672 - Navigating Loss with Jesse Eisenberg
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Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and you're listening to episode 672 of Script Notes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, how do we handle loss? Loss of a parent, loss of a relationship, loss of a home,

How do we grieve both alone and collectively? To help us explore these questions, we have a very special guest. Jesse Eisenberg is a writer of plays, short stories, and screenplays, who is also an accomplished actor and director. He's the writer, director, and star of his film, A Real Pain. Welcome to Script Notes, Jesse Eisenberg. Thank you so much, John. It's a real privilege to be on the show and to talk to you. Excited to have you here. Congrats on your WGA nomination. Oh, thanks. Yesterday? Yeah.

Thanks a lot. So I want to talk to you about your movie, about the writing of it, the journey to making it into a movie. But also, if we can, I'd like to answer two listener questions that we got in. Sure. One about signature styles and simultaneous perspectives. And then we do a bonus segment at the end, and I'd love to talk to you about...

the radio drama as a form because it's weird. It's like ScriptDance, we've been doing this for 12 years, but we've never actually talked about the audio drama and you're actually a person who has written and performed in those. So I want to talk to you about that as a thing. Oh, great. Oh, I would love to. Cool. We're recording this on Thursday afternoon, January 16th, and we've just gotten word that David Lynch has died today, which is the writer-director behind Blue Velvet.

Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks, which was such an important thing for me. Jesse, did you ever get to work with him? Did you ever get to meet him? Did you ever cross paths with him? No, I've never met him and would definitely have not forgotten, you know, that experience. No, I just loved him so much. I think I wrote like three different like college papers on Mulholland Drive because I was recycling them because I love the movie so much. Yeah, I never got to meet him either. And I think the thing about writer-directors is they sort of just generate their own work. And so as a screenwriter, it's hard for me to sort of...

entered into his orbit. But I was just always so impressed by the specificity of his work and that you have some filmmakers whose names become adjectives and Lynchian is just a thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can identify it as a signature style that's not even just the visuals but just like the way the feeling his worlds feel. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So he died at 78. Not...

In the fires, but partially because of the fires. He was evacuated from the Sunset Fire, which also affected us. It was headed down our way. So apparently that was part of what set off this last series of things. Oh, I had no idea. Oh my goodness. So emphysema, but like when people are in a fragile state and then they have emergency, you're moving them around. Right, right, right. Oh goodness, I didn't realize. So Jesse, I associate you as a New York person. Have you been in Los Angeles much?

Um, I mean, I'm aware of it. And the first time I would like go to Los Angeles would be for like screen tests for movies. So I just developed this horrible, like Pavlovian anxiety about landing at LAX because I knew I had to like go, you know, I was trying to like memorize my lines in the car over to some audition. And so I never got like the wonderful LA experience. I shot there and I did a play there actually. And when I'm working there, it's nice. But when I'm like not working there, all that old stuff kind of

you know when I'm there and I have a day off or something you know all that old feeling of being out there and I don't know just the anxiety of being out there comes back

Yeah, it's strange that in the States we have like these two big cities, big iconic cities with many great iconic cities. But the two big ones we think of are New York and Los Angeles. And like New York, though, is so see like everyone kind of has a connection to New York. And Los Angeles is sort of a place people drop into and out of, but they don't have that same kind of affinity for. Exactly. And being in the entertainment industry, I always felt like, well, if I'm in L.A. and I'm

not working, what am I doing there? Whereas when I'm not working in New York, it feels like less of a problem because I'm a third generation New Yorker, so it just feels like, oh, this is where I should be. Well, this really brought me to this last week in the fire, watching the national coverage of it. There was good coverage of it. You could see a lot of national interest in it, but it wasn't the same kind of visceral feeling we had after 9-11, something that which was so devastating on a national level. Exactly. It was the attack on 9-11 was like an attack on a fundamental piece of America. Yeah.

These fires were more disparate. There wasn't one center to it. Exactly. And I've been really eager to talk to people about the fires because I was in L.A., you know, a few days before. And so, you know, I'm and I have so many friends and colleagues there. I know several people that have lost their homes. And in New York, I'm finding less it's more difficult to kind of connect with people about it because it's really not on their radar as much as I would have expected. Yeah.

Yeah, so update from where we are here. As we're recording this, the fires aren't out, but they aren't growing, so they feel like they're largely under control. And we have thousands of homes burned, people displaced, and we're just starting to get a handle on sort of what we've lost and what happens next. I and a bunch of other writers donated to the Writers Guild Member Fund, which is through the Entertainment Community Fund, which is helping out people in the industry affected by this. But obviously, as ScriptNotes and sort of individually, we're going to be doing a lot of

donations and fundraising for folks impacted by these fires and the work of rebuilding the city and the parts that were lost. So we'll have a link in the show notes to resources for writers from the WGA for if you've been impacted, places to go first to look for some help here. But let's get to talking about you and sort of what you've been working on. So it's just so fascinating, this intersection between you as a writer and you as an actor. So I want to talk about where things started because

