Jesse Eisenberg Hated Bar Mitzvahs As A Kid
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Jesse Eisenberg wrote, directed, and stars in the film A Real Pain. Oscar predictors expect the film to be nominated for multiple Academy Awards. Eisenberg had his first major film role in 2002's Roger Dodger when he was still in high school. Three years later, when he was 21, he was a star of the film The Squid and the Whale. He played Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network about the early days of Facebook. He played the journalist interviewing writer David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour. He starred in the 2022 miniseries Fleischman is in Trouble. In a real pain, he plays a husband and father who goes on a Jewish heritage tour in Poland with his cousin, played by Kieran Culkin, who was like a brother when they were growing up. The trip is funded by their beloved, recently deceased grandmother, who left money in her will for the trip so that they could see the home she fled when the Nazis were in power.
Each cousin is dealing with mental health issues, which are exacerbated by the trip. Eisenberg's character is introverted and takes meds for his OCD. He's constantly hurt and embarrassed by his cousin's inappropriate behavior. Culkin's character is dealing with depression, but when around other people, he becomes extroverted, manic in ways that can be seen as charismatic or incredibly annoying and intrusive. Both extremes are intensified by the disconnect Culkin's character experiences between the first-class train car the tour travels on and the cattle cars that brought Jews to their death. He's also troubled by the disconnect between the nice restaurants the tour takes them to while at the same time the death camp Majdanek is on the tour. Our critic John Powers wrote, quote, unquote. It's worth mentioning that the film also has comic touches. Jesse Eisenberg, welcome to Fresh Air and congratulations on the film.
Thank you so much. What an honor to be on your show.
Oh, it's a pleasure to have you. So the movie is based in part in a movie you were making, a kind of road movie set in Mongolia. And it wasn't working for you. That's right. And then you saw an ad advertising like a Holocaust tour, a Jewish heritage tour, and it said lunch included. And you thought, okay, this is something. What intrigued you about that, especially the lunch included part?
Well, yeah, I mean, actually, it was even more explicit than what you mentioned. It was at Auschwitz tours with lunch. So, right, so I was writing this movie that took place in Mongolia. It was about similar kind of characters, David and Benji, the characters Kieran and I play in this movie. But it was set in Mongolia, and it was just not going well. And then an ad popped up online for Auschwitz tours with lunch. And I just thought, you know, well, first, like, I must be the target demographic for that advertisement. But also... Like, it was just so profound in its simplicity. It spoke to so many awkward modern things, which is just like, you know, we want to tour sites of horror and, you know, kind of wonder, like, why do we want to do that?
What are we doing when we're doing that? And then also we want to maintain the creature comforts that we have in our lives. So that's the with lunch part. And so, you know, I clicked on the ad, and it took me to a site for, you know, what you would imagine English-speaking – heritage tour of Poland that culminates at Auschwitz and it was just so interesting just like posed all these interesting philosophical questions like you know why do we do tragedy tourism and why don't we try to connect to this kind of history in a way that feels less you know comfortable
Well, another question the movie raises is like, what is real pain? Like, what is suffering? Like, if you're suffering from, you know, emotional or mental health issues, and I know you have issues of your own. The character has OCD. I don't know if that's an issue you have to contend with.
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