you're the one that wrote that.
05:09And I go like, well, at the time, it seemed…
05:12Wait.
05:13He had seen your quote?
05:14Mm-hmm.
05:15Oh, my God.
05:16I know.
05:17Isn't that weird?
05:18That is weird.
05:19That was on your movie.
05:20You'd think Steven Soderbergh, after those movies, wouldn't think he had to defend his
05:22movies anymore.
05:23No, he didn't.
05:24And I've since reassessed it a little bit.
05:26Those are good movies.
05:27Yeah.
05:28I like those movies.
05:29You came to your senses.
05:30Perhaps it was a little too hyped up.
05:31Yeah.
05:32But you were excited because of all that magic.
05:33I mentioned you're an essayist for The New Yorker and things.
05:37And you wrote one very funny one several years ago about a movie review.
05:42Oh, God.
05:43And I started to read that, being a critic myself, that it was real.
05:48And I'm going, I haven't heard of this movie.
05:50Oh, really?
05:51Yeah, in the beginning of it.
05:52Because you sounded like critics I know who go like, I didn't want to like this movie
05:58because it was on the other side of town and I was mad and I didn't want to take the J
06:03train.
06:04Yeah, yeah, yeah.
06:06That rang true for me.
06:08I have been apologizing for that essay for 15 years.
06:11Have you really?
06:1210 years.
06:13Yes.
06:14Yeah, I shouldn't have written it.
06:15I was just, you know, like I'm on the other side of things.
06:17And so you sometimes feel like you're being evaluated through somebody's very personal
06:22lens.
06:23And you don't want your things to be evaluated through that.
06:25You want your things to be evaluated on their own terms.
06:27And so that was like a satire on that, but certainly not a satire on, you know, general
06:31critics.
06:32I thought it was very funny.
06:33Oh, thanks.
06:35You can say that and I can't.
06:37Do you read your reviews?
06:38No, I don't.
06:39I mean, a real pain has been so well received that I'm occasionally sent something if it's
06:43like really great.
06:44But no, because I don't want to read something bad.
06:49I'm thin skinned.
06:50I don't know.
06:51That's the only thing I could say is that it makes me feel bad.
06:52Yeah.
06:53Oh, yeah.
06:54Well, that's a natural.
06:55Yeah.
06:56I've tried to justify it with some great logic, but no, it just makes me feel sad.
06:59There are people that will only read their bad reviews and just zero in on it and make
07:03it take over their life.
07:04Oh, I know people like that.
07:05I truly don't understand because if I read one bad thing, I just want to be able to like
07:10continue working in an industry that's very unstable.
07:12And I don't want to have to feel like I just want to feel like I'm working because of my
07:17own interest in the world rather than working to be evaluated.
07:22I don't know.
07:23So you started writing screenplays when you were a teen.
07:26Yeah.
07:27You know, you were always like zeroing in on this part of the business.
07:31Yeah, exactly.
07:32Yeah, I wrote scripts when I was younger.
07:35Some two were even like optioned by companies here, including Depth of Field, the White's
07:38Brothers, great company when I was like 19.
07:41And yeah, I just was writing big commercial movies like the movies I'd grown up watching,
07:48like big Adam Sandler kind of romantic comedy, that kind of stuff.
07:51And then at like 22 or something, I gave a script to Bob Odenkirk, who I thought would
07:59send it to Adam Sandler and they would get produced that afternoon.
08:02And Bob called me and just kind of like eviscerated me, but in a very sweet paternal way, just
08:08saying, buddy, you're a sensitive, thoughtful person.
08:12Write something personal.
08:13You're 22.
08:14You don't need to write this kind of stuff now.
08:16Right.
08:17You know, he said, this is the kind of stuff that I would get hired to write in two weeks.
08:20You're 22.
08:21You should be an artist.
08:22Write something personal.
08:23And so I changed paths right then.
08:25And I wrote my first play and then just started writing plays every other year and performing
08:30them.
08:31And it turned into like me, I guess, finding my own voice.
08:33And then when I felt, you know, kind of like ready enough to enter this medium where the
08:37stakes are higher, where the money is bigger, where, you know, the actors are just, you
08:42know, I felt I was ready to do movies.
