The highly anticipated third film in the 'Now You See Me' franchise features new and returning stars
Eisenberg’s Holocaust-heritage comedy-drama was a big hit in the country where it is set – though some have questioned its lack of engagement with locals
critics and heritage tour guides give us their thoughts
Jesse Eisenberg’s film about two cousins on a heritage tour of Holocaust-related sites in Poland
has been largely embraced by Polish audiences
who appreciated its understated humour and conspicuous good intentions
the film had grossed more than $1m at the Polish box office – no small feat for an indie production in Poland
“There was a collective sigh of relief,” says Vogue Poland film critic Anna Tatarska
“that here was a Hollywood Holocaust narrative that didn’t cast Poles as historical villains.”
A Real Pain occupies an unusually diplomatic position
and this political neutrality helped Eisenberg’s film achieve what others couldn’t: acceptance not only from Polish audiences but also officialdom
made me feel like I was a real person and not just floating through a lucky life of shallow emptiness.”
But while A Real Pain was promoted as Eisenberg’s love letter to Poland
many Poles still feel it failed to represent them adequately
the film’s only significant interaction with the locals occurs in a single scene near the end
when the Kaplan cousins arrive at the house where their grandmother used to live and briefly talk with two neighbours
Poles are otherwise background characters – a mostly voiceless crowd of receptionists
a beautiful and wealthy decoration that is essentially empty
because no real people inhabit it,” historian and writer Irena Grudzińska-Gross said
the director of the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw
a community that today numbers some 30,000
Jews made up 10% of Poland’s population; of the 3.5 million living there in 1939
only about 300,000 survived.) “It felt as if Eisenberg sent his love letter without an addressee,” he said
“And we watched it as outside spectators.”
The most biting critique, perhaps, lies in the film’s selective amnesia, sidestepping uncomfortable conversations about wider antisemitism in Poland. “We don’t get to find out what happened to the cousins’ family during the war, and why their grandmother emigrated soon after. She must have had a good reason to leave, right? Otherwise she would have stayed,” says Grudzińska-Gross, who was forced to flee Poland in 1968 amid an antisemitic campaign.
Read more“I think many people fell into the trap of expecting too much from this film, and assuming that since it’s connected to the Holocaust, it must be epic, it must be another Son of Saul,” says Tatarska
“You can interpret these [artistic] decisions negatively
but I would expect them to be mostly financially driven
but written by someone who has less lived experience and more ideas about what Poland could be.”
Wrzosiński sees the film as a heartfelt attempt at overcoming disconnections
“There’s a sense of joy that people keep on coming here – and we see more of them each year – to restore memory
to catch these threads from before the Holocaust and to talk not only about how their ancestors died
but also about how they lived here for 20 generations
And if this film encourages anyone to do this
Avraham Eisenberg (LinkedIn) What to know: Avraham Eisenberg was sentenced to 52 months in prison on Thursday after pleading guilty to a charge of possession of child sexual abuse material in 2024.Eisenberg was convicted on wire fraud
commodities fraud and commodities manipulation charges last year after he exploited Mango Markets to the tune of $110 million
but a federal judge said he was considering okaying a retrial on these charges
NY — Mango Markets exploiter Avraham “Avi” Eisenberg
who stole $110 million from the now-defunct decentralized finance protocol in 2022
was sentenced to 52 months in prison on Thursday — on his guilty plea to possession of child sexual exploitation material
not for his conviction on the crypto theft
which was found on his devices after his arrest
claiming that the Department of Justice pursued the case in the wrong venue (the Southern District of New York)
that the government hadn't properly proved that the MNGO Perpetual was a "swap," that Eisenberg intended to manipulate the MNGO Perpetual's price and that his "alleged deceptions ..
Judge Arun Subramanian said he would sentence Eisenberg to more than four years in prison at FCI Otisville
a medium-security facility about two hours' drive from Manhattan
but that there was a "non-zero chance I will grant that motion" related to the Mango Markets-related charges
The bulk of any sentence would be related to the CSAM charge anyway
the only way to try to stem the tide of the distribution of this material" is through a prison sentence
The judge also said he acknowledged to Eisenberg's effort to better understand the impact of his crime
but that a prison sentence was still necessary
Eisenberg is sentenced to five years of probation with strict rules after he is released from prison
but will have to install monitoring software on all of his electronic devices and go through a drug outpatient program
I believe all of our actions were legal open market actions, using the protocol as designed, even if the development team did not fully anticipate all the consequences of setting parameters the way they are.
Prosecutors also detailed Eisenberg’s child sexual abuse material charges, telling the judge that between 2017 and 2022, he downloaded 1,274 sexually-explicit images and videos of children — including toddlers and two-month-old infants — as well as “depictions of sadistic violence and masochism against children.”
In their own sentencing submission to the court, Eisenberg and his lawyers attempted to blame his strict religious upbringing and his lifelong “struggles to conform to social norms” for his crimes, calling him a “fundamentally decent person” and detailing his challenges adapting to the “daily horrors” of life in jail.
On the news team at CoinDesk, Cheyenne focuses on crypto regulation and crime. Cheyenne is originally from Houston, Texas. She studied political science at Tulane University in Louisiana. In December 2021, she graduated from CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, where she focused on business and economics reporting. She has no significant crypto holdings.
Crypto trader Avraham “Avi” Eisenberg was sentenced to four years and four months in prison Thursday for possession of child sexual abuse material
But a federal judge said he needs more time to consider Eisenberg’s request for a new trial for his October 2022 exploit of now-defunct
Solana-based decentralised exchange Mango Markets
A federal jury convicted Eisenberg
of fraud and market manipulation in April of last year for the $110 million exploit
Eisenberg exploited a flaw in Mango Markets’ design: by trading with himself to inflate the value of the protocol’s token
he was able to use MNGO perpetuals as collateral to borrow crypto worth about $110 million from the protocol’s users with “no intention of repaying them,” according to prosecutors
But Eisenberg’s attorneys promptly requested an acquittal or a new trial
The government failed to prove that Eisenberg ever committed a crime in the Southern District of New York
where he was tried; that MNGO tokens were commodities; that he manipulated the price of MNGO perpetuals; that he defrauded Mango Markets; and that he had used an interstate wire
Judge Arun Subramanian said there was a “non-zero chance” he would grant Eisenberg’s request
but added he would still sentence Eisenberg for his possession of child sexual abuse material
Eisenberg pleaded guilty to possession of more than 1,200 images and videos of child sexual abuse
which federal agents had found on his computer when he was arrested in December 2022
While Eisenberg never created or distributed such material
his possession “creates a market for these types of materials that otherwise wouldn’t exist,” a prosecutor said Thursday
attributed Eisenberg’s possession of the material to his upbringing in an ultra-orthodox Jewish community in Rockland County
and a lack of understanding of many things regarding sex.”
Talkin also implied Eisenberg had been abused himself as a child
citing “at least two situations” in which Eisenberg was the “recipient of unthinkable activity.”
Eisenberg said he has since come to realize he shared responsibility for the victim’s abuse
even if he wasn’t creating or sharing images of that abuse
His attorneys requested a sentence of three years for his possession of child sexual abuse material
Prosecutors had requested a combined sentence of six and a half to eight years for his possession of that material and for his exploitation of Mango Markets
In a statement before he delivered Eisenberg’s sentence
But courts levy an average sentence of about four years for possession of child sexual abuse material
some of the images and videos found on Eisenberg’s computer were particularly horrifying
such as those depicting children younger than two years of age
In addition to his four years and four months imprisonment
Eisenberg will serve five years of supervised release
Aleks Gilbert is a DeFi Correspondent with DL News
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Jesse Eisenberg is best known for playing smart but awkward characters. His distinct acting style—highlighted by quick speaking and various tics, such as finger tapping—has earned him comparisons to Woody Allen and Dustin Hoffman
Jesse Eisenberg appeared in a number of successful films, including Adventureland and Zombieland (both 2009), before his breakout role as Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010)
Among his later notable films are To Rome with Love (2012)
He also starred in the TV miniseries Fleishman Is in Trouble (2022)
In 2022 Jesse Eisenberg wrote and directed his first feature film, When You Finish Saving the World. The comedy centers on the strained relationship between a mother (Julianne Moore) and son (Finn Wolfhard)
two Jewish cousins honor their recently deceased grandmother by traveling to Poland
where they tour Holocaust sites and visit her childhood home
and in 1996 he was an understudy in the Broadway production of Summer and Smoke
It was based on a novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner and centers on the breakdown of a couple’s marriage
Eisenberg’s distinct acting style—highlighted by quick speaking and various tics, such as finger tapping—has earned him comparisons to Allen and Dustin Hoffman. Eisenberg has said that all of his roles are based on little parts of himself.
Eisenberg also wrote and appeared in the off-Broadway plays Asuncion (2011), a comedy that centers on the friendship of two men; The Revisionist (2013), which costarred Vanessa Redgrave; and The Spoils (2015), about a struggling filmmaker who pursues a childhood crush. In addition, Eisenberg penned short stories, and in 2015 he published the collection Bream Gives Me Hiccups.
During the filming of The Emperor’s Club (2002), Eisenberg met Anna Strout, who was an assistant to one of the film’s producers. The couple dated for more than 10 years before breaking up. However, they later reunited, and in 2017 Eisenberg and Strout married. That year the couple had a son.
Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco reprise their roles as the Four Horsemen
Sam Smart and Anne du Croo de JonghPhoto by: © row2k MediaNo
5 Yale for Eisenberg Cup This Weekend April 17
For Lionsgate’s next trick, they have released the first trailer for Now You See Me: Now You Don’t
The official trailer for the third film in the Now You See Me franchise arrived on Tuesday
along with the rest of the illusionists in The Four Horsemen
return to put even more magic on the big screen
Dave Franco and Morgan Freeman also return in the upcoming sequel
New cast members this time around include Justice Smith
“The Four Horsemen return along with a new generation of illusionists performing mind-melding twists
and magic unlike anything ever captured on film,” the film’s official synopsis reads
everything that disappears reappears,” J
while on stage in front of a massive crowd
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Jesse Eisenberg is worried about his anxiety levels
his mind is already crawling with the brainworms of what might go wrong
As I waited to meet him at the East Village restaurant Little Poland
I spotted Eisenberg outside walking in tight circles on the pavement
who was telling him not to freak out because his new film
had made the front page of the arts section of The New York Times
It’s also the day his film is released in the US
And it’s a story about the suffering of Jewish people
From here it’s only three days until the presidential election and America quite possibly voting for fascism
and so the ghosts swaying from the ceiling might be day-old Halloween decorations
but they also might just be trying to tell us something
“I’ve never been to this restaurant,” he says after coming inside
It’s so weird that I’ve never been here because I wrote a movie called Little Poland
but for some reason I was scared to go in.”
his voice halting to edit itself like a cursor running back and forth over each sentence
He arrived today in a storm of polite questions and thank you
or that we were late for the lunchtime special
Little Poland has been in New York’s East Village since 1985
and wooden panelling seemingly unchanged since then
It is the sort of time-warp restaurant which might feature in A Real Pain—a place you walk into looking to feel the weight of history and end up feeling a little shortchanged
Eisenberg planted his new film squarely inside that expectation gap
partly inspired by a trip to Poland with his wife to see the last house his ancestors lived in
“I just remember not having the catharsis that I thought I would have in front of this three-story apartment building,” he says
a neurotic Jewish New Yorker who embarks on a Holocaust memorial tour of Poland with his live-wire cousin Benji
made irresistible by the wayward charm of Kieran Culkin
who descends from Polish Holocaust survivors
wrote Culkin’s character as a composite of guys he knew growing up
whose ease in moving through the world he found strange and captivating
Benji loves the weird Polish soup they encounter
and makes inroads into the tour group easily
getting strangers to open up about the painful parts of their lives
winning them over even while insulting them
but it is seeing him through the watchful eyes of his timid cousin that gives the story its emotional sucker punch
and it’s as though he’s been validated by a god,” says Eisenberg
dropping Benji into the kind of anonymous spaces that he thrives in
but also showing the loneliness that comes with being the “fun” guy
goes beyond the kind of films that might play his uptight tendencies for laughs
“It’s like meeting the neurotic character but then going to therapy with them and realizing this person is actually struggling with something,” he says
“We’ve been reared to laugh at these comic
but most likely this person is also crying themselves to sleep a few nights a week.”
Most Saturdays and Sundays for the first 10 years of Eisenberg’s life
and prepare for her weekend job as a children’s birthday party clown
He remembers hearing her blowing up balloons to fill trash bags with
“When I told people my mom was a clown they laughed
and yet I saw her taking it as seriously as my dad who was doing work at a hospital,” he says now
folding and unfolding the paper wrapper from his straw
“She would get pulled over sometimes for speeding and she’d be in her costume
It was always shocking to the police and it was awkward
[but] my mom is such a charming woman that she’d always charm the police.”
The irony is not lost on him that his mother was a birthday party clown and he was a deeply unhappy child
missing a year of school because he was institutionalized for mental health issues
Growing up he felt out of sync with everyone else cruising through each day as though every minute didn’t feel life or death
“It was just mystifying to me why we weren’t all crying all day long because it just seemed like the world is so sad and scary,” he says
“Maybe that’s what part of this movie is: I would watch people like Kieran’s character and just wonder
Don’t they know school is tomorrow as well
Don’t they know the summer is transient and we have to come back here
Don’t they know they’re not going to see their parents all day tomorrow?”
This whirling internal tempest—which settles as we talk and he looks me in the eye for longer and longer stretches—is part of what has made Eisenberg so compelling as an actor
whether as a teenager embittered by his parents’ divorce in Noah Baumbach’s 2005 film The Squid and the Whale
or as an asshole Trojan-horsed into a fretful father in the recent hit series Fleishman Is in Trouble
His talent for telegraphing a hive of activity behind the scenes was apparent early in his career
even if it wasn’t always what was required
but I was imbuing him with this deep anxiety.”
This tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve was why he found playing Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network such a fun challenge
given his interior life had to remain so closed off
“He’s someone who at once knows exactly who he is and doesn’t have any perception of who he is,” he says
“[His] interactions with other people are these kind of stilted puzzles he has to try and figure out
because he can’t really perceive [their emotions].”
Eisenberg realized that being funny was a way to armor yourself
“Nobody laughs at the funny guy,” a childhood friend once told him
Eisenberg has used comedy not only in the characters he plays
but also in writing humor pieces for The New Yorker
which is now being turned into a TV series
There is a claustrophobic quality to his writing that can feel like being trapped in a lift with a stranger’s raw emotions rubbing up against you
and the previous film he wrote and directed
2022’s When You’re Finished Saving the World
Eisenberg assumed that everyone else was using jokes as a way to mask inner pain
and recalls asking him: “Are you depressed
and I love being around people who are making jokes,’” Eisenberg tells me
“It's the first time I ever heard that
maybe that's some kind of cultural difference.’ Then I also remember thinking
the reason he's saying this to me is because I'm bringing him really way down right now.”
Eisenberg pauses to think in front of his vegetarian stuffed cabbage
which arrived so large he had to quickly relinquish the menu he had held onto
and which tastes so good he is worried it’s surely going to give him food poisoning
because anything good will manifest something terrible
because it’s really tinged with a lot of sadness,” he says
If Eisenberg hadn’t been so prone to introspection then he thinks maybe he would never have had a career in the arts
I would take my neurosis rather than living in ignorant bliss
“Or is that just a way you justify your own misery so that you don’t kill yourself?” he says
“I don’t mean to be glib about your impending suicide
but is that just what sad people tell themselves
There have been certain moments in Eisenberg’s life which he remembers as deeply happy
the domestic abuse shelter his mother-in-law founded in Indiana
and learning to fix the garbage disposal from the building manager
Working with a clear purpose and in service to others
he felt the calm of doing something that takes you outside of your own head
Afterwards he wrote his first feature film
who runs a domestic abuse shelter but cannot be charitable toward her shallow son Ziggy (Finn Wolfhard)
Seeing the noble work of a domestic abuse shelter up close might inspire another writer to pen a moving drama about social justice
“She’s arguably deserving of some kind of hagiography,” he says
“But isn’t the more interesting story to see how this person can’t navigate this other world?”
