Ask A Genius 1205: ‘I’m in the Writers Guild’
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/11/13
Rick Rosner: So, I’m in the Writers Guild and the TV Academy. That means I can vote in certain Emmy categories and for the Writers’ Guild Awards. I get invited to screenings of TV shows and movies, and I can bring Carol along. Someone from the production team, or even a few people, will often talk about the show or movie afterward. It makes you feel special, and they usually feed you, too.
They have hors d’oeuvres and everything. There’s a huge difference between good Q&A sessions and bad ones. The bad ones focus on how actors or characters felt during certain scenes, offering little insight. A poor set of questions usually involves many actors and the interviewer asking what the characters felt at various points.
That doesn’t provide any real enlightenment. If you’re an actor, but as a viewer, the characters’ feelings should appear on the screen.
You leave those sessions thinking, “Well, that was a waste.” But yesterday, we saw a movie called A Real Pain, written and directed. We acted in by Jesse Eisenberg, co-starring Kieran Culkin from Succession. It was a good film. The story follows two cousins on a Holocaust tour—trips that many Jews take to Poland to visit concentration camps where their family members may have been killed 80 years ago. In this movie, their grandmother is a survivor, so they go back to see the camp she is in and her old house.
Jesse Eisenberg spoke afterward, and it was incredibly informative. Yes, they asked the audience many questions. Often, at these events, the questions can be overly flattering or self-serving. Some attendees ask long-winded questions to show off their knowledge, hoping they’ll get noticed by industry professionals.
And sometimes things reach a desperate level. When we moved to LA about 30 years ago, a woman would attend these screenings wearing a bikini top, hoping to get discovered. Eisenberg was surprisingly, even intimidatingly, in command of everything he discussed. People asked him decent questions, and he explained why he did certain things, often for incredibly insightful reasons.
It came up that they only had 25 days to shoot in Poland because of their $3 million budget. To save time, before the cast arrived, they rehearsed every scene with Polish actors standing in for the American actors. This meant that every scene was already blocked when it came to film. They could shoot scenes in one or two takes, similar to what Clint Eastwood does. But Eastwood does it because he’s known for not caring much about retakes.
Eastwood is infamous for doing just one or two takes and calling it good enough. He doesn’t bother with revisions to the script—someone hands him a script, he likes it, and he shoots it as is. That’s why, when you watch a Clint Eastwood movie, there are often scenes that could have been improved, but he doesn’t care. The movie keeps moving along.
And he’s 94 now and still releasing new movies. They’re usually entertaining and cover solid themes; people let him do things his way. However, in Eisenberg’s production, everything was meticulously planned and blocked, which was interesting.
It’s impressive how Eisenberg moves between indie films and big-budget productions. He recently finished shooting Now You See Me 3, a high-budget caper film about magicians and sleight-of-hand scam artists—like Ocean’s 11, but with more twists. He mentioned talking to the director of that movie, Ruben Fleischer, who gave him a note on the ending of A Real Pain, the movie Eisenberg directed.
Fleischer told him that if he wanted the movie to make a billion dollars, he should change the last scene to make it more conventionally satisfying. However, Eisenberg was adamant about giving the audience a different resolution.
Eisenberg said, “Nope,” refusing to deliver a typical movie ending that would offer easy satisfaction. That choice speaks volumes about his creative decisions.
I need to remember exactly what he said. However, Eisenberg mentioned that neatly wrapping up a story means nothing left to think about afterward. He talked about how the two main characters are Jewish and how he directed them to avoid what he called “fetishizing” Jewishness. His analysis was that Jewish characters are often portrayed in stereotypical ways. For instance, Eisenberg’s character has OCD, which makes him act anxiously. In contrast, Kieran Culkin’s character deals with trauma, influencing his behaviour.
He intentionally did not include typical comedic moments rooted in Jewish “snobbishness.” There were some physically awkward scenes, but they never ended with a pratfall or a punchline because he didn’t want to give the audience easy satisfaction. I’m not explaining it as well as he did. He’s been writing plays for a long time. Even though he’s 41, he looks younger and often plays younger characters.
He said he’s been doing this since he was 18, and when he’s shooting a movie he’s acting in, he avoids watching playback of himself. He’s done this work long enough to know how his performance comes across and whether another take is needed. Watching playback would waste time, so he decides quickly if he needs to do a retake. There were some interesting points in his talk.
One thing that stood out was how he’s a big movie star but prefers something other than the spotlight. He mentioned he has OCD. In the movie, his character wears rubber bands around his wrist. It snaps them to help manage his OCD, anchoring himself in the moment and avoiding obsessive routines.
I have OCD, too, though my routines aren’t as intrusive. For example, I prefer to turn right, even if it means making three right turns to go left. I like to walk into a room with my right foot first. These aren’t superstitions but compulsions. Also, I wouldn’t say I like the number four—things like that.
It was interesting to see that Eisenberg used this rubber band-snapping technique in real life, as I noticed during the Q&A session. It’s part of how he manages his OCD. You could tell by how he spoke that he’s so focused on acting, writing, producing, and managing his OCD that being a movie star should be fun. Still, it isn’t the kind of fun he enjoys.
He came across as someone with tasks to complete and challenges to overcome rather than someone who revels in having the biggest dressing room on set or similar perks.
That was refreshing to see—it defied expectations. When people think of movie stars, they often imagine a fun-filled life. However, what stood out about Eisenberg was his extreme competence and understanding of his craft. I didn’t expect that level of depth from an actor, but it’s clear he’s much more than just an actor. This might have been the best Q&A session I’ve ever attended.
And we do get spoiled. I’m not a movie star, but you get treated like one at these screenings. You get to see the movie for free, often with the stars present, and there’s food and drinks. If you want to, you can go up to the person and say, “I loved the movie, da da da,” and they’ll talk to you for a second. I don’t usually do that because I never feel like I do it well—it feels awkward.
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