“I Was Sitting in the Library Writing It, Crying”: Jesse Eisenberg, James Mangold, Halina Reijn and the Writer Roundtable

A touch of neurosis, a lot of laughs and plenty of profound insights could be found at The Hollywood Reporter’s , where six scribes who crafted seven of 2024’s top screenplays gathered for a lively conversation in November. (, with Jay Cocks) and (, with Gil Kenan) have been writing screenplays and then directing them for decades (they received Oscar noms for their scripts Logan and Up in the Air, respectively). () and () are best known as actors — he was Oscar-nominated for The Social Network, while she has been a stage and screen standout in her native Netherlands — but within the past few years had several screenplays made into films, under their own direction. As for ( and ) and India-born (All We Imagine as Light), these were their first scripts to make it to the big screen; Kapadia directed hers, while Luca Guadagnino helmed both of Kuritzkes’. Related Stories Jim, what set you on the path to writing? JAMES MANGOLD A burning desire to shoot and direct. It was a chore for me early on — extremely painful, which it still is. But for some reason, with age, I’ve come to a kind of respect and appreciation for it. Jason, your late father, Ivan, was a terrific director but wrote very few of the films that he made. JASON REITMAN I’m a filmmaker today because I grew up on sets and wanted to be on the trucks and part of the crew. But I realized the only way I was going to get there was if I wrote something for myself. My father later told me that when I was 16 or 17, he realized I could write and decided to treat me like a professional writer, so he was really tough on me. And he never stopped. Up in the Air is a script that I’m proud of to this day, but the first time my father read it, he said, “You know, a movie needs a plot.” (Laughs.) Halina, what inspired your pivot from acting to screenwriting? HALINA REIJN I was raised by hippies and wasn’t allowed to watch moving images, because that would be bad for the soul. But we had a babysitter who took us to the cinema when I was 6 to see Annie, and that did change my soul. I thought Annie made that movie, so that’s why I thought, “I’m going to be an actress.” (Laughs.) I also wrote stories and diaries and, at a certain moment in my life, a novel, and it just went from there. But my biggest writing teachers were the plays that I was in, Shakespeare and O’Neill and Ibsen. Jesse, it’s hard to know what came first for you, acting or writing, because you started doing both so young. JESSSE EISENBERG Starting out, I was writing little jokes because I was interested in comedy. Then in my late teens, I started writing screenplays of the Adam Sandler ’90s-era style. I figured out the formula, and I could reproduce it. I even had some of these scripts optioned — I’d send them to agents — but nothing would ever get made. I was also acting. When I was 20, I got a part in a movie that Bob Odenkirk was directing, and I gave him my scripts because I knew he was in the comedy world and had worked at SNL, so I thought, “He’ll send them to Adam Sandler.” He took about two weeks to read them and then called and yelled at me for an hour, but in an incredible way. I’ll never forget what he said because it changed my life. He said, “Buddy, why are you writing this? This is something that I’d get hired to write in a weekend. There’d be three of us sitting in a room at Happy Madison doing this. You’re a thoughtful, sensitive guy. Why is this your art?” It killed me because those scripts represented years of my life. But right after that, I went to Poland for a movie and went to visit my family’s house, as we do in A Real Pain. And I came back and wrote a play. From left: Kuritzkes, Kapadia, Mangold, Reitman, Reijn and Eisenberg discussed their screenplays in November at Soho House West Hollywood. Courtesy Justin, where did it start for you?  JUSTIN KURITZKES I was always writing, even really young. But there was a playwriting festival at my high school where they’d take student-written plays and other students would direct them. That felt like finding my people. Payal, you have experience in nonfiction filmmaking, which one can feel in this debut narrative film …  PAYAL KAPADIA I was inspired by experimental films like those by Stan Brakhage and Len Lye, and an experimental filmmaker in India, S.N.S. Sastry. I saw these at film festivals and said, “I want to make films.” Then I went to film school, and that’s where reality hit me: I had to write. I’d never really written a structured script, and I’d constantly get told, “No. Do it again.” I was sometimes at the point of tears. But the redos actually helped me, and my process now is to rewrite so much. My final year, I had to make a “diploma project” of 20 minutes. At the time, I had two family members separately in the hospital. While in the waiting room hanging around — because I was a student [and didn’t yet have a job] — I was thinking, “This is a great mise-en-scène to make a film.” I was observing things; I started making friends with some nurses; and I got used to the rhythm of the hospital, the shifts, who’s going to come, when she’s texting her boyfriend. And I noticed, in a very banal, depressing place, little moments of happiness. Then I did a lot of interviews and realized that 20 minutes wouldn’t be enough. It’s been five years since then. Jason, after the success of your 2007 film Juno, you could’ve