While talking he breaks off to thank our waiter in Polish
For a second I don’t know what horrors we are about to hear
but all he says is “Good—pretty good” with a vacant smile
It is an exchange which has an Eisenberg reality-check quality to it; this is how strange and often flat life really is
“Jesse understands implicitly that what we intend is not necessarily how we behave,” Julianne Moore tells me
“You would think that would be a given in lots of screenplays
You watch these people desperately trying to understand each other and missing.” Moore—who will star alongside Paul Giamatti in Eisenberg’s next film
a musical set in the high-stakes world of community theater—says Eisenberg is a “triple threat
A Real Pain was the first time he was using all of those muscles at once
all while resisting the urge to have some huge personal catharsis in these places of historical significance
He also had to get accustomed to watching himself for the first time
Until now he’s always hated to see himself back
The director David Fincher did so many takes for The Social Network—half of them really socially removed and aloof
and half more naturalistic—and Eisenberg has no idea which version of Zuck he ended up playing
But editing A Real Pain meant he simply had to get over it
“I have developed a thick skin because of acting
I know the worst of what people write about me and my body and my face,” he says
“I don’t feel that as much with writing because it’s so less reflective of who I am
The thing you don’t like about your nose is the same thing New York Magazine hates about your nose
The thing you read on a messageboard is the same thing you hate about your hair
After lunch we had planned to walk around the Strand bookstore
but Eisenberg passed it on his way here and reports that it is in fact incredibly crowded
he worries that he was wired for a life much more stressful than the one he’s currently living
Tonight he has to do a Q&A for the film at a movie theater
“Somebody's gonna tell me how much they hated the movie and then the rest of the audience is gonna realize that they also hated the movie too
and if it wasn't for this one intuitive person in the room
they wouldn't have realized that,” he says
and they're gonna realize we were also hoodwinked!”
but these days it feels as though our age of anxiety is finally rising to meet Eisenberg’s panic levels
and in the street and on the news—shouldn’t we all be a little more worried
He’s just finished filming Now You See Me 3
and his hyper-confident street magician character is the most joyful part to play
because he’s not allowed to let any self-doubt in
and banishing nerves from his body gives him a kind of afterglow when he walks off set
“Every other movie I've ever been in is just: ‘That was terrible
A Real Pain is about learning to live with not being easygoing
Eisenberg wrote Benji as a way to work through “family members or relationships I've had that make me feel inadequate.” At one point David tells his cousin
You see what happens when you walk into a room
I would give anything to know what that feels like
This dynamic played out between the two actors on set
Eisenberg amusedly recalls him being "explicitly resistant” to being told what to do
sure that Eisenberg had written something so clear he understood what was required
‘Do you want to talk about what happens here in the scene?’” Culkin tells me
Eisenberg grew up envious of the Benji effect
but he now understands that there is a loneliness to being that guy; everyone has their demons
There are also superpowers that come with being the emotionally open
on the set of When You’re Finished Saving the World
He loved the script so much and really wanted to get it right
“I pulled Jesse aside and told him I was pretty stressed out and was apologizing,” Wolfhard tells me
“He told me this story about having a similar issue with anxiety on set
because it made it seem like it was fine to be anxious and not feel like you’re weird for having those kinds of feelings.”
“Sometimes if I mess up a line I’ll remember Jesse saying it’s not a big deal
It’s definitely made being an anxious person more comfortable
Eisenberg hadn’t expected to find a kindred spirit in Wolfhard
in addition to being an actor,” assuming he would be the most confident guy in the world
The depth and self-consciousness he displayed was not only great for the film
but it also gave Eisenberg something he knew how to help with
Eisenberg’s interest in other people also struck Claire Danes
who played his wife in Fleishman Is in Trouble
“He’s incredibly interested in everyone he meets
but people are very touched he cares,” says Danes
and really thoroughly.” This was echoed by Culkin
who told me if he did direct he’d want to do it the way Eisenberg does
but really wanted to hear people’s thoughts,” he says
Eisenberg would be approached by people in the street
telling him desperately sad things about their marriage ending
and the most vulnerable parts of their lives
I can’t imagine the same person opening up to
Jason Statham or something,” he says—then adding quickly
as though worried Statham might be cracking his knuckles reading this
I think I just appear like somebody who would be sympathetic to a story.”
of wanting to go deep with people—of genuinely caring—is that you come to realize how scary and fragile the world really is
Perhaps you don’t get the curiosity without the anxiety; perhaps the anxiety is part of the deal
I experience this curiosity with Eisenberg firsthand
as I find myself offloading about my personal life
He keeps asking questions—about what I want from a partner
or where my surname is from—and then really listening
so much so that I realize I’ve run over time
but now he’s very sorry and really does have to leave
“I was wondering how tall you were,” he says
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Darren Richman
@darrenrichman
Krystal Quiles
The actor and writer/director of A Real Pain discusses his Polish heritage and the tricky prospect of filming scenes for a comedy drama in a concentration camp
follows David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin)
making their way round Poland on a tour in honour of their recently departed grandmother
The bickering cousins with an odd couple dynamic visit Majdanek concentration camp as well as the childhood home of their beloved ancestor
after he died on his 93rd birthday in early 2023
my mother and I travelled to Poland to see the apartment of his youth
the place he lived until history had other ideas
I went to Majdanek and other camps with friends and family on an organised tour in 2019
Eisenberg spent the first few minutes of our time together peppering me with questions and googling my grandfather
seemingly keener to talk about my family than his film
there isn’t much that separates the two things
I know you’ve been trying to sort Polish citizenship in recent years – did that lead to A Real Pain
I became really interested in my family’s Polish history when I was 18-years-old
I became interested because I had started to become close to my dad’s aunt Doris (who we call Grandma Dory in the movie)
From the time I was 18 to 36 I saw her every Thursday and I even lived with her for a period in my early 30s
She was a very close person to me and she lived to 107
She was born in Poland and left before the war but I became so obsessed with her history probably because I felt a certain lack of meaning in my life as I became a professional actor and became celebrated for something that didn’t feel worthy of celebration
I became interested in my past and the suffering of my ancestors to connect to something more real and meaningful
Did you make a similar trip to the one shown in the film
was from Lodz and we did the trip shown in the movie but not on a tour
I really felt this deep connection to the place
I stood outside the house my family lived in up until 1939 and felt the fluke of history that I’m American with this JanSport backpack and I’m not living inside these doors
We were in this city for much longer than we were in New York City
I was further interested in getting Polish citizenship when I met all these people who were not only helping with the movie but also preserving the memory of my family by working at concentration camps and memorialising Jewish history
the town’s gynaecologist is also the Jewish genealogist–
He’s not Jewish but he knew more about my family than I did
I was so desperate to go back but it was Covid when I was writing and it just seemed like an impossible thing to tell my wife
I’m going to leave you for a week and go on a tour of Poland.” Especially when ninety percent of what I write doesn’t get produced
I ended up doing this really weird thing of getting brochures online for Holocaust tours and then using Google Street View and going street by street walking where the characters would go
Which of the two main characters is closest to the person you were doing that trip in 2008
I probably present to the world what David presents to the world
I did that character in a play I wrote called The Spoils which played here in London
said I should not play an unhinged character while also trying to direct
It’s too much cognitive dissonance to try and reconcile on a set
I have elements of Benji in that I’m also a performer and at times I’m in control of groups but I’m much more self-conscious and self-aware than Benji is
Kieran Culkin is perfect in the role but did you think about casting a Jewish actor
The only reason I didn’t send the first ten pages I wrote to Kieran Culkin was because we thought a Jew should play this role
It was a very complex process where I was trying to mine my own feelings about representation and what I ultimately felt
was that this is a movie that’s in my head about my family’s story
Who is best to illustrate this story in a way that’s closest to my reality
What was it like doing that as well as directing
I could pace the scenes as I wanted to pace them and play things that would come across on screen if not the page
I understood the emotional stakes of my character in a way some readers didn’t even understand
We had the option after every take to do another one or watch the take back
You chose not to deify the survivor in the story and I really related to that
My grandfather was an amazing man but I also saw the way he behaved when he was stuck in traffic
the key is to humanise rather than turn people into statistics
I just think about what it took to survive something like that
What does that look like in the quietness of regular
The characters in this movie are missing their grandmother and Benji in particular is really grieving her loss because she was the only one in the family who would set him straight
But she was not a saint and that probably speaks to you because it’s real
Sometimes people who’ve been through really horrible situations can be scary to little kids because they’ve had to toughen themselves up unfairly
The person who has been toughest with Benji is the only one he can feel love with
Judaism puts such a large emphasis on being alive with the Book of Life
wishing someone a long life when they’ve lost a relative etc and that’s even more significant when you’re talking about the descendants of Holocaust survivors
We talk about it more than previous generations and feel less of it
That’s something I wanted to explore but the counter irony is that sometimes when you have real suffering it provides meaning in a way this modern life can never do
I’ve always found it strange to be called a third generation survivor
But then I read articles about generational trauma and wonder if I’m different because my grandfather survived Auschwitz
Were you deliberately attempting to grappled with this stuff
I don’t think of generational trauma as this magical
If your grandparents went through something historically and epically unbearable
they were probably a stressed-out parent to your parents and your parents were probably stressed-out parents to you
With the movie I was just trying to pose the question – what pain is valid
Is my character’s treatable OCD valid when our grandparents survived the holocaust
I watched so many films and read so many books about the topic
But I was really moved to see someone do something from our kind of perspective
I’m obsessed with movies about this topic because it’s an impossible subject to understand and I watch movies in an attempt to get some little nugget or some truth
I was trying to do something different with characters that are irreverent
It brought up all sorts of interesting questions like why are we travelling on a train to a concentration camp and sitting first class
It sheds light on an irony that people like you and me would feel whereas our parents’ generation might have a different perspective
Sequences like that make you cringe but they’re relatable
I’ve read you’re a big fan of The Office and I feel like there’s something of that in here
and they didn’t even get enough credit for
is that Ricky Gervais is playing this character that’s saying all the wrong things and you love him
What’s great is that Kieran never pushes it too far and he remains lovable
He makes good arguments even when he’s being obnoxious
he breaks people open because he is open himself
How hard was it to get permission to film in a camp given this is a comedy drama
It was the most interesting process I’ve ever been involved with
they told me that to shoot the Majdanek concentration camp it would be a $1 million build
“What do you mean a $1 million build?” They told me you can’t shoot in concentration camps; you have to build them
there’s somebody who knows how to build concentration camps?” That was a third of our budget so we couldn’t afford it
I reached out to anyone I’d ever met with a connection to the camps and got the word to Majdanek that it would be a reverential scene about a tour group at the camp now
Nobody would be running around dressed as a Nazi
Eventually I met the people there and we got along so well as they’re young academics who’ve devoted their lives to preserving the memory of yours and my families’ histories
we realised that on some level we were all trying to do the same thing – let people know what happened here
LWLies 107: The Sinners issue – Out now!
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The empty showboat of cinematic one-shots
Inside the academic conference taking Terrifier back to school
By Katherine McLaughlin
Based on a trip he took to Poland with his own cousin
Jesse Eisenberg crafts a sensitive dramedy co-starring Kieran Culkin
By Victoria Luxford
The actor’s sly take on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg casts a spotlight on the dark side of success
By David Jenkins
Jesse Eisenberg breaks his dweeby typecast as a disenchanted bodybuilder lured into to a men’s rights group in John Trengove’s intriguing thriller
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them
we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience
A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: I appreciate Jesse Eisenberg not just because he's really good at acting
but here's what I mean: Eisenberg tends to play male characters with deep interior lives
Characters who spend a lot of time feeling things like anxiety
we see Eisenberg's characters trying to find their place in a world where men are expected to flatten their vulnerabilities and all of their emotions to fit into some antiquated definition of masculinity
and I very much want for them to turn into young men who are comfortable living through every one of their emotions
And maybe I'm giving Hollywood too much power in my life
but it feels affirming as a parent to see these kinds of male characters on screen
And of course the movie that's getting a ton of accolades right now — including a best original screenplay and supporting actor nomination at the Oscars — A Real Pain
He also co-stars in the film alongside Kieran Culkin
This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity
Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards
Tap play above to listen to the full podcast
I transferred to a performing arts high school in New York City
But the bravest thing I did was probably cut school one day to go see a Broadway matinee of Judgment at Nuremberg — which maybe tells you enough about me to understand my full personality
My friends and I — we were planning it like a heist at math class in the morning
cool I'm gonna meet you at lunch and I think we can get student tickets for the last row mezzanine." So our big transgression in high school was going to see a Broadway matinee
I'm sure it would have been the kind of thing if our teachers caught us
In an attempt for me to stay busy and active I sometimes will push for my things to be done sometimes
I'm not naturally an ambitious person for myself
but I really am quite a worried person about failing
And so it creates an ambition in me by necessity to just try to stay busy at all times
Rachel Martin: How have you managed that fear of failure
He's a teacher and has such sweet perspectives on my life
there's a feeling inside of me that this should be the norm and like
And my dad has kind of a 60,000-foot view or 30,000-foot view – depending on your airline – of what this means
that's a cool thing." A really successful career to have in the arts is to have
let's say two movies that you make that are regarded this nicely
because what it tells me is that this should not be expected to be the norm
And then my friend Jim tells me all the time that if you want a career in the arts
success is basically staying active and busy
The successes are not the one or two things that spike
Eisenberg: I married a woman who has the same values as me
she's a far better person — she teaches disability social justice and awareness in public schools
And her mom ran a domestic violence shelter for 35 years
And I'm preoccupied with privilege versus struggle and meaning versus emptiness
But the interesting thing that occurs to me
is that my wife – she just does something about it
so what are you going to do about it?" Or I'm like
"I feel so bad about what happened to my friend." She always is just like
let's call him now and try to get him a job
She actually knows somebody who just lost their job here
Maybe they can work together." There's not an instinct in her to wallow in it or to
I feel so guilty." She's not even aware that she's doing something different than me
Martin: I think it's so lovely that you found each other
and Jesse Eisenberg I don't think you're wired to do nothing good
She's just very active and has a good heart
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Jesse Eisenberg is showing off some new magic tricks in the trailer for “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.”
“I’m talking about a trick that is bigger and better than anything you have ever seen
tells the three new magicians in the first trailer for the highly anticipated third film of the franchise
Lionsgate said it surprised fans in Times Square by giving away $250,000 in digital payments
residents and tourists in Times Square saw a billboard that flashed the words
“Now You See Me,” alongside a live countdown clock and phone number that invited locals and tourists to text or call in for a surprise
“Now You Don’t” as fans received a text with the official trailer and a cash prize courtesy of The Horsemen
Justice Smith and Dominic Sessa were also there to help with the visual “heist.”
A post shared by Now You See Me (@nysmmovie)
Justice and Dominic are joining Jesse and his team of illusionists including
as they embark on their latest elaborate heist to steal a diamond from a worldwide criminal network
A fourth “Now You See Me” movie is already in the works
“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” is in theaters Nov
Then check out the trailer for Lionsgate's Now You See Me: Now You Don't
the third film in the Now You See Me franchise
Now You See Me: Now You Don't reunites the team of thieving magicians known as the Four Horsemen: J
Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer helms Now You See Me: Now You Don't
which also sees Morgan Freeman returning as master magician Thaddeus Bradley
"Eight magicians against a worldwide criminal network
I like our chances," Greenblatt's character says
Notably missing from the trailer is Mark Ruffalo as Dylan Rhodes
Check out the trailer above for more dazzling escapes and sleight of hand
Belen Edwards is an Entertainment Reporter at Mashable. She covers movies and TV with a focus on fantasy and science fiction, adaptations, animation, and more nerdy goodness.
because of his “inquiring mind.” Seventeen minutes into my recent lunch with Eisenberg
but he’d peppered me with plenty of his own
Did I get to consult on my New Yorker cartoon avatar
Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin play Jewish cousins who go to Poland to take a Holocaust tour and to visit their late grandmother’s childhood home
David (Eisenberg) is a high-strung fuddy-duddy with a wife and a kid; Benji (Culkin) is a charismatic stoner with no boundaries and barely concealed psychic wounds
where it won a screenwriting award; it’s already getting Oscar buzz
especially of moral vanity and his own ostensibly noble intentions: How can you do real good in the world
rather than just catering to the liberal need to seem virtuous
Shouldn’t we all feel a little more uncomfortable
which covered these riddles of life and more
Did you take a trip to Poland like the one in the movie
my wife and I went to pretty much all the sites that the characters go to and wound up at this house in Krasnystaw
I was standing outside this house and trying to feel something profoundly cathartic
That’s kind of what happens at the end of this movie: the characters finally get to this house and have these great emotional expectations that are just met by a typical-looking three-story apartment building
Had you always been interested in your ancestry
and unimpressed by anything I had to offer that was not from a place of substance
I even lived with her in my early thirties
and I moved into her tiny one-bedroom and slept on her couch
I will visit that house and take a picture for you.”
