Following the 35th Philadelphia Film Festival Closing Night screening of The Debut, writer-director Jesse Eisenberg joined Artistic Director & Senior Director of Programming at the Philadelphia Film Society, Michael Lerman, for a conversation and audience Q&A. 

The A24 absurdist musical comedy is Eisenberg’s third feature film following When You Finish Saving the World and A Real Pain. The film stars Julianne Moore as Mona Friedman, a shy housewife who decides to audition for a community theater production directed by the local controlling director, Jerry, played by Paul Giamatti. 

The transcript below has been edited for clarity.

I want to start by talking about the process of writing the songs for this movie, because you wrote them too. Often when people write musicals, they go back and forth between song and story. Did you finish the script and then go back and figure out what songs you wanted, or was there a back and forth?

Jesse Eisenberg: The musical in the movie, “Nosy Neighbors,” does not exist, and it does not deserve to exist. It was written entirely for what I needed in each particular scene. The opening number of the show is “Girl in 4F, Boy in 4A” because I needed a number that ended with the lyric “Won’t you notice me?” Paul says to Julianne, “Do you remember the line for your cue?” And she says, “Yes, I do, it’s ‘Won’t you notice me?’” Mona does say the words “won’t you notice me,” but not for real. So I gave her that, and then I worked backward. The entire musical was created around what I needed at any given moment.

I meant more: did you write them while you were writing the script, or did you finish the script and then say, “Now I’m going to write the songs”?

Jesse Eisenberg: I wrote the lyrics as I was writing the script, and I’d record a little voice memo, singing a melody while I wrote. I was just in more of a flow state, so it was coming, because I knew it needed it to exist in the thing. Musical theater music comes to me more easily than anything else I know how to do, unfortunately. That I can write quickly.

Can we talk a little bit about the pivot in tone from your previous work? Because I think it’s amazing. One of the things that really strikes me is how much you’re leaning on the camera to tell the story. Not that there aren’t shot choices in your other two films, but in this one you’re really using the camera to tell the story. Did that come naturally? Was it part of the process, or something you thought about afterward?

Jesse Eisenberg: Thank you so much for saying that. The last movie I directed [A Real Pain] was just two cousins going to Poland, and it was shot in a very simple way. The characters were people you know in life. The locations were all real, objective reality. With this one, I was trying to make a movie that existed in this woman’s head.

The rule for everybody (music, direction, camera, production design, props, costumes, everything) was that every scene should look like how this woman feels right now. So when things are happy, and she enters the theater, the music is all flutes *da da da da da* and everybody comes up to her and says, “You’re going to be so amazing, we’re going to be sisters, you look so beautiful in this costume.” And when things are scary, it’s like she’s walking through a 1920s noir flophouse. It’s terrifying. There are people rubbing their hands over a garbage-can fire. The whole idea was that I wanted to make a movie that feels subjective, where the emotions are always real, but the reality is not objective. The reality is just what her emotions are. I thought it would be more interesting, and the world of musical theater allows me to work in fantastical ways, because the subject of the movie is already fantastical.

The last thing I want to ask before we go to the audience, and maybe I’m projecting a little, but from your interviews, and from the roles you’ve chosen and how you choose them, you seem to bring a high level of empathy to your work, which is almost counterintuitive to the director in this movie. Do you feel you bring that empathy to directing when you’re working with these great actors?

Jesse Eisenberg: Yes, but the weird thing about directing is that you’re not just making decisions on shots and costumes; you’re in charge of a big group of people. That was a big thing for me. Since I started acting, I’ve felt like I have to know every single person on the crew, sometimes a hundred people. I always felt I couldn’t be comfortable acting if I didn’t know everybody, because I have to cry, and it felt weird to be emotional in front of strangers. So I got to know everybody, and I liked it so much. I love the collaborative process of moviemaking, being at this weird, heightened summer camp with everybody. It’s fourteen hours a day, it’s raining, it’s freezing, and we’re all in this great thing together. 

So when I was directing, I was obsessed with making sure everybody was happy, to the point where I screwed up the first movie I directed [When You Finish Saving the World]. On the second or third day, we finished a little early, and a guy who worked on the set said, “This is the best set I’ve ever worked on. We finished early.” After that, every day I was like, “We must finish early.” We’d shoot a scene, they’d ask, “Do you want to do more shots?” and I’d say, “No, we’ve got to get out of here. Everybody has families. We’re going home.” Everybody really liked me, and then I got to the editing room and thought, “I should have had a shot on the lead character there.”

So I had to figure out a way to protect the movie while still creating a nice environment. This is my third movie, and I’ve figured out a nice balance. I just love working with people so much, and when you’re working with people who are really talented, you don’t want to be a tyrant, because it makes them less comfortable doing good work. With this movie, in terms of empathy, Mona Friedman is me. It was my life. I grew up shy like her. I felt invisible like her. Then I joined a community theater like her, I found a family like her, and then I took things too far in my head like her. Even when she’s being awful and a tyrant, I feel bad for her, because she’s trying so hard to be good. She just doesn’t know the exact way to do it.