done just about anything. What led you to SNL? REITMAN I told my agent at the time, “I had two dreams when I was a kid: one was to direct movies and the other was to be a writer at Saturday Night Live.” Lorne [Michaels] was very gracious and allowed me to come be a guest writer for a week. His exact words were, “Yes, you can come to Space Camp.” (Laughs.) And the reason I made the movie is because I’m in love with the people. When you watch SNL, there are the people onscreen, and then for a moment there’s a bumper and you see them moving the sets and the cameras, and I remember thinking, “I want to know more about them. I want a movie that makes you feel like you’re part of this group that shows up on Tuesday when there’s nothing, and by Saturday you have a finished show.” Saturday Night, written by Jason Reitman with Gil Kenan Hopper Stone/Sony Jesse, A Real Pain blends a past project that you’d written with the story of your family, right? EISENBERG I was writing a short story about two friends who go to Mongolia. It wasn’t going well. Then this ad popped up online for “Auschwitz Tours” and then, in parentheses, “With lunch.” (Laughs.) I didn’t think those four words would change my life, but they did. I took the guys out of Mongolia and reimagined the story as them going on this strange thing that actually exists, a yuppie tour of historical trauma. Their interpersonal strife set them against the backdrop of real historical trauma; these things could be in conversation with each other. Halina, you consider Paul Verhoeven, who directed Basic Instinct, a mentor from your acting days. Did he influence your choice to make an erotic thriller?  REIJN At a certain point, I knew I wanted to be a director, but I was still full-on acting. I’d always be asking Paul, “Can you help me? What do I do?” And he’d say, “If you want to create a feature film, it helps to define one singular question.” For Babygirl, it was: “Is it possible to love all the different layers of myself, not just the ones that I like or that please others or that I like to present to society, but also the ones that I’m embarrassed and nervous about, that are dark and hidden?” I began to explore sexuality and power and control and all the things that Paul’s also intrigued by. … So I’m absolutely in conversation with movies from the ’90s that I loved and made me feel less alone in my darkness, like 9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct and another film directed by Paul, Elle. Babygirl, written by Halina Reijn Courtesy of A24 Jim, almost 20 years ago you made Walk the Line, a film about Johnny Cash, who also pops up in A Complete Unknown. Were you similarly fascinated with Bob Dylan or do you like stories about the music world generally?  MANGOLD I love Bob Dylan, but that isn’t a good enough reason to make a movie. In fact, it’s a terrible one. What intrigued me was making a movie again about an artist in a time without cellphones — and the music was powerful. When I learned about this book [Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric!] and project, it already came with Bob and his music. The Searchlight guys talked to me about acquiring the book and the existing materials — I was taking Ford v Ferrari to Telluride, I was on a plane with them, I took what they had and, even though I had no deal, I just started writing in Colorado. By the time Ford v Ferrari premiered in Toronto [a few days later], Timmy [Chalamet] met me there. The thing came together through my absolute conviction that I had to do this, even if they didn’t want me. The writing that existed in [Cocks’ script], while really good, avoided most of the juicy stuff because the Dylan camp said that it had to be strictly about the music. I didn’t pay attention to that. I just wrote about everything. Then I made a deal. Bob’s team was concerned about where I had gone with the script. But when COVID hit, Bob’s tour was canceled and he apparently said to his manager, “Let me read this thing that you’re worried about.” And he liked it. That changed everything. Over COVID, I had a series of meetings with Bob. When I first sat down with him, he goes, “So what’s this movie about?” I said, “It’s about a guy who’s choking to death in Minnesota and has to escape and runs away and reinvents himself, leaving behind all of his family and friends, finds new ones, becomes wildly successful as he blossoms as an artist — and then starts choking to death and runs away from all his family and friends.” And he smiled. A Complete Unknown, written by James Mangold with Jay Cocks Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures Justin, you wrote Challengers on spec, right?  