I thought she would start weeping and realize that her life had come full circle
She just looked at it for a second and was
From the moment I started investigating her life
Poland as an idea gave me a certain meaning that I was missing
I was living with material security and appropriate antidepressants for the things that ail me
made me feel like I was a real person and not just floating through a lucky life of shallow emptiness
and he says he was there not as an adrenaline junkie but as a meaning junkie
and she teaches at a school for continuing education
She doesn’t walk around with a sense of shame and embarrassment and guilt
She walks around with a sense of: How can I be of service
you have poked fun at this feeling you have
and the line I still remember is when your character says that he wants to go to some famine-plagued part of Africa
I remember that line because it nails a kind of clueless self-righteousness
But this is also what you’re talking about
because in my attempt to find meaning I find myself indulging in the very things that I find obnoxious
and we were trying to help with the Red Cross there
But I’m not strong enough to carry the flour bags
I also acknowledge the silliness of somebody like me assuming that their life has some greater purpose
so I can explore that in these creative and ambivalent ways
“A Real Pain” is trying to show these two characters searching for meaning
and they’re not really finding it in the places they’re expecting to
They’re not finding it in a concentration camp
They’re actually finding meaning in their very narrow relationship
I’m just constantly questioning my own—what’s the word?—hypocrisy
And then the irony is that I write about my hypocrisy
and because I write about it and am occasionally lauded for it
it perpetuates the exact thing that I’m trying to avoid
By writing about trying to connect to something real
I get to go to parties for my movie and wear a tuxedo
taking me once again further away from that thing that I’m striving for
and I feel like that’s an underexplored relationship
I Googled “movies about cousins” and the ones I found were “My Cousin Vinny,” “Mary Queen of Scots”—because her cousin was Queen Elizabeth I—and the weirdest one
“The Blue Lagoon.” People don’t remember that those kids were cousins before they got shipwrecked on a desert island and started having sex in a waterfall or whatever
It’s not a familial relationship that’s been deeply explored
It’s somewhere between friends and siblings
you both have the opportunity to lay the foundation of what this means to each other
The original script was about two friends who go to Mongolia to see a third friend of theirs who’s sold out to a Norwegian tourism company
When I changed course and set it on a Holocaust tour
it occurred to me that it would be great if they were cousins
because the thing that they share is gone: the grandmother
It allowed me to create stakes between the two
because this relationship truly does not have a need to exist anymore
One of my cousins is a fantasy-football journalist
I really recognized the type of person that Benji is: the stoner who wants to have a really intense emotional connection and doesn’t realize when it’s making people uncomfortable or is sort of bullshit
but maybe there’s some part of you that also feels envious
If only I were able to connect to my grief in the grounded and full way that that person connects to their grief
talks about how much he misses the version of me that used to cry all the time
I’m so happy that I’ve matured out of that phase
the pre-medicated version of me that he felt a connection to
because he’s lost his purpose in our relationship
He needs to talk about my body in this almost fetishistic way
which is something a cousin might say that not a lot of other people in your life would say
it’s this need to be in complete control of my person
an awesome guy stuck inside the body of somebody who’s always running late
And it’s up to me to pull that guy out.” It’s a backhanded compliment: You could be cool
and the only person who can help you is me
Your character says that he takes pills for O.C.D
“Asuncion” was a heightened version of my terror of male relationships
I had just changed my major to Anthropology when I was writing that play
and I was obsessed with the way that we as Americans “other” people
Do you still use anthropology in your writing
I think about the other people on the Holocaust tour in “A Real Pain.” It’s a cross-section of people
The Rwandan character was based on my friend Eloje
and converted to Judaism when he felt like no other group of people in Canada could understand what he’d been through
He’s the only person who sends me e-mails on Jewish holidays
and I asked him if he’d allow me to use his story in this movie
I’m curious if you thought about it in the lineage of Holocaust movies
going back to more explicit ones like “Sophie’s Choice” and “Schindler’s List.” In recent years
filmmakers have dealt with the Holocaust in more idiosyncratic ways
like in “Jojo Rabbit” or “The Zone of Interest.”
I assume that no one’s ever going to see it
because my track record is such that most things I’ve written have never been seen or published
So I don’t have the confidence to assume that this thing I’m conceiving is going to be discussed in conversation with Holocaust movies
What I was thinking about was: How do people who don’t have a physical connection to a specific trauma try to find that connection in awkward
When I was [originally] writing this movie
travelling on Aeroflot to Russia and then eventually on to Ulaanbaatar
and I’m realizing this movie has nowhere to go
because I love the idea of shooting in Mongolia
and this ad pops up for Auschwitz tours—in parentheses
“with lunch.” It was like a deus ex machina
where something drops in your lap that completely upends this thing you’ve been doing
I wanted to have some perspective on the irony of wanting to connect to your ancestors’ pain but at the same time not being willing to experience any pain yourself: stay at the Radisson
have your croissant in the morning and your coffee in the van going to Auschwitz
going back on the air-conditioned bus to eat your lunch
maybe the unethical thing is to have such a cynical attitude that you never do anything about it
You’ve talked before about your Jewish-comedy influences
Was this the first time you grappled with the subject of Jewish identity in something you’ve written
“The Revisionist,” was about a character named David who sneaks weed into Poland and spends a week at his second cousin’s house
and it’s about him grappling with his own meaninglessness
What I don’t like is when Jewish comedians use Jewishness as a punch line
I like using it in trying to contextualize these people who are obsessed with other cultures to reflect on their own otherness
because Jews have this ability to assimilate really well
It’s been a fraught year for Jewish people
Are there things in the movie that you think resonate differently from how you thought they would when you started writing it
My hope and my assumption is that the answer is no
that this movie is an evergreen story about cousins who are trying to experience something very personal
There’s no discussion of global politics—certainly no discussion of the Middle East
My hope is that this movie could have taken place in 1992
when Jewish Americans started going back to Poland as tourists after the Cold War
You can’t predict the context that will surround the thing you wrote two years ago
so it would be foolish to attempt to make some kind of commentary on a world that is ever-changing
I read that you applied for Polish citizenship after making the movie there
I felt like my life was comfortable in a way that made me feel very suspicious
So I became obsessed with my family’s history in Poland
and I feel like I’ve been an American for ten thousand years
it’s so ironic that we never talk about Poland
that we never talk about this town that was home to us for far longer than Queens was
So I had this nagging feeling that I would like to connect to it more
I don’t know if that means going on vacation there
or trying to find people who might be related to us
When I was telling people that I was going to Poland
Good luck.” And what I found was diametrically opposed to what I had been warned about
I found a crew of a hundred and fifty people who were giving everything they had to serve my family’s story
I found young academics who work at the Majdanek concentration camp
because to shoot at Majdanek required eight months of negotiation of me having to prove my good intentions
I had the sense that it was such a deep shame that American Jews have this perception
and I pitched them the following sentiment: This movie is partly an attempt to bring Poles and Jews to a place of reconciliation
if there are any efforts I can make in that direction
So I’m going to Poland in a few days and doing events in various cities
I just get so uncomfortable that it distracts me from feeling like I’m just in the thing
I would just look at the monitor when we were setting up the camera
so I’d be able to see what I look like for composition purposes
I just try to feel the thing that my character is feeling
and I base my own success on whether I came close to that feeling
Who is a better arbiter of performance than the greatest actress of our generation
Are there things that you’ve absorbed from directors you’ve worked with
and he really does try to keep the action in as much of a single take as possible for momentum
for the artistry of camera movement and choreography
My favorite director that I ever worked with was Richard Ayoade
I did a movie called “The Double” with him
and there are some overlaps with this movie
I play two characters: one about whom the world is uninterested
and the other for whom the world opens up for no discernable reason
I liked the way that Richard dealt with the ironic humor of that
The first movie I saw you in was “The Squid and the Whale,” and I see some of Noah Baumbach’s observational style in your work. That movie is wonderful at observing people’s flaws in a loving way. I think about the scene when your character plays a song he claims he wrote at a school assembly
but he’s just passing a Pink Floyd song off as his own
Do you feel like that movie or Noah rubbed off on you
twenty-one and was auditioning for commercials and stuff
I had this conception of acting that characters should be relatable and heroic
Doing that movie and seeing how it can have warmth—even when the characters were not warm to each other—was amazing
There’s a line at the end that directly reminded me of “A Real Pain.” Jeff Daniels
“You used to be very emotional when you were young.” In “A Real Pain,” Kieran says
You used to fucking cry about everything.”
it was awful!” That didn’t occur to me until you brought it up now
I went to a mental institution when I was a kid
Did I lose something by becoming a yuppie and medicating all that stuff away
Whenever I ask my therapist if the Prozac is going to dull my creative impulses
he just reminds me that every person he saw that day asked him the same question
they would give Tootsie Roll Pops to the whole bus
and from down the block I heard the entire bus chanting
Jesse!” I just remember feeling extra worried that I was going to ruin it for these people
That’s one of the things I’m exploring in this movie
searching for this thing that he’s very deliberately medicated away
Acting for me was not about performance—in fact
it gave me stage fright—but about just having an outlet
being with adults and seeing that there was another possibility
I was doing community theatre with people who had other jobs during the day
because we didn’t feel comfortable somewhere else
Weren’t you a Broadway understudy at thirteen
then I was an understudy in “A Christmas Carol” at Madison Square Garden
You mostly think of kid actors as these big
but actually there are these understudies sitting in the back playing poker until the show’s over
I went on for “Summer and Smoke,” maybe two weeks at the end
For “A Christmas Carol,” the guy I understudied generously gave me a Monday
Do you remember anything about Tony Randall
and he spent a night at a candlelit vigil once with Tony Randall
and Grandpa always told us about it.” I wrote him this card
People are more familiar with your history as an actor than as a writer
but of course you’ve been writing plays and screenplays and humor pieces
and they found all these little Post-it notes of mine
something I wouldn’t have or know about for five years
when the kids are writing with their full fist
And I wrote Adam Sandler-style nineties comedy screenplays
and one of them was optioned by the Weitz brothers when I was nineteen years old
They made “About a Boy” right before they optioned my thing
It was called “The Vigilante,” and it was about a guy in New York who meets a woman he had evicted from the building and falls in love with her without telling her he was the one who had her evicted
I wrote a movie about two college freshmen who hate the dorms they’re in
so they pose as senior citizens and move into the local old-age home
called “College Seniors.” It was optioned by Michael Bay’s company
I wrote a script about Woody Allen that got sent to his lawyers
and they sent me a cease-and-desist letter
Then when I was twenty-two I sent a script to Bob Odenkirk
because I was acting in a movie that he was directing
I thought he would send them to Adam Sandler on my behalf
Why are you writing this shit?” I thought my life was over
It was shortly thereafter that I went to Poland and met my second cousin Maria
and I came back to New York and wrote my first play
“The Revisionist.” Vanessa Redgrave ended up playing my cousin
I took myself seriously for the first time
I wouldn’t have done it without Bob Odenkirk’s tough reaction
but how did you react to the extra level of celebrity from “The Social Network”
I’d been in movies that were popular before then
You go through a little fuzzy period where you rise to the top of the list for a month
and they send you all the scripts that aren’t that great but think if they get an actor who’s popular at the moment they can get it greenlit
I was in this movie “Roger Dodger.” It wasn’t a hit or anything
but it was really well-liked in the New York independent-film scene
Then a year later I was auditioning for commercials again
“The Social Network” was a bigger version of that
You and Kieran Culkin both started as child actors
if you’re doing something like that at a young age
Kieran has the most unusual sense of ambition that I’ve seen in an actor
He’s not eager to be celebrated in any capacity
I’m just eager to be celebrated enough that I can continue working
He tried to pull out of our movie a dozen times
because he didn’t want to leave his family
I live in a perpetual state of worrying that my career is going to end if X or Y goes slightly amiss
We were living on and off in Indiana for the last decade
it provided a safe haven from feeling like I was pounding the pavement in New York
you’re so at the mercy of the whims of an industry
You’re being judged based on your hair and all these other things that seem so shallow and silly
and I judge actors in some of those same ways
So being in Indiana allowed me to not feel like I was in New York knocking on doors
which makes me feel totally out of control in my own life
most of the things I’ve written have not been published
I spent months writing lyrics to every country’s national anthem
you could listen to the instrumentals of every country’s anthem
Most of the things I write are just creative impulses that never see the light of day
we should show one of these anthems the light of day
[Sings.] “This is Andorra’s national anthem
/ There’s only sixty-four thousand people there
/ So it’s surprising that there are so many instruments required for this song
/ Where did they find the musicians out of only sixty-four thousand
/ To play the national anthem / for Andorra!” ♦
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"It is really good to be back," Eisenberg tells a crowd in the teaser for the film
though their roles appear a bit more sparing
a group of magicians dubbed the "Four Horsemen" are seen as Robin Hood-esque
on the run from the law for devious ploys but motivated by a sense of justice all the same
the crew is seen in a series of high-stakes puzzles and chase sequences
promising a film as action-packed as the first two
I like our chances," Greenblatt says as the trailer draws to a close
the franchise has carved out a loyal audience
endeared to Eisenberg's charismatic lead and the "what you see if not what you get," quality that grounds any good magic trick
and real estate are a part of Derek Eisenberg’s DNA
He grew up in a family of homebuilders and entered the real estate industry straight out of grad school
He began appraising in the 1990s and later joined several private property sale databases known as the Multiple Listing Service
a totally online brokerage offering flexible
Customers can choose entire full-service packages or choose only the specific services they need
“A traditional broker might only sell a Cadillac
whereas we sell a stripped-down Chevy with crank windows
no AC and only an AM radio and let customers add the options they want.”
are several states’ requirements that brokers maintain physical offices within their borders—a completely antiquated condition as modern technology makes local offices unnecessary
meant to protect in-state incumbents by discouraging market entry and blocking intrastate online services by out-of-state competitors
The result is fewer realtors and higher consumer prices
Derek must pay about $2,000 a year for an in-state presence
and the cost only compounds with each state he adds to Continental’s reach
West Virginia’s physical office requirement isn’t just outdated
It denies both Derek’s opportunity to do business and West Virginians’ opportunity to access innovative
Represented by Pacific Legal Foundation free of charge
Derek is defending his right to earn a living in West Virginia
free of the government’s unjust economic protectionism
In the meantime, Derek’s fight extends beyond West Virginia. He is currently challenging a similar requirement in Nevada and stands ready to contest other states’ burdensome laws that unfairly separate people from opportunity
Subscribe to the weekly Docket for dispatches from the front lines
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If you were an IU student and you watched the Oscar-nominated film “A Real Pain,” you may have noticed a familiar crimson hat atop Jesse Eisenberg’s head
eager to tell her about the “lore” surrounding one of my favorite actors.
directed and starred in “A Real Pain” alongside “Succession” fan-favorite and Oscar-nominee Kieran Culkin
The film follows the two actors as cousins who travel to Poland to see where their Holocaust survivor grandmother lived
The film itself is phenomenal and well deserving of the Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination it received (even though I firmly believe it should’ve earned a Best Picture nod as well).
With the Oscars coming up, Eisenberg sat down with CBS News to discuss the film and gave some rare insights into his personal life
He talked with CBS News correspondent Tracy Smith at Canter’s Deli in Los Angeles
The lunch was filled with my personal favorite foods: chocolate babka and pickles
he explained his passion for our beloved Bloomington
Eisenberg’s wife, Anna Strout, is an Indiana native and IU alumna. The 2000 graduate, Strout was the recipient of the Richard D
This award has been given to students in the Individualized Major Program whose “combination of academic excellence and civic engagement exemplifies the ideals the program exists to nurture.”
Eisenberg described Bloomington as a “hotbed of activism.”
who donated food to the shelter.
Eisenberg talked about the peace he found from volunteering almost every day at the shelter.
and I don't mean this for any kind of – it was
I was painting walls and fixing garbage disposals
he surprised Alpha Chi Omega whose philanthropy supports Middle Way House
There is even a Reddit discussion on his time in Bloomington in which one commenter claims the actor as a Bloomington local.
“I will always consider Jesse a Bloomingtonian,” they wrote
“I’ve seen him around too many times to count."
Eisenberg’s love for Bloomington is a very popular conversation starter these days
Every one of my friends had received a call or text from their parents when the CBS News interview aired
It was a sweet reminder of all of the good that goes on behind the scenes in Bloomington.
Eisenberg perhaps said it best himself when discussing Bloomington in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“I think college towns are just the best place on earth because they attract the most interesting people to one area,” he said
The Daily Rundown is published Monday through Friday and gives you a quick look at the day's top stories
Friday's weekly recap will let you catch up on the most important and most popular stories of the week
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actor Jesse Eisenberg was writing a movie about two men on a road trip in Mongolia when an ad popped up on his screen
"I clicked on the ad and it took me to a site for what you would imagine: An English speaking heritage tour of Poland that culminates at Auschwitz," Eisenberg says
just posed all these interesting philosophical questions like: 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 comfortable?"