Looking back through your history, it feels like you were kind of doing both things at the same time. You were never an actor who then decided they wanted to write or a writer who then got put into some things. They were simultaneous interests for you. Yeah. And that started as a kid, I'm guessing. Yeah, exactly. I would always write. I mean, I started just writing kind of like jokes. And then I would, you know, be writing scenes when I was 16 years old. I wrote a movie about Woody Allen, you know,

that was like a young version of Woody Allen in modern society, but it was about him changing his name to Woody, to Woody Allen from his real name. And I got a cease and desist letter from his lawyers once they finally got the script. And then I want to, I want to push you on pause there. So once he finally got the script, so that means that you hustled your way into getting him to read this script.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Because I wanted to like film it on a little camera. Like I had, I was like, I was just trying to do all things at all times. Like, you know, as you know, or maybe you don't know because you're like very successful screenwriter, but like as an actor, like you always feel like you're like one job away from never working again. And, you know, so I felt that way even when I was like 17 and auditioning for things, I always felt like this all feels like you have to win the lottery to get a part in something. And so I was just

doing anything I could in the arts, which included just writing scripts in high school and trying to like, you know, send them to anybody who might read them. And then I started getting parts in like movies when I was like 18, 19, 20. I started getting like good parts in movies that people actually saw. And that helped me like, because I got an agent, that helped me to get

my screenplays that I was writing. I was writing like commercial style screenplays that helped me have an agent to get them into companies' hands. And so some of them got like optioned by like Depth of Field, which is the Weitz Brothers company. And I was like 20, 21. And I would rewrite these scripts. I had like

three or four of them at the time. I'd rewrite these scripts. I never got paid for an option. It was always just like they were at these companies. I'm not complaining, nor I should not have been paid for these. But I just mean like it was not like I was a success. It was basically some companies had taken these scripts and agreed to talk with this nice kid for...

you know, once every six months. So that was the thing. And at some point I realized these are never going to get made. So I want to unpack a few things there. So you were talking about the difference between an actor and a writer. So the writer can just go off and write a new script. You have an agency as a writer that you don't have as an actor because as an actor, you're asking somebody to put you in their thing. Let me be a part of your thing versus like, let me create the thing behind it. Exactly. Yeah.

And yet, as an actor, you have a lot more access to different filmmakers and different styles of doing things. Because by the time you were 20, 21, 22, you'd been on a bunch of sets. You'd seen how a bunch of different people worked. You were also reading a ton of scripts. That's a great education. It's unbelievable. I don't think I would be able to direct a movie had I not been on so many sets as an actor. Yeah.

you know, on sets, like, as an actor, but really, I'm just like, kind of, you spend the day, you know, as you know from being on these sets, you know, you spend the day kind of just watching things happen. And if you're like a curious person, which I'm a curious person, like, you know, you can ask the people and usually people are happy to tell you about their jobs and why they're doing what they're doing and why the dolly should go this way and not the other way. And,

So that was really helpful. But it also helped me as a writer too, because I'd been in so many, you know, on the micro level, I'd been in scenes that just don't work. You're like, why does this scene not work? Why is it not playable is the word we would use as an actor. This scene is not playable. I don't have, my character says this thing and then two lines later says this thing and it makes no sense. There's no psychological jump. And so as a writer,

I just don't do that stuff. And so, and that's not the difference between a good movie and a bad movie, really. It's just the thing that actors like to do versus what actors don't like to do. So that was really helpful. And then just because I'm writing things that are like character-based generally, it's like, I feel like I have a good sense of what actors like to do because that's always the thing I come into conflict with, you know?

I just did this movie. We just finished it. It was Now You See Me 3. It's this big, you know, big Hollywood kind of thing. It's an ensemble movie. There's eight characters in it. But I really do have to say, like, my character has a consistent voice from beginning to end. And it's just great. And I love doing it. And even though the movie looks like maybe this movie that wouldn't be, you know, emphasizing character stuff too much, for me, my character has like a distinct voice from beginning to end. And I just love doing it. It can happen in any level of movie.

Well, let's go back to those first scripts you were writing, the ones that the Weitz brothers were not paying you for, but to sort of bring in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is the first screenplay you remember reading? And the thing that made you think like, oh, this is actually a form I understand. This is a form I want to work in. Do you remember? Oh, wow. God, that's a great question. Yeah, God, it must have been something. I mean, when I was...

Because when I was younger, I was like auditioning for things, but I couldn't tell you the difference between a good thing and a bad thing. Yeah, and often you were probably seeing sides, so you were seeing the pieces of a thing rather than the full work. Exactly. I mean, I auditioned for the movie The Squid and the Whale when I was like, I think 19. I ended up filming it when I was 21 because...

they got on hold for two years because of budget or whatever. But I definitely remember thinking this is amazing. Like, it was amazing. So it was funny and emotional in a way that just felt original. And that kind of tone just seemed really cool. Yeah.

And Squid and Whale would also be, it's a spare script. It's like, it's just, it's not a play, but it's not a big cinematic. There aren't car chases. It's not the camera doing wild things. Right. It's just characters in a situation creating their own issues. Right. So it's easier to read. It's harder to read like a kind of big action thing and understand actually what it's going to look like and be because there are just so many moving parts that are not able to be explained.

explicit in a script. But, you know, for a movie like Squid and the Whale or the first movie I got to do, Roger Dodger, they were great scripts. The dialogue was great and you could see on the page that the thing was going to be great. It didn't require directorial or technical flourishes that you couldn't see on the page. Yeah,

Yeah, but the first script I read was Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, and Videotape. It was like one of the first things that was like printed that I could like buy at a bookstore and read. Oh, wow. And it was just the realization like, oh, everything that's happening in the movie that I'm like, I'm watching on the VHS copy. I think it's just reflected here and realizing that like,

there's a standard format that makes sense for explaining what's going to happen in this movie just on the page. And it was a good read? It was a great read. Accessible read, right. 100%. And again, it's spare because it didn't need a lot of flourishes, but just the sense of like, oh, this is how we're going to introduce a character on the page, which is not necessarily going to match exactly what you're going to see on the screen. Right. It tracks well. And you could hear characters' voices being distinct,

even before those actors are being cast in them. That's a crucial thing. Do you find that there are a lot of movies that just don't read well, but you know are going to be great?

