Kieran Culkin, right, and Jesse Eisenberg on the set of A Real Pain.Agata Grzybowska/The Associated Press
Twenty-two years ago, when Jesse Eisenberg made Roger Dodger, I interviewed him at Johnny Rockets not far from Times Square for a story I was writing for New York Magazine. In the movie, he wears a baseball cap and plays a nebbishy whip-smart virgin.
We hit it off. He’s curious and funny, and our energy – me, eager and enthusiastic; him, self-conscious and intense – worked well. This doesn’t usually happen in entertainment journalism, but I threw an invite out to a friend’s party that night – and he actually came with his girlfriend, Anna, now his wife.
Since 16, Eisenberg had wanted to be a writer and so I ended up letting him co-write his own New York Magazine story (with my editor’s blessing). He deeply appreciated it. Even after he was nominated for an Academy Award for 2010’s The Social Network, we stayed friends. He was a big Hollywood star but I was still his buddy, a big brother figure nine years his senior.
A Real Pain is his new film, which he wrote and directed and has had in his mind for 20 years. Kieran Culkin plays a weird, selfish dude who’s an over-the-top weed smoker and sweet lost wayward soul. He’s charming and insufferable, and his name is Benji Kaplan, which is basically my name.
I asked Eisenberg: Dude, is that me?
The character, while loveable, is kind of a jerk. “You have an intensity to you, but I don’t find you antagonistic, and Kieran can be quite antagonistic,” says Eisenberg, who plays David, cousin to Benji, a guy he hates, loves, wants to kill and just as much, wants to be. The pair travel together from New York to Poland to reconnect and learn about themselves after the loss of their grandmother.
Eisenberg says, when I ask him again, that his Ben Kaplan isn’t me. “The name is after my father-in-law Ben, who died before my first play, and ‘Kaplan,’ my agent,” he says, explaining how his character’s first and last names came from people in his life, but not me.
I was kind of bummed – even a miscreant named after you in a film is an honour – so Eisenberg apologized. “Listen, you’re the very, very first person who allowed me to write something, and I’ll never forget that because I thought the world would open itself up to me after that but no, no, no, no, he’s not you.” In fact, he told me, it only occurred to him much later that this character shared my name.
Writing about celebrities is impossible. I was allotted only 15 minutes with Eisenberg to discuss A Real Pain, which is autobiographical and filmed in Poland, including at the Majdanek concentration camp and at his great-aunt’s actual house.
But I know Eisenberg. He’s less like the creepy Mark Zuckerberg character he played in The Social Network, and more like the sensitive types he’s taken on in Zombieland, Adventureland, The Squid and the Whale and this film.
On his visits to Toronto, I get a firsthand glimpse of what life is like for him as a celebrity. One time, we walked to the convenience store on my corner, and when he was recognized by fans, he winced and demurred their request for a picture. It was painful to watch and I gave him hell – the same big brother, little brother dynamic we struck all those years ago, with me telling him to enjoy the moment. He ran after the girls, gave them their picture and apologized, making everyone’s day (including his own).
He says he wrote the character of Ben Kaplan because he wanted to create someone present in the universe who takes up space. “Sometimes it feels like I’m going through life just waiting to get back home,” Eisenberg says, “Ben is the inverse of that: When he’s sad, he cries in public, when he’s angry, he yells at people and when he’s feeling good, he takes everyone along for the ride. I envy people like that because I’m self-conscious, easily embarrassed and self-aware. I think I’ve even become stranger since the last time you saw me.”
During our Zoom call, I can see neither his outfit nor his disposition has changed much since we first met. After The Social Network, he and his wife moved to Indiana. He writes and acts in plays off-Broadway and recently made Fleishman Is in Trouble, which showed him as a sexual grown-up on prestige TV. In Indiana, he avoids his agent, doesn’t read trade publications and spends time with teachers (his parents and his wife all are teachers, as are most of his friends). Recently, he wrapped the third Now You See Me film, the big-budget action comedy and his second franchise (Zombieland is the other), but he’s never stopped being that same talented, ambitious kid I split fries with at Johnny Rockets.
In March, after taking A Real Pain for screenings in Poland, he starts shooting his next film and his hope is to write and direct a new movie every year. “I didn’t have the bravery to attempt that earlier,” he says.
Before we hung up the Zoom call I asked if he’d record my daughter Esme’s voicemail greeting and that night he sent me a video: “Hi, this is Jesse Eisenberg. Esme can’t come to the phone right now because she’s in Europe directing Zombieland, and she’s hilarious in it,” he says. “She might call you back, but she’s hanging out with a lot of celebrities, so we’ll see.” That he took the time to make my kid a video at an insanely busy moment in his life reveals more about what makes Eisenberg tick than anything he could say in a 15 minute interview.