Jesse Eisenberg wrote every song in The Debut, but they’re not exactly the kind of songs he dreams of writing.
The actor-writer-director opened up about his musical side Friday night after a screening of his A24 community theater comedy at the Academy Museum’s David Geffen Theater, where he was joined by Julianne Moore, Paul Giamatti, Halle Bailey, and producer Emma Stone for a Q&A.
“I write musical theater music just instinctively. That’s just the thing I can write. It’s not the thing I necessarily want to write,” Eisenberg explained. “Do I wish I was a great rock star? I sure do, but I sit down with dreams of Nirvana and walk away with Stephen Schwartz. I don’t know why. That’s just the thing I can write. I grew up listening to it. Every year I write these 24-hour musicals as a benefit in New York, so you’re forced to write a musical over the nighttime.”
He also made sure the movie doesn’t hinge on them. “If you don’t like the music in this movie, the movie still works,” he said. “I created the ultimate safety net for you to hate me as a writer and for the movie to still be okay.”
Stone wasn’t buying the self-deprecation. “I did not know that he had all of these demos and songs and ability to write things in this way,” she said. “The songs are incredible. This is a musical I would like to see in its entirety. I feel like there’s going to be other things that he knows how to do that we’re going to find out about two years from now.”
“I maxed out,” Eisenberg replied.
Bailey, who got her own start playing a Munchkin in a summer camp production of The Wiz in Atlanta, said she had “a beautiful time” recording the songs. “I was telling Jesse, ‘Man, that’s amazing. You wrote all these songs? It’s so good,'” she recalled.
Moore, who plays Mona, a repressed woman who finds her way into community theater, had a tougher time in the booth. “Singing on screen is terrifying,” she admitted. “When Halle was talking about how much fun it was for her to record the songs, I had to walk in to record mine listening to Halle and Colton Ryan sing like angels, wafting down the hall, like these golden throats, singing this music so beautifully. Luckily I didn’t have the burden of having to be a professional singer. I could just sing.”
Still, she said the music gave her something special to play. “What Jesse wrote so beautifully musically allowed me to do stuff as an actor that is really, really rare,” Moore said.
Eisenberg had no such doubts about his two leads. Every Moore and Giamatti scene in The Debut is a first or second take.
“These are my two favorite actors in my life,” Eisenberg said. “These are my favorite actors for the last 25 years, since I was watching movies that were not geared towards children — except Big Fat Liar.” (Giamatti played the villain in that 2002 family comedy.)
“What you’re seeing in this movie of Paul and Julianne are the first and second takes of every scene,” he continued. “And that’s not because we didn’t have enough time. It’s just they are so perfect. I have never seen actors, especially actors of their caliber, who come onto set and in the first take do a completely flawless performance. As a writer, I’m worried they’re getting the words right, but there’s a thousand other things that they have to be doing. There was no kind of fumbling around trying to figure out what they’re going to do or working out their scene or questioning something because they haven’t thought about it before. You’re looking at not only the two most gifted people on the planet, but two of the most responsible colleagues you can ever have.”
As for playing a total beginner, Moore said that part came easy. “I think we’re all familiar with what it means to be a beginner,” she said. “And I think particularly as an actor, you really remember what it’s like to not know what to do with your body, to get your arm out in front of you and not know how to get it back. It stays there for a while. And not know how to control your voice or match energy or move. So that stuff was really easy for me to get in touch with.”
Community theater runs deep for Stone, too. Eisenberg said it was the first thing they bonded over while shooting Zombieland in 2009. Hers was in Phoenix, and he could tell “it was an echelon higher than my New Jersey theater.”
“Well, because you only did three performances,” Stone teased.
“That’s right. We did three performances. They did 30,” Eisenberg said. “That’s Broadway. You’re talking Broadway.”
Stone has now produced all three films Eisenberg has directed, and he said she’s just as sharp behind the scenes as she is on screen. “She comes into these marketing meetings, and all of the people whose job it is to do all this stuff just sit and listen because she has such a great business savvy,” he said. “I won the lottery a thousand times over.”
