INTERVIEW:JESSE EISENBERG TALKS 30 MINUTES OR LESS

Check full show here or check the excerpt by JesseEisenbergFan below.

As a pizza driver coerced into a bank robbery with a bomb on his chest, Jesse Eisenberg re-teams with Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer for the comedy 30 Minutes or Less. When not handing out free slices of pizza, he spoke to us as part of a roundtable interview in Austin, Texas, about balancing a realistic sense of peril with a required sense of comedy.

Question: Did you think six months ago when you were nominated for an Oscar that you’d end up here, serving pizza?

Jesse Eisenberg: I was hoping to. I guess the gimmick is, because I play a pizza delivery guy in the movie ... I now wish my character had a different job, because we’ve been going to only hot cities for the past week, serving pizza.

Question: How do you feel about the fact that you’re playing somebody who’s constantly panicked and feels like they’re in real peril when you, as an actor, know you’re in a comedy? How do you play it so it’s hysterical, but not too hysterical?

JE: Yeah, it’s a strange balance between the dramatic situation that my character is in versus the movie as a whole, which should play comically and more lighthearted. Ruben, the director of this movie, asked me to just play the scenes as realistically as possible and to keep in mind that I’m in a comedy, so if something funny occurred to me I could say it. But I was lucky to be surrounded by the funniest people in the world -- Aziz Ansari, Danny McBride, Nick Swardson -- who kind of took the burden off me a little bit of making the movie funny while I’m able to maintain the dramatic situation for my character.

Question: I really liked your relationship with Aziz in the movie. Can you tell me how that relationship developed?

JE: Actually, Aziz was cast before me in the movie, so when I auditioned for it, it was with him. So I had to adjust myself to his pace, which is very funny and very quick and uses a lot of random cultural references. I like improvisation, but I’m not as up-to-date on cultural references. Like, he called me Wayne Brady when I auditioned for it. I’m like, “I have a bomb on me!” and he’s like, “Very funny, Wayne Brady!” and I didn’t know who that was, so I couldn’t respond. I had to do a lot of crossword puzzles to get up to speed before we shot the movie. But it was great; like I said, it took the burden off my shoulders. I was worried about having to be funny in a very dramatic situation, so I felt kind of unburdened by him because he’s just so naturally funny, even when he’s not trying to be funny. He just has a funny way about him and naturally funny speech patterns. So it felt more comfortable than if I was with somebody who was playing it more dramatically.

Question: You still had to audition for the film?

JE: Yeah, because when you do a movie, there are so many people that have to sign off on every actor. I’d worked with the director before, he directed Zombieland, but there are so many other people working on it that get paid to sign off on things like that.

Question: What attracted you to this project, and is comedy your favorite genre of film to do?

JE: I loved the script when I read it. It’s rare to find a script that is genuinely funny and also has a character that is credible. Most movies in general, but especially in comedies, the characters change based on the whims of the plot. So if the plot needs them to stand up for themselves in this scene, then they do that. This character was really driving the plot. In the first part of the movie, he’s living this sort of mundane life and he’s a bit of a depressive and he doesn’t engage. When he gets this bomb strapped to him, it forces him to re-evaluate his life and to kind of grow up a little bit. He tells his boss that he quits, he tells this girl he’s in love with that he loves her, and he reconciles with his best friend. It’s very character-driven, even though the framing of the movie is funny. And I like comedies, but more than that I like to be part of something where I feel like my character is treated seriously, where it seems like the character can maybe live off the page, where the character is not just in service of a plot, where the character is actually dealing with something. And this had that in spades. I mean, some of that was cut out of the movie, but we filmed a lot of stuff that was really character-based. I mean, my parents splitting up, there was a real backstory there. It’s not important that the audience knows everything, but it was important that the writer at least had kind of intended on creating something real.

Question: I’m curious -- did you do any of the driving yourself, or was it all stunts?

JE: Yeah, I ended up doing a lot of the driving because the director wanted to shoot this movie without a lot of computer-generated driving effects. Most chase scenes now, with the technology available, would be done without the actors really there, but he wanted to do this kind of classic style that mirrored the movies these guys liked -- you know,Point Break, Lethal Weapon, even a movie like Heat -- which is so different, to shoot it in a way that they would have shot it. That means putting the actors in the car, putting stunt drivers in 20 cars surrounding the actors and then having a single camera just drive next to that scene and shoot it practically. So it was a unique experience for me to get to do that. I live in New York City where I never drive a car, ever, so I was that much more reckless than I would have been if I was from California.

Question: Was the Facebook joke already in the script or something added during production?