There are. And so some of the cases I've run into are directors who've written things, they have a vision for what it is, but they sort of can't get it on the page very well. And so I know this filmmaker is going to be able to make something great. It's just not there yet. I've worked a lot at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. And sometimes you have these filmmakers coming in who are working on generally their second movie. And so the first one they just kind of like, just kind of made. And the second one, like they really are trying to put it all together. Right.

Sometimes they're struggling with the form, but you know they have a great vision there. And you know that because they've made that other movie? They've made that other movie or in the conversation with them, you see what it is that they're trying to do and they're just not quite able to find the... Translate that? Yeah, they're not able to evoke that on the page for what they're going to try to get to at the end of it all. Right, right, right. There are definitely times where...

I've read scripts that are just a really tough read. And yet, in talking with a filmmaker, you say like, oh yeah, they have a vision. They're going to be able to make something really, really cool out of that. And so my job as a

an advisor is just to be... I describe it as like, I'm your friend with a pickup truck who's going to help you move from where you are to where you need to be. I'm not going to change anything. I'm just going to help you get there. Oh, that's a nice way to think about it. Yeah. The alternative thing is scripts that read really well that don't make good movies. And I've been able to figure out what those are too. Well, tell me. Well, you know, it's the kind of script that has really kind of flashy dialogue, you know, funny dialogue and things that are like... What I find most of the movies that I'm thinking about that are...

fun to read but not but I know they're not going to make good movies are ones that are really quirky where like the quirk factor is turned up where people have odd names and everything stuff that is funny to look at but doesn't translate to when you're watching human beings take on those things

And now you have to kind of follow them. And I'm not just saying like you have to relate to everybody, but just things where they're really cutesy and quirky on the page, usually those things are just not translating to 3D imagery. Also, I think what you're describing is sometimes things could be like, oh, that little moment was funny, but it's not the kind of fun it's going to continue out through the rest, through two hours of a movie experience. And so it's the difference between sketch writing and...

longer form writing. It's the ability to really go on a journey with these characters and want to see them as it continues.

Yes. And, you know, and not be too funny. Like sometimes scripts are too funny and you're like, yeah, I get it. This is really, really funny, but you're constantly undermining the gravity of the emotions of the characters. So it's a good sketch, but it won't make a, you can't actually, you know, engage with these characters in an emotional way. Speaking of sketches, so you've done, you've hosted Saturday Night Live. Oh yeah. What was that experience like as a person who's usually going in with full preparation, usually you get a chance to really think everything through and suddenly you're in sketches. Do you,

Did you enjoy it? What was that like for you? Oh, it was terrible. I'm an idiot. It's my fault entirely. What happened was, like, when I was, like, 18 and I got an agent and everything, I had put together a packet for Saturday Night Live to write. Wow. You know, I'd written tons of sketches. I loved that format. Yeah. And, like, even as an adult, I could look back and say, yeah, they were, like, good sketches. It wasn't, like, a teenager writing. It was, like, somebody who had a voice and whatever, you know, and the concepts were funny and varied. And so...

when they asked me to host the thing i didn't want to because i only wanted to like write for the thing and i didn't want to be like an actor coming in you know they put the wig on an actor and like parade you around i wanted to be like a writer and i spoke to somebody there before and they said yeah no you can do that yeah that's fine you can bring your description that'd be great

And I didn't realize that they were just being nice to me. That was not the way it works. There are writers there, you know, they all come from the Harvard Lampoon and they are competing with each other to get sketches on. And the celebrity actor that comes in because they're in a popular movie that week doesn't get to write the things. But I didn't know that. And so I spent the week trying to have my scripts infiltrate the planned sketches. And so there was a table read and I think I did like two sketches at the table read and

I could tell increasingly over the course of the week, people were not happy with me, but I didn't realize. And I was just so desperate to be a writer. If I went back on the show, I wouldn't do that again. And I was an idiot. And I guess I was, I must've come off really obnoxious or something, but I was just so eager to write comedy since I'm young. And that felt like an opportunity for me to do it. Well,

Well, let's take it back to the 20-year-old Jesse Eisenberg. If I were to sit you down for an interview then and say, Jesse Eisenberg, what do you want to do with your life? What is your goal? What would you have identified as your aims? What were you shooting for?

Oh, I mean, The Onion. I would have just wanted to write for The Onion. To me, it's like the greatest thing in the world. During the pandemic, they allowed me to do six weeks on like a probationary period. I did not make it past the six weeks, but I had great stuff and like it just wouldn't get it voted in at the end. Like I was also like not one of the core writers. I was on this probationary thing. So like...

my headlines and stuff would not be prioritized. But still, I really, that to me still feels like the whale, you know. Oh, yeah. To me, it's like the greatest comedy writing in the world and I aspire to it and feel ashamed that I didn't get in there. Yeah, so instead you're just, you know, making movies and starring in things. To me, it's so much easier. Like the head writer from The Onion saw the movie A Real Pain and he complimented me on it and I immediately sent him back a headline because I was like so...

desperate to like just have something in the onion. To me, if I had a non-byline onion headline, you know, no one knows it's me and it came out in one of a hundred headlines that week, it'd make me happier than any movie script. Incredible. I want to talk to you about your movie, A Real Pain, because so this is your second feature as a director. For folks who haven't seen it yet, I'm going to give the shortest log line, but then I want to talk to you about what the movie's really about.