Eisenberg shifted the setting of his Mongolia script to Poland, and borrowed details from his own family history. A Real Pain
which Eisenberg also directed and stars in
follows two American cousins who go on a Jewish heritage trip to Poland
culminating in a tour of Majdanek concentration camp
The trip is funded by their recently deceased grandmother
who wanted her grandchildren to see the home she fled when the Nazis were coming to power
Each cousin is dealing with mental health issues, which are exacerbated by the trip. Eisenberg's character, David, is introverted, and takes medication for his OCD. His cousin Benji, played by Kieran Culkin
but outwardly is charismatic and lights up the room
Eisenberg says one of the themes he wanted to explore in the film is the validity of pain
[if] he's experiencing the worst of what a psyche can experience
but at the same time he is in a comfortable life
Or is the only pain that's valid and should be acknowledged is the pain of war
A Real Pain was nominated for four Golden Globe Awards
including the award for best supporting actor
Eisenberg is grateful for the recognition his film has received
but he also acknowledges the disconnect between the subject of his film and the celebratory nature of the award season
and it certainly sums up probably a lot of my inner life," he says
"I have a materially nice life and I walk around kind of feeling bad for myself
And yet I'm also incredibly fascinated by my family's history in Poland and learning about the suffering
And I don't know how to reconcile those two things: Feeling bad about my very fortunate life and also understanding the horrors of my family's past or the horrors of people around the world today."
On shooting part of the movie at Majdanek concentration camp in Poland
[The authorities at Majdanek] get asked every day [for the camp] to be turned into essentially war sets that take place in 1942 and have extras running around in Nazi uniforms
Of course they're not going to allow that at this kind of site
And so over the course of the next eight months before we made the movie
I just tried to reach out in any way possible to this concentration camp
which is I wanted to film a scene of a modern tour group going through this place
in an attempt to have it be part of the movie
but also to show audiences what this place is
And my kind of plea to them was that I want to do the same thing you're doing
You exist as a museum to show people today what happened on this site
And I'm trying to do the same thing through my movie
We went over every angle that we wanted to film
but they agreed to it and we had two cameras and we basically set up the shots in the most kind of unfettered way
It was written in the script even that these scenes will be shot very simply
The actors will walk in and out of the room
On needing to be flexible with Kieran Culkin on set
the actor has to stand on their mark to deliver their lines
Kieran would never stand on a mark because he didn't know what he was going to do or where he was going to walk or what he was going to be performing
if I had some kind of strict compulsion to wanting the actors to all do my thing
the movie wouldn't be good because it would be stifling our leading character
On his own relationship to Judaism and bar mitzvahs
I dropped out of Hebrew school when I was like 12
these [bar mitzvah] parties that people had
They turned my stomach in a way that I couldn't probably even articulate
Just like the deification and celebration of a 13-year-old kid
The kids in school would talk about the checks they got
why are we celebrating this kid and giving them the kind of false illusion that they've done some great deed for the world by learning seven seconds of Hebrew
I was playing a Hasidic Jew in a movie called Holy Rollers
And so I was doing all this research on Hasidism and I actually got a bar mitzvah because I was kind of like going to this Hasidic school and I was kind of pretending like I was just a kind of curious
loved to have because they thought they can kind of convert me into their world
… So not only did I not have a secular Jersey bar mitzvah
but I ended up having a Hasidic bar mitzvah with
100 Hasidic young men standing around me chanting … so I had probably the most religious bar mitzvah a person could have
but it was just because I was trying to infiltrate the school to learn about it for an acting job
I guess at some point I probably shed the embarrassment that most kids would have probably felt
I was kicked out of preschool … because I locked my mom in the closet because I didn't want to be away from my mom
… I probably at some point got over the expected humiliation the kid would have about being very emotional in front of people
On being briefly admitted to a mental hospital as a child – and his parents taking him out because of a swastika drawn in his room by another patient
… They kept bringing me to this padded room or something and it was terrifying
… I would go to the soft room and they would put their knee in my back and hold me back to restrain me
I remember actually not being bothered by the swastika at all
but for whatever reason [that] was the thing that tipped my parents into taking me out of there
"I think I should skydive!" I had this feeling on the way home
I was kissing the car and I was kissing my sister's arm hair
but to try to go to school and sit in the therapist's office at least for three hours a day
then [I would] have to go back to the institution
So the institution became this kind of boogeyman
On finding a place for himself in community theater as a kid
What was really great about it was I was with adults
Somehow I just felt so much more comfortable not only being with adults
but being with adults who are all attracted to the arts
And especially when you're working on the community theater level
It's all people that feel outcast in every other part of the world
and that's why they're working after their job at AT&T during the day
they come and they have their outlet at night
And just being around people like that was just so life-changing and affirming and made me realize
I think [I'm] going to be OK when I'm an adult because I could see all these people are more like me
They're not like the people I go to school with
These people are outcasts and weirdos and artists
Lauren Krenzel and Anna Bauman produced and edited this interview for broadcast
Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web
His Zoom background is of a blue sky and white puffs of cumulus
The camera framing shows Eisenberg’s entire seated body in the center of the shot
an enthroned figure floating in the heavens
instead of a heavily bearded giant man draped in white robes
before me was the 41-year-old Jewish actor and filmmaker
recognizable mop of brown curls had been straightened and his right middle finger bore a splint
talking with this version of Jesse Eisenberg about his new film “A Real Pain,” which explores the legacy of Holocaust trauma
as he seemingly hovers in the sky is completely apt
“A Real Pain” itself is full of contradictions
focuses on cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji Kaplan (Kieran Culkin) as they go on a Holocaust tour after the death of their survivor grandmother
socially awkward David and hyper emotional yet charming Benji are in pain
They are in pain from the problems in their lives
the death of their grandmother and the backdrop of the horrors their Jewish family faced
And yet “A Real Pain” is effortlessly funny
the cousins sneak onto a train without paying for tickets
they shouldn’t have to pay to take a train in Poland
Benji urges David to take a photo with him on the Warsaw Uprising Monument and instead
David ends up taking photos of Benji with everyone else on the tour
The tenuousness and incongruity of David and Benji’s own relationship heightens the comedy and the tragedy of their stories
So, too, is the movie itself a contradiction. Yes, “A Real Pain” is essentially fictitious — Eisenberg was inspired to write the film after coming across an online advertisement for tours of Auschwitz “with lunch.” But many narrative elements and histories within the film are true to Eisenberg’s own life. His family lived in Krasnystaw
and he specifically filmed the movie there
where Eisenberg’s family and and the family of his wife Anna also hail from
Grandma Dory in “A Real Pain” is inspired by Eisenberg’s late
who was born and lived in Krasnystaw until 1918
(Though Aunt Doris was not herself a Holocaust survivor
David and Benji visit Grandma Dory’s ancestral home
and Eisenberg chose to film the real house where his great-aunt lived
He also chose to use his real-life son Banner to portray his character David’s son
As unforeseen as the surface-level circumstances of my conversation with Jesse Eisenberg were
what I did correctly predict was the genuine care with which he created “A Real Pain.” In the proceeding
He even worried aloud at one point that he was “man-Jew-splaining” to me
(He was not.) We discussed the degree to which generational pain is insurmountable
the experience of filming at Majdanek and his remarkable real-life friend who inspired a character in “A Real Pain.”
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity
“A Real Pain” is obviously very personal for you
Did making the film change or clarify anything about the way you think about your family’s own history
it didn’t answer any questions that I’ve had
but it did just kind of ground some of the questions I had in some greater authenticity and history
I’ve always had a kind of ambivalent relationship to my family’s history because I didn’t know much about it
I come from people racked with survivor’s guilt who didn’t want to talk about what happened to their family
So I started to investigate on my own — when I say ambivalent
I just mean it was never something that was talked about openly
My family’s history was something that I had to investigate myself
And [I have] an ambivalent feeling about my faith because I live in the modern world
and there’s not a lot of room or demand for it in the way I live my life
But the real answer is that I’ve always had trouble reconciling my own personal anxieties and misery with the horrors that my family experienced
I could never understand how it’s possible for me to feel so bad about myself
get out of bed for a week because I’m depressed
It was this cognitive dissonant thing in my head: Shouldn’t I be jumping for joy at every moment
at every smell of a flower and fresh breath of air and sweet fruit that I can eat
because my family had been through such terror
I was never able to reconcile those two things
“A Real Pain” is really an attempt at that
I set these characters against the backdrop of something so much more horrific
and try to ask the audience to contemplate: What is real pain
Are modern day petty grievances really painful against the backdrop of this
And what value do we ascribe to pain when something is so objectively worse
I see David and Benji as being kind of two parts of the same psyche
But do you see yourself relating more to David or Benji
my default would be something more shy and reserved
and especially as played by the brilliant Kieran Culkin
is somebody who wears his emotions and his joy on his sleeve
He commandeers groups through charm and bullying
He’s somebody who I look at and just marvel at how he’s able to walk through the world
All the feelings that I express about him in this movie are feelings that I have about men like this
people who just seem so at ease in their own skin
they even feel more grounded in their own misery than I do
It was fascinating to see the different ways that David and Benji deal with their grief and their pain
But I was also interested that at the end of the movie
they are where they started out at the very beginning
this suggested the idea that generational pain is in some ways insurmountable
Is that an idea you were writing towards in the script
I was less trying to make a commentary on generational pain
and more about just these two guys who navigate the world very differently in terms of pain
“I’m going to live with this kind of anxiety
I’m going to jog.” He’s just a normal modern day New Yorker who can afford a therapist
He feels it to the point where it’s paralyzing
show these two reactions to growing up with that history
And neither reaction is actually perfectly satisfying
Kieran’s character is stuck in a limbo state
where he can never really escape his own demons
And my character is just so encumbered with his own anxieties and self-consciousness that actually he’s stuck too
I guess I wasn’t really thinking about this consciously until you brought it up
But I guess perhaps I was trying to show the way that this third-generation grief can manifest
and how neither solution is working for them
I also really appreciated the character of Eloge
I feel like you learn about the Holocaust in a bubble
without putting it in conversation with other instances of mass violence
I was curious if that was something you were conscious of when you were writing that character
Eloge is a character who survived the Rwandan genocide
who did all these things and is this unbelievable guy
I’m seeing him tonight for the first time in a year at the premiere
When I met this guy at a wedding in Canada
“I think I just met the most fascinating person on the planet today.” This guy is a more religious Jew than I am
The only emails I get on Jewish holidays are from Eloge
deep gratitude for life and he holds a wisdom about the human condition
high level position in the Canadian government doing counterterrorism stuff
to visit Mauthausen — this is an interest of mine — I walk away thinking about Rwanda
I walk away thinking about wars that are happening now
I don’t walk away thinking that tragedy is exclusive to the Jewish experience
and it makes me really uncomfortable to think that they think that tragedy is really exclusive to our history
and shouldn’t we constantly feel bad for ourselves and hold almost an inward looking grief
that’s just the mistake of what these camps represent
I would say that I went to the Rwandan Genocide Museum in Kigali and saw the same imagery that I saw at Auschwitz
these two things are related far more than they’re unrelated
So is Eloge seeing the film for the first time tonight
Eloge is seeing the film for the first time
His wife Simone helped our costume designer select the wardrobe
and he was very instrumental in all of his dialogue
making sure that it was accurate and what he would say
On the anniversary of his grandmother’s murder in the genocide
please keep my grandmother in your heart today
It was a really beautiful meeting of the minds and spirits with him and me and Kurt
You were talking about Holocaust sites and concentration camps
and something that really struck me in the film is that when the characters go to Majdanek it’s completely empty
I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum in DC and Dachau
What was the experience of being able to film at Majdanek when it was empty
and we were the first ones there in the morning
It’s really a place that is preserved as it was
And so my wife and I walked around there alone at 9 o’clock in the morning like ghosts
We brought 25 extras in and we started shooting with them
I would see them in the background as I was directing these big shots
because you’re shooting a vast expanse of this place
And it always looked wrong to me to have extras
And so these wonderful people that are being called as extras to work at Majdanek for day — which is a weird job to have in the first place — they got paid for the day
but we basically said we’re just going to use our group
I don’t know if this is because it mirrored my wife’s and my experience in 2008 or because it just felt like this place is existing in its own limbo of history where it’s this preserved camp
I just wanted the audience to very simply experience what the characters are experiencing without any kind of pomp and circumstance
without musical backing score and without too much dialogue
and you’re waiting on line to go into this thing
There’s something about that that makes the place feel less harrowing
it just overlaps with other tourist sites you’ve been to
Are you standing on line to go to the Empire State Building or into this place of shocking death
Not having tourists there made it feel more like what it felt to me
A few months ago, you said that you were in the final stages of reclaiming your family’s Polish citizenship
but it’s being given to me in a ceremony at the embassy in D.C
I really pitched to the government that I want to help Jewish and Polish relations
the Poles are antisemites.” I just had the exact opposite experience doing this movie with 150 Polish crew members who are all there to support my family’s story
who spend seven days a week there to go in and preserve the memory of my family’s history
I just had this really eye opening experience of feeling really connected to Poland
feeling connected to my family’s history there
they were integrated and they were friends
Evelyn Frick (she/they) is a writer and associate editor at Hey Alma
She graduated from Vassar College in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature
she's a comedian and contributor for Reductress and The Onion
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He began appraising in the 1990s and later joined several private property sale databases known as the Multiple Listing Services or MLS
Customers can choose entire full-service packages or select only the specific services they need
In addition to requiring real estate brokers to conduct business at their in-state office
Nevada’s requirement triggers a host of other costs
and counties are allowed to demand a separate license for those with offices in the locality
it means he must be licensed by both county and state
They deny both Derek’s opportunity to do business and Nevadans’ opportunity to access innovative
Derek is defending his right to earn a living in Nevada
In the meantime, Derek’s fight extends beyond the Silver State. He is currently challenging a similar requirement in West Virginia and stands ready to contest other states’ burdensome laws that unfairly separate people from opportunity
Lionsgate recently intrigued residents and tourists with a digital billboard in New York City
which flashed the words "NOW YOU SEE ME," and was accompanied by a live countdown clock and mysterious phone number
the billboard flipped to reveal: "NOW YOU DON'T," and fans who texted the number received the new trailer and instant cash prizes
This was all to get everyone excited for the Now You See Me: Now You Don't official trailer. The new and returning cast includes Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson
A post shared by Now You See Me (@nysmmovie)
Ruben Fleischer directs with Seth Grahame-Smith
The story is by Eric Warren Singer with characters created by Boaz Yakin & Edward Ricourt
The Four Horsemen return along with a new generation of illusionists performing mind-melding twists
and magic unlike anything ever captured on film
While this is the franchise's third installment, it's been confirmed that a fourth film is already in the works. At CinemaCon, Lionsgate Motion Picture Group chair Adam Fogelson said
"Ruben has delivered all of the twists and turns and sleight-of-hand that audiences expect from this franchise while upping the stakes and scale in every way
We can’t wait for audiences to discover what he’s done with the third film and thrilled he’ll be making even more magic with us."
While speaking with Screen Rant
"Now You See Me is one of those stories that kind of works all the time
it’s also about a new generation and an old generation coming together
I feel like what we’re so proud of about Now You See Me is magic movies tended to not work
and then suddenly they worked really well when we made those films and people loved them
You always want to tell a story because you have a story to tell
and it took us some time to figure out what that story was."
Now You See Me: Now You Don't will appear in theaters on November 14
Sophia Soto is a writer and interviewer with a passion for all things entertainment
She is a Senior Reporter at The Nerds of Color and contributes to Yardbarker
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Movies
The actor and director talked to Kveller about generational trauma
Holocaust humor and casting his own child in the film
It’s strange to say this about a Holocaust movie, but I left the press screening of Jesse Eisenberg’s film “A Real Pain” feeling happy and strangely grateful
Like the Holocaust heritage trip that is at the center of the film
Holocaust movies often leave me feeling like there is a certain way I am supposed to feel about them
like I’m meant to leave with a kind of somber reverence
But the truth is that as the granddaughter of survivors
I grapple with the Holocaust and its aftermath in many ways on a regular basis
and that grappling is often messy and unclear
I don’t need a movie to spur on my ongoing big questions: What do I do with this legacy of pain
What I love about “A Real Pain” is how utterly un-didactic it is
how much space it gives for a wide gamut of feeling
are polar opposites in the way they deal with this trip
while Benji easily makes friends but is also prone to wild emotional outbursts
There’s also a diverse cast of characters traveling with them
each experiencing the trip in their own ways: a non-Jewish guide who is a history buff
a convert to Judaism who is himself a genocide survivor
Jennifer Grey as an older gorgeous woman from New York who is going through a personal upheaval
a married Jewish couple with deep American roots
The movie is both reverent and deeply funny in an effortless and unforced way that only a Jewish creator could manage — David and Benji’s banter is full of jokes that often hold in them more truth than their serious somber dialogue does
the kind of Holocaust movie I’ve always wanted
lost Walt Berkman in “The Squid and the Whale,” all roles etched in my memory
Eisenberg is deeply thoughtful as he muses about his movie and refreshingly kind
telling me he hopes I feel better even though he knows I’ll get yet another daycare cold soon (and reminding me to get my flu shot in true Jewish parent fashion)
We talk about the memories that have helped him
as well as how humor functions as familial currency and why he chose to cast his own child as his onscreen progeny in “A Real Pain.”