KURITZKES Yeah. I’d never written a feature script. I’d been working as a playwright for 10 years in New York and then found myself writing a novel. One day, I happened to turn on the TV and the U.S. Open was on. It was a match between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka — the final — and it was very controversial because the umpire accused Serena of receiving coaching from the sidelines. Serena was really upset, saying, “I would never do that.” Her coach was denying it. But the umpire was insisting, “You were getting signals.” And that struck me as this intensely cinematic situation: You’re all alone on the court, and there’s one other person in this massive stadium who cares as much about what happens to you out there as you do, and that is the person you can’t talk to. And for whatever reason, it clicked in my mind, “Well, what if you really needed to talk about something? And what if it was something beyond tennis? What if it was about the two of you? And what if somehow it also included the person on the other side of the net?” Immediately it was clear that the only way to tell that story was as a movie. That match happened in 2018, and I didn’t start writing until 2021, but I kept thinking about this movie that I really wanted to see. As I started to do research, I became a tennis obsessive, to the point where that was the only thing holding my attention. I don’t know if it’s true for you guys, but I find most writers have no hobbies. Actors are always doing other stuff, but every writer I know just writes. REITMAN We should introduce you to whiskey. KURITZKES Well, you can do that while you’re writing. Anyway, I found that I was running out of Grand Slams and Masters tournaments to watch, and I found these little tournaments, the Challenger Tour. It’s still professional tennis, but people are playing for less money than it costs to travel to the tournament, and the matches, for the most part, are filmed by one stationary webcam, so it feels like you’re watching security footage. And it’s only like me and 10 other people in the world watching this, but on the court are people playing for their lives. As somebody who works in off-Broadway theater, I could really connect to it. The character that Josh O’Connor plays in Challengers is the 271st best tennis player in the world — he’s incredible at tennis, and nobody gives a shit, and he’s broke. I probably know the 271st most successful playwright in America. I probably was the 271st most successful playwright. I know what that means: Even though it’s not that far from number one — you’re in the same rooms — it feels very different, and it looks like walking dogs, tutoring, working as a coffee boy at an architecture firm and doing all the stuff I was doing. Your ranking increased once Luca read your script. He wanted to make it and to keep you on set during the shoot. That led to Queer?  KURITZKES On set one day, Luca handed me a book by William S. Burroughs[the 1985 novella on which Queer is based] and said, “Read this tonight and tell me if you’ll write it for me.” I read it, called him and said yes.  Challengers (left) and Queer, written by Justin Kuritzkes Courtesy of Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures; Courtesy of a24 Challengers is an original screenplay, Queer is an adapted screenplay. Many of you have written both. Can you compare and contrast the experiences? MANGOLD No fucking difference. In both cases, there are challenges. With Cop Land, I wrote a 200-page script and then had to adapt it — I had to beat it into submission and pull it together — so, in a sense, I was adapting a novel. REITMAN For Saturday Night, we interviewed every person we could find who was in the building on Oct. 11, 1975. We started with Lorne. Then Dick Ebersol and Rosie Shuster, every actor, every writer, production designer, costume designer, members of Billy Preston’s band, literally anyone we could find. So, in a weird way, it felt like an adaptation — we were adapting all of their memories that did not line up. Babygirl, Challengers and Queer are about sexual power dynamics. Was your desire to tell these stories, or the way in which you told them, affected by the exposure of Harvey Weinstein’s behavior and all that followed? REIJN I think me sitting at this table has to do with it, honestly. Women have gotten a lot more space since then. It’s a very delicate balance to make a movie about control, surrender, power, sensuality and consent but at the same time try to shine a light on the beast inside of us. My movie is a cautionary tale of what happens when you suppress things in yourself. With #MeToo, for myself as an actress, I really needed that movement to occur. And my movie tries to reflect on it in its own manner. KURITZKES Circumstances change and the world changes, and as an artist, you have to respond to that. If you don’t, you’re not paying attention, which is your primary job. At the same time, with the work that inspires me and gives me courage, the people who make that work don’t change everything because of an event that happened in the world. Who you are as an artist stays the same. REIJN In Europe, we think about these things a little differently. That’s why I was excited to make a movie about sexuality in this country. Jesse, there’s a scene in A Real Pain in which David, your character, says of Benji, Kieran Culkin’s character: “I love him. I hate him. I want to kill him. I want to be him.” Can you expound on that moment? EISENBERG The movie is autobiographical in some very specific ways — my kid plays my kid and the house the characters visit is my family’s house from before the war. But the things that are really personal in the movie are me talking about the struggles I’ve had within male friend relationships. In this case it’s with a cousin, but it can be with a friend, just feeling completely envious of somebody whose life is materially worse than yours, being a self-conscious, anxious person. Benji, for me, is like my id, my shadow — he’s so comfortable with himself [and expresses] his grief in a way that feels more earthy and rich than how my character talks about his. At the same time, my character knows that Benji has this unsustainable life and just can’t reconcile this great person and this person