08:47Yeah.
08:48Yeah.
08:49Do a movie.
08:50And then you did.
08:51And you had Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard.
08:52Yeah, exactly.
08:53So it was a great first experience.
08:54I mean, it was very strange.
08:55We're shooting at the height of the pandemic on film before vaccines.
08:58And we were like capping our days both with film and hours.
09:02It was a very strange experience.
09:04But yeah, it taught me a lot.
09:05And before that one went to Sundance, I made sure to set up my new movie just in case that
09:09one wasn't received.
09:11And then my next movie we're shooting in March, which I set up before a real pain
09:15premiered at Sundance.
09:17You know, you want to strike before the iron is freezing.
09:21Well, a real pain.
09:22Obviously, you don't have to worry about that because it was, like we said, very well received.
09:27But it's a very personal film for you.
09:29Yeah.
09:30Yeah.
09:31I mean, the movie is both autobiographical and personal, which I kind of which I which
09:36I separate a little bit like there's some autobiographical elements, for example, the
09:40house that the characters visit in the movie is the house my family lived in up until World
09:44War Two.
09:45And, you know, we were able to film inside the house.
09:48It was pretty magical.
09:49And the kid in the movie is my real kid.
09:52And so there's all those like autobiographical elements, all the stories that the characters
09:55tell are stories from my family history.
09:57But then there's very the things I consider personal are really like just the emotional
10:01stuff.
10:02My character is talking about his relationship to his own grief and his family and the ambivalence
10:06he feels about kind of connecting his pain to the pain of his ancestors and the pain
10:12he feels in relationships with family.
10:14And so like that's the stuff that really strikes me as personal, although a lot of it is kind
10:18of fictionalized.
10:19Yeah.
10:20But so you shot it in the house that your family connection.
10:24You just go and knock on the door and say, I want to shoot here because I can't imagine
10:29you had a connection to whoever was living there.
10:31No.
10:32And you know what?
10:33It taught me more about the movie industry than anything else, which is this.
10:36In 2008, my wife and I visited this house because I always wanted to see where it was
10:40and I stood outside of it.
10:41It never occurred to me to knock on the door.
10:43Never.
10:44Of course not.
10:45Ever occurred to me to knock on the door.
10:46And then we were in pre-production for this movie and I wanted to shoot outside.
10:49That never occurred to me to like knock on the door and go inside.
10:52And our locations manager said, you want to go inside?
10:55I was like, oh, wait, we can.
10:57Can we?
10:58How do we do it?
10:59He goes, I'll just go knock on the door.
11:00So the guy walks up to the thing, knocks on the door in Polish.
11:02He says, hi, we're here.
11:03We want to shoot a movie here.
11:04Can we come inside?
11:05And people were like, oh, yeah.
11:06OK.
11:07And it just tells me like the weird power of a movie.
11:10A movie can go into a town and say, we want to dig up all the front lawns of everybody's yards.
11:14I'll be like, wait, why would you do that?
11:16Well, it's a movie.
11:17Oh, then of course.
11:18Right this way.
11:19And so it's just the absurdity of the power of movies.
11:23Well, you have a lot of power, not just on that level, but power to move people and to
11:28make a difference in lives, I think, in storytelling.
11:31Yeah, no, I agree too.
11:32But I don't think that's what they were considering at the time.
11:35Probably not.
11:36Please come in and make a difference.
11:37This deals with the Holocaust.
11:39We have seen many Holocaust movies over the course of Hollywood history.
11:44This year alone, we have the Zone of Interest nominated for Best Picture, won International
11:49Film and many things like that.
11:51Yeah.
11:52And it's using that kind of subject matter in a very different way.
11:57What was your thinking?
11:58Well, a few things.
11:59My thinking was that I was telling a very personal story of these two cousins who are
12:05very specific characters with very specific history.
12:08The other thing I was thinking of is that if I'm going to make a movie that, you know,
12:13deals with this theme, this big theme, not only is it a big theme in history, it's a
12:17big theme in movies.
12:18Right.
12:19And that I have to treat it in a way that I've never seen before, just for originality's
12:23sake.