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity
and someone who has struggled with mental health
I really loved the way you mixed this heavy subject with humor
to make a movie about the Holocaust that is also profoundly funny
It sounds like we are probably the same person
That was like the currency in my childhood
to make friends and to get a word in edgewise with my family
but we’re also serious people who contemplate bigger things
It’s presenting this kind of funny and fraught relationship between these two cousins who have kind of grown apart
and presents their relationship in kind of a funny way
and you’ll see the contrast in a way that’s humorous
They’re exploring the depths of their curiosity about their family history
he’s trying to explore the visceral feeling of his family’s pain
He struggles with his own demons and wants to connect to something greater
He doesn’t know where to place his demons now
And my character has just been this kind of medicated
How is it possible that my life is so easy when other people’s lives are so difficult
And how can I try to scratch the surface of understanding it
you know these guys so well that you’re laughing at just little looks they give each other
because you’re so aware of the way they differ
both of these characters are so wonderfully flawed and so wonderfully relatable
But as someone who’s been on a trip to Poland… It’s already kind of hard for him (and me!) to be a human in the world
and then to perform this “humanity,” if you will
I felt while on these trips to Poland an expectation to perform a certain kind of grief or connection that’s maybe sometimes hard to feel
there’s something about doing a tour like this
where you’re expected to kind of debrief at the end of a day
or expected to lean on each other for comfort in moments of pain
What I liked about the character of Benji is that he doesn’t perform anything
He’s so in touch with his own feelings and so in touch with his own opinions that he could just say what people are thinking but not saying
and he kind of breaks open that tour group mold
The tour group mold being the one you’re describing
where people are kind of self-consciously trying to perform their own grief because it’s the appropriate thing to do
and so he breaks open this mold in a way that feels to me both really scary
because it means he’s upending norms that we all agree upon
because he’s kind of saying the stuff that I think a lot of us feel we wish we could say and just don’t have the brazenness to
Is it true that you’re the first film to shoot at that camp
but maybe we were the first movie like this
which is kind of a straightforward American independent film
What was behind the choice to show it that way
The choice to show a very austere version of Majdanek was based on my wife’s and my trip in 2008 to Majdanek
and it just gave me this feeling that I’ll never be able to shake
of feeling like I was a ghost walking through this purgatory of a place
And so I was trying to create that through imagery
We didn’t tell the actors where the camera was
Try not to stand in front of each other so we can see you
but don’t worry about lighting and just react as you would
And then we’re going to visit the gas chamber and just look inside and do whatever you would do
The actors understood the tone of the movie
so they knew I was not reaching for melodrama
That was just natural reactions to seeing these really dramatic places
My feeling generally about Holocaust presentation in movies is
It’s just as viscerally uncomfortable as possible
just something that felt like an adult was filming these scenes
I had basically conceived of my character having a child so that Benji can feel a little bit like he’s been replaced
that my character has moved into adulthood at the expense of his cousin
and his cousin both resents him for it and loves him for it
I cast my own child mainly because I didn’t want to go through auditions of children
because it just seems like a horrific process to go through; I can’t think of anything worse than making kids audition for something
It’s really more of a touchstone and a kind of memory piece
And so I just wanted my kid to be in there
I loved those moments of David looking at these videos of his kid on his phone
I’m always the mom who’s looking at the videos of my kids the moment I’m away from them
What is the Holocaust lore that you grew up with
the moments that truly connected you to the story of the Holocaust
this woman would come to our house in New Jersey from Poland
She grew up in the house that we filmed the movie in
She was given to a Catholic family during the war; her brothers were shot in the cemetery in Krasnostav
Her parents were taken to concentration camps
there was this weight in the house that I didn’t understand
I started to piece together a little bit more
and I knew there was going to be a kind of feeling of heaviness in the air
and I wasn’t exactly sure why or what it meant
My first play was called “The Revisionist,” and Vanessa Redgrave actually played Maria and it took place in her apartment in Chechen
Maria told me a story of when she first came to America in the mid ’50s
and I couldn’t get out of my mom’s lap.” And I just cried and cried and cried
My wife and I stayed with her in her apartment in Chechen
just thinking of this person who survived [so much]
including other horrors that I don’t want to get into now
Do you connect to the idea of intergenerational trauma
in relation to anxiety and mental health struggles
Sometimes I look at my son and see the same kind of pain echo in him and I think
It’s hard to… I’m not a very smart person to address this thought in any way other than through characters in a movie
But my mom used to wake me up in the middle of the night and say
I was just like: Why does my mom keep saying this thing
But I guess you can call that an example of intergenerational trauma
just this constant paranoia that life is a boat ride away from ending
My dad’s side has been through so much tragedy
and I guess the feeling that life is losable is a kind of connective tissue
my family really did feel a wonderful connection to Poland before the war
And so maybe there’s a feeling of destabilization
and maybe there was a feeling that New York could become unsafe for them
But it’s not an exclusively Jewish experience
Even in doing my play “The Revisionist,” about this woman who stayed in Poland
And they were telling us just horror stories of communist control
And so the experience of generational trauma is not exclusive to Jews
because I think it can become tempting to feel like your pain and history is so exclusively traumatic
when actually it’s probably far more common than
the very comfortable experience of being an 8th generation Mayflower American who feels like the country has been made for them
Lior Zaltzman is the deputy managing editor of Kveller
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Mar 5, 2025 | Culture, History
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has been handed Polish citizenship by President Andrzej Duda at a ceremony in New York
that we have a new citizen,” said Duda
“I am pleased that people from around the world remember their origins
and want to connect with our country.”
Eisenberg said that receiving Polish citizenship was the “honour of a lifetime”
He revealed that he had decided to apply while filming his most recent movie
Aktor Jesse Eisenberg – twórca filmu oskarowego “Prawdziwy Ból” – otrzymał właśnie w Nowym Jorku obywatelstwo polskie z rąk @prezydentpl @AndrzejDuda . Aktor powiedział, że jest zaszczycony i że czuje głęboką więź z Polską – podkreślił, że jego rodzina ma dłuższe więzi z Polską… pic.twitter.com/cpzRdDnKZj
— Radio RAMPA (@RadioRAMPA) March 5, 2025
A Real Pain tells the fictional story of two American-Jewish cousins who
join a Holocaust tour in Poland to explore their roots
and many of the locations it was shot in were connected to his family history
Kieran Culkin won the Oscar for best supporting actor for his role in the film
playing one of the two cousins alongside Eisenberg
A Real Pain was also nominated for best original screenplay at the Academy Awards but lost out to Anora
Eisenberg has described the movie as his “love letter” to Poland. Last year, when he revealed that he had applied for Polish citizenship
he said that he “feels a strong connection with this country” and wants to help improve Polish-Jewish relations
grandparent or great-grandparent who was born in or lived in Poland after January 1920 and was never stripped of their Polish citizenship are themselves regarded as holding Polish citizenship and simply have to go through a process of officially confirming it
Eisenberg has previously revealed that his great-grandmother was from the Polish town of Krasnystaw
He first visited there in 2007 while exploring his family roots
Krasnystaw awarded the filmmaker honorary citizenship of the town
Another part of his family came from the city of Lublin
“My family lived here [in Poland] for hundreds of years
and in New York for only 80,” Eisenberg told Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza last year
“I feel that this bond has been broken and I really want to reconnect with Poland.”
He said that he had been “largely raised by my aunt Doris
She always told me how good her relations were with the Poles… I heard only positive stories about Poland”
a new movie by Jesse Eisenberg filmed entirely in Poland
The director says that the film, which is being tipped as an Oscar contender, is a “love letter to Poland”, the country from which his ancestors hailed https://t.co/JjX2yJkprG
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) November 5, 2024
was not interested in delving into his roots
“His generation wanted to be Americans
the most important thing was to assimilate into America.”
“I feel like my generation is very curious and has started to wonder where our families come from,” explained Eisenberg
I have decided to return to Polishness in some way.”
The filmmaker described Poland as “a delightful country…[that] combines an almost unbelievable past with a wonderful
He says he wants to do more work in the country
“When I am in Warsaw – a place that is vibrant
flourishing and one of the most important cities in the world – I feel the same as if I were in New York or Los Angeles,” said Eisenberg
I am full of admiration for the numerous towns and villages
Congratulations to Kieran Culkin on his Oscar-winning role in *A Real Pain*
based on our history and our Jewish heritage
Filmed in Poland and co-financed by the Polish Film Institute
— Radosław Sikorski 🇵🇱🇪🇺 (@sikorskiradek) March 3, 2025
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland
He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications
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The proportion of Poles saying the US has a positive influence on the world has also fallen to its lowest recorded level
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Poland has recorded the strongest rise in consumer sentiment across the EU this year
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The stunt has also been criticised by Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland
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That response will include “large Polish and NATO exercises in Poland”
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host Daniel Raimi talks with Ann Eisenberg
a professor and research director at the West Virginia University College of Law
about economic challenges facing rural communities in the United States
Eisenberg explains how rural economies that develop around single industries
become vulnerable to decline when macroeconomic and societal changes weaken or displace local industries
Eisenberg also discusses examples of successful economic diversification and revitalization; what strategies can be used to support rural communities that are facing economic hardship
including federal policy; and why policies that have strengthened rural economies have bolstered broader national economic stability
a weekly podcast from Resources for the Future
professor of law and research director at the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at West Virginia University's College of Law
Ann published a book called Reviving Rural America
which focuses on identifying strategies that can support rural US communities that have faced economic hardship over the last several decades
I'll ask Ann to describe what these strategies might look like and give some examples from history
including a close look at the 1930s-era Rural Electrification Act
I'll also ask her to describe why she sees the deregulation of certain economic sectors
as key drivers of some of the challenges facing rural communities today
from West Virginia University's College of Law
Ann Eisenberg: Thank you so much for having me
Daniel Raimi: It's a pleasure to have you on
I'm really excited for our conversation today
we always ask our guests how they got interested in working on environmental topics
whether you had some early life inspiration or whether you got inspired later in your career
Ann Eisenberg: I was giving this some thought
and I think I have a pretty strange answer to that
My interest in the rural environment and the rural economy goes back to my love of French as a kid
I can see that there's this French-language-to-Francophone-Africa-to-rural-development pipeline
I got really into French in middle school and high school
and that led me eventually to the Peace Corps in Morocco
the Peace Corps in Morocco was where I really got interested in rural development
Did you work specifically on energy and environmental stuff there
I was there as a youth-development volunteer
in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains with this primarily Indigenous population
this massive hydroelectric project and this big pipeline running down the side of the mountain
You could see it coming into town on the bus
"We hate that pipe; that pipe serves people who aren't from here," and that was a formative experience
Even though I didn't realize it at the time
Daniel Raimi: That's fascinating and definitely a thread that is in your book in many places
One thing that you spend a while on near the beginning of the book is defining this term “rural.” So
defining what we’re talking about when we talk about “rural.” For me
rural is a kind of place that I think of as having a couple of important characteristics
One characteristic is that there are fewer people; there's a smaller population
The second important characteristic is that there’s some distance or remoteness from where there are a lot of people
It's fewer people living in far-off places
Daniel Raimi: Are there example communities that come to mind that would fit into your definition of rural and ones that wouldn't fit
Ann Eisenberg: That's a really fun question
If you want the quintessential place that’s not rural
If you want the quintessential rural place
where maybe there’s two or three people living on a ranch in a remote area
depending on if you're using the definition provided by the United States Census Bureau or another authority
because a lot of the challenges facing rural communities in small to mid-sized cities
You talk a lot in the book about the different types of economic opportunities that exist in rural places versus more urban and suburban parts of the United States
Can you give us a basic sense of the differences in economic opportunity that you describe and observe
it follows naturally that there are going to be rural economic challenges based on the definition of rural
because you have fewer people in far-off places
there's just less economic activity in a rural place
because it ends up making rural populations more vulnerable to economic problems
if you have a town that grew up around one plant
It can be a really serious problem in cities
where plant closures are a very palpable part of life here
But even if cities get hurt by something like that
going to have more resources to bounce back with
because they have more people and more economic activity
That diversified economy gives people more options to recover with
you talk about several instances where you argue that federal policy has exacerbated the lack of opportunity that might exist in rural America
Can you describe some of those arguments for us
The best time to have made better decisions about the rural economy was probably 100 years ago
The best time to not have a town evolve around one plant
or another sustainable mono-economy was when these places were born about 100 years ago
There were public-policy drivers of that unsustainable foundation for the rural economy
There was never good planning for a lot of these regions
factor number one is that bad planning—or total lack of planning—100 years ago
Issue number two is that we are seeing a lot of traditional rural industries contracting
timber—a lot of the economic activity in those sectors has declined
The energy transition is a really good example of that
and natural gas are probably not the energy sources of the future
but there are a lot of places that have relied on the fossil fuel economy that have either already been hurt a lot or risk getting hurt
We've normalized the idea that a rural town can just be left in the lurch if that's what happens because of economic activity
We've gotten used to the idea of a plant closing
and the town descending into a state of socioeconomic despair
My argument is that we shouldn't say that's normal
We could be making different decisions right now as a society
and we could be managing these economic transitions much more proactively
I point to the lack of federal transitional policy over the past half-decade as one of the things that has really made all of this worse
What might you imagine a policy looking like that ameliorates some of the downsides of the prototypical plant closing or some other disruption that happens in the rural community
which meant that a lot of plants closed really quickly
this hurt urban and rural communities alike
had this disproportionate reliance on any given employer
during that raft of plant closures in the '80s and '90s
“You shouldn't just be able to pull the rug out from under us.” That resulted in one piece of protective legislation: the Worker Adjustment Retraining and Notification Act
“If you're going to close your plant and lay off a bunch of people
I think you have to notify folks two months ahead of time
and I think it's only for a workforce of more than a few dozen workers that are going to get laid off
When you're thinking of a town that may have existed around this plant for half a century
I would envision a lot more robust protections for workers in towns
but I would want to go a lot further and provide people with a lot more help to both find a new vision for individual workers and households
Daniel Raimi: I’d like to go a level deeper on that town part
I think most people can imagine why an individual might need some support
or financial assistance as they work toward their next job
but what are the interventions that might support a community actually building up that economic resilience
Ann Eisenberg: One of the things that's really challenging in our society is that the private and the public are often really interconnected
This is especially true in a rural place where a local government
might be very reliant on tax revenues from one sector
Let's say you have a town that had a coal mine
and the coal mine closes and lays everybody off
you have a lot less money going into the local government coffers to provide public services
we can conceive of some of this as a municipal fiscal crisis
and there are a lot of tools we can use to try to deal with that
One tool we have is the centralized authority in the country that has the most resources: the federal government
We need to take that seriously and find ways to sustainably support these local governments that are losing their lifelines so that they can engage in planning
and come up with new industries to replace the one lost industry
Daniel Raimi: That scale of resources is really quite substantial
those industries provide tens of billions of dollars per year for local governments to provide the types of services that you're talking about—schools
Is there an example that comes to mind of a place where the community did replace the coal mine with three new industries
Are there any good news stories you can share with us
Ann Eisenberg: There are a lot of good news stories
I need to work on getting my top three at the ready
One thing you'll hear a lot in this space is that we do not have examples of successful transitional economic policy for regions
I think that that is a bit of an exaggeration
Towns all over the country are doing really cool things and are being entrepreneurial
A lot of that hinges on whether they're getting technical assistance to tap into local amenities and make the most of them
There is one fun story of a town that's not in coal country
I hope I'm getting this right: I think it's Aiken
“We are going to become a horse-and-equestrian destination.” And so
they had this Main Street visioning process and looked holistically at what that could be
multifaceted effort that has public-private partnerships and attracts new tourism activity
I do think that there are blueprints for successful small-town economic revitalization
I don't know that we've mastered leadership on that from the federal to the state to the town level
you were talking about what things were like 100 years ago
Let me take us back almost 100 years and ask about a policy that you talk about in your book
which is the Rural Electrification Act (REA)
You identify that as a model for how federal policy can effectively support rural places
Can you tell us more about the REA and why you see it as a good model
Ann Eisenberg: That follows up nicely on what we were just talking about—what is the secret sauce to intervene and get a distressed locality back on its feet
There's an intuition among many of us working in this space that it's probably a combination of universalist approaches with local leadership and locally tailored deployment
That's one thing that was really cool about the Rural Electrification Act and the agency that administered it
This was federal legislation that said “We are going to electrify the countryside.” First off
that's already really cool and really different from what we tend to see with rural policy today
They said that “the characterization of modern federal rural policy is its programs
that's already a thing that's cool about the REA
The REA was there to give low-interest loans to groups of rural residents
that wanted to come together and get electricity
That put local folks in a proactive role to say
and here's what we're going to bring to the table to make it happen and make it work for our unique circumstances.”