So it follows two cousins, David and Benji, who are on a group tour in Poland to visit important Jewish cultural sites, including a concentration camp, and to learn more about where their grandmother grew up. That's sort of the logline version. But was that the actual movie you set out to write? Like, what was the actual intention behind sitting down and starting to write this movie? Yeah, thank you so much for saying that. And your question, which...

which is like the first time I ever was asked it in that way, is quite spot on because that's not, the log line was the vehicle. You know, the log line was the way to get them. What is the actual screenwriting term? MacGuffin? Is that the thing? Sure, well, MacGuffin would be sort of like a plot device, but it's just like the mechanic. It's, yeah, yeah.

Exactly, yeah. So my background as a writer, like after sketch stuff didn't work out, my background was playwriting. So I've written, like I've had four plays on in New York. One of them transferred to the West End and some play in other places. But I had written one character in a play. It was named David. The play took place in Poland. The play was called The Revisionist. And it's kind of similar to my character, David, who I play in this movie. My third play, which is my best play, was called The Spoils. And I played a character named Ben, who is this kind of like,

charming, maladaptive guy like Kieran's character in A Real Pain. And then I had written a short story for Tablet Magazine where I took those two characters from the two separate plays and I put them in the same room as childhood friends who go to Mongolia. These two characters that are pretty similar to the characters in this movie. And then I thought I would adapt that to a movie.

And so I was adapting the Mongolia script, and I thought it'd be cool to shoot in Mongolia, and I'd never seen it before in a movie, etc. And it was just not going well. I just didn't have enough of like, I didn't have a second act. It's okay to talk in jargon, right? Oh, yeah, 100%. Jargon is very much welcome here. Okay, great. So like, basically, I had this amazing setup of these two guys who were childhood friends, and they had all this kind of funny, fraught history together. And then they got to Mongolia, and this

big thing happened there but the problem is it happened the first day they get there so there was no second act so it went basically it was a first act and then it jumped to this big tragic reconciliation of their past and I didn't have a second act and so I was like sitting there I was so frustrated because I knew there was potential with these two characters I love them so much and I love their banter

And I knew there was potential in a road trip of these guys. And I was like kind of banging my head against the computer when an ad popped up for Auschwitz tours and then parentheses with lunch. Auschwitz tours with lunch. And I, you know, I clicked on the ad even though I already knew what it was, which is that, you know, it takes you to a site for advertising, you know, English speaking tours of Holocaust sites.

And I thought, that's the movie. That's the movie. That gave me the vehicle. I can set these two guys who both have their own internal pain against the backdrop of objective, horrifying pain. And suddenly I could just implicitly make this kind of bigger commentary on like what pain is valid. Is my OCD character's pain valid? Is Kieran's pain, who has much darker demons than my character's pain valid? Or are we just individual kind of grains of irrelevant sand on the beach of Pothos?

Polish trauma, you know, in Holocaust history. And so once I came up with this Holocaust tour, it just seemed like this is a great vehicle to have a movie with these two characters. Yeah, and the choice to make them cousins makes a lot more sense now that you talk through the history of this. So originally, they were like best friends, but that really wouldn't make sense for why they're going on this tour together. If they were siblings, you're dealing with all the sibling stuff of it all. And so cousins is sort of like this in-between place.

Exactly. So originally, when I thought about the Holocaust tour, I thought they have to be family. I thought they'd be siblings. And then I realized it would be so much more interesting to make them cousins who just lost a grandma because what that would do is allow them to basically not have a relationship anymore. You know, if you're siblings, you're always connected by your parents. And there's, you know, just expectations that you should always be in each other's lives. But cousins who lose a grandparent, which is their only link, really have to kind of make a decision in some ways.

unconscious, you know, implicit decision on if they're going to remain really close. And that's what's going on with these characters in this movie. So Jesse, as you sat down to start writing the script, did you know that you were going to star in it? Did you know that you were going to direct it? Like, was that always an intention from when you started writing the script? No, not really. I write all the time. This was just the next thing I was writing. I wasn't exactly thinking that I would act in it.

I guess I wanted to direct it because I want to direct because I feel like the film industry is so fickle with actors that I feel like I need to have some kind of like control. I don't have your skill set to write the way you do these really big, wonderful movies. I can write my small personal things. And if I direct them, it gives me a little more agency in this industry that I find is really unstable. Yeah. Right. So I thought, okay, I could direct this. This could be something. It's a character driven movie. It's, you know, it doesn't...

require a technical, you know, mastery. And then in terms of acting in it, you know, I didn't really think about it. Because it sounds like you've actually played both characters. Yeah, I did. I did play both of those characters, but I always think of my acting as quite separate, like in terms of movies, because I'm in other movies and other people's movies. And so I wasn't exactly thinking of being in it, but the weird thing happens and God, you could probably relate to this in a roundabout or maybe the other side way, which is that like,

When I send people a script, it's just much easier to get something made that has an actor attached to it. Even if it's an actor they don't really like. Like, even if producers don't really like me, just the fact that an actor seems to have, you know, theoretically— I mean, you're at a higher level than this, but at my level, like with writing, like, there's an actor engaged on a $3 million movie. It already seems like it's possibly real. No, Jesse, I will assure you that at my level and sort of at every level, having an actor—

attached to something is really, really helpful. I think it anchors in people's minds like, oh, I can picture the movie. I can picture Oscar Isaac in that thing. Yeah. It just makes life easier if there's somebody attached. Exactly. And it also seems like validated by a non-writer. That seems helpful too. Like, okay, this is not just a literary thing. This is validated by somebody attractive. And so once I started sending it out to like

investors, you know, financiers, independent investors or whatever. So I just, you know, put my name on it, basically just

as like a kind of shorthand for that. It's going to hopefully be made soon. Yeah. And so as folks started to read this, they were reading this as like, okay, this is something that Jesse would be, Jesse wrote, he's going to be starring and directing in it. They've seen that you can direct a movie. They know you as an actor. It must make it easier because there's a sense of like, oh, I get what this is and it's not going to be a crazy expensive movie. What was the process of like going out and finding the money? Was it all independent investors? Did you have a plan? Because you ended up selling it at,

Was it Sundance or where did you sell it? We sold it at Sundance, yeah. No, this was, it was really hard, like really hard. Like we were passed up by everybody in like the first round of who we went to. It was ultimately produced by this great company, Topic. They're certainly not a second round company, but the people we had gone to for like a higher budget, essentially, like all passed on it. A24, who did my first movie, didn't do this one.