12:24Yeah.
12:25And so the characters are going on this Holocaust tour and a lot of the movie plays kind of
12:30like a buddy comedy and a road trip.
12:34Yeah.
12:36And when the theme of the Holocaust or the history of the Holocaust or the locations
12:41from the Holocaust come in, they're seen through the eyes of these two characters.
12:44And I feel like it gave me a way in to talk about it in a way that didn't feel like self-important
12:50or, you know, sanctimonious or like academic or like, you know, the kind of movie that
12:55has these kind of big themes and they feel like they're, you know, doing you a favor
12:59by showing you how great they are and, you know, and punishing you in the audience for
13:04not being as noble as they, the filmmakers are by showing you this history.
13:07Right.
13:08This is essentially a buddy comedy.
13:09Exactly.
13:10It should play like a buddy comedy with these really big themes in the background.
13:15Yeah.
13:16And that was the goal, that it can be easily watchable but thematically very important.
13:22Yeah.
13:23And very funny, too, as it goes along.
13:25You and Kieran Culkin, he's great in this.
13:29Both of you are.
13:30When you direct, how do you direct yourself?
13:33How do you approach that?
13:35You know, I've been acting for so long in film that I have like a pretty good intuition
13:41and like a self, yeah, just intuition of when I'm feeling like I'm doing what I want to
13:47do or not.
13:48And my entire, like, criteria is if I, like, feel the thing that the character is feeling
13:53in that moment.
13:54Yeah.
13:55And I feel like if I felt that, it's successful, even if it doesn't exactly look the way I
13:58wanted it to look.
13:59Right.
14:00And if it's working to me, that's a success and then I would move on after that.
14:03So with this one, we were moving so quickly, shooting so quickly that I really didn't even
14:08have time to watch playback.
14:09So if the camera was on me, we would do a take and I would, the scene would end and
14:14I would ask the producers, did that look okay?
14:16And ask my cinematographer, was technically everything okay?
14:19And if they said yes, I would do one more take and move on.
14:22I wouldn't watch it back.
14:24There was just not a lot of time to do that.
14:26And then with the other actors, I'm in every scene.
14:28So I'm sitting across from them and I could just gauge if they're doing well.
14:35And I got lucky with amazing actors, most notably Kieran Culkin, who's one of the great
14:41performances of the year or whatever.
14:43Oh, he's fantastic.
14:44You had never seen him.
14:46No, I didn't.
14:48You never watched Succession?
14:50No, I tend not to watch anything that's popular in the moment just because I don't know why.
14:56I just, I don't know why.
14:58Because I'm a weak person.
14:59I don't know why.
15:00But basically, I hadn't seen him and I just had this intuition about him.
15:05We had met at an audition in 2009 for this movie Adventureland.
15:09And when he came in to audition for that movie, he just started kind of like, the character
15:13was supposed to be a little like attacking me and stuff.
15:15And Kieran just started like actually physically attacking me.
15:18And he was so funny in the audition and he like took over this room.
15:21And so I think in the back of my mind, it was like the relationship we have in this
15:24movie where like, you know, my character is like manhandled by this guy who's so charming
15:29and funny and inappropriate.
15:30Yeah.
15:31And watching Kieran every day was just an unbelievable gift.
15:34I'd never seen somebody so engaged with a character that he understood the kind of like
15:42strange nuances of shifting behavior in a way that was just seamless.
15:47That's amazing.
15:48Is he full of anxiety like you say you are too?
15:52Because I heard he kept trying to drop out of the movie before it started.
15:56Kieran is filled with a totally different set of issues than me.
16:00And when I brought that up to him on set, he said, wait, you really thought we were
16:03going to be similar?
16:04And I said, yeah, of course I thought we were going to be similar.
16:06We're from New York.
16:07We speak the same way.
16:08You know, we have the same sense of humor.
16:10And he's like, we're not at all alike.
16:11And so Kieran basically doesn't want to work that much.
16:14He doesn't want to leave his kids.
16:16He hasn't done a job since Succession except our movie.
16:19He won every award for Succession.
16:21And the next thing he did was our, at the time, very small movie.