because if you just have top-down injections of resources … People often misinterpret my work and think I want us to have the federal government throw money at all these places
But this is one of the things that lets it be strategic
If you have that local leadership and an accountability role
it really helps direct the resources to where they're going to be put to the best use and get them put to the best use sustainably
Can you say more about what that local role looked like and why it helps channel resources the right way
Ann Eisenberg: Groups of farmers came together into what we now know as rural electric co-ops
electricity to substantial portions of the population in large swaths of the country
They needed to form these organizations and say
“We're going to be the people who take out these loans
and we are going to pay them back.” That was nice from the point of view of the federal political side
who was really committed to making this vision happen
was very clear that he wanted this to be a public-interest
There were folks in Congress who were saying
can't we let private businesses take out these low-interest loans?" And Norris said
the whole point of this is that private businesses don't want to serve the countryside
he was very clear about wanting this to be a not-for-profit
But he also wanted it to be “self-liquidating,” meaning he wanted money to come back in to cover this
and that proactive role of the rural people to get this resource
when we're talking about investing in rural regions
people get the impression that we're talking about passive beneficiaries—people who are sitting there just waiting to be handed all of the urbanites' hard-earned money
collaborative infrastructure project that wasn't just good for rural people—it was good for farms to be connected to electricity networks
There were benefits for society as a whole
and you could implement policies at the federal level that translated some of these successes from rural electrification into other policy domains
what are some of the ways that you would wave your wand
Ann Eisenberg: I love the idea of a clear mandate
Also—and I'm not alone in this—there have been a few folks
whether it's in coal-transition policy or rural-development policy
that like the idea of a single centralized agency that takes on the rural economy
But I think we have this contradictory dialogue about the rural economy today
"This is a huge deal; it's reshaped everything." And then
Why would we tackle it with more aggressive policy?" I'm definitely more in the former camp—that rural economic change
the fact that the REA was deployed through an intentionally created agency meant to do that is a model
we have had some exciting newer federal industrial policy statutes that had REA flavors to them
big economic resources into rural communities on a broad scale
like the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act
I have a suspicion—I haven't looked into this
but I’m going to guess—that the application process to get a loan through the REA in 1935 was probably simpler than modern grant applications
Could we learn from the analog age to remove the barriers to the communities that need resources the most and think about what more sustainable financing looks like
as opposed to the competitive grant system that modern federal policy has leaned into
Daniel Raimi: For folks who aren't familiar with this topic
one thing that Ann and I have both learned in our work is that when accessing federal dollars—whether it's through the CHIPS Act
or the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—one of the big barriers that rural and low-capacity communities have faced is the complexity of these federal applications
and the many hoops that need to get jumped through
It'd really be fascinating to go back to the 1930s and try to track down one of those applications
I wonder if you could find it in the Library of Congress or somewhere like that
we end up with the places that need the resources the most often having the least capacity to get them
As someone who has done it just a couple of times
even if that's part of your job and you've done it a few times
if we're talking about a small town where the mayor is also the firehouse captain
just finding the time to go through the process
I want to ask you one more question before we go to the Top of the Stack segment
because a lot of our audience is economists or economics-minded folks
You make a variety of arguments in the book that focus on deregulation and how deregulation across certain sectors of the economy
I suspect a lot of our listeners have observed the positive impacts of deregulation on things like air travel
Economists have quantified the economy-wide benefits of these types of policies
or maybe you wouldn't characterize it that way
How do you think about deregulation and how some of the benefits of deregulation might be paired with solutions that can support rural communities
Ann Eisenberg: I tend to talk about this topic a little bit more dramatically than economists do
I'm really interested in the idea of sacrifice and this moral or ethical question of who and what we are willing to sacrifice for other things
when we try to quantify those questions in economic terms
I have gotten skeptical in my work over the past few years about justifications based on aggregate welfare
I'll complain about something that happened in rural communities
and I'll hear a lot about aggregate welfare
That usually means we're recognizing that somebody did get hurt by some policy
but we might be arguing that it was worth it
Part of one of my points is that that's pretty subjective
I think some disciplines get the benefit of the doubt of having an objective assessment
but it really depends on the values that you're measuring for
My own instinct is that I don't think the many ways that deregulation hurt rural communities was worth it
even if you have some measure of aggregate welfare that came out of those decisions
I complain about our transportation infrastructure
which is sometimes called the Paris of Appalachia
It’s not exactly remote; it is a concentrated population center
If I want to visit my mother in upstate New York
I cannot take a single direct flight to upstate New York
That's hard for me as a privileged urban person
and then there's this compounding localized economic harm that came from shuttering a train station or an airport
I am for the wise and efficient use of resources
when we cut a lot of communities off from intercity bus services
Daniel Raimi: It's a really interesting set of arguments
and I would encourage people to check out the book and read through them
It definitely challenged some of the ways that I had thought about effective deregulation over the years
and I appreciate you coming on the show to talk about it
I would love to now ask you the last question that we ask all of our guests
which is to recommend something that you've watched
or heard that you think is great and that you think our listeners would enjoy
what's at the top of your literal or your metaphorical reading stack
Ann Eisenberg: I am late to this; this was a popular book a couple years ago
But I finally just listened to the audiobook of Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
It’s a modernized version of David Copperfield
but it’s a really compelling illustration of a lot of what we've been talking about here
It really drives home the life-and-death stakes of geography and class
but it really illustrates the human costs of the opioid epidemic and what it really means when we talk about economic issues and they become social issues
It was a really powerful read for me for that reason
Daniel Raimi: It's funny—I actually just read it a couple months ago
Ann Eisenberg: Barbara Kingsolver is great
Ann Eisenberg from the West Virginia University College of Law
we really appreciate you coming on the show
and thank you for sharing it with our listeners
Ann Eisenberg: Thank you again so much for having me
Daniel Raimi: You've been listening to Resources Radio
we'd really appreciate you leaving us a rating or a comment on your podcast platform of choice
feel free to send us your suggestions for future episodes
This podcast is made possible with the generous financial support of our listeners. You can help us continue producing these kinds of discussions on the topics that you care about by making a donation to Resources for the Future online at rff.org/donate
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A24 has landed Academy Award-nominated writer/director Jesse Eisenberg’s next untitled comedy project
Lilli Cooper and Maulik Pancholy also join the cast
The film follows a shy woman who is unexpectedly cast in a community theater musical production
going to extremes as she loses herself in the role
Eisenberg wrote the original music and lyrics for the film’s musical
with music supervisor Steven Gizicki (“A Complete Unknown,” “La La Land”) and executive music producer Bill Sherman (“In The Heights”)
choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler (“Hamilton”) and cinematography by Drew Daniels (“Anora”)
Dave McCary and Ali Herting will produce with Topic Studios serving as executive producers
This film reteams Fruit Tree and Topic Studios with Eisenberg
as the companies were behind his critically acclaimed film “A Real Pain,” which earned Kieran Culkin an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and Eisenberg a nomination for Best Original Screenplay
This project continues Eisenberg’s partnership with Fruit Tree and A24
following his directorial debut “When You Finish Saving the World,” as well as Fruit Tree and A24’s previous collaborations on “I Saw the TV Glow” and “The Curse.”
Topic Studios is also teaming with A24 on several upcoming films
including co-financing David Lowery’s epic pop melodrama “Mother Mary,” starring Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel; and “Peaked,” a new comedy written by Molly Gordon and Allie Levitan
Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole and Felker Toczek Suddleson McGinnis Ryan LLP negotiated the deal
Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks
as well as new program elements specially paced for weekends
Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers
and it often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts
In 'A Real Pain,' Jesse Eisenberg asks: What is the purpose of 'tragedy tourism'
Eisenberg's film follows two cousins on a Jewish heritage tour of Poland
which includes a stop at the Majdanek death camp
The story draws on his own family history — and his struggle with OCD
messy life' — and she's still reinventing: Pamela Anderson's role as a lifeguard on Baywatch made her a global sex symbol in the '90s
But she longed to be taken seriously as a performer and person
You can listen to the original interviews here:
HOST: What do you find yourself getting fixated on?JESSE EISENBERG: I've been fixated on trying to remember if I went two
one with the first round of cards and if I should do that again or if I should change it up.MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: And I guess this speaks to a larger truth
I get fixated on complete and utter irrelevance.MARTIN: I'm Rachel Martin and this is WILD CARD
the game where cards control the conversation.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)MARTIN: Each week
my guest answers questions about their life pulled from a deck of cards
They're allowed to skip one or flip one back on me
director Jesse Eisenberg.EISENBERG: My preoccupation in my life is
how do I try to find meaning in a life that seems too good for what my expectations were for my life?MARTIN: I appreciate Jesse Eisenberg
not just because he's really good at acting
Jesse tends to play these male characters with deep interior lives
characters who spend a lot of time feeling things like anxiety
They are also big-hearted and kind.And on-screen
we see Jesse's characters trying to find their place in a world where men are expected to flatten their vulnerabilities and all their emotions to fit into some antiquated definition of masculinity
and I want very much for them to turn into young men who are comfortable living through every one of their emotions.And maybe I'm giving Hollywood too much power in my life
the show "Fleishman Is In Trouble" from the same year
the movie that's getting a ton of accolades right now
including an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay
"A Real Pain," which Jesse wrote and directed
These are just a few of my favorite performances of his
and I am so excited to welcome Jesse Eisenberg to WILD CARD
Thank you for that amazing introduction and apparent responsibility that I have to your children.MARTIN: (Laughter) Sorry
No pressure.EISENBERG: Yeah.MARTIN: They're great kids.EISENBERG: No
no.MARTIN: So you've been doing a great job from a distance.EISENBERG: No
yeah.MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: You're welcome.MARTIN: (Laughter) So
but Ruben Fleischer happens to be a family friend of mine.EISENBERG: Oh
wow.MARTIN: And when I told him I was going to interview you for our show
he sent me the most lovely text that I want to read to you
Jesse knows all the crew members by name and discovers a little about each person's life
Actors have a reputation for being self-absorbed
where it seems like he'd rather talk about anyone other than himself.EISENBERG: (Laughter) Yes.MARTIN: So that's what your director thinks of you.EISENBERG: It's probably not good to send to somebody who's doing an interview with me for a radio show.MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: But
like - it's just he's a contradiction of a person
a very sensitive person who you might not necessarily suspect.MARTIN: Yeah
He was glad to hear that you were on the show
that doesn't mean that this is going to be too painful for you
That's fine.MARTIN: ...Going to ask you about yourself (laughter).EISENBERG: That's fine
I talk about other people because I do weird things like this occasionally and have to constantly talk about myself
I take as many opportunities as I can to learn about other people.MARTIN: OK
I think you're actually going to enjoy it.EISENBERG: OK.MARTIN: OK
Let's go.EISENBERG: Great.MARTIN: First three cards.EISENBERG: OK.MARTIN: One
What's something you thought was normal about your childhood that you now realize was unusual?EISENBERG: Yeah
normal that we're all terrified of all things
and they run right into the building smiling.And the first
How do they not know what's inside for them
life is miserable and going to school is miserable
an unbelievably revelatory experience watching my kid go to school in a different way than I did.MARTIN: Wow
in subsequent questions.EISENBERG: OK.MARTIN: But I do wonder - my immediate follow-up to that
has watching your kid not suffer from the same kind of anxiety that you did
has that lessened any current or existing anxiety that still travels with you into adulthood
Like does your child...EISENBERG: That's such a great question.MARTIN: Does your child's...EISENBERG: Right.MARTIN: ...Boldness in the world...EISENBERG: Right
Right.MARTIN: ...And ability not to be paralyzed by fear
does it free you in some way from your own?EISENBERG: No
do you think if I had more circumstantially difficult life experiences
if I'd be more confident asking for a bagel
there is a trove of academic evidence to support what you're saying
Do you use ChatGPT that way?EISENBERG: Yeah
like - I'm not like that much of an educated person
but I'm not like - I come from more academics
anytime I have these thoughts about myself
any academic literature that supports these things that I think are these
You know...MARTIN: Ah.EISENBERG: ...It's like when you're in high school
and you think you're so brilliant for having
basically epiphanies that somebody had thousands of years ago
literature to support the thing that I think is so novel in my head
So it's not that you need...EISENBERG: Yeah.MARTIN: ...Validation from artificial intelligence about what you're feeling
but it gives you...EISENBERG: Yeah.MARTIN: ...Resources
It basically gives...EISENBERG: Yeah.MARTIN: ...You footnotes.EISENBERG: Yeah
and I felt too nervous to ask something about the bagel
I wonder if I had something more objectively horrifying happen in my life
I'd be much more comfortable asking about the bagel because I wouldn't have this kind of
fantastical self-consciousness that for some reason
there are theories about growth through trauma
you're working on growth in a way that maybe makes you less subconscious about these kind of smaller
This is going to be an interesting episode
imagine how interesting this bagel was this morning.MARTIN: (Laughter)EISENBERG: Little did the bagel know it was part of a discussion with a computer.MARTIN: This poor
What was it?EISENBERG: It was pumpernickel everything
is pumpernickel healthier than eating a plain bagel
They don't want to answer this kind of question.MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: And so then I went to ChatGPT
do you think if I suffered an objective trauma
I would have asked if the pumpernickel was healthier
maybe.(LAUGHTER)EISENBERG: What a dumb life
that is - I feel like that's - there's a kernel of a movie in there somewhere.EISENBERG: Yeah.MARTIN: OK.EISENBERG: Three.MARTIN: The next question
Who was a person you wanted to emulate growing up?EISENBERG: Oh
I guess people who want to be spacemen might also think that
You know what I mean?MARTIN: That's true.EISENBERG: With the NBA you really have a good - you have a - the odds of that.MARTIN: You thought you had a chance.EISENBERG: And...MARTIN: I mean
Oh.EISENBERG: And the kid - there was a kid who lived across the street from me
And he lived across the street from me in New Jersey
And I remember thinking it was so amazing that I knew somebody who was 6'1"
And I thought that gave me a better chance
because it was there.MARTIN: Knowing Tom?EISENBERG: That's right
and just having - basically just seeing that it was possible to be 6'1"
6'1" in the NBA would be really - it would be small
a smaller end guard.MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: And - but at the time
drinking the same water as I drank...MARTIN: That's right.EISENBERG: ...You know
was 6'1".MARTIN: Did - I have so many questions
I was - I could taste it.MARTIN: Genetics are not in your favor
Who knows would have happened?EISENBERG: No
and I stopped drinking milk for two years because
I had some weird phobia amongst other weird phobias
I genuinely think I - I think I ruined myself
I think I self-destructed when I was 12 and 13 out of a phobia of milk.MARTIN: I think your inner basketball player may have self-destructed
two or three?EISENBERG: One.MARTIN: One - what's a moment when you remember being brave as a teenager?EISENBERG: Ooh
I kind of like came into my own a little bit
But the bravest thing I did was probably cut school one day to go see a Broadway matinee of "Judgment At Nuremberg," which maybe tells you enough about me
the way we were planning it like a heist at math class in the morning
I think we can get student tickets for the last row
our big transgression in high school was going to see a Broadway matinee
That's great.MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: I'm giving you an A
So we're actually going to pause from the game for a few minutes...EISENBERG: OK.MARTIN: ...And I want to talk about your new movie.EISENBERG: Yeah.MARTIN: It's called "A Real Pain," and you are getting so much positive feedback on this film
It has been nominated up the wazoo for all kinds of stuff
You've been nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars
Kieran Culkin was nominated for best supporting actor
He already won that award at the Golden Globes
congratulations on all of it.EISENBERG: Oh
thanks.EISENBERG: It's about these two cousins who come together to go on this heritage tour back to Poland where their family originated from
And they're trying to connect with the experience of their ancestors who survived the Holocaust
Kieran Culkin was cast as Benji...EISENBERG: Yeah.MARTIN: ...Who's this troubled cousin of your character
And I understand you had not seen Kieran Culkin in anything before
have a sense - Kieran has this very unusual quality where he is just like this very unusual mix of incredibly sophisticated and also like spontaneously crass
dumbs himself down as a power move.And also to try to feel like a little bit more
you could see that he has a deep inner life
anxieties roll off his back in a way that affect me more
the two of us together felt right.MARTIN: Yeah
what I love about it is that these are - they're
psychological profiles of these two - of these two men.EISENBERG: Yeah
exactly.MARTIN: Deep examinations of how they absorb the trauma of their family
but also how they're just trying to navigate their own relationship and their place in the world
his character felt like a composite of a lot of people I - not a lot
but a handful of people that I know in my life
deep sadness.EISENBERG: Right.MARTIN: And he was able so beautifully to kind of straddle that
And then there's your character who's just
you have to suffer the repercussions of all his emoting (laughter).EISENBERG: Yeah
my character pays for the trip...MARTIN: Right.EISENBERG: ...And he prepares the trip and schedules the trip and shows up early
just for whatever set of life cosmic reasons
the other characters all love Kieran and don't like me
is the person who kind of gets on people's nerves
I get it 'cause I've been in those situations
and I've been on the other end of those situations
not really care and the person who seems to kind of
be comfortable in their own skin for whatever set of circumstances
like...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...Those people are liked
I see my wife is incredibly charming and funny and wonderful
but she's late to everything and I'm early to everything.MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: And I see what happens
and I'm helping set up the chairs and everything.MARTIN: Oh
yeah.EISENBERG: And my wife - and people are nice to me
thanks for helping with the chairs and everything
10 minutes late after - and the group has to
and I got an apple on the way.MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: And
And I think for people like me - and I love my wife and everything - when I'm with people like that
how is it possible that the world opens their door for people like that...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...And closes it on people like me?MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: But I also understand it from
Have you heard from a lot of people for whom this really resonated
gone back to Europe to try to reconnect with family stories from the Holocaust or...EISENBERG: Yeah
and that concentration camp in particular?EISENBERG: ...Yeah
I've met just as many people who are Jewish and have a connection to this very specific history as people who are non-Jews
but just - it resonates for them because they were
the most kind of vivid story I heard is from somebody who's very clearly not Jewish
he went back to see where his family was from in Ireland.And he said I had a really similar kind of strange epiphany
and he said he was looking out at the rolling hills in Ireland
and he asked the guy who was showing him around because he was at
because you can't eat the views.MARTIN: Right (laughter).EISENBERG: You know
the actual history that we're exploring is
is so horrific.MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: But there's
We're going to go back into the game.EISENBERG: OK.MARTIN: Three new cards
Yep.MARTIN: It's Round 2.EISENBERG: Right.MARTIN: This is
Is the music you listen to happier or sadder than you are?EISENBERG: (Laughter)
but I really only like dark musical theater
we were listening to "Light In The Piazza" as my kid was getting ready
like "Dividing Day." I was playing for my 8-year-old before they had to go to school today
That's probably - will cause some problems.MARTIN: I don't know what that is.EISENBERG: Oh
it's a woman - it's from "Light In The Piazza," Adam Guettel
about this woman realizing that she perhaps was always disconnected from her husband
So that's what I was playing at...MARTIN: Have a good day
kiddo.EISENBERG: Yeah - 7:30 in the morning
And that's - all the music in "A Real Pain" is my favorite music
is to get us back in touch with something miserable
you know...MARTIN: (Laughter) It's her prerogative
exactly.MARTIN: To each their own.EISENBERG: Yeah
OK.EISENBERG: Yeah.MARTIN: Three more cards
What do you find yourself getting fixated on?EISENBERG: I've been fixated on trying to remember if I went two
I get fixated on complete and utter irrelevance
with the...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...So I just get fixated on that
how do I try to find meaning in a life that seems too good for what my expectations were for my life
I think I create these weird little games in order to
having to arrive on certain places at an even-numbered time
preoccupations.MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: But I think I do it to create
in an attempt to just give me some trouble during the day.MARTIN: That's so interesting.EISENBERG: Is it
I think it's more (laughter)...MARTIN: Yeah
Everyone's little psychological peccadilloes
When I was young...EISENBERG: Yeah.MARTIN: ...(laughter) I've never even said this out loud
I used to count the syllables of things I was saying.EISENBERG: Yes
I used to count the syllables.EISENBERG: Yes.MARTIN: And I would do it on these three fingers
it was a problem.EISENBERG: Yes.MARTIN: And I needed to construct the next sentence
I have that.MARTIN: Isn't that weird?EISENBERG: Not at all
Not at all.MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: So that's great
if I could just - I don't want to take your moment
And if I can get - if they can have a five-syllable name
my name is five syllables....MARTIN: Yes.EISENBERG: ..