And so it did feel like a little bit like a really uphill battle to the point where I was writing to German reparations funds who give some money to Holocaust-themed movies. So I was able to get like a little grant from them that I thought could be seed money to make this. I didn't know how I was going to fund it. I know that must seem strange to maybe some listeners who know me as like a Hollywood actor and it seems like, well, why don't we just go make it? But the way these independent movies are made, it's kind of difficult. Like a lot of people want to make movies at this level. So it's competitive. Yeah. Yeah.

So you were able to find producers and financiers. How early on in the process did you have, did you enlist some sort of aligned producer, somebody who could come up with a budget, come up with a schedule? How early did you know like how expensive it was to make the movie? Oh God, that's a great question.

Pretty early we did that because, okay, so I should also say, because I don't want to seem like I'm asking for pity that it was a real struggle. It was a real struggle to find investors, but my producers are great. They're Emma Stone's company called Fruit Tree. So it's her husband, Dave McCary, and their partner, Allie Herding. So they were great. But when we were looking for actual investors, that was the struggle. We had to find investors.

We had a budget done, I think, pretty early, but it was a bit amorphous because the budget is partly dependent on getting money from the Polish Film Institute. That's right. And you don't know if you're going to get it. And in our case, we actually, we lost, like, I think it was like, we were a $3.5 million movie, and I think we lost $850,000 two months before because we were expecting it from the PFI. And then for a set of technical reasons, we didn't get it. So we thought it would cost $5.5. We ended up having to make it for $3.5, which meant cutting out days, which meant cutting locations, etc.

It was scrappy, it was quick, and every day felt like something would go wrong. Yeah, it was really challenging. We'll put a link in the show notes to the screenplay that's being published, sort of the four-year consideration script. How close is the script that we'll be seeing to what you sort of went into production with? Because it's always hard to tell with four-year consideration scripts how much they're just conforming to the final movie versus what the original shooting script was. What changed?

Oh, wow. What a nice question. I haven't even thought about this stuff. Yeah, we cut two scenes from the movie. We cut two scenes from the movie which are not reflected in the For Your Consideration script. So we cut the two scenes. Otherwise, maybe it's word for word. Like, it's that close. And the two scenes, one of the scenes was I put in at the very last minute

So it wasn't, it was a scene lit. But the big scene we cut was just the beginning of the movie. You see my character at home with his wife and kid. And the actress was great, Laura Torchia. She's a brilliant British actress. She played my wife and my child played my child. Wasn't happy to be cut out. But the scene felt too formulaic and kind of just standard issue for the pace of the rest of the movie. Absolutely. The way you're starting now makes a lot of sense because...

We see we're in New York. We know we're headed to the airport. I suspect what you found in the edit was that seeing the wife and family made you want to see them more over the course of it, and that really wasn't the movie you were making. Exactly.

Exactly. It was not helpful. And actually, you just want to, you know, I mean, God, you probably know this better than anybody, but just like audiences pick up on shortcuts to characterizations really quickly. You know, so like you see me in a taxi cab now in the beginning and I'm calling my cousin and it's a funny little scene, but it just says everything you want to know about who I am, who that character is, the cousin I'm calling. And it's a funnier scene and it's more original. And so.

Audiences are so aware. They just know, oh, that's this kind of person. And let's see how this person unfolds now. Yeah.

So I want to talk about sort of kind of a showcase scene in the script right now. It's eight pages long. It's pages 64 to 72, which is the restaurant scene. So this is where we're at a restaurant. Benji's being very prickly. He leaves the table. Yeah. David apologizes for him, explains what sounds like bipolar disorder. And two of your lines here, basically, I know he's in pain, but isn't everybody in pain in some way? Yeah.

And I know my pain is unexceptional, so I don't feel the need to burden everybody with it. Sort of central theses that you're sort of getting out there. Right, right, right. And it's also the revelation to this group that Benji had attempted suicide six months ago, which is new information for us as the audience. Right. Can you talk about the writing of that scene? Did you always know it was going to be sort of a turning point in the movie? That would be a showcase scene? And what were your feelings going into it, not just as a writer, but also then as the actor and the director? Yeah.

I hope it's okay to admit this, but I didn't have that line in the first draft of Benji trying to commit suicide. There were like little droppings within the movie that indicated that this guy's pain was far more... was darker than mine. But my instinct was to not put something so explicitly detailed like that. And the reason I put it in... I mean...