16:25Now, of course, it's getting attention.
16:26But at the time, it seemed like, you know, not a big thing.
16:29And he's still not going to do another movie.
16:32The next thing he's doing is a play for several months.
16:34And so, yeah, he just doesn't want to leave home, doesn't want to leave his kids.
16:37So he, this was something that I was like shielded from.
16:41But he tried to drop out of the movie several times because he didn't want to come,
16:44didn't want to leave his kids.
16:45Oh, my God.
16:46He came to the set the day before we started filming with his family.
16:50So he wasn't even leaving his kids.
16:52And they were like on set.
16:55And, yeah, he just didn't want to talk about the character, didn't want to do any rehearsal.
16:59Wow.
17:00Didn't want to get notes in between takes.
17:02I would try to give him notes.
17:03I would say, you know, things like, you know, that was really great.
17:06But can we try maybe that rage coming in a little earlier?
17:09Because you're, you know, maybe a little triggered by that character.
17:12And he would say, I don't know what you mean by coming in earlier.
17:15I don't know where the rage came in.
17:16I don't know what just happened.
17:17But if you want to do another take, I'm happy to do it again.
17:19So he would have no, it was so surreal because I'd never seen an actor do this.
17:23He'd have no sense from one moment to the next what he was doing.
17:26He was just like living in this space in this very real way.
17:29And it was a gift.
17:30And it was so great.
17:31Normally it would be frustrating because you want to have a conversation with somebody.
17:33But he was so great that it was just like, I just, it felt for me to just like get out of the way of him.
17:39Didn't matter because it's all up on the screen.
17:41Exactly.
17:42It may be chaotic when you're shooting it, but all that matters.
17:45Exactly.
17:46Is that.
17:47Exactly.
17:48I really appreciated it.
17:49I, you know, he was not the kind of actor to come to me in the morning and say that, you know, he was up late last night reading about the Holocaust.
17:55And, you know, you know, that's the kind of actor who's so eager to tell you about the homework they've done on your film.
18:00He was just there.
18:01Didn't even know what scenes were shooting some days.
18:03He said, what scene are we shooting today?
18:05I was like, it's the scene on the train that I've been shot listing for six months that I wrote two years ago.
18:10That you have a five page monologue in.
18:12And he would take the script and he'd say, OK, what is it?
18:14And he would look at it.
18:15He would look at it.
18:16And then 10 minutes later, we'd be doing the scene.
18:18He was word perfect and brilliant.
18:20Wow.
18:21It was.
18:22He's a really he's an unusual and spectacular artist.
18:25That is a gift.
18:26Yeah.
18:27That is a gift.
18:28Because I was just reading about an actor who.
18:30Is dyslexic.
18:31Yeah.
18:32And said, you have to send me this way in advance.
18:36I have to be able.
18:37And you can't change anything on the set.
18:39Oh, yeah.
18:40Very well known actor.
18:41And was just the polar opposite of something like that.
18:45You have to be prepared because they can't handle all the dialogue.
18:48Listen, I think I can't speak to everybody's experience.
18:51But I think more people are probably like that person, which is like, yeah, I want to learn my lines a week out or two weeks out or a month out or something.
18:58Especially in a movie like this.
18:59A real pain.
19:00Kieran is speaking a mile a minute and it's and it's it's it's it's dialogue driven movie.
19:04Yeah.
19:05It's madcap.
19:06Exactly.
19:07Parts of it.
19:08You actually shot in a real camp.
19:10Yeah.
19:11Concentration camp.
19:12Yeah.
19:13How difficult was that to get permission and how much did you have to think about what you were doing in terms of the history?
19:23It was a really it was a really unusual experience because I felt queasy just writing a scene at a concentration camp because you set a scene at a concentration camp.
19:34I just felt like you feel kind of like a hack because it's like, yeah, you could anybody could set a scene there and the scene is going to be dramatic.
19:40You know what I mean?
19:41And so I just felt like I can't believe I'm setting a scene here.
19:43But I had to because the movie is about a Holocaust or it has to culminate in this in this trip.
19:48And so so I basically in the screenplay, I think I wrote like a note to the reader like there will be no music in this.