Jesse Eisenberg.MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: And
it's really satisfying for me.MARTIN: And it feels like - yeah
it feels self-indulgent to talk about these things
but I feel like maybe we've given it some kind of humorous perspective that allows us to not feel like it's indulging.MARTIN: I think - and then maybe there are people out there who are
I also count the syllables of what people are saying
and now I feel less lonely...EISENBERG: Yeah.MARTIN: ...Jesse.EISENBERG: Yeah
Yes.MARTIN: But I do - a real follow-up question
if you create too many...EISENBERG: Yeah.MARTIN: ...Of those psychological problems throughout the day
but clearly...EISENBERG: Yeah.MARTIN: ...You've been able to compartmentalize.EISENBERG: Well
which just means you hop from one job to the next.MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: And I really like staying busy because if I'm not busy
I get preoccupied with this just crazy stuff...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...All day.MARTIN: Yeah
I know I'm not going to do all those things all day because I'm going to be thinking about...MARTIN: Yeah
and this...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...And I need to stay busy; otherwise
Has ambition ever led you astray?EISENBERG: Whoa
I think about it all the time.MARTIN: Do you?EISENBERG: Yeah
push for my things to be done sometimes if they're premature
So I just try to be involved with things all the time
that are unrelated to the things I like doing creatively.MARTIN: How have you managed that fear of failure thing
Yeah.MARTIN: ...As we all do.EISENBERG: Yeah
in the arts and has such sweet perspectives on my life
again...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...So sweet and has kind of a 60,000-foot view or 30,000-foot view - depending on your airline - of what this means
that's like a...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...Really successful career to have in
two movies that you make that are regarded this nicely
like - should not be expected to be the norm.MARTIN: Right.EISENBERG: And that kind of puts things in a nice perspective
like...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...The one or two things that spike
I went down a metaphor rabbit hole...(LAUGHTER)EISENBERG: ...But basically
staying active and busy...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...As opposed...MARTIN: Being able to...EISENBERG: ...To...MARTIN: ...Keep doing it.EISENBERG: ...For example
having crazy...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: Exactly
being able to keep doing it.MARTIN: Yeah.(SOUNDBITE OF BLUE DOT SESSIONS' "ONEEIGHTFOUR")MARTIN: This is the last round.EISENBERG: Oh
two or three?EISENBERG: Caution to the wind
What do you think of that?MARTIN: One.EISENBERG: That's growth.MARTIN: (Laughter) Wild.EISENBERG: Yeah
I know.MARTIN: What's a belief you chose to let go of?EISENBERG: Oh
so my relationship with religion is probably very run-of-the-mill
I grew up with parents who are more religious than I am
very standard - probably American - practice
that I grew far more secular than my parents grew
who grew far more secular than their parents
you know?MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: And so...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...That's not unusual
I got very comfortable as a young man with
basically abandoning all ties to religion and to beliefs and
and she started being more curious about going to temple for
and also a feeling of connection to something greater because she was grieving so much for the loss of her parents
Like - and the boring communal activity of going to temple when I was younger served a purpose
you don't know what purpose it's serving 'cause you just want to get the hell out of there
communal things I think are probably serving us as a culture or society in a way that's probably a good thing
living in our own heads without constantly entertaining ourselves to death
but...MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: ...I feel like it's good for me in some bigger way.MARTIN: It's one thing to think it's good for you
after you've gone to Temple and you're talking with your wife about it
is she very clear on the effect that it had on her
and are you still struggling to find words to define what just happened and how it's benefiting you?EISENBERG: Wow
And I think the answer is that my wife and I experience it very differently
and then she's tearing up when appropriate
you know...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...When they're talking about grief and our loved ones...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...And the loss of them
too in my head to appreciate all that stuff or to engage with it in
but I do notice that after I do that stuff I feel a sense of humility
I'm not an expert in the liturgy or whatever - maybe that's not even a Jewish-related word - but
I just know that me sitting there in a state of
was good for me.MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: 'Cause otherwise
my life is a series of choices I made.MARTIN: Yeah
right.EISENBERG: And that - and I don't know that that's actually healthy
great agency.MARTIN: That is such an interesting answer to that question.EISENBERG: Thanks.MARTIN: Yeah
We do need to be uncomfortable and bored sometimes.EISENBERG: Yeah.MARTIN: I think you just identified
a spiritual quality to boredom...EISENBERG: Yes
Yes.MARTIN: ...I think is what you just said.EISENBERG: Yes
which I think is hard for probably a lot of people connect to
We can understand humility a little better...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...Which means
you're not the center of the world for these moments and the thing...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: All of your desires are not the kind of relevant things in this moment
I also live in a bubble because I'm a very lucky person
so I live in a bubble.MARTIN: Right.EISENBERG: I imagine for most people in the world they are experiencing lots of boredom during the days 'cause they have regular jobs.MARTIN: Sure.EISENBERG: My job is
and then we're going to put you on a poster
I live in a really weird world that is probably...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...Unrelatable.MARTIN: This is the last one.EISENBERG: OK.MARTIN: One
the same number for each thing?MARTIN: Totally.EISENBERG: Oh.MARTIN: Oh
you could have released...EISENBERG: No.MARTIN: There are three different cards every time.EISENBERG: Right.MARTIN: So it doesn't matter.EISENBERG: Oh
I'm an idiot.MARTIN: You could have just been
I should have...EISENBERG: I could have done one the whole time.MARTIN: ...Told you that because then you created
yeah.MARTIN: ...To try to get at every question
and now I feel so sad that I made you do those mental gymnastics.EISENBERG: No
You did me a great favor because I needed that matrix to feel the struggle of what life is like
Now I understand what it feels like.MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: I've tasted the soil
What is your best defense against despair?EISENBERG: (Laughter) Oh
I feel rude flipping because - but I'm curious
I mean - but I feel rude flipping 'cause it's kind of like a personal question.MARTIN: No
a really rigorous practice of appreciation
I'm constantly thinking about people who have it worse than I do.EISENBERG: Yeah
of course.MARTIN: Which seems sad and grim
but it's a surefire way for me to kick whatever particular pity party I'm having for myself
it can be a grief for I'm missing a loved one or just
a psychological sorrow I'm feeling on a particular day
Just hyper-awareness to all the good.EISENBERG: Oh
that's interesting.MARTIN: And that usually kicks me out of it.EISENBERG: Right
flipping implies I also respond...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...Though
something kind of tangential but also relevant
teaches disability justice and awareness in public schools
and her mom ran a domestic violence shelter for 35 years.MARTIN: Wow.EISENBERG: And so she comes from this kind of world
preoccupied with people who have it worse than me
it's what my new movie "A Real Pain" is about
It's what all my plays have been about - privilege versus struggle and meaning versus emptiness
And the interesting thing that occurs to me
ever...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: She always just says
so what are you going to do about it?MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: So if I'm
She actually knows somebody who just lost their...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...Job here
She's just - she just - there's not an instinct in her to wallow in it or to...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...Like
make it about her herself.MARTIN: Ruminate
Yes.EISENBERG: Yes.MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: So I make it about myself.MARTIN: Me
She's not even aware that she's doing something...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...Different than me
It's just the way...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...She's wired.MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: And so I kind of - I look to her all the time
I - it's very easy for me to just kind of just ask her.MARTIN: I think it's so lovely that you found each other
I'm lucky because I'm not wired for anything good
She's wired to do all this good stuff.MARTIN: That's not true
so stop - I don't - I've known you for an hour
and I don't think...EISENBERG: (Laughter) I've known you for an hour and...MARTIN: ...You're wired to do nothing goodEISENBERG: ...I think that - yeah.MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: No
She's just very active and has a good heart.MARTIN: Though
Ruben Fleischer...EISENBERG: OK.MARTIN: ...Your director
I think you have to qualify...MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: ...That text message
He said one of the kindest actors.MARTIN: It's true.EISENBERG: Yeah.MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: Yeah
It's a low bar in my profession.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)MARTIN: So we end the show the same way every time...EISENBERG: OK.MARTIN: ...With a trip in our memory time machine.EISENBERG: OK.MARTIN: So in the memory time machine
you get to revisit one moment from your past
It is...EISENBERG: OK.MARTIN: ...A moment that you wouldn't change anything about
You would just like to linger there a little longer.EISENBERG: Whoa.MARTIN: What moment do you choose?EISENBERG: And it could be anything
it doesn't even...MARTIN: Anything.EISENBERG: ...Have to be a positive thing?MARTIN: Well
it has to be somewhere you want to spend more time in.EISENBERG: Whoa
really needed this relationship in some way I couldn't explain
I miss her so much because - so I would do three hours a day - it was every Thursday - I would clear my schedule
And so I would - we had these three hours every week
like...MARTIN: Yeah.EISENBERG: ...Self-love
And it - we were in her darkened apartment
even though she didn't realize that the way she was shaping me was not the way she was intending.She was shaping me to kind of
But what she thought she was doing was making me stand up straight
so what she was actually kind of angling towards was maybe something a little different than what I do
And...MARTIN: (Laughter).EISENBERG: ...Yeah
darkened sanctuary with her.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)MARTIN: Jesse Eisenberg's new film
thank you so much.EISENBERG: Thank you so much for having me.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)MARTIN: If you liked this conversation
He was also a complete open book about his anxieties
including his next-level phobia of germs.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)JACK ANTONOFF: You know
this is how it's all happening.MARTIN: And like Jesse Eisenberg
Jack Antonoff also just struck me as someone who is just trying to be a good person in the world.This episode was produced by Rommel Wood and edited by Dave Blanchard
WILD CARD's executive producer is Beth Donovan
You can reach out to us at wildcard@npr.org
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The Four Horsemen — aka the group of thieving magicians — are back for another heist, this time involving a valuable diamond. The first look was unveiled at CinemaCon earlier this month where it was also announced that a fourth film is already being developed
the film also returns Mark Ruffalo as Dylan Rhodes and Morgan Freeman as Thaddeus Bradley and newcomers to the series including Ariana Greenblatt
Ruffalo joined the group in 2016 for the sequel
which also saw a replacement of Fisher with Lizzy Caplan’s new magician
however it appears that the Four Horsemen are retired before they get pulled back into another heist mission
Posted on April 14, 2025
From UCLA Newsroom (by Holly Ober):
David Eisenberg, a distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCLA
has been selected by SPARK NS for the 2025 cohort of research support for development of new therapies to treat Parkinson’s disease
SPARK NS is an independent nonprofit dedicated to advancing discoveries in neuroscience
Nearly a million Americans suffer from movement disorders and possible dementia brought on by Parkinson’s disease (PD). There are drugs that mitigate some symptoms, but none that halt progression of the disease. Scientific consensus is that the proximal cause of PD is the aggregation of a protein called alpha-synuclein (a-syn) into fibrils in the brain. These fibrils kill neurons
“Our approach is to discover small molecules that disassemble these fibrils of a-syn,” Eisenberg said
“Small molecules have the advantage that they can often be formulated as pills that can be orally administrated by patients at home
rather than by injections or infusions that need the bedside skills of a medical professional.”
One challenge of developing small-molecule drugs for brain-based diseases such as PD is that the molecules must pass the blood-brain barrier — which helps prevent harmful substances from reaching the brain — and get into the neurons
Small molecules can also interact unexpectedly with other biological processes
SPARK NS will provide funding and connect the Eisenberg group with experts in drug development to help the researchers meet these challenges as they work toward a new type of drug that can slow — or stop — Parkinson’s
University of California © 2025 UC Regents
Think of actor Jesse Eisenberg speaking and
you're likely thinking of him nervously hemming and hawing
"I asked ChatGPT this morning: 'Do you think if I had more circumstantially difficult life experiences, do you think I'd be more confident asking for a bagel?'" he said on the NPR show Wild Card
Eisenberg went on to explain that he had wondered if pumpernickel was healthier than a regular bagel
He considered asking the folks at the NYC bagel shop but then got anxious because he figured the workers would be too busy
he went to AI to ask if he'd be less anxious if his life had been more difficult
Eisenberg told NPR: "So then I went to ChatGPT
'Do you think if I suffered an objective trauma
I would have asked if the pumpernickel was healthier?' And it said
But at least Eisenberg got some of the answers he was looking for.
or eating Buffalo wings (as often as possible)
Jesse Eisenberg arrives at the Oscars on Sunday
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk speaks at the Sejm
Poland (AP) — Poland’s prime minister has made a tongue-in-cheek offer to U.S
to give him military training that would land him “the new James Bond role.”
that a day after he received citizenship he looked at the news “and the top story was ‘Poland now requires all males to participate in military training.’”
there’s really nothing to be afraid of!” He noted that military training is voluntary
and Jesse Eisenberg pose for a portrait to promote the film “A Real Pain” on Thursday
Kieran Culkin poses for a portrait to promote the film “A Real Pain” on Thursday
Jesse Eisenberg poses for a portrait to promote the film “A Real Pain” on Thursday
This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Kieran Culkin
and Jesse Eisenberg on the set of “A Real Pain.” (Searchlight Pictures via AP)
and Jesse Eisenberg in a scene from “A Real Pain.” (Searchlight Pictures via AP)
and director Jesse Eisenberg pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film ‘A Real Pain’ during the London Film Festival on Sunday
Kieran Culkin poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film ‘A Real Pain’ during the London Film Festival on Sunday
Jesse Eisenberg attends the premiere of “A Real Pain” at The Museum of Modern Art on Thursday
rattling in his mind for almost two decades
follows two cousins on a Holocaust tour after the death of their grandmother
It’s about modern pain and historical trauma — serious themes handled with the light
humorous touch of an odd-couple road trip film
You can guess which one Culkin had agreed to play
“I connected with the character right away,” Culkin said
“We totally understood but we were also panicked,” said Herting
“He was meant to fly the next week and start shooting the next day
The only ace we had up our sleeves was the fact that Emma had this very close relationship with him.”
