Not too many guests come into the garage and tell Marc he changed their lives forever. In fact, Jesse Eisenberg might be the only one. Jesse and Marc go over that formative moment and what it says about both of them. Jesse also talks about being terrified as a child, growing into an adult who identifies with bleakness, and turning some of his life experiences into the new film A Real Pain, which he wrote, directed and stars in alongside Kieran Culkin. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: How did Jesse Eisenberg's childhood fears shape him?
So you're speaking Traumaturism essentially revolving around the Holocaust.
Oh, ich meine, ja, aber ich bin auch zu den Tötungsfällen in Kambodscha und Rwanda geflogen, zum Genocide Museum in Rwanda. Es gibt solche Orte, wo man geht, und ich als Amerikaner habe keine Verbindung dazu.
Es gibt auch das Slavermonument in Alabama, das war wahrscheinlich eines der am meisten bewegenden und horrendesten Dinge, die ich je gesehen habe.
Oh, wirklich?
Ich war noch nie da. Oh mein Gott. I always forget the full name of it, but it's basically about the lynching and all the lynching that took place over time. And it's an art piece. And it's part of the museum in... in, I think, in Montgomery or somewhere that has to do with remembering this slave experience. But it was, you know, that was a similar kind of thing.
Exactly. And I guess my question for you is, like, you probably ate a nice breakfast before you went there and you probably ate dinner at night. Yeah. So, like, we're trying to, like, connect to these places. But we're also... especially if you go on like a tour overseas, you know, you're still like kind of maintaining the cream. Well, that's why the whole tour thing.
I mean, it was a smart movie in the sense that like you're very specific about the size of the tour. Right. Because, you know, those tours can be much bigger than that. Yeah, of course. And for some reason, as a device, and it was smart to just be like, well, this is a very small group.
Oh, these are the tours I've been on, though. Not Holocaust tours, but I've been on these eight-person tours a lot. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, not to Poland, but to other places.
Yeah, because I went to Israel once and it was a busload.
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Chapter 2: What experiences influenced Jesse's film 'A Real Pain'?
It has to be the exact right group of people and they all have to not be listening to me. Aber, ähm, du weißt, aber, äh, ja, aber das ist wie ich auch, aber er ist auch in manchen Fällen, wie die Sache, die ich in anderen Männern genieße, du weißt, Menschen, die sich sehr komfortabel sagen, was sie wollen.
Ja, und sie geben nichts. Genau. Ja.
Und das ist die Sache, die ich ansehne. Und dann, es ist interessant, weil ich es so viel ansehne und diese Leute so viel genieße und in einer Art und Weise einfach so viel mit Menschen verliebt bin, wie das so viel, du weißt, ähm, ich denke über sie immer. Und, äh, ich komme zu diesem Punkt, wo in meinen Gedanken über sie, dass eigentlich vielleicht etwas da fehlt, du weißt, dass mit ihnen.
Ja, es gibt es. Ja. Und ich denke, die Art, wie diese beiden Charaktere zusammen gespielt haben, hat es geexplodert. Ich meine, das ist letztendlich... It was sort of a battle to challenge strangers' empathy. Yeah, exactly. And the way you kind of played that out with yourself and with that character is that you both specifically... have problems. Right.
And because you're the more codependent one, you know, half of his problems become your problems. Exactly. Because of your own fear and attachment. Right. But through that monologue that you had, You kind of reveal your own sort of issues. And then it just becomes, both of these guys have problems, but the zero fucks guy somehow is more palatable. Wait, palatable how?
Well, just like, you know, you feel for him, like right at the edge of him losing everybody. Right. You know, you reveal this thing, I don't want to spoil it for anybody. And all of a sudden, the entire lens of how people look at him changed. Oh, of course, exactly. And they're willing to forgive almost everything. That's right.
Whereas your character is harder to forgive because there's a brittleness to it. That's right. Yeah, he's too kind of self-conscious to open up. Yeah. And, you know, Benji, Kieran's character, for all of his flaws, is being honest in a way that is appealing, I think.
But it's also like in general, though, it's off-putting and there is a, you know, you're sort of, Ich meine, ja, sicher, du hast es gespielt, also hat der Tourist etwas aus dem, was er gesagt hat, und das könnte wichtig sein, aber es gibt immer noch den Niveau... Genau, das ist genau es.
So, you know, you meet him at the beginning and leave him at the end at the airport. And there's a feeling of, like, this guy can only exist in these transient places where he can have quick relationships. So he's really good, like, on a first meeting. Like, when you first introduce him, he's great.
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