Again, I hope it's okay to talk about this stuff. I mean, because it's inside baseball-y a little bit. But the first movie I made wasn't received that well. And I think the reason it wasn't received that well is because I assumed that the audience would totally understand how I felt as a director about my characters. And they didn't. They thought I maybe had contempt for them, and I didn't. I was in love with them, but they were not being their best selves in the movie. It was really hard to read harsh criticism of the other movie. And so for this, I just wanted to make sure...

the audience understood what was happening. And that, yes, you could imply in 10,000 different ways and looks and lies of omission and all this stuff, you know, indicate that that character may have done something like that or tried to hurt himself or kill himself. But I needed to be more specific. Well, yeah, because we're seeing this as an audience. We're approaching it only with the information that we're seeing on screen. You as the writer-director understand

you know the facts, you know things that we're not necessarily able to see. So we don't know whether this is typical behavior for Benji or atypical. Is he always just an asshole? And so sort of what's going on in this moment? Yeah. What I like about the revelation where you put it is that it recontextualizes sort of the scenes that we've been thinking about beforehand. Exactly. And the same way that we as an audience are doing that, the other people around the table are like, oh,

oh, okay, the stuff we saw before. And so it actually does provide just really good dramatic fodder for sort of, you know, figuring out what happens next. It makes us appreciate both you and Benji differently for now knowing this information. The scene used to end, like the kicker at the end of that monologue was not this revelation that Benji, you know, tried to kill himself. But the real, the kicker in the, I mean, kicker is such a sleazy word to use for something emotional, but the great ending...

prior to that was basically it was a discussion of it was that you know our grandparents survived by a thousand miracles to get us here and the ending of the monologue was and I know we were born on third base I know I was born on third base and I feel like so lucky but it

but it feels like Benji is just constantly trying to run back to second. And so that was the ending line. It was like this guy who had everything and was trying to make his life so much worse. Yeah, and that's such a great line. And it's not supported by the scene that's there beforehand. So I can understand why it changed, but it's such a great sentiment. And so I want to drill into this aspect of it because what's interesting about your movie is that it's hard to make a dramatic comedy, comedy drama, something that walks that line

it also goes to the fact that this movie has to become quiet at moments. It has to let the concentration camp be what it is and then find a context for it. Yeah. Because, you know, you're talking about the loss of a grandparent and sort of

your own personal pain in this environment of just unspeakable, catastrophic, unfathomable loss. Right. And trying to hold the balance of that. And the shame you feel of feeling bad when others have it so much worse around you. Right. Exactly. Talk to me about the rest of the people in that group and sort of like

how you thought about those characters and the tour guide, Will, and sort of how you thought about putting together the rest of the folks who are going to be surrounding them. Yeah, so like in a macro way, after I kind of read up a lot on these, what these Holocaust tours mostly are, they're mostly suburban, middle, upper middle class Jews who are doing like their responsible trip, you know, instead of going to Rome this year, they go to this place and it's very well-intentioned. I don't mean to sound like flippant about them. No, no, it's wonderful that they're doing that and exploring that history. But,

But basically, I knew I couldn't have 15 people on the tour that were all basically my parents. Like, it would just be... It would be monotonous. So I was trying to think of who could be on this tour realistically that is just a little more interesting than probably what most of these tours offer. So for me, that meant, you know, I wrote a character based on my friend Deloge. I met this guy named Deloge in real life. He...

survived the Rwandan genocide, converted to Judaism. If you look up his name, the first video that comes up is him talking about going on an Auschwitz tour. He's my most religious Jewish friend. And I asked him, you know, I think you'd be a really interesting character. I told him when I was writing. I said, would you mind if I used your life story in this? And not only did he agree to it, but helped me with casting and wardrobe. And so it was wonderful. So that was interesting. I had a neighbor, Martha. She's kind of the basis of Jennifer Grey's character, Marsha. She was divorced and she was curious about kind of...

her roots in Hungary. And I thought it was, I kind of just put the story together in my head of how interesting it must be to be going through a divorce and trying to find grounding in your own family's history, even if that means Holocaust history, you know? And so that was a character. And then in terms of like the tour guide, I thought it'd be interesting to have a character that is kind of, there's a term that Jews use called philo-Semitic. You know, anti-Semitic is a hatred of Jews. Philo is, of course, a lover of Jews. But Philo,

It's kind of a weird... Yeah. You know, the word is not used exactly. It's kind of derogatory. It's basically used to describe somebody who fetishizes Jewish culture. You know, like, you guys are so... I love the food. That kind of thing. And so I thought it'd be really interesting to have a character as a tour guide who is like an academic so that he can kind of represent just the kind of cold facts of the tour because I wanted somebody...

Basically, I was just trying to create people that Benji could play off of, that Kieran's character could play off of. And I knew if I had this guy that was, like, overly academic and intellectualizing this tragic history, I knew...

it would just create some tension for Kieran. And so as I was writing it, it just proved to be true because once they got to the cemetery and they're looking at this oldest Jewish cemetery, Kieran just goes nuts on him. Yeah. So you've assembled sort of this group of folks who are traveling through this place. At this point, you've cast Kieran. How much time did you have to figure out sort of the relationship between you two guys? Because...

I can imagine if you weren't also the writer-director, you were just the two actors, you might find some time to get together and figure out what your dynamic was. How much time did you have to spend with him to figure out sort of how to play things? What was the process of working with him?

I mean, I had no time with him. And that's more having to do with Kieran than it is anything else. Kieran is the most unusual person. Every writer listening to this, hire him in your movie, but don't expect to have any conversation with him. Don't expect him to know what scenes you're shooting during the day. Like he's like the main, not only is he like the main character in this movie, like he's like the focus of every scene in this movie, you know? Yeah.

And he didn't know... First of all, he showed up to Poland a day before we shot. He didn't want to talk about it with me on the phone ever. We did a 15-minute rehearsal. Well, basically, he showed up to Poland the day before we shot, and I had a three-hour rehearsal planned. And it was the scene where he calls up all these characters to this monument to take pictures, and he kind of just brings the group out of the shell. And I thought we'd had a three-hour rehearsal...

And he was late to rehearsal. He came... I'm criticizing him only because I'm about to compliment him. And he came to the rehearsal and he didn't know what scene we were rehearsing and he didn't know any of his lines. And he said, can I look at the script for a second? So I showed him the script. He looked at it for like 30 seconds and then was word perfect and did the scene once so perfectly that I said, let's not rehearse anymore. Let's just shoot it. And then...