Culkin described Stone’s phone call as a “reverse psychology thing.” Stone
honest and direct about the fact that his reasoning made perfect sense and also that the whole thing was going to fall apart without him
“She let me off the hook completely,” Culkin said
“And I think it was the moment I got off the phone that I was like ‘oh (expletive)
It wasn’t the first or the last time that the fate of “A Real Pain” would hang in the balance
It was a struggle to even secure financing
and Eisenberg (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
“We were desperate to be part of it,” said Ryan Heller
Topic’s vice president of film and documentary
“It had this clear arc for audiences and a huge opportunity to surprise with how deep and layered and complex and personal it was
He also found it hard to adjust to taking directorial notes from his scene partner
“It kind of fit with the movie though,” Herting said
they both soften and kind of started to meet in the middle
And then by the time we’re deeper into the story
they’ve really come together and there’s a sweetness and a bond
Eisenberg learned to throw out his playbook and embrace the improvisation
Culkin started to appreciate that his director’s asks were part of a cohesive vision and not arbitrary
The result is something more alive and fun than Eisenberg could have ever planned for
but now they’d face their next test: Audiences
But with “A Real Pain,” they needn’t have worried
It was celebrated by audiences and critics and had distributors lining up to chat with Eisenberg moments after its premiere
The sale turned into one of those famous all-night sessions that are rarer and rarer for festival breakouts these days
“These are companies that I’ve been pitching to for years,” Eisenberg said
“It was totally surreal and even embarrassing a little bit to be in a position like that because I wasn’t ready for it.”
The next day Eisenberg and Culkin were at lunch
Eisenberg couldn’t even find a moment to eat: He was too busy fielding calls
he looked over at Culkin and flashed a big grin
Culkin snapped a shot of his director and co-star in that moment of triumph
Soon the world would know too that Searchlight had acquired it to the tune of $10 million
The journey of “A Real Pain” isn’t over yet
though Eisenberg winces at the idea that there’s “an element of judgment still to come.” It’s almost
a Damocles (as in “sword of”) hanging over the experience
And yet even he and Culkin have been excited that it’s resonating with audiences and not even in the same ways
gets a different response everywhere they go
it was “a laugh a minute” for everything he did
Kieran Culkin (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)
“They were not charmed by him,” Culkin said
“But they were connected and listening and I thought that was very
no matter what your feeling is on that guy
The litmus test might be in Daniel Oreskes’ character Mark
a somewhat minor role that Eisenberg had written specifically for an actor he loves
While the others in the Holocaust tour group are discussing how great Benji is
Mark deadpans: “Forgive me if I don’t see this magical spark.”
but he speaks to half the audience usually every night,” Eisenberg said
“The movie is not telling us that this is our hero.”
Eisenberg had originally written Benji with the idea of playing the part himself
It would simply have been too much on his plate
He’s glad about getting the “easy” role in David
But one actor’s idea of easy is another’s nightmare
Just ask Culkin whether or not he could play Eisenberg’s part
The Eisenberg Cup returns to New Haven!??#ThisisYale pic.twitter.com/N1HVmv0oXD
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Russian Jewish immigrants Sam and Ida Paley settled in Madison
they moved across the street from their synagogue and the St
They became friends with the nuns at the church
and when the Church's School had to close down for a semester in order to construct a new building
suggested to their rabbi at Temple Beth Israel that the temple offer the use of its classrooms for the Catholic teachers and students
This arrangement made national news at the time
with The Catholic Herald calling it "an unforgettable lesson in human relations and how better understanding between churches can be created."
a second generation American who was raised in Madison
is a pillar of the Coachella Valley philanthropic community
Eisenberg is a respected whirlwind event organizer whose efforts currently benefit more than 20 local nonprofits
from McCallum Theatre to the Steinway Society of Riverside County
and she credits her grandparents with showing her the importance of giving back
"They felt extremely lucky to be in the United States," Eisenberg recalls
"My grandparents taught me about giving back and helping everybody
the American way — no matter what the religion
they would bring their own relatives over from Russia to the United States to save them from the Holocaust."
they knew how to help people in creative ways
"They successfully taught me that giving back is not just about giving money — it is about helping humanity any way you can."
Eisenberg began her giving back as a high schooler at the age of 16
volunteering for the Red Cross and later as a "Pink Lady" volunteer at a local hospital
Eisenberg was pursuing a banking career in Chicago
who owned Kelly Corned Beef Company & Eisenberg Gourmet Hot Dogs
Marvin was always very supportive of Eisenberg' philanthropic efforts
honest and a real mensch of a man," Eisenberg says
"I was the loudmouth and he was the quiet one
just such a good person." They were happily married for more than 40 years
five grandchildren and seven great grandchildren
Marvin decided to purchase a home in the desert in the late 1980s
Eisenberg dove right into the valley's charitable scene
"Phyllis Eisenberg is a shining example of how one person with considerable initiative and charm can create situations and events that bring people together for a fun
happy afternoon or evening," says philanthropist James Egan
"The fact that she does this three or four times a week has earned her the title 'Queen of Happiness!'"
Eisenberg happily supports local organizations like the Palm Springs Air Museum
Eisenberg is frequently asked to serve on nonprofit boards
but she says she is "really not a board person." She sees her role more as educating her friends and the broader community about the various causes and getting people involved in their own ways to support the charities she is passionate about
"I do not give a lot of money to these charities," she says
"but I try in many ways to make people in the community become aware of what programs and services these organizations provide and what their important mission is." She works hard to get people to support the nonprofits and attend their fundraising events
and she loves the challenge of getting involved in a cause and figuring out how her skills can best be of assistance
Eisenberg says she doesn't help charities for the glory of it
"Being involved and giving back just makes me feel good," she says
'I'm here today and I need to continue to give back.' I just want to keep supporting these charities in any way I can for many years to come."
Zuckerman Marketing & Public Relations Inc.
public relations and special events firm with offices in Rancho Mirage and Newport Beach
a board member of the One Valley Foundation
the official nonprofit of the Coachella Valley Firebirds and has been a guest reporter with The Desert Sun for the past 17 years
The Four Horsemen are back for more card-counting, sleight-of-hand trickery, and cinema has officially been saved. Okay, that might be exaggerating a bit, but the third entry in the "Now You See Me" franchise has certainly been a long time coming
Not only have the decision-makers caved to fan pressure (and
common sense itself) by subtitling the movie with something as amusing as "Now You Don't," but they've brought back our favorite quartet of magic-obsessed rogues ..
It's been almost a full decade since the last "Now You See Me" movie arrived in theaters
but our Robin Hood-like heroes appear none the worse for wear
After years of struggling to get another sequel off the ground
Lionsgate has just released a new trailer that seems perfectly aware of its own production history
What else would you call Jesse Eisenberg's showman J
Daniel Atlas kicking off the footage from the stage in front of a roaring crowd with a line as succinct as
That's just the beginning of all the illusionary action in store for fans
and you can check it all out at the link above
Finally, Ethan Hunt has some real competition in the magic trick department. The first two "Now You See Me" movies might not have lit a fire under most critics (2016's "Now You See Me 2" earned itself a truly dismal 34% Rotten Tomatoes score)
but moviegoers turned out in theaters just enough to convince Lionsgate not to give up on a third film to bring the franchise back on track
The movies have traditionally followed Jesse Eisenberg's Danny Atlas
but "Now You Don't" seems to begin with the group on somewhat poor terms
as Danny himself puts it early on in the trailer with his usual deadpan delivery
it wouldn't be a proper reunion movie if the original characters remained out of the action for long
making for an awfully crowded trailer pitting one generation of illusionists against the other in a team-up for the ages
the official synopsis goes so far as to hype this up as something audiences have never seen in movies ..
We'll all find out for ourselves when "Now You See Me: Now You Don't" arrives in theaters November 14
Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history
His new film about two cousins trekking through Poland after the death of their grandmother is getting rave reviews
David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin
in an acclaimed performance) go back to Poland to see where their recently deceased grandmother was from
As they embark on a Holocaust tourism tour
the grieving characters explore their troubled
bittersweet love they have for one another
“They were kind of joined at the hip when they were younger and have since grown apart based on circumstance and personality,” explained Eisenberg
it allowed their problems and interpersonal strife to really play out against the backdrop of something much bigger.”
Eisenberg hasn’t always connected with his Jewish identity
but got more interested due to a religious character he played
“I grew up pretty reform and we would go to school on Sunday and Wednesdays
I was doing a movie called ‘Holy Rollers,’ where I played a Hasidic Jew
And I went to learn about Hasidism from this school in Brooklyn
And they let me in and actually gave me a bar mitzvah there in my research for this character.”
Getting his first bar mitzvah there was a unique experience for Eisenberg
with like 30 Hasidic men standing around me and me not knowing what was going on,” he quipped
“But wrapping this thing around [tefillin] my arm
while I was doing research for a movie–that was really unusual
and temple became something that she wanted to engage more with
And it came really out of my wife's grief and hope to connect to something from her parents.”
He added: “But I'm probably speaking for more people than not
in discussing my kind of rollercoaster of experiences with my own faith
I imagine my experience probably mirrors so many other people
and that it's kind of circumstantial and vague and ambivalent and also nostalgic in a way
“We filmed this inside the house that my family lived in up until 1939
So there are so many autobiographical details in this movie
including when the characters talk about their grandma
and have all these very specific references to this woman in their lives
It’s based on my great Aunt Doris who died at 106; she was the most important person in my life.”
Eisenberg used her address to pretend that he lived in New York City so that he could go to public school in New York
even though he actually resided in New Jersey
“She was my closest friend,” Eisenberg acknowledged
“I even lived with her in my early thirties
Especially as I became an actor and sometimes would lose my way
in terms of feeling a sense of groundedness
She was really tough on me and was really an unusual character
And because she was born and raised in Poland
it really sparked my interest in seeing where she’s from…I was really just interested in her life
I wanted to know every single thing about her
I wish she was alive to know that we filmed inside the little room that she lived in a hundred years ago.”
The two would spend every Thursday together in the afternoons
I will go and visit the house that you lived in.’ And I got a job doing a movie in Bosnia and my wife met me there and we drove to the house
I took pictures for her of the house that she hadn’t lived in in 80 years
And I became interested in my own history and why don’t I feel a connection to this house
The war has made my family feel so separated from Poland and from their history because of the trauma that they had from the war
Eisenberg was so fascinated by Poland it inspired him to get his citizenship from Poland which he is receiving on November 17th
“I really wanted to forge a connection that had been so tragically lost in Europe.”
Eisenberg and his wife did the exact trip that the characters do in 2008
He is one of the very few people who got permission to spend a day shooting his film in Majdanek
it was during Covid and it was hard to travel there for research
walking street by street of where these characters would go
to the point where I knew I would want them to go from this particular monument to this particular park.”
Eisenberg has been writing mostly theater for the last 20 years, and has previously focused on the Holocaust in 2013, in his play, “The Revisionist.”
“The first play I wrote when I was 22 was called ‘The Revisionist’ and it starred me and Vanessa Redgrave,” he told Aish.com
“She played my second cousin Maria who survived the war and stayed in Poland up until Covid
unfortunately after surviving the Holocaust
I guess you can say ironically in some ways
to die of something like Covid after surviving that
I have had basically a certain interpersonal dynamic between the characters that can feel fun and light and irreverent
but never at the expense of some of the bigger themes that I’m trying to address,” he noted
I wanted to create a dynamic between the characters that felt real and funny and irreverent and authentic
and then throw those characters into something that has much greater weight and heft and thematic import
Eisenberg’s goal was to talk about these big themes but in a way that doesn’t alienate the audience
“That seems to be the overwhelming reaction to the movie
is that people don’t feel like it’s a homework assignment or that I’m trying to kind of preach to them about my political viewpoints
which is just the furthest thing from my personal creative desires.”
Eisenberg is inspired to write about everything in his life
“I pick anything that’s happened to me or my family
anything I could possibly relate to that has some kind of heft or unanswered questions for me
And this movie in particular is trying to answer an unanswered question for me
which is how does my personal pain of my struggles with mental health and emotional struggles
compared to the pain of my ancestors which is objectively more horrible
Is my pain worthy of talking about or is it a petty grievance of a really privileged American?”
He continued: “And so that’s the question I’m trying to ask with this movie
That’s why I set it against the backdrop of this big thing
I’m certainly not trying to make a commentary on World War II or Holocaust history
And I’m really just talking about my own personal grief
And this movie is far more of a therapeutic session for me than it is a kind of let’s say academic commentary on third generation Jewry
Eisenberg hopes audiences of all cultures will relate to his “very personal” story and family experience
for everybody who is curious about where they came from
“Like when I gave the script to my friend who’s Haitian and he read it and said
I wanted to see where my family’s from.’ That’s kind of the reaction I hope for
is that the specific experience of my relationship to my family is the universal experience for anybody who comes from another place and is curious about it
Susan Hornik is a veteran entertainment journalist who has written for numerous publications
My parents had the fortune to leave Kobrin
I regret not having the opportunity to see t where my parents were born and our extended family was murdered in the Holocaust
One minor point: you “become” a bar mitzvah; you don’t “get” one
A very sensitive and challenging film that requires a thoughtful and reflective response
A film that should find its audience as word about its quality and challenge spreads
I remember Vanessa Redgrave as a rabid Jew hater from many years ago
How odd is it that she would be in a movie with him
I love his idea of this movie as a kind of group therapy
Our world needs more opportunities for "public group therapy"
I'm a proud Ashkenazi (Polish and Russian) Jew
but I am also a fourth-generation American
A Jew who's family was here before The Holocaust
I grew up in a community full of survivors
I was one of the few children who didn't have at least one survivor grandparent
It took me until I was in my 20s to understand that although the Holocaust is not a direct part of my personal family history
it is still my story because it is part of our collective his
I've been a "fan" of Eisenberg since "The Squid and the Whale"
I will make it a point to see this new movie
as it resonates with my own desire to learn of the actuality of my grandparents lives
who immigrated from the Pale (Russian territory confining Jews)
As a daughter of a Holocaust survivor who recently passed at age 95
I am so appreciative there is a film like this not just for survivors
not just for second or third generations but for everyone who searches for faith especially in the world we live in today
I look forward to seeing it when I am able to
Thank you I will try to see the film if I can
I heard there’s a country with a Jewish past even older than Poland’s that one can become a citizen of
visiting Poland the birth place of my parents
sisters and more I will not simply because Poland today is not the same as it was pre WWII as it was pulverized to the ground
even a episode of "The Twilight Zone"" Dead Head Revisited" said in the end of the episode "Europe is a huge graveyard what they did to Jews and we must remenmber and never forget and bear witness" I think he said something along those lines
my mom( obm) was a Holocaust Survuvor from Poland and told me about the very anti semitc Poles
that is why the Nazis( may their name be erased) made the worst and biggest Concentratation Camp and killing place in Poland Auschwitz was a Polish town that had a Polish name with O
Rea I like you have.no desire to go to Poland
My grandparents on both sides of the family came to Canada after the first World War
I feel no “ pull” to connect with ʻPoland despite our family’s centuries old roots there
It was never a warm & inviting “ home” for it’s millions of Jews.The Jews of Poland & the rest of Eastern Europe
were not accepted as fellow countrymen but seen rather as foreign vermin & despised
In spite of being in Poland & the rest of eastern Europe for over a milennia,they were not wanted
"The Jews of Poland & the rest of Eastern Europe
were not accepted as fellow countrymen but seen rather as foreign vermin & despised. "
and why do you think so many Jews were living in Poland
Because they were not accepted in western Europe
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