I’m going to open it up to the audience. [Relaying an audience question] The question is about Jerry’s diabolical coffee order. Was that inspired by a real person?

Jesse Eisenberg: That was inspired by a real person. He’s a friend of mine, and he’s not like that at all. His name is Scott Elliott. He directed the last two plays I wrote. Scott did the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in a rehearsal room. It was the first day of rehearsal for one of my plays, and Scott was giving notes while the actors sat around. An intern brought him coffee; he took a sip, and he said, “Oh my God, a horrible thing has just happened.” We said, “What?” He said, “This is hazelnut.” It was so funny, and he was the butt of the joke. That memory made me laugh so much that I always wanted a coffee thing in there. I’m not a big coffee drinker, so I just wrote the line “Mocha, no milk!” because it sounded funny to my ear. Then I found out it’s not a real thing. Or maybe it is, and it’s just gross. I don’t know why it sounds so silly.

A24

[Relaying an audience question] Mona makes a lot of suggestions to Jerry that aren’t very helpful. Were there times on set when actors gave you notes that weren’t very helpful, or that were insightful?

Jesse Eisenberg: Let’s talk about them now, publicly. No. Insightful ones, yes. I don’t like improv in movies, but Paul Giamatti came to me and said, “I have this friend who always says ‘dynamite,’ and I think it’s so funny that he uses it in modern parlance. He says, ‘Dynamite, baby!’ Could Jerry say ‘Dynamite, baby’?” I said, “Yeah, I’d love that.” It seems like it’s from another era. It’s just great. He was so sweet, nervously asking me if he could do this thing, when this guy, in my opinion, is the greatest actor in the world. So that was Paul’s contribution, and I loved it so much. The other contribution Paul had was at the end, when he says, “That’s where everyone really wants to be, Mona.” He added the words “center stage.” He asked me, “Can I say ‘center stage’?” Beautiful. It turned out to be such a wonderful line. 

Julianne is the most loyal to a script of anyone, to the point where if somebody else on set says a line with a word missing, she’ll come over and tell me, “They said that instead of this. Is that okay with you?” I’m like, “Yeah, it’s okay. It’s fine. It’s fine.” She’s worked with the greatest directors, so I don’t know why. Maybe she got into the habit of thinking, I’m going to be loyal to this thing. I’m going to be a vessel for it. Maybe that’s what makes her so loose; she’s not questioning anything. She’s just ridiculous on take one, because she’s decided she’s never going to question it.

A lot of times I’ve seen an actor go up to the director and say, “I don’t know that the ending of this scene works, and in the middle I don’t think I would say this, and also, why would I be wearing that jacket?” A lot of times those actors are not good, because what they’re doing, without realizing it, is taking themselves out of the commitment to the thing. A lot of that stuff doesn’t really matter. We accept tons of weird things in movies: weird jackets, people saying illogical things. Sometimes that’s what makes it artful. The actors who are constantly questioning things seem really smart, but they’re treating it as an academic game. They’re less committed, and they’re not as good.

Then you get somebody like Julianne, who’s like, I’m going to devote every aspect of my being. Every hair on my head is going to be in this character, and I’m going to look as ridiculous as possible while crying. She’s just given over to the thing. She never questions anything. It’s amazing. As a director, those are the people you want to stay with forever, and not everyone is like that.

[Relaying an audience question] Mona ends up being kind of a bad coworker, and her colleagues on stage are consistently kind to her, even to the point of holding her at the end. Can you talk about that choice?

Jesse Eisenberg: Yeah, but I don’t accept the premise. They fight back. The Boy in 4A hates her. My character hates her. When they’re screaming at her to “take the fucking line,” they’re all screaming at her, and Jerry berates her. The one holding her at the end is Sybil, who was always cold to her, because they were the only older women in the show, and Sybil wants Jerry’s affection. At the end, Mona sacrifices herself for the show. She doesn’t want to say that line, but she does it anyway, and that’s when Sybil finally respects her. So Sybil’s holding her at the end. But otherwise, that’s not the case. So I win. Thank you.

[Relaying an audience question] Can you talk about your writing process, and did you have either of them in mind for the roles?

Jesse Eisenberg: It was the exact opposite with the two actors. I want to say at the outset, they’re my two favorite actors. She’s been my favorite actress since I was young. I wrote this movie not only for Julianne, but based on a voice she did in the first movie I made with her [When You Finish Saving the World]. That voice is Mona in the first twenty minutes: “Oh goodness, gosh, I just think it’s going to be such a hoot!” and “Oh my God, it looks so beautiful, goodness, I don’t even know if I could do well!” This aw-shucks, almost 1950s thing. She did it in one scene we shot four years ago, and I started writing from that, because I knew she could do that voice.

I wrote every scene picturing her, and it made me take the movie to weird places, because she’s weird. We think of her as this beautiful, glamorous, dramatic star, which she is in everything, but she’s also just bizarre. She has the strangest instincts to do a dance, to do all the weird stuff she does, to smile like a child. Everything she does is just odd. Thinking about her every day while I was writing, without telling her, let me take the movie into weird places.

