Jesse Eisenberg (4:23)

What?

Mike Pesca (4:23)

Which won't happen and was never going to happen anyway. The other thing about the government shutdown is there will be pain. There will be pain among government workers, but will it be enough pain over the holidays for regular people who don't know someone who works in a VA hospital or for the tsa? Will it be enough pain to be distributed for the public to clamor against it? Normally we would say, well, CNN and MSNBC and even Fox would have to cover it. But look at the lesson of the election. Msnbc, cnn, these entities seem to only exist as touchstones for irrelevance. It's like as a sports reporter for many years there was a trope of higher ratings than the NHL and you could Plug that into the ratings of just about anything. You know, NASCAR is much higher ratings than the NHL. You know, women's ice dancing has higher ratings in the NHL. Don't get me started on darts and snooker. Higher ratings than the NHL. So that's a little bit like the ratings of MSNBC and CNN these days. And those are supposed to be something of the warning signals for a society. So I would say that either I've been proven totally wrong and I've just wasted your previous three minutes, in which case I have a way to make it up for you, or these could be reasons where there could be a shutdown. Now here's the way to make it up. Joining me now for the whole show is Jesse Eisenberg. He is out with a new movie. It is called A Real Pain. And yet it is a real delight to watch Mr. Eisenberg in his directorial sophomore effort as a writer and a star, working alongside Kieran Culkin as two cousins who, who traveled to Poland on something of a trauma tourism visit. It's a great interview. Of course it is. Jesse gives, you know, we in the, we in the interview business, we talk about givers and this guy's a giver. Jesse Eisenberg, a Real Pain. Not a description of Jesse, just the movie stars and wrote and directed. Up next, I can say to my.

Jesse Eisenberg (6:45)

New Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, hey, find a keto friendly restaurant nearby and text.

Mike Pesca (6:49)

It to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a.

Jesse Eisenberg (6:52)

Finger so I can get in more squats anywhere I can. 1, 2, 3.

Mike Pesca (6:58)

Will that be cash or credit?

Jesse Eisenberg (7:00)

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Mike Pesca (7:51)

What she endured, that gave her hope, right?

Jesse Eisenberg (7:54)

Yes. In fact, she used to tell me that like, you know, first generation immigrants work some like Menial job. You know, they drive cabs, they deliver food. Second generation, they go to good schools, and they become like, you know, a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. And the third generation lives in their mother's basement and smokes pot all day. I mean.

Mike Pesca (8:13)

She said that.

Jesse Eisenberg (8:17)

I think she was, like, just speaking generally about, like, the immigrant experience. I lived in my mom's basement. She was just talking about immigrants. Okay. That's all.

Mike Pesca (8:23)

Yeah. A Real Pain is a new movie by the writer, director, and one of the stars, Jesse Eisenberg. The other star is a guy named Kieran Culkin. He's very good in it, I have to say. Two cousins go to Poland to visit their grandmother's house before she was taken away to the camps and eventually made her way to America. Jesse Eisenberg, welcome back to the gist.

Jesse Eisenberg (8:48)

Thank you so much, Mike.

Mike Pesca (8:49)

Cousins are interesting, right? Because they're not friends. We don't choose them, and they're not siblings, so we don't have that. We don't have an obligation to them. So, I mean. And then cousins will have the same grandmother. So how do you decide to base it on cousins? Cause there are a number of different options for the relationship between your character and Kieran's.

Jesse Eisenberg (9:09)

Yeah. I mean, the movie actually started as a separate movie script that was about these two friends, and they were going back to Mongolia for other reasons. And when I shifted it to Poland, and I thought that they could be, you know, having some, you know, this tie to their grandmother who grew up there, I just thought it'd be more interesting to have them be cousins who are kind of, like, estranged. And when you lose your grandmother as cousins, you in some ways kind of lose the connective tissue between the relationship, and then it's kind of up to you. You become kind of more in that friend area where you can kind of make the decision to kind of, let's say, continue diverging or decide that you're going to overcome your personal differences and get closer.

Mike Pesca (9:51)

Now, I think I know what David, your character, wants from Benji, which is, well, he more or less explains, and David is the character who's functioning and moving through the world. So at least to me, who I like to tell myself I'm doing that, too, I can relate to it. What exactly do you think, other than a vague sense of love or belonging? What does Benji want from David on this trip?

Jesse Eisenberg (10:14)

Yeah, you know, Benji. Benji is somebody for whom life has kind of, you know, passed him by in a confusing way, and he's somebody who kind of Exists moment to moment. And he has kind of, you know, difficulty shaping that into something. Something a little more cohesive. And what he wants from my character is to. When we were younger, his behavior was really wonderful and celebrated, and now it's kind of seen as a bit maladaptive in society. And so he's trying to recapture this relationship he had with his cousin that made him feel empowered when David, my character, would cry about everything. And when I was a kind of wreck when I was a little kid, you know, he was the one who can be in control of me. And now he sees that I grew kind of out of the way realm of his control, and it kills him. And so he keeps wanting the old David back. And he thinks by going to Poland and experiencing this kind of trauma tourism, maybe he'll get his old David back, who's crying and falls asleep and who could kind of, you know, need him in this way that made him feel good about himself. Benjamin.