JE: I thought of that not because of [The Social Network], but just because my character really likes to think of himself as living off the grid. He’s the kind of guy that lives a very isolated life. He’s a pizza guy, he doesn’t like to interact with other people because they bother him. You know, a typical depressive, someone who imagines themselves off the grid like an aesthetic, although it’s really living in a town with a television.

Question: How do you feel about the fact that this is set in Grand Rapids, which very much has the feel of a small town, where even the grand schemes and ambitions of the bad guys are to open a tanning salon? How do you feel about the fact that this could have been set in New York or something?

JE: Yeah, it would’ve been a very different movie if it was in a big town. The idea of doing it this way is that it’s possible to happen, that they’d actually be able to pull this bank robbery off in this small town, whereas in New York, it would cause so much chaos and it would be impossible to get away from it. Also, the evil guys are evil but also kind of sweet, because like you said, their ambitions are so dumbly modest.

Question: So you’ve worked with Ruben Fleischer before with very small casts, and some of the other stuff has had much bigger casts and a bigger scope. Which do you prefer?

JE: I guess it depends on the people you work with. You know,Zombieland and this movie ... It’s really a very isolated group of people, especially Zombieland, where everyone is supposed to be dead, and it was great. You end up developing a kind of rapport, and I can imagine if that doesn’t work, it can really hurt the movie. When it does work, it’s really special because it’s the only thing you have to look at for two hours. And I mostly have done independent movies where they can’t really afford a big cast, so you’re stuck with the same people whether you like it or not. And I guess I feel more comfortable because my background is in theater, where you tend to have smaller groups of people.

Question: Did your working relationship change with Ruben on this film vs. Zombieland, now that he’s directed his first film? What lines of communication do you guys have? Is there a sort of verbal shorthand between you?

JE: Yeah, I think Ruben has a great way of encouraging his actors to improvise, but with the kind of assurance that nothing stupid will wind up in the movie. He’s not looking for jokes just to make his movie funnier. He never leaves in a joke that would hurt the plot or kill the momentum of the scene, so we had the freedom to say what we want. We have a scripted take and then we are able to say what we want in the scene, but with the confidence that he’ll never do anything to compromise the pace of the movie, whereas maybe another comedy may just keep putting in jokes if they have a lot of funny jokes, to make it funny. But the cumulative effect of that is that the movie just becomes tired.

Question: What was your favorite scene to shoot, and what was your most challenging?

JE: I think that the bank robbery scene in the movie was really challenging but also our favorite because it’s logistically challenging, because so many things go wrong. The idea is that these regular guys -- this elementary school teacher and this pizza guy -- have to rob a bank, and in their heads, they think they’re Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, but in their bodies, they’re me and Aziz. So there’s this great disconnect between what they think they’re doing and what is actually happening, and they end up kind of looking ridiculous. Everything that can go wrong goes wrong, and they end up just apologizing to everybody. And it was a challenge to shoot because there were so many things to account for. But it was also the most fun because we were gearing up for it as actors and characters. We shot it toward the end of the schedule, so we had already kind of bought our tools, our toy guns and our 5-hour Energy drinks. We were anticipating it so much as actors and characters that it was kind of a relief to be able to do it.

Question: Did you have a chance to talk to Ruben about aZombieland 2? Where’s that going at this point?

JE: Geez, I have no idea. I think they’ve written a script, but I haven’t seen it. I don’t know anything about it. I assume the more time it takes to make it, the less interested people will be in it, so it’s probably not helping it that it’s taking a while.

Question: Did you hang with your co-stars off-set a lot to build rapport, did you guys get along?

JE: The truth is that there’s not really that much off-set time when you shoot a movie like this in a kind of shorter period of time. You’re working 12 to 14 hours a day and you go home and sleep. The next day, you come right back in the morning at 6:00 a.m. and you work until the sun goes down. So you end up just spending a lot of time with everybody on set, which is where you’d want to be anyway.

Question: How consciously do you try to play to different kinds of comedy, in Adventureland as opposed to Zombieland as opposed to doing a David Fincher film? Is it necessarily a conscious effort on your part to try and broaden the scope of what you’re doing, or is it just the order that the projects come in?

JE: It’s really just the order of the projects. All those movies, I auditioned for, and one of the things you learn in acting school is to understand what they call “the texture of the piece,” to understand the tone of it. If you’re in a broader comedy, it’s OK to make these kinds of faces. But my job doesn’t really change from one thing to another, because in this kind of movie, my character, according to him, he’s in an intense drama, even though in the movie, you’re kind of laughing at it. For him, he’s in a dramatic situation. Same thing for The Social Network. There are some similar things -- the audience is sometimes laughing at him, but for the character, it’s an intense situation, and even as compared to this movie, creating Facebook isn’t anywhere near as intense as having a bomb strapped to you. So the comedy and drama doesn’t really affect my acting so much as it affects what the director does and how the marketing team works and how the editor shapes it.

