KARLOVY VARY – He may still be baby-faced at a spry 42 years young, but Jesse Eisenberg already has a resume many of his peers would envy. A resume more than worthy of receiving an honorary President’s Crystal Globe Award at the 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The Oscar-nominated screenwriter accepted the honor before an archival screening of Richard Ayoade’s underrated “The Double.” He then segued to a masterclass discussion of his career in front of a packed, public audience in the festival’s Hotel Thermal headquarters.
The 90-minute conversation spanned the breadth of Eisenberg’s career from the aforementioned “The Double,” which he watched for the first time today (directing more has allowed him to tolerate looking at himself on screen more), to his unexpected direction from Kelly Reichardt during “Night Moves” (she continually asked him to simply speak slowly) to his love of screenwriting and, most notably, his Academy-Award winning last release, “A Real Pain,” and “The Debut,” with Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti, which A24 has acquired for distribution this fall.
Having spoken to Eisenberg many times over the years, he’s always been genuinely humble. And discovering this afternoon that he donated a kidney anonymously last year is Eisenberg to a tee. So, was his admission that he had little use for social media after playing Mark Zuckerberg in David Fincher’s seminal “The Social Network” over 15 years ago. But the subjects that sparked the most joy were his love of screenwriting and the five produced plays he’s staged so far.
“My plays are all about mean people, but it humanizes them,” Eisenberg says. “That’s my fascination. My first movie [“When You Finish Saving The World”], Julianne Moore played this very tough woman. I just was crying for her. And then the reviews came out and said, ‘Why did I make a movie about such a mean person?’ And to me, I’m like, ‘She’s not.’ I’m crying for her. We’re watching the movie. I’m weeping. I guess I was the only one. And then my second movie, Kieran Culkin plays a character that’s also very kind of cruel, but for some reason, maybe sexism, he is celebrated for it. So, I don’t know. And in my new movie, Paul Giamatti plays a character who’s really cruel. And also, because we’ve been doing test screenings of it, celebrated. I think it’s maybe having to do a little bit with sexism. When a woman is mean, we’re really put off. And when a man is mean, we give them a little flexibility.”
When the moderator responds, “I didn’t think she was mean. She was maybe hurt, maybe burnt out.” Eisenberg zings back, “Tell the New York Times.”
When then asked if he pays attention to reviews, Eisenberg replies, “I don’t read reviews, but somebody just told me, ‘The review of your first movie in the New York Times was so bad that I wanted to watch the movie. That it was so horrific, the review. They hated it so much that I thought, ‘I have to see this.'”
“The Debut,” which is rumored to premiere at one of the four major fall festivals beginning next month, finds Moore playing a shy middle-aged woman whose life takes a turn after she auditions for a role in a community theater production spearheaded by a director portrayed by Giamatti. Eiseneberg, who has a small role on screen, says that unlike his first two projects, this one takes place in a somewhat Kafka-esque world where the audience gets stuck in Moore’s character’s head, and she starts living in almost, like, dream fantasy.
“I was really trying to push the style to be, in some ways, the Central European cinema of Kafka and German expressionism, where the light hits the person directly in the face rather than bouncing off a card. So, hopefully people will like it here,” Eisenberg tells the audience. “The movie takes place in 1990, when I was 6 years old, and is about this woman who is so ignored in her life. No one notices her in her life, and she joins this community theater, and it’s a bad show. They’re doing a show called ‘Nosy Neighbors.’ It’s a dumb show. And she has a small part playing the superintendent of the building, the janitor. And she has a small part, but she takes it so seriously. And it’s exactly what I did when I was younger. I was miserable as a kid, and then I started doing theater, and I found my place, but also it was terrifying. Because when you love something so much, it scares you. But I was in panic before every show because I put so much into it. And so that’s what this movie is about. It’s about a woman kind of finding herself, but really, it was about me when I was six years old.”
Not so surprisingly, despite a previous Oscar nomination for his on-screen efforts, Eisenberg insists his own acting isn’t up to par with Moore and Giamatti in the movie. He recalls, “I had a good scene with Julianne Moore, and I kept screwing up my lines. And I just remember thinking, ‘God, acting is hard.’ You know? Because I don’t think I played a really small part in a movie for a long time. That sounds obnoxious. But it was hard to have a small part because all of my importance was on that scene. When you’re the lead role in a movie, you feel more comfortable. You’re more in the momentum of the movie. But I was, like, coming in once a week with a little scene, and that’s hard. It’s funny, Giamatti, when he was younger, he only played small parts in movies. And so Paul said, ‘I got really good at being great on the first take, because the director is not gonna give you a second take. If you have a small part, they don’t care enough. So, I got really good at being good on the first take.’ So, unless you’re, like Brad Pitt or somebody who is always playing the lead role or something, you learn to get really good.”
The production’s fictional musical features music and lyrics Eisenberg wrote himself. It turns out musical theater is his “favorite thing in the world.”
“But I recognize when I was younger that I’m not talented enough to be in musical theater,” Eisenbeg admits. “And it was very strange. I was talking about this audition where I could be funny when I was 15 years old. I have the exact opposite with musical theater. I would audition, and I would sing, and I could just tell the people behind the table were disappointed. And I was like, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, this is not gonna be something I can pursue. I’m not good enough.’ And so I started writing my own musicals. And one of them got close to being made. And then it fell apart. And so I was just, like, always trying to write music. I loved doing it.”
It also appears “The Debut” has given him the perfect chance to demonstrate those songwriting skills to a larger audience.
“With this, I thought, ‘O.K., this is great because this character, Julianne’s character, can be in a musical, and the musical could be bad. And it’s still good for the movie. The musical doesn’t have to be great. She’s not in ‘Les Misérables.’ She’s in ‘Nosey Neighbors.’ And so I was just writing all the songs and the scenes, and it was so much fun, because I wasn’t worried that the audience would think it’s bad. Because if the audience thinks the musical is bad, they like the movie. ‘Oh, because she’s in this bad musical.’ And if the audience thinks the musical is good, that’s even better too. So I don’t know. Maybe people will hate the musical. But, you know, Bernadette Peters sings the song in it, and you got all these Broadway actors, and the people from ‘Hamilton’ choreographed it, and did the orchestrations. So, I had these amazing people working on this very silly show.”
He continues, “My Polish movie, [‘A Real Pain’], was done by Michał Dymek. He is known for ‘EO,’ ‘The Girl with the Needle.’ He’s amazing. One of the great European cinematographers. And I was acting in the movie, so I would just say to him, like, ‘Yep, just put the camera out there. You know, and make it look pretty, and just tell me if it’s O.K., ’cause I don’t want to watch it after. And then my new movie is shot by Drew Daniels, who shot ‘Anora.’ And same kind of thing. I was just like, ‘I want this to look pushed, and I want it to look stylized, and I want it to be scary.’ And Drew was just great. And I love working with cinematographers because I need them. They’re great directors who, you know, who want to be cinematographers. I’m not that person.”
“The Debut” arrives in theaters later this year. The 2026 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival runs until July 11.
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