He would come to set during the days and I would say like, are you okay? He's like, yeah, I'm okay. I was like, yeah. He said, what scene are we doing today? And I would say, it's the scene you have five pages of dialogue on a train and it's moving quickly. And he goes, oh, I remember reading that scene. That was funny. Can I take a look at the script? And I would say, you don't have your script? He's like, oh no, I think I don't, I don't know if I brought it. And so I give him my script. I'm sitting there panicking that this guy doesn't know his dialogue and we have eight hours to shoot on this train scene.

And again, he looks at the pages for like a minute and he's word perfect and brilliant. He's just the most unpretentious actor, but he's doing all of the work. He's just not doing it in a way that's like performative. So like we found out from his hotel room

towards the end of the movie that he had been sleeping on the floor and his room was like a mess. His mattress was on his floor and he was like living, like, I don't know if he was eating at night. He was living like Benji, the character in the movie, but he was just not telling anybody about it. And I contrast that to the actor that, you know, comes to set every morning and says, you know, God, I was just going over the,

the pages last night and it just reminded me of Lear. You know, this kind of bullshit pretense that adds nothing to the movie but just makes you realize that this person is, you know, doing their work or whatever. You know, Kieran's the exact opposite. I would love to work with him again and again, but he doesn't make the director comfortable, you know, or the writer comfortable. I want to talk a little bit about directors here because I think I was thinking through this morning as I was getting ready for this is,

there's some actor directors who've directed themselves incredibly well. And so I was thinking like Bradley Cooper directed himself great in A Star is Born. Lena Dunham did a great job directing herself in Girls. And yet there's other, I will name names of the people who didn't do a great job, but like

who are people who are really good actors, who are good directors, who sort of don't direct themselves well. How did you make sure that your performance is working as an actor when you're also worrying about everything else as a director? What are the challenges there? Do you have any hints or tips? Yeah, I guess, you know, from the outset,

because I've been writing so long, it was not like I was an actor trying to make a vanity project for myself where I was putting so much emphasis on my performance because I had written it for me to show the audiences that, hey, I can do this dark thing. Look, I can play homeless. You know, that was not my intention with,

The script, I've been writing for myself for years. I've been, you know, in my plays. And I don't know who or what you're referring to when you say it doesn't work. But my sense is that probably those are intended as vanity, not vanity pieces, but trying to show something that they're not often cast in. And those things just go wrong for the reasons...

because the initial intention is off there. Yeah. So for me, I just didn't have that. And I'm sitting at the library writing the scripts and I'm, you know, I'm, you know, crying when I'm writing because I'm feeling all the emotions and then I'm on set. It's an extension of that. So it's coming from a real place. I'm probably an unusual writer, actor in that, like, I've started out doing plays and stuff and so, like,

I just never think of like the extravagance of a movie being something important for me to act in. So yeah, maybe that helps. We have two listener questions that I thought we could take a crack at together here. Drew, could you help us out with a question from Tate?

Tate writes,

And at what point does something shift from being a unique, constant quality of a writer's work to a laziness that the writer continues to rely on? Okay. I'm expected to answer this? Together we can answer it. Okay, great. Because, like, gosh, I couldn't possibly. Yeah, no, please. It strikes me that we're trying to answer this question on the day that David Lynch died. And, like, David Lynch had very common things that sort of kept appearing in his stuff. They felt, like, of a consistent piece. And so I wonder whether Tate is just actually...

recognizing what their style is and sort of what interests them. I think if I look at a lot of my movies, generally it's about a person crossing from one world into another world, having to learn the rules of it and survive within it and sort of get back out at the end. Like Go is that movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is that movie. A lot of my movies have those same kind of themes in them, but they're all very different. Where sometimes people become like a crutch and they say that they're a hack, they're basically doing the same scene again,

after movie that have sort of one way to go to. And Jesse, talking about like the plays you've written, the two movies you've made, they're consistent enough of a piece, right?

Wouldn't you say? Yes, they're all based on my preoccupation of why do I have a good life when other people have a bad life? All my plays are exactly that theme. My first movie is that. It's about a woman who works at a domestic violence shelter and resents her son because she's raised an upper middle class son. And so she tries to parent this kid at a shelter. Why does... And so, yes. So I guess just the thing you said, though, you used the word interest. That seems...

Great. Yeah, because when you say you're finding the things that you're interested in, well, that's great. That's really great. And that you could repeat forever and ever because if you're interested in them, maybe it feels like maybe perhaps you haven't found the solution. And when you don't have a solution for something, that's always the best thing to write about because it has a kind of unanswerable tension. So I fully agree. And Tate, I think just as you're looking through the seven scripts you've written now, which is great. You've written seven scripts. You have a sense of sort of what it is that you like to do.

You know, those are things you're writing for yourself. And down the road, if you're going to be a writer who's working for other people, you may be writing stuff that's not that. You may be using your skills of putting scenes and words together to do a very different thing. And that may be a great opportunity for you. The same way that Jesse gets to act in movies that are not his movies and gets to play different people, too. So it's not a problem that the stuff you're writing for yourself is of a piece. It's just you.

Yeah, it means you have a voice. To me, it sounds actually great. Like, you know, when I read writers and you could recognize that it's theirs, it's wonderful. Drew, next question.

Victoria writes,

Should I think in terms of shot coverage, where I outline each character's full action in the timeframe of the scene and then edit them together? Is there another good way to look at this? Do you have any specific directorial techniques you use when writing these kind of action sequences?