Mike Pesca (11:14)

Yeah. Now, you were kind of like that. The guy who cried about things.

Jesse Eisenberg (11:17)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of the character's flaws were. Yeah.

Mike Pesca (11:22)

Do you think you just grew out of it? Medicated yourself out of it? Maybe there was some conscious rewiring of the brain to get past that.

Jesse Eisenberg (11:28)

Yeah. God, that's such an instinct. Insightful question that I would have expected to be asked 20 months ago in terms of my promotion of this movie. But of course, you're the first one to ask it, which is, yes, I knew when I was younger. I knew, when I'm an adult, I'm gonna be fine. I just knew it. I just had this sense, you know, I missed a year of school. I was institutionalized. I could not be in school. And I knew, when I'm an adult, I'm going to be fine. And I started doing theater when I was, like, 14. And it really got me out of whatever it is I needed to be away from. I don't know what it is, but I knew when I would be an adult, I would be fine. And that's kind of what happened. I, you know, I was able to kind of, like, just have agency over my life, meet people that I kind of liked, you know, artsy people, people who felt outcast in their suburban lives as well, and then in term. But I still had severe amounts of personal anxiety and. And I think that might be medicated away. And I wonder what damage that's done to my creativity, zest for life, my highs, et cetera. I don't know. But I do think, yeah, a lot of it's been medicated away.

Mike Pesca (12:26)

Well, I was thinking about the creativity and the artistry, and I don't know, maybe it's the case that having or the openness to experience that will compel you or a person to cry. That's useful for the artist. Right? That's taking in the information, but then having the maturity to push that aside and not being beholden to that, that's needed in terms of the output.

Jesse Eisenberg (12:47)

Exactly, exactly. And, you know, it's the thing I, like, ask my parents.

Mike Pesca (12:50)

So you're probably. Sorry to interrupt. You probably feel a little like you're glad you don't cry about all the horrors of the world. But you question, am I out of touch? Am I losing that part that's necessary to the artistry?

Jesse Eisenberg (13:01)

Yeah, I mean, you know, my therapist assures me every time he re ups my dose or perhaps heightens it tells me that it's not going to do the thing I'm worried about, you know, which has kind of sat me of any creative energy. You know what I did notice, though, it was very strange. Like, once I started taking these antidepressants, like maybe like 15 years ago or something, like, I did notice, actually I was more emotionally available on sets, on movie sets, in characters. I normally. I would often before that kind of like freeze up as an actor when there was a big emotional scene because I put pressure on myself. And now my emotions were right at the surface, but not in my life. So, like, now I cry very little in my real life, you know, and yet in characters, I find it's right at the surface. So I don't know what that is. It's so strange. I'm sure. You know, there's a great Onion headline from 20 years ago, which was that Ritalin cures next da Vinci. And it was like, you know, I think about that all the time. I mean, not to compare myself to da Vinci and I'm not on Ritalin, but just the idea of, like, are we stifling the thing that makes us special? And I don't really know the answer to that, but I do know I can kind of function and I'm a fine dad and all that stuff. Yeah.

Mike Pesca (13:58)

But probably antidepressants saves the next Van Gogh.

Jesse Eisenberg (14:01)

Yeah, that's a great point. You're right. That should be. You should do rebuttals for the satirical newspaper the Onion.

Mike Pesca (14:07)

Well, then I'd be the Babylon Bay. That would be the middle ground.

Jesse Eisenberg (14:10)

That's really true.

Mike Pesca (14:10)

So I heard you once say that on, I think, the set Of Adventureland, you had this freeze up panic attack.

Jesse Eisenberg (14:17)

Yes, yes.

Mike Pesca (14:18)

And the director there intervened.

Jesse Eisenberg (14:20)

Yeah.

Mike Pesca (14:21)

And the way you told the story then was this very copious amount of kindness towards. Who was the director?

Jesse Eisenberg (14:26)

Greg Mottola. Oh, yeah, he's from your old stomping ground.

Mike Pesca (14:29)

Right. So. But in fact, it wasn't just these words that Greg Mottola said that oriented you. It was. There was a medication part of it as well.

Jesse Eisenberg (14:39)

Oh, was there? What? I think what I had said was like, yeah, he took me aside and basically said, I, I don't understand how you wouldn't be having panic attacks all the time. I don't understand how any actor does what you're doing.

Mike Pesca (14:50)

Right.

Jesse Eisenberg (14:50)

And it just, it was revelatory for me because I always thought that what I do is the selfish vanity thing. And then. And that put into perspective like this thing of, oh, maybe there is this special thing that actors do. And yes, of course there's this vanity element. And of course, yes, there's, you know, they're getting paid, you know, disproportionately to the workload, etc. But like, you know, now that I'm on set directing and I watch how actors kind of like are exposing themselves and kind of, you know, just, you know, pushing through, you know, emoting in front of 100 people, I now think of it as this amazing, real sweet gift and, you know, generous thing to do. Yeah. In terms of medication, I started it a few years later and yeah, I just, I haven't had that. I have not froze up again. And I used to have it way more, you know, I used to have it during plays. You know, I would, I would, I would go on stage and like run my whole play before the play started because I was so panicked that I would have a kind of panic attack during it. So I would pre panic, I would run through everything, you know, and kind of get all that stuff out so that I could do the show.

Mike Pesca (15:45)

So on Wednesdays when you had matinee and evening performance, it was four times.

Jesse Eisenberg (15:49)

Long day. It was a long day. You know, it's like what the Rockettes do. They do four shows a day. They don't realize I was doing that off Broadway for years.

Mike Pesca (15:55)

And then Santa comes in at the end and gets all the credit.

Jesse Eisenberg (15:58)

Yes, exactly.

Mike Pesca (15:58)

God damn guy in the red suit. So you said that Kieran's character, Benji lives in the moment and. Okay, that's a. It's true. If you watch the movie, you could see. But I did note that in one of his great scenes in the cemetery he tears into the very sweet tour guide and then a couple of scenes later he seems to have no memory of that.

Jesse Eisenberg (16:22)

Yeah, yeah.

Mike Pesca (16:22)

So is that living in the moment or. I want to ask you another question about the character and his particular mental makeup. But it's. Yeah. Did that come from. So did that come from just this, what we call living in the moment, or is there a sort of diagnosis that you could look up in the DSM 5 that would correlate to what Benji has?

Jesse Eisenberg (16:41)

I think it's probably a little bit of both. And I was writing, forgive me if this sounds like pretentious or you know, artsy fartsy, whatever, but like I was kind of writing not from like, you know, a calculated diagnostic perspective, but I was really just writing from my unconscious and letting this character that I've written before in very plays and that I've written about in short stories kind of just speak. Speak himself. And so I wasn't really kind of like thinking like, oh, this kind of person would do X, Y and Z and then not remember it in this X, Y and Z way. And so it just seemed like the kind of thing like, you know, he's driven viscerally and maybe there is some manipulation there. And so if there's manipulation, perhaps he could be kind of performing, not remembering that he said that. So perhaps it is something like that. But he's somebody for whom kind of like he trusts his own wavering moral compass and instinct more than the average person. And so he can become kind of like, you know, moralistic at the drop of a hat and then also, you know, hypocritical because he's somebody that just kind of trusts his own instincts in a way that I think other people would filter out or be more suspicious of.

Mike Pesca (17:45)

Should he. Does that serve him?

Jesse Eisenberg (17:47)

It's like, serves him in like I would say these transient ways, in these small ways, like I would say, I wouldn't like, you know, he'd be somebody for whom, you know, a long sustained relationship might be difficult but you know, within a two hour span would be the greatest two hours you've ever had.

Mike Pesca (18:03)

Yeah, that's true. And so he's more suited to our TikTok generation. Well also it shows that the advice to thine own self be true. Well, I think it was that that advice was probably given in the context of mocking the person giving the advice. Right. But anyway, what does it really mean? It can mean drive yourself over the cliff or you know, don't take any shit from anybody.

Jesse Eisenberg (18:22)

Right. Of Course, I'm sure a therapist would look side eyed at somebody saying, I just wanted to be true to myself in that moment, which is kind of a meaningless popular phrase.

Mike Pesca (18:31)

But I was thinking about writing a play and doing it from your consciousness and you understanding the characters. 100 years ago, 400 years ago, Shakespeare didn't have any of the understanding that we do of how the mind works. And there was nothing like the DSM or Freud, but he tapped into character and he might have gotten some parts of what we would now label a disease or a disorder wrong. Now I'm comparing it to Shakespeare, but I wonder, as a playwright, is there a, I don't know, is there a trend now or is there a pressure to write characters who have, you know, certain personality, let's say disorders in a way that very much aligns with the disorder. You don't want to give the impression that someone who has, let's say, adhd, if you very much know what that is, show some signs that someone who actually had it wouldn't have. I wonder if there's a little bit of pressure to do that. And I wonder if we're better off maybe getting it wrong in the diagnostic sense, but that actually helps the dramatic sense.

Jesse Eisenberg (19:35)

Oh, that's. God, that's such a fascinating series of questions. And my first thought really is that I would never in a million years think to write somebody who has a particular diagnosis because I'm just not an expert and I'm an idiot. My dad has a PhD in social psychology and has studied this and is an academic and would obviously caution me against writing about somebody who has a particular diagnosis. But the other reason that he would probably caution me against it is because mental illness manifests in people in very different ways. And you could argue that for, you know, there are as many mental illnesses as there are people with them. Because you're talking about something that is pathological or diagnostic but manifesting through somebody's personality. And you wonder where one begins and one ends. And then, you know, the other thing is I'm really just interested like in people and I tend not to like, you know, think like, oh, this person's interested because they have ADHD with a side of this or that. You know, I just find people so fascinating. I've been spent the morning reading about this new phrase I never heard. Have you heard of this phra. This word called paltering? No, P, A L T E R I N G. Paltering is fascinating and I've been wondering what this is for so many years. But I Finally found the name for it. It's paltering, which is that you're not lying. The way they define it is. It's not a lie of omission or commission. It's a lie where you tell the truth, but it somehow is lying about something bigger. For example, you ask me when I'm selling you a car, and an omission would not tell you that it broke down yester, and a commission would tell you that it's great yesterday. But a lie of paltering would tell you that, oh, you know, I've been driving it for years and I had a great time in it. So you're telling the truth technically, but you're kind of using that truth to tell a bigger lie.

Mike Pesca (21:17)

And is this named after Saint Paul who lied about Jesus or Paul being dead in the Beatles?

Jesse Eisenberg (21:24)

I'm wondering which one archaic term from English that doesn't have to do with. With what you might. It was a shock to me where it came from. It's an archaic term. But I thought, that's just so fascinating.

Mike Pesca (21:33)

I've been writing Paul lies said, I'm gonna fight Mike Tyson and really try.

Jesse Eisenberg (21:37)

And reappropriate it through him. Yeah, they're both brothers. But I think, you know, for me, like, I've been writing characters that do that a lot, and I never had a term for it, but I knew people like this, and I grew up with people like this, and I would find it so irritating. And this is something my wife and I talk about all the time because I think I judge a person because of their paltering more than any other aspect of their personality or crimes or good deeds if they palter to me. And I've never been able to put a name to it until this morning. But, like, that's the thing. I. You know, when somebody is telling me a technical truth, but I could tell it's masking something. I don't know why. For some reason, it just eats away at me. And, you know, I've been writing about people like that for a long time, but it's not because I knew of the terminology through, you know, some academic manual and then kind of applied it to characters.

Mike Pesca (22:20)

Do you think having the words for it, as they say, it's not helpful? It's not helpful, right?

Jesse Eisenberg (22:25)

No, because. No, because now I'm, you know, I'm thinking of this used car example that ChatGPT gave me when I asked it to give me an example, and suddenly now it's, like, codified in a way that makes it less fun and Edgy, and it makes it less of a mystery that I want to explore through characters. Right.

Mike Pesca (22:37)

Or the next time you create a character. Ten years ago, before people knew about paltering, they said, oh, you're really touching on the vagaries of human experience. And I was like, oh, yeah, this guy's a palter.

Jesse Eisenberg (22:46)

Yeah, Classic. Another paltering story.

Mike Pesca (22:49)

1.0.

Jesse Eisenberg (22:49)

Exactly.

Mike Pesca (22:51)

And we'll be back with more of Jesse Eisenberg in a minute.

Jesse Eisenberg (23:13)

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Mike Pesca (23:42)

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Jesse Eisenberg (24:03)

Welcome to the now it pays to Discover.

Mike Pesca (24:06)

Learn more@discover.com credit card Based on the.

Jesse Eisenberg (24:09)

February 2024 Nielsen report.

Mike Pesca (24:13)

We'Re back with Jesse Eisenberg, writer, producer, one of the main actors in a real pain.

Jesse Eisenberg (24:20)

Look at her. Who? That woman, Marcia. She's walking alone. We should go talk to her. We just met her. She's got this like, deep sadness behind her eyes, you know? She does? Yeah. You didn't notice that during the introduction? No. I think we should check on her. Benji. Maybe she wants to be alone.

Mike Pesca (24:38)

Sorry?

Jesse Eisenberg (24:39)

No one wants to be alone, Dave. Okay, I'm gonna check it out. Hey. Why are you walking alone? Are you a big fucking loser? Seriously? Yeah.

Mike Pesca (24:47)

So this movie is based on the two. The two main characters. You mentioned this. You've written Benji before. I mean, Ben Benji. He's come up in different plays. You played Benji in one of the plays. You played David in one of the plays. Is that some sort of superpower? The fact that. That you can. Without even knowing what you're doing, you can essentially do rewrites or pre writes. Not on the page or not even in a staged reading. You can actually have it play out in a theater to see how people react to it. And then those characters become. There is an alchemy. You marry it to the Polish experience and then you have this. This fantastic product that benefits from everything you put into it.

Jesse Eisenberg (25:29)

That's so nice. Yeah, maybe. But again, I don't feel it's, like, calculating. I think I just like calculating. Yeah. I think I just have, like, very specific preoccup. Like, probably anybody who writes similar thematic, personal stories over the course of a career, which I haven't finished my course. I'm new, but I have these preoccupations with people like this, with why is my life good and somebody else's life is not good. And those plays are kind of about that and the way we react to feelings like that. And sometimes we have resentment towards the person whose life is not good because we feel like we want that suffering to give us meaning. And sometimes we have a deep amount of shame and guilt because that person's life is not good and ours is. And that's kind of what this movie is a bit about. And it's just the preoccupations I have with my own, I don't know, kind of lucky life in comparison to the struggle of my forebears, you know?

Mike Pesca (26:17)

Now, the character Benji is very similar to this character of Ben in the Spoils.

Jesse Eisenberg (26:22)

Yeah.

Mike Pesca (26:22)

And the character. This is what's really, really fascinating to me. It's a great character, fully formed. But you were the one American. Well, the one New Yorker who is in the TV or movie industry who didn't watch Succession, apparently.

Jesse Eisenberg (26:40)

Right, right, right, right. Yeah.

Mike Pesca (26:42)

Because you hate popular things.

Jesse Eisenberg (26:43)

Yeah, yeah. At the time, I'm sure. I like them when they're.

Mike Pesca (26:45)

Well, I don't think there's going to be a backlash for it to become unpopular.

Jesse Eisenberg (26:48)

That's not just like when they're not at the coffee cooler. What is like the water cooler?

Mike Pesca (26:52)

The water cooler that is spiked with coffee and, you know, to product, to increase productivity. But I understand not liking popular things. It gets you out of boring con conversations at parties. Oh, have you seen the new Succession? No, moving on.

Jesse Eisenberg (27:05)

Yeah, yeah, Right.

Mike Pesca (27:05)

So the thing about Succession and Kieran Culkin's character, which you never saw, is that he speaks in a certain ratat way. He comes up with phrases, and very specifically, a lot of things are fucking. Fucking this. And why would you put this on the headstone? And the character of Benji, which you wrote 10 or Ben in the Spoils.

Jesse Eisenberg (27:29)

Yeah.

Mike Pesca (27:29)

He uses fucking almost as much and to the same extent as Ciaran Culkin's character does in six days.

Jesse Eisenberg (27:36)

Yeah, yeah. What it is, is I'm using it to kind of like it's offsetting a class thing. So in the play the Spoils, he's roommates with this very sweet Ernest, Nepalese business student. And that guy speaks in this kind of proper way. And Ben, in that play, to offset his. To offset the thing he hates about himself, which is that he's a trust fund kid, speaks in this kind of crass way to kind of create a Persona that makes him feel, in his paradoxical and perverse set of ideas, also part of a struggle.

Mike Pesca (28:07)

Oh, so you never saw Succession. That exactly describes why I didn't realize it. That's why I think his character was Roman Roy. That's why Roman does that. That's exactly why Roman does that.

Jesse Eisenberg (28:16)

Okay. Okay.

Mike Pesca (28:17)

Because he knows he does feel guilty, and he wants to be a man of the. Not a man of the people, but he definitely wants to look down on hoity toity privilege. He does it through his language, and he does it through probably his inappropriateness, which also Ben had in the Spoils. Yeah, Spoils is right here.

Jesse Eisenberg (28:34)

Yeah, I see that.

Mike Pesca (28:35)

I have the works, and these are great. The Revisionist. You play David. Yeah. I don't think that character was so similar to the David.

Jesse Eisenberg (28:44)

No, it's not so much. Just nominal. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Pesca (28:47)

But that play was in Poland. You've long been interested in Poland because you're Polish.

Jesse Eisenberg (28:51)

Yeah.

Mike Pesca (28:52)

And so what were you trying to scratch with this play? And how is it different from a real pain?

Jesse Eisenberg (28:57)

Oh, yeah. God, thank you so much. It's so flattering. Yeah. I knew you're a completist, but I didn't realize they'd be on hand. Yeah, yeah. The play the Revisionist, takes place in Poland, is about a guy, David, who flies to kind of Poland basically to just take advantage of his second cousin who's a survivor, just so he can kind of get away. And because he has writer's block in America and he's trying to finish this shitty novel, and so he kind of takes advantage of this woman's house. But over the course of their relationship, they realize, you know, the kind of humanness of each other. And he comes and all of his kind of shame emerges and her truth of her life emerges as well. And I guess I was trying to tackle a similar theme, which is like, you know, he's kind of blind and noxious in the play, the Revisionist, my character. But it's essentially a similar theme, which is, why is my life good and somebody else's life is not good? And why, if somebody else's life was so bad and yet they survived enough to produce me, why am I miserable, you know, and why am I doing something stupid? Shouldn't I be the king? Shouldn't I be curing cancer? If they survived by, as we say in the movie, like a thousand miracles, and they, you know, survived the Holocaust and produced me, why am I not walking outside and kissing the ground that I'm still alive every day? Why am I walking around miserable that they didn't have my scone? You know? And it's these kind of things that I'm preoccupied with, but I'm trying to kind of present these themes in a way that doesn't feel self indulgent, but rather kind of, you know, questioning and entertaining.

Mike Pesca (30:22)

Right. So in the Revisionist, David's character had those ideas. They're expressed in Benji's character in A Real Pain. But they're obviously your ideas, and they're ideas. I think that we've all been. We've all. We. I think if we think about the world and think about our ancestry or think about our forefathers and think it all deeply, it's really perplexing. And I can come up with answers that get us around the difficulty of the question, but I can't really answer the question. Like we. But, like, how can the people we come from have struggled so much and we're such pains in the ass.

Jesse Eisenberg (30:59)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Mike Pesca (31:00)

Our progeny, their progeny is just such pains in the ass. Babies who can't move on from the world. And I guess the answer is maybe if we were in that position, it would be better or people do what they have to do. Right. But it is kind of one of those perplexing mysteries that should get you down about yourself.

Jesse Eisenberg (31:17)

If you're two elements, strike me. One is that the two things are related. The fact that our lives don't have the same struggle means our lives are not imbued with the same meaning, because we don't have this very specific goal to survive or to immigrate in an attempt to succeed and work some menial job in order to make our children's lives better. Because we don't have those immediately kind of explicit purposes. I think we're devoid of meaning. But I also think there's something else, too, which I think about sometimes, which is that perhaps those people. This is something this famous director, Ula Grossbaard, who's now dead but was one of the great European American directors, and he said, we attribute wisdom to all Holocaust survivors, but it's often misguided, it's often misappropriated that we attribute great wisdom to people who survived great suffering. But a lot of times, those were just the people who survived. In fact, maybe perhaps their toughness, actually, perhaps their ability to shut off allowed them to survive, and yet we imbue them with this great wisdom.

Mike Pesca (32:21)

Yeah. Also, you know, I think there's a comedian who said this, or maybe I'm just doing the thing where I'm attributing this horrible thought to someone else. But, like, in the camps, there was the guy who everyone hated. Right. I'm not talking about the guard, like the Jewish prisoner who everyone looked down on and thought was just a dick or a pain in the ass. And I guess that guy gets imbued with this great wisdom and character as well.

Jesse Eisenberg (32:42)

Of course. I mean, this is something that really kind of stayed with me, which is that we filmed this movie at Majdanek, the concentration camp near where my family lived. And they were talking to us about getting soup during the day. And the people in the front of the line would get the stuff from the top, which was basically watery, and the people at the back would get good soups. There'd be stuff at the bottom, but if you were too far back, you might not get soup at all. And so the kind of prime position was in the middle. And so you just think of the jostling about. Because people would probably figure this out. And the jostling about makes me realize I would be killed in the first day because I'm not assertive. When I walk on a train, I'll let 17 people go in front of me because I don't want to kind of nudge my way onto the subway or whatever. So I'll take the next car and I'll be late and text somebody. I'm sorry that I'm run. I couldn't. I didn't have the. I didn't have the bravery to get onto the train. And, you know, so it occurs to me, like, you know, who's the person surviving that? And, you know, who. What's the makeup of the person that can survive these, you know, these. These just horrible, you know, unfathomable, you know, horrific situations. And I often think it would just not have been me.

Mike Pesca (33:42)

Oh, I think that. Well, there's probably thousands of survivors who would have said that beforehand. All also.

Jesse Eisenberg (33:49)

Yeah, yeah, that's true, too. Yeah. I wouldn't have thought that. I. Yeah, right, right.

Mike Pesca (33:53)

My donic was. I. I went through a Researching the Holocaust phase about a year and a half ago, and I think it does.

Jesse Eisenberg (34:03)

Huh?

Mike Pesca (34:03)

Yeah. I'm against it.

Jesse Eisenberg (34:05)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Pesca (34:05)

Like good soup notwithstanding.

Jesse Eisenberg (34:07)

Yeah, yeah. I just.

Mike Pesca (34:08)

Yankee Bean Day.

Jesse Eisenberg (34:09)

That was okay, you know, and that's why they did it on Jewish holidays. Yeah. But a year and a half ago, what did you. What, what was the difference between a year and a half ago you and a year ago know?

Mike Pesca (34:20)

Well, it was maybe a year. And however much October 7th was, that is when I started.

Jesse Eisenberg (34:25)

But I mean, like, what, what did you research that you hadn't known before? Just like.

Mike Pesca (34:28)

Well, for instance, Madonna, which is spelled weird in English. Right.

Jesse Eisenberg (34:32)

Well, it's Polish, so it's M A J is madame. Yeah.

Mike Pesca (34:34)

So I didn't even know. I was so ignorant. I knew about Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, I knew the big camps, but this was a big or huge camp. And I just encountering that name or word and being a little confused about how it was pronounced because. Because that alone tells you. I don't know the depths of my ignorance on this. And in my investigation, I did go online and they have the very scenes that you shot and they have, you know, this, right. They have. It's the most outward facing, open experience to some virtual tourists. So you can basically walk through the halls that you walk through in your movie online.

Jesse Eisenberg (35:15)

Somebody told me this last week and I went online. Yeah, yeah. Would have really helped. Two years ago we were shooting and, you know, we needed to show prep work.

Mike Pesca (35:22)

Yeah, yeah. But was it hard to get permission from them or is this the camp that they're putting forward more than some of the other?

Jesse Eisenberg (35:29)

On the contrary. No, no, no. So. So the reason I wrote it is because this trip was based on a trip my wife and I took where I went to my Danic. I didn't have family in my Danic. My family. And my family was the people that were taken to a camp, were sent to this camp called Belzech, which I don't know if you heard or you would say Belz is the pronunciation. And that's not even my. Anyway, but so my Danek was just the camp my wife and I went to. And I thought it was so eerie when I went there. You know, the distinguishing feature, I think, is that it was so far east that the Russians made it in before the Germans could destroy it. And so it kind of feels like it was liberated the day before. It hasn't been museumified, really. No, but it was really difficult to get permission because they don't want movies shooting there because probably every movie that approaches them wants to turn it into 1942 and have it be a working Auschwitz. You know what I Mean, should be playing Auschwitz at 1942 rather than what I wanted to do, which was set it in 2022 and have it be, you know, a tour. You know, so it took a while just to get in touch with them, and then finally, not to get. Not just to get in touch, but to, like, you know, just plead my case, which was that I was trying to do what they're doing in another form. I'm trying to show audiences through this movie kind of what this place is and what happened here. And that's essentially their mission statement. But for tourism, do you think that.

Mike Pesca (36:43)

That being either Jewish or famous or. I don't know, maybe they wanted to get on the good side of history. Were any of those a factor in them saying yes?

Jesse Eisenberg (36:56)

Oh, I don't. No. I mean, the people who run these things are like young, brilliant academics who could have worked anywhere at any great museum throughout Poland.

Mike Pesca (37:04)

They're generally not Jewish.

Jesse Eisenberg (37:06)

They're not Jewish. They're Polish. Exactly. And for reasons that I've come to synthesize as just pure benevolence, they spend their days driving, parking at Majdanek, going to, you know, eating their lunch there and working every day to kind of memorialize, you know, essentially my family, you know, Jewish family's, Jewish history there. And so I just kind of.

Mike Pesca (37:27)

Oh, that's right. Sorry to interrupt. They do it. What they're doing every day is what your movie was doing. And you're thankful they saw the overlap there.

Jesse Eisenberg (37:33)

Exactly that.

Mike Pesca (37:34)

Yeah.

Jesse Eisenberg (37:34)

Yeah. In terms of, like, I just ascribe to them nothing but just really beautiful, pure motives. I mean, I got to know these people well, and they're just young intellectuals who find this calling, you know, the way you'd find somebody working in social service here or somebody who works here to kind of, you know, highlight, you know, marginalized historical groups in America. And you would just think, my God, thank God these people are devoting their lives to doing this.

Mike Pesca (37:59)

What does the Polish government want people to know about Poland in World War II?

Jesse Eisenberg (38:04)

I don't know, because, you know, I hear criticisms about that all the time, and, you know, even from older relatives of mine who are saying, why are you going there? That government's. And it's just the opposite of my experience. My experience was working on a crew of 150 Poles who, like, you know, worked tirelessly to bring my family's history, you know, to light. You know, I found people who are working these monuments and these museums and all of the, you know, kind of connections that we had to make. In order to get to shoot and various sensitive areas to just be so warm and welcoming. And I kind of walked away thinking, you know, my God, these people are spending so much more of their lives. Memorial. Memorializing my family's history than I ever do.

Mike Pesca (38:41)

Yeah, but they do want. I mean, there are many different Polish people and factions in the Polish government, as I don't have to tell you, a Polish citizen.

Jesse Eisenberg (38:49)

Oh, yeah, I know, I know. I know that government like the back of my hand.

Mike Pesca (38:53)

So there is a feeling in Poland that they would like the world not to think of them as collaborators. And that is overly reduction, but it is also complicated. Right.

Jesse Eisenberg (39:04)

They were really sensitive to Obama misspeaking and calling it Polish death camps. And I understand why. You know, they were German. You know, this is not my expertise. And so I don't even want to say anything about it. But my feeling just historically is, look at this country that's been overrun a thousand times in European history. And, you know, you know, we so easily travel to Berlin and Paris and everything, but then we consider Poland to be, you know, this, you know, you know, you know, a haven for antisemitism. It just was not my experience of all.

Mike Pesca (39:32)

What's the citizenship test like to become a Pole?

Jesse Eisenberg (39:35)

Oh, for me, I basically, my citizenship was outside the bounds of normal citizenship application. I basically said, like, you know, I. I have this deep connection to this place. You know, we lived here longer than we lived in the States. No, there's such a long history that was just, you know, abruptly, you know, ended, obviously, and tragically ended. And I just thought, you know, if there's something I can do, because I found with this movie that I thought this movie could have kind of of, like, you know, just in its own small way, a kind of just rethinking of like Polish Jewish relations because it's a pop culture thing and people are seeing it. And, you know, I've heard now from people, I'm going to go back to Poland. We just heard it about 10 minutes ago from your friend. And so, like, I'm seeing that a lot. And I just thought, if there's anything I could do to be helpful on creating better relationship between the Poles and, you know, Jews who come from, you know, Polish heritage, that's something I would be really interested in doing.

Mike Pesca (40:25)

I would say not since John Paul II has there been someone to make that entreaty into.

Jesse Eisenberg (40:31)

And I was inspired by Carol, and I think he knew at the time.

Mike Pesca (40:35)

You do?

Jesse Eisenberg (40:36)

I think so. You know, he said, you know, part of his sainthood was kind of the premonition that somebody would take the mantle.

Mike Pesca (40:42)

And that boy would be born in New Jersey.

Jesse Eisenberg (40:44)

Yes, exactly, exactly. Like the Dalai Lama, somebody across the lake.

Mike Pesca (40:47)

So I have one other stray thought and then I want to end where I wanted to end. I just forgot to say it. You know, this vexing question of us being the inheritors of these amazing people and just frittering away so much of our life. It is also covered. And I know you're very familiar with his work and that Simon Rich book and short story and that movie about the pickle maker.

Jesse Eisenberg (41:09)

Yeah, yeah, right.

Mike Pesca (41:10)

That's such a terrible life. And then comes back to life and is like, look at these kids. There's a. There's a humorous way to do it. There's a serious way to do it. And you found a serial comic way to do it.

Jesse Eisenberg (41:21)

Oh, yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, I read Simon's story. I think I tried to buy it. I mean, I think I tried to like. I think Seth Rogen had the rights before I could get it. But like, you know, it was just such a. Yeah, because Simon is, you know, a genius. I think you maybe called him a genius of the greatest premise, you know, conceiver in the world. You know, he's just such a genius. And the way he was able to kind of synthesize this complicated thing through this really funny idea is great. And yeah, I guess I'm kind of doing my own version of that, you know, but through kind of a, you know, kind of self questioning lens and maybe more of a dramatic approach or something. But no, Simon, really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So clever.

Mike Pesca (41:53)

So my last thing is. The last thing. Are you one of those directors, writers, artists who will never tell the audience what to think or what to conclude about where the story ends? What I'm saying is, I don't want to give too much away, but the story ends. And then we contemplate where the Benji character is and where he's situated. And I've seen a bifurcation over what it means where he ends up. Is any interpretation valid, would you say? Am I being too opaque? Should I tell you what I mean?

Jesse Eisenberg (42:28)

Oh, I know exactly what you mean. And you know, all I'll say is, like, yeah, I mean, my favorite stories are ones that kind of make me think about them five minutes later rather than ones that, you know, kind of answered the thought I would haven't even been able to conjure. And so, you know, this is not a movie about like, you know, answers. This is A movie kind of, you know, it's talking about questions and it's a character driven movie where these characters have real voices rather than being kind of stand ins for some political ideas or historical ideas that I have. And so like, it ends in a way that's like very satisfying to me. But it's that kind of movie, you know, you have to be ready for that kind of movie. Yeah.

Mike Pesca (43:07)

And I would also say if someone wants the big answer ending, there is zero contrivances in this movie. I mean, obviously the whole thing's a contrivance because, you know, you write it as fiction. But even the crazy adventures that these two guys take are only such because of their reactions. I mean, they go to the roof of a building or they walk through a train and try to evade getting their ticket taken. The stakes being they'd have to pay 50, 15 bucks.

Jesse Eisenberg (43:29)

Right.

Mike Pesca (43:29)

But it seems like this crazy bonding adventure. And it's not out of, you didn't insert some deus ex machina or some, you know, dramatic event that maybe wouldn't have happened in real life. So we can't expect that. If anyone criticizes the ending for not being, you know, spelling out what, where the character is left. I mean, think about that during the whole movie.

Jesse Eisenberg (43:50)

I would say, yeah, exactly. I mean, this is, this movie was made for like $3 million. You know, the expectations for it narratively are to be thought provoking rather than some kind of you generalized pleasing device.

Mike Pesca (44:02)

Yeah. Jesse Eisenberg, the new movie is a real pain. He wrote, starred, directed. Kieran Culkin's also in it in a big amazing way. And if you haven't seen the Revisionist, it stopped playing about 12 years ago in the Cherry Lane Theater. Jesse, thanks so much for coming in.

Jesse Eisenberg (44:19)

Thank you, Mike.

Mike Pesca (44:25)

And that's it for today's show. We have a couple more shows before for Christmas. Cory Wara is the producer of the Gist and Joel Patterson's the senior producer. Leo Baum is our intern. Michelle Pesk is the chief compliance officer of Peach Fish Productions. Oomper G. Peru Du Peru. Thanks for listening.

Jesse Eisenberg (44:50)

Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret.

Mike Pesca (44:53)

It doesn't have to be. Let me point something, something out. You're listening to a podcast right now, and it's great.

Jesse Eisenberg (44:58)

You love the host.

Mike Pesca (44:58)

You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working.

Jesse Eisenberg (45:01)

Out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion.

Mike Pesca (45:06)

And this is a podcast ad.

Jesse Eisenberg (45:08)

Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with Podcast Advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcast Podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to Libsynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today.