Then I sent it to her and told her agent I’d written the part for her, and I waited. Basically, if she said no, I wasn’t going to do the movie. I was so worried she’d reject it that I started going through every other actress in her general age range, and it was no, no, no. No one could do it. It’s so specific. Then she called me and said, “I read it. I’m scared.” I thought that was a rejection, because I’m used to that. So I said, “Oh, okay, you don’t have to. I just thought maybe you’d like it, but I know it’s kind of a weird role.” She said, “No, no, I want to do it. I’m just scared.” I said, “Oh, don’t be, you’re the best.” So then it was fine.

Paul Giamatti was the exact opposite. He’s also been my favorite actor since I was young, but I wanted a person with mystery. The whole idea was that this guy is shrouded in mystery. The problem with casting somebody you want to be mysterious is that once you put a face to the mysterious person, they’re no longer mysterious. Now it’s John Turturro. Now it’s Paul Giamatti. Now it’s Tom Hanks. Every time I thought of an actor, it made the character less mysterious. So we were struggling. We didn’t know whether to cast somebody British or from a different country.

Finally I asked our producer, Emma Stone, who’s great with actors, “Emma, can I just cast my favorite actor?” She said, “Who’s your favorite actor?” I said, “Paul Giamatti. I thought I told you this.” She said, “But that’s not what you pictured.” I said, “I know, but at least it will be great in some way.” It was. It’s different from what I pictured, but better. He’s amazing. It’s hard to find a performance that cruel. It’s the same with Julianne: it’s hard to find a performance that’s so ridiculous and also so emotionally engaged. 

[Relaying an audience question] Were there any scenes in the writing or editing process that you had to cut but had a lot of love for?

Jesse Eisenberg: Yeah. The electrocution scene was originally much bigger. She plugs the plug in and electrocutes herself, and originally it was this huge fireball. It was an expensive thing to shoot, because the joke was that she plugs the thing in, a fireball shoots out, her hair lights on fire, and she looks for something to put it out, but all she has is alcohol. So she pours it on herself, and it goes whoosh, and now there’s this huge, spherical fire on her head, and she’s walking around the bathroom with the fire moving.

We played the movie for our first test audience, at a mall in New Jersey. Test audiences don’t know what they’re watching. They get recruited at the mall to come in and see the movie. People were laughing, laughing, laughing, and then we got to that, which should have been a huge laugh. It’s a big comedy set piece, and it was quiet. I thought, oh, they’re not going with it. It was too much, and the fact that she’s still alive afterward was confusing. In my mind, it was so funny, and it just didn’t work. You hear this all the time with comedies. When I’ve been in comedies and asked the editors and directors, they say the funniest joke always got cut because it was funny for a reason that made it inappropriate for the story. It was an outlier in some way.

Then there was another scene. Actually, you would have liked this one [to the audience member who asked about Mona being a bad coworker]. Steph, the young woman played by Halle Bailey, gives Mona a pep talk. She says, “Once I tried to change the whole script too, because I was just nervous,” and Mona brushes her off. Again, at a test screening, audiences said, “We don’t like her being mean to Steph, because we love Steph so much.” So we cut that too. But maybe for your cut, we can put it back in.

[Relaying an audience question] What does humor mean to you as a person, and how does it affect your process?

Jesse Eisenberg: Thank you. What a nice way to put it. It’s a million things. One is that it’s the language I grew up in, which a lot of people here probably did too, because I’m from Jersey. When you live in this area on the East Coast, humor is a natural part of the culture. I’m Jewish, my friends are Italian, and even in stressful times, the person with the funniest joke wins the argument. Then, for entertainment, I’m not a good person to give advice, because I’m not a stable human being to begin with. But when young writers ask me for advice, I always say, write something personal, but make sure it’s entertaining. The problem a lot of young writers run into is that they write something so personal that it’s unwatchably boring. It’s like, “Well, this is what happened when I had ice cream.” You’re like, “I know, but there’s nothing in it that’s engaging to us.” There’s a great quote: “You don’t have to make a movie for everybody, but you have to make it for somebody, and it can’t be you.”

Humor lets me get you hooked and engaged with the characters so you can go on the journey with them. It was even more important in my last movie, which took place on a Holocaust tour, that the audience had some levity, some feeling of laughing, because otherwise you’re just talking about bleak history. With this one, if it weren’t funny, God, it would be so bad. It would be a woman who’s crazy and doesn’t seem to act in reality, going through this weird, tragic story for no reason. But because it’s funny, it signals to the audience, “I’m here with you.” The movie is with you. It’s not trying to confuse you. It’s weird, but we know we’re being weird, because we’re being funny. It signals to an audience that the filmmaker, the writer, and the actors are with them.

So when I see a fiction movie without humor, unless it’s a documentary or something really serious, I sometimes feel like I don’t relate to the culture it was made in. Two of my favorite movies are about the Bosnian genocide, and they’re so bleak, but there’s so much irony in what the characters are going through. That’s a culture I can understand. So I guess that’s what it means.

Well, we have to turn the house over, but I want to thank you so much for coming.

Jesse Eisenberg: Thank you, thank you.

Transcript Courtesy of Danny Jarabek