Whether it's an action sequence or sort of any time we were moving between two different things in a movie, that's one of the great wonders of cinema is we can cut between two different things. It's how do you make that feel like every time you're cutting back and forth between them, you're gaining energy that you're actually, you know, moving the story forward in a way that it all fits well together. And it's just honestly so different than what you do in a play. And a play is a continuous space and time generally. And this is,

Jesse, what's been your experience? Because I would say that I can't think of moments in a real pain where you've had to sort of intercut between two different things that much. Yeah, to me, I couldn't even imagine doing that. Yeah, I mean, I'm so impressed by this questioner's ambitions. I was just like thinking, oh, wow, yes, note card sounds like a great idea. I'm like the last person that should be asked about this. I just finished acting in this movie. Now you see me three. And to me, it's like,

The writers are great. And it's like, to me, they built like the Empire State Building. I have no idea how they put this thing together. They're accounting for an ensemble. They're accounting for tricks. They're accounting for, you know, studio notes from a big studio. To me, it's like they built a building. It's like that far afield from the thing I know best.

I know about. Yeah, and so, listen, I think, Victoria, if you're writing stuff that involves intercutting between that stuff, reading a bunch of scripts that do it is going to be a real help to you. So, look through the for your consideration scripts. We have them all up on, we can read, just read the scripts of the movies that you like that do it and sort of see what that looks like on the page and you'll get a sense of it and,

The most challenging script I had for intercutting was probably the first Charlie's Angels, actually, in which you have the three different angels in different parts of this castle. You have your villain, you have all this stuff that's happening and it all is fitting together. And that had to work on the page before we started shooting it. And what I wrote is very much sort of the cut that you see there. And it's just, it's making sure that every time you're moving from one thing to the next thing, you're remembering where it was there, but also you're getting energy out of that cut. And that's just a, it's a,

a skill to learn. If it's something that you like writing that kind of stuff, it can be really exciting. All right, it's time for our one cool things. My one cool thing is this little website gamey kind of thing called a network of time. It's a little

So it's networkoftime.com if you want to go there, it's free. And it's basically doing six degrees of separation between two famous figures. And so you put a person on the left, a person on the right, and it figures out like, okay, how are they connected through what other people are they connected? But not just the names, it actually connects them through photos. And so it shows you the photos that put all those people together. And so...

I'm going to go network of time here because I think you are a person in here. So I'm going to try Jesse Eisenberg. And what other famous person should I put you into? It could be like any historical figure as long as they lived in some time of photography. So anybody post Abraham Lincoln. Wow. Shakira? Shakira, 100%. I suspect Shakira will be a link through...

some other actor or like a talk show host. Let's see. Cause you've probably been on the same talk shows. Oh, got it. Okay. So that's an easy. Yeah. So it's loading up now. How many people are, Oh wow. You're right. Talk show for four photos. All right. So the connections are Jimmy Fallon. So you're both on Jimmy Fallon's talk show. So there's a photo of here with Fran Lebowitz. All right. So Jimmy Fallon, then Donald Trump, Jimmy Fallon and Donald Trump, uh,

Then Donald Trump and Jennifer Lopez. Oh. Then Jennifer Lopez and Shakira. Oh, this is amazing. Oh my God. This is amazing. So I did it before we started recording. I did one with, to figure out how many steps between you and Abraham Lincoln. And so for Abraham Lincoln, it's both, it goes to Jimmy Fallon, Paul McCartney, Queen Elizabeth, George V, Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft, Robert Lincoln, was Lincoln's son, and then Abraham Lincoln.

Got it. Oh, I see. That's interesting. So I could see this website is Jimmy Fallon and probably the British royalty are doing a lot of heavy lifting. They are doing a lot of heavy lifting. And yeah, presidents do a lot there. What's weird about it is like it has a limited set of things because if I try like Jesse Eisenberg and Chris

Kristen Stewart it'll go through Jimmy Fallon it's like no no no there's photos of you and Kristen Stewart you started two movies with Kristen Stewart so at least I see okay got it so it sticks to its own game absolutely

Jesse, do you have something to share for us? One cool thing? Yeah, sure. You know, one of my favorite shows of all time, God, when did I first learn about it? Probably when I was like 14 years old. So I'm 41, so do the math. It's called Floyd Collins. It's a great musical by Adam Gettle, my favorite composer. And it's

coming back to New York. It's like, it's a musical that's basically every college kid's favorite musical, but it's never been like produced on Broadway. And so now it's coming. So it'll be in New York, I think pretty soon. And I just recommend it to anybody who can go. It's just the coolest. So Floyd Collins by Adam Gettle. Tell me the story of Floyd Collins. I don't know it.

Well, actually, you probably would know the Billy Wilder movie Ace in the Hole. It's about a caver in Kentucky in 1925 who gets stuck in a cave and then like this kind of circus forms around him. And so Ace in the Hole, I think, follows the reporter. But in this, you're following the guy who gets stuck in the cave and this just circus forms around the cave of he turns into a novelty and he dies. But this is a true story of like the guy stuck in the cave. Come look at the guy stuck in the cave. And the guy died. He couldn't get out. And so it's just this really kind of

dramatic irony and you know tragic true story and a musical that's awesome so Floyd Collins

That is our show for this week. Scriveness is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Ciolelli. Our outro this week is by Nico Manzi. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaux.com. That's also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You'll find transcripts at johnaux.com along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have t-shirts and hoodies. You'll find us at Cotton Bureau. You'll find the show notes with links for all the things we talked about

in the newsletter you get each week as a premium subscriber. So thank you to our premium subscribers who make it possible for us to do this. You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we're about to record on Audio Dramas. Jesse Eisenberg, an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much, John. What a great honor to be on your show.