Question: It seems like all the actors in the movies have distinct comedic styles. Was it ever difficult to make those mesh together well?

JE: Yes. Sometimes I was just worried that it was inappropriate for my character to be funny, so it was a strange balance of knowing that this is a comedy, but knowing that my character would never say anything right here that would be lighthearted. I sometimes struggled in knowing what kind of movie I was in, and also knowing what kind of situation my character was in, and you want to do your character justice, and that should take precedence over the movie. Ruben did a good job of reassuring me that I could play it seriously and that it’ll be OK, as opposed to Zombieland, where the character is running from creatures who are trying to kill him. The tone of the thing is so different that you can do this more self-aware acting, sort of rolling your eyes like “I can’t believe this is happening again, another dead guy chasing me!” whereas this movie, you can’t roll your eyes when there’s a bomb strapped to you. It’s a whole different set of real circumstances.

Question: [about working on The Bop Decameron] What’s it like to get that call from Woody Allen and him saying, “I want you to be in my film”?

JE: He’s been my favorite director of all time for a long time now, so it was a very flattering thing to be asked to be part of his movies, especially because his casts are so interesting and great. Even in the movies that haven’t had that much success, you look at the people in them, they’re great actors and the movie is great too, and for whatever reason or another, it didn’t have as much publicity as some of his others. So it’s really nice and flattering to be part of that group.

Question: Now, I know Woody Allen’s in it, so I assume he’s playing “the Woody Allen character,” so what kind of character are you playing in it?

JE: I’m not sure if I can say anything, but I did hear he was in it. I don’t know who he’s playing because they only send me my scenes. I’m very curious to see it, because I think he’s just the greatest actor. I just love watching him in movies, too; I think people underestimate his actual acting skill because they think he’s playing himself. But if you’re on a set and realize what it takes to do it realistically, it takes a lot more than just being yourself. I’m so happy to see him. I hope we’re in a scene together.

Question: After that, you’re going back to theater?

JE: Yeah, I’m doing a play through the end of the year in New York City ... It’s a play I wrote called “Asuncion,” and it will be at the Cherry Lane Theatre.

Question: Do you have any aspirations to get behind the camera and write or direct?

JE: Movies don’t come all that easily to me, but I’ve written several plays. With movies, it stresses me out to think you could do anything. With a play, it has to take place in this apartment, and they can only have four people in it. A movie, I can’t even imagine. If it could take place in two apartments, I wouldn’t know what to do.

Question: Do you worry about being typecast as the neurotic guy?

JE: No. My feeling is that I’ve gotten to play these wonderful characters in some really great things. It’s impossible to predict how other people will perceive you because they’re filtering it through all of their own personal biases. But I feel very fortunate to have gotten to play such a diverse group of characters, and only hope to maintain doing quality things like that.

Question: Can you walk me through the Saturday Night Liveepisode? From what I understand, it was the first time you met Mark Zuckerberg. Did you know he was coming on during your opening monologue?

JE: Yeah, we’d rehearsed that prior to the show. The first time I met him was really during the rehearsal of that scene. I don’t think anything actually happens on there that’s totally spontaneous; even though it’s live, they try to rehearse everything. And he was so nice to me. You expect people to be nice to you when they meet you, but given the strange circumstances, it’s a kind of noble thing to be so nice to me after I was in a movie that in some ways present some difficulties for him. He couldn’t have been nicer or more generous then to come and do that ridiculous thing on Saturday Night Live ... It was something that everyone thought would be a nice resolution to what had been at that time six months of weird press. You know, us struggling to figure out how they were reacting, and them struggling to figure out what we were saying about them, so to have that kind of reconciliation on TV in that silly way made everybody relax a little bit.

Question: Is the challenge of live TV more comparable to theater?

JE: Yeah, it’s strange. It’s very exciting there because, unlike theater, where you rehearse for a month prior to doing a show in front of anybody, on that show, you figure it out right before you do it. That day, they’re changing the script between dress rehearsal and live show, so after it’s ended, you feel like it’s just starting. It’s a really unique environment, and it makes sense as to why a lot of the people who come out of there do really well, because it requires so much of you ... It was a wonderful experience. There’s nothing like it in the world.

Question: I guess we better ask the obligatory pizza question, so what’s your favorite pizza?

JE: I live in New York City, so on the Upper West Side, there’s a great place called Sal and Carmine’s. It is far and away the best pizza I’ve had in New York City, and a little out of the way enough so that it’s not too overrun ... The guys who run it are from Naples, and it’s totally unique.