19:55The characters will walk into this room and they will walk out of this room.
19:58Basically, like just showing how austere it should be, it should be styled.
20:04And so I sent the script to our Polish producers, Eva Paczynska.
20:10She produced Ida, Cold War and Zone of Interest.
20:13And she said she said, yeah, everything in the script seems doable.
20:17You know, we can get maybe a little airplane set for your airplane scene and we can maybe work with this airport.
20:23And she said, but the concentration camp scene is in a million dollar build.
20:27I said, what do you mean a million dollar build?
20:29She said, oh, it's a million dollars to build the scene that you wrote.
20:32And I said, oh, no, I want to shoot there.
20:34And she goes, you can't shoot there.
20:35They don't let you shoot there.
20:36But we'll build it for a million dollars.
20:38That's a third of our budget.
20:39What are you talking about?
20:40And and so it took about eight months to try to get permission.
20:45Wow. And my attempts, which were varied and weird, which included like me emailing the Holocaust Museum in D.C.
20:51Can you please put me in touch with the Holocaust Museum in Lublin and Majdanek?
20:55Was basically it was eight months of me trying to express to this camp that I'm trying to do exactly what they're trying to do.
21:01Their mission statement is to try to get people to become aware of what this place is.
21:05Yeah. And that's that was my statement, too.
21:07I didn't want to turn the camp into 1942.
21:10You know, exactly. Auschwitz.
21:12I wanted to use it for what it is now, which is a museum that deserves and and, you know, begs to be seen.
21:18That they have these tours and things, you know, and you want people to go there with that in mind, that they're.
21:24Yeah. And, you know, one of the strange experiences I've had since putting the movie out and meeting audiences is that people want to go there.
21:32You know, I mean, it sounds weird to say they want to go there, but people feel, I would say, the kind of responsibility to go to these places.
21:38I've been hearing that from a lot of audience members.
21:40I always intended to go and I never did.
21:42I couldn't work up the courage. But now I see what it is and I feel like it's doable.
21:45That kind of thing. It weirdly funny in a weird way.
21:48But I heard you saw an ad in a paper that said Auschwitz tours lunch also.
21:53Yeah. Like that's absurd. Yeah.
21:55This script was originally set in Mongolia and it was these two characters going to Mongolia for a series of reasons that didn't pan out.
22:02And I was like having I was having trouble finishing the script.
22:06And an ad came up on the Internet for Auschwitz tours and then in parentheses with lunch.
22:11And so I clicked on the thing and it was basically just it was an advertisement for basically like a yuppie middle class tour for American retirees to go to the sites of the Holocaust.
22:22Yeah. But while still maintaining the kind of creature comforts of their lives back in Shaker Heights.
22:26And so like I thought, like, that's the story. It was immediately clear that that should be the story.
22:32It's amazing. And it so works. You know, it really does.
22:37In so many ways, it could have not. You know. Yes. And you know that as a writer.
22:42I know when I've done that as a writer, you just throw it away and go like, I can't. I don't know where this is going.
22:47But this no, sometimes I produce them and they still. Yeah.
22:51Oh, my God. What's the one you've got going in March? You already have something.
22:56Yes. I think it's going to be leaked probably by a colleague of yours, I think, next week.
22:59But, yeah, it's set in the world of community theater.
23:03And I just write everything that has happened in my life.
23:06And so this is a movie about my family and the Holocaust.
23:10And the next thing is about my childhood and community theater.
23:13But that's just because I'm mining everything that's ever happened to me.
23:16They say, write what you know. Yeah. You know, which is a good thing.
23:19And I think John Patrick Shanley said or something like I think I think it was him that like you spend the first half of your career.
23:24It was Christopher Durang. You spend the first half of your career writing about what you know.
23:27And you spend the second you spend the first half of your career writing about yourself.
23:30And you spend the second half of your career writing about other things. Yeah.
23:33And so I hope I'm in the first time. Maybe. Who have you been influenced by who you work with?
23:38I mean, going back to Squid and the Whale, Noah Baumbach. Yep.
23:42What was that? What was he like in terms of inspiring you to maybe I could do this one day?