who’s been hollowed out. That stuff is really personal. I was sitting in the library writing it, crying. MANGOLD It’s a beautiful scene. A Real Pain, written by Jesse Eisenberg Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures For the rest of you, was there a scene that you found particularly daunting, and then you cracked it? KAPADIA There’s a scene toward the end that is kind of magic realism — going from a realistic documentary kind of film to something that becomes almost dreamlike. It was an important one because I wrote it first. I write random scenes that have nothing to do with each other and then try to connect the dots. I still haven’t gotten over the three-act structure problems that I have …But connecting dots I enjoy very much. It’s a story about a woman who’s in an arranged marriage with a guy who’s vanished from her life. That relationship is seen as acceptable by society; but she really looks down on her roommate who’s having an affair with a poor person who the society would never accept because of their difference in identity and religion. For me, this disappearing husband didn’t have to come back to tell her anything; she just needed to purge this morality out of her life and see the light in a world that was all dark for her. That’s where the title comes from. REIJN The result was absolutely magical. So poetic and beautiful. KURITZKES I was pretty militant while making Challengers that we were never going to — spoiler — declare a winner of the match. Because for me, by the time they arrive at that final scene, all their cards are on the table and they’re having the most open and honest conversation of their lives, and they’re having it through tennis. They’re playing tennis for the first time in years, Tashi [Zendaya] included, so the match doesn’t matter anymore. Declaring a winner would cheapen that. But because it’s a movie at this scale, there’s pressure — “This is a sports movie, we have to know who wins.” I get that, but I was convinced it was not the path. Then it dawned on me that within tennis there was an answer: Sometimes the game itself brings the players closer together, when there are volleys at the net. So it felt like that could be a way to have our cake and eat it too. REIJN There’s a scene in my movie where Harris Dickinson, who plays Samuel, and Nicole Kidman, who plays Romy, have their first long meeting in a cheap hotel room. The challenge of that scene, for me, was that they go through a whole “marriage” within, let’s say, 12 hours. I wanted nobody in there except my DP and them; we put microphones everywhere so that they could be completely alone. There’s a lot of intimacy in that scene, but it’s also technically very hard to do, because I was looking for a tone where they go in and out of the performance that sexuality sometimes is, because they’re trying out their dynamic. I wanted him to give her an assignment and then at the same time be like, “Oh, sorry. Is that OK? Am I allowed to say this?” I was like, “How am I going to write that tone on the page so that an actor can read it and actually understand it?” I spent a long time writing it out so that hopefully the actors would. All We Imagine as Light, written by Payal Kapadia Courtesy of Janus Films REITMAN Ours is not a movie with 90 scenes; it’s a movie with one 90-minute scene. The entire thing connects, from the moment you meet Lorne all the way to the “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” We knew we were going to meet all these characters in between. So it became a question of having two scripts: There was the producible script at 100 pages, which we actually numbered backward. And there was a second document that had everything else, because we were going to be tracking 30 main characters and 80 speaking roles. To actually feel what it’s like to be there is for it to sound like we were really there, and that meant everyone needed dialogue, not just the people in the foreground; there needed to be layers of dialogue as you move through rooms so that you were tracking individual storylines even when you didn’t think you were tracking them. The solution became constant dual dialogue. MANGOLD The moment I felt as a writer I had figured something out was very early. Jay Cocks’ script had great moments in it, but Jay had handcuffs on, having to avoid the stuff between the music. But in going after that stuff, I realized what I didn’t want to do. A long time ago, I co-wrote this movie called Girl, Interrupted, and there’s a scene where Angelina Jolie’s character comes up to Winona Ryder’s, talking about the therapy at the institution, and goes, “Did you cough up your secret?” And Winona’s character is like, “What secret?” And Angelina’s goes, “The one that you cough up and confess so that they let you fucking out.” It’s essentially my own reference to what I think of as the Ordinary People or Good Will Hunting structure of movies, where you have someone harboring and burying something but suddenly, somewhere in the third act, it comes out and then, due to modern psychoanalytical theory, they’re essentially healed. There’s nothing wrong with it — it’s classic, and I did it with Walk the Line, essentially. But I knew that I couldn’t do that for this movie to Dylan, that there was nothing he was going to vomit out in the third act that was going to suddenly make you go, “Oh!” This story first appeared in a January stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

View Original Article