672 - Navigating Loss with Jesse Eisenberg
Scriptnotes Podcast
John August
4.8 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 21 January 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After a difficult few weeks in Los Angeles, John welcomes writer, director and actor Jesse Eisenberg to peel apart the complicated human reactions to grief and loss. They look at how both collective and personal grief inform the characters of Jesse’s latest film, A Real Pain, and reflect on the ongoing LA fires and the loss of David Lynch.
They also explore Jesse’s evolution as a writer, directing himself as an actor, and answer listener questions on artistic signatures and simultaneous perspectives in action.
In our bonus segment for premium members, Jesse and John look at the creative opportunities and frustrating restrictions of making radio dramas and audiobooks.
Links:
- A Real Pain | Screenplay
- Jesse Eisenberg
- WGAW Wildfire Resources
- David Lynch
- Mongolia by Jesse Eisenberg, Tablet Magazine
- Jesse’s plays The Revisionist and The Spoils
- Network of Time
- Floyd Collins the Musical
- Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
- Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
- Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
- John August on BlueSky, Threads and Instagram
- Outro by Nico Mansy (send us yours!)
- Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.
Email us at [email protected]
You can download the episode here.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and you're listening to Episode 672 of Script Notes, |
| 0:07.2 | a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, |
| 0:11.9 | how do we handle loss, loss of a parent, loss of a relationship, loss of a home? How do we grieve, |
| 0:17.5 | