Following a middle-aged mother who finds a new lease on life through community theatre, “The Debut” hardly sounds autobiographical. Yet writer-director Jesse Eisenberg insists it’s among his most personal works.
“I wrote the film for Julianne Moore, but it’s about my own experiences,” he says of the upcoming musical dramedy, set in 1990 New Jersey — the exact time and place where the young Eisenberg first discovered the stage. “I loved it and was terrified by it. It was the only place I felt comfortable, and the place that scared me the most… All I wanted was to be an understudy in ‘Les Mis’ so I wouldn’t have to sing every night but would still get paid.”
Due from A24 later this year and widely expected to bow at a major fall festival, “The Debut” blends the affectionate backstage absurdity of “Waiting for Guffman” with the psychological unraveling of “Black Swan.”
“It’s like if Catherine O’Hara’s character was actually having a nervous breakdown,” Eisenberg tells TheWrap. “I grew up loving ‘Waiting for Guffman,’ but I also trained as an actor, and I would have loved to see somebody genuinely unraveling while doing theater, which is exactly what happened to me.”
Rather than a traditional musical in which characters spontaneously burst into song (“which I think the movie studio was happy about,” he grins), the film follows the backstage squabbles and halting rehearsals leading up to opening night. A lifelong musical-comedy devotee, Eisenberg wrote 10 original songs for the fictional revue ‘Nosy Neighbors,’ loosely inspired by Joe DiPietro’s “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” another New Jersey-born stage hit that premiered in Teaneck in 1995.
“They’re chopped up now,” he says of the nine numbers that survived the cut. “The first thing to go when editing a movie is characters singing long songs in a rehearsal room —it doesn’t advance the plot, and I’m not precious with my own stuff. So you trim it down and trim it down. One of the nine you only hear for four seconds.”
Still, Eisenberg isn’t ready to let the material disappear. The songs, with music by Emile Mosseri, could yet find a second life, perhaps as a standalone cast album.
Eisenberg was speaking at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, where he received the President’s Award. After Saturday’s ceremony, he sat for a career-spanning conversation and reiterated why he turned down playing Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Reckoning”: “I don’t want to be associated with him anymore because I don’t really like the comparison.”
At a Sunday roundtable, though, he lit up at the idea of revisiting another role — a follow-up to “Roger Dodger,” now that the 42-year-old is even older than Campbell Scott was in the original.
“I think about that all the time,” he says of his 2002 debut, which follows an awkward teen and his lothario mentor crisscrossing Manhattan trying to score. “Campbell seemed like a real adult, and I still feel like an 18-year-old boy. I really should pitch the director, Dylan Kidd!”
And the actor is hardly averse to another biopic, revealing a rather unexpected passion for longtime San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich.
“I just find him to be the most fascinating person on the planet,” Eisenberg explains. “Here’s this tough coach who cries sometimes and talks about the plight of America, and yet he’s also this terrifying figure who can be so mean to journalists. People like that are fascinating because, on the one hand, they’re known to be very nasty, and on the other hand they’re these bleeding hearts.”
Still, Eisenberg isn’t holding his breath for an offer. “I just think I would be very low on the list to be cast as a basketball coach,” he laughs.
As fate would have it, however, Eisenberg does have another dream role — and this one seems extraordinarily within reach.
“Honestly, I’d love to do ‘Now You See Me 4’ more than anything else,” he says with complete earnestness. “I’ve never felt happier than when playing that part. Normally I play depressed people, which makes me depressed, but playing that confident, arrogant magician, I walk away everyday thinking, ‘That was amazing.’ It’s the only character where I get to stand up straight and wear a nicer outfit. It’s my happiest place.”