23:50Well, I guess specifically with that movie, like the script was so great that it felt like there was so much room.
23:59There was so much room for messiness as an actor because the script was so great.
24:03So you knew going into it that this screenplay was so perfect that, you know, you could kind of feel a variety of emotions.
24:12It didn't have to just be X, Y or Z or you as an actor didn't have to like solve an emotional problem that the script hadn't solved.
24:17So it was the first time I think I was working just like with something that felt like, oh, this is going to be great, irrespective of me.
24:24Yeah. You know, and and I so I take inspiration from it.
24:29I mean, I don't want to say like my thing is as good as that.
24:33But like what I took from it was like just to make sure the script is as perfect as it's possibly going to be by the time you shoot,
24:39because it's because that because it's never because you're never going to get it exactly, you know, 100 percent to what you intended.
24:44But also what I loved about that movie was that that there were characters that were presented that were not like on paper,
24:50likeable in movie terms, but still understandable and still feeling.
24:55And so with this movie, Kieran's character is caustic and obnoxious at times and, you know, demanding, self-centered, narcissist, narcissistic.
25:04And yet audiences are crying for him and his plight, because with that movie, he was able to kind of thread that needle between characters that are caustic.
25:12But because they're real and understandable, you feel for them. And so I guess I was, you know, trying to do a similar kind of thing here.
25:19Yeah. What about David Fincher directed you into your Oscar-nominated performance as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network?
25:26He's known for doing a lot of takes. I don't know if that was your experience, but.
25:30No. Oh, yeah. It was my experience as an actor in that movie. 100 percent. Yeah. You would do 100 takes. And it was exhilarating.
25:36I mean, I really like that. Oh, I mean, it was the greatest thing in the world because like you get to try it a million different ways.
25:43You know that, you know, you never leave a day thinking I didn't get that scene, you know, which is how I leave half the days on most movies.
25:49I didn't. If we had another few shots of it, I think I could have gotten exactly what I wanted to do.
25:53No. And no. So that was a dream. I would love to be able to do that.
25:57I don't think I have like his attention to detail to know the difference between take 14 and 37.
26:04He is obviously picking up on something that no other filmmaker, no other modern filmmakers are because no one does that.
26:11So what did I pick up from him? God, I mean, he's the top in his craft in terms of, you know, you know, cinematic technique.
26:21The only thing if I had if I was pressed to say what I learned, because it's like, you know, it's like, what did you learn from Mike playing against Michael Jordan?
26:28I don't know. You know, he's a lot faster and taller. But like is that David Fincher would always try to do a scene as simply as possible, try to shoot a scene as simply as possible.
26:37In fact, there was the first thing we shot in that movie was the only scene we shot entirely. And I asked him why.
26:42And he was like, it was too complicated. We had too many shots. I thought, God, that's so interesting.
26:46So here's a person who has access to every resource in the world, big budgets, the most biggest crew you can possibly afford and the greatest equipment you could possibly demand.
26:55And he wanted to simplify, simplify, simplify. And so that just stayed with me always as like there's no scene that's better by shooting it in a more complicated way.
27:05You know, so that, I guess, stayed with me. But I would I feel almost embarrassed even linking myself to him.
27:12Are we going to ever see another Zombieland movie?
27:15Yeah, we would love to. I just finished Now You See Me 3 with Ruben Fleischer, who directed Zombieland.
27:20And Emma Stone is the producer of this movie. Woody Harrelson is in Now You See Me.
27:24And so the gang is all the gang is all circling each other all the time.
27:28Ready to go again? You've done two of them, you know.
27:31We're all friends and we would love to. It's like the movies are like like a confection of, you know, family and humor and all this sweet stuff.
27:41And so it's the kind of thing that audiences might imagine and they'd be correct in assuming that it was like a great, fun thing to film.
27:47Exactly. Yeah. And well, best of luck with this movie as it goes along.
27:53You know, it's definitely something that's unique and special and it's something audiences need to discover because they're going to find they really like it.
28:02Thank you so much. A real pain is the name of the film. This is Jesse Eisenberg.
28:07Thank you for going behind the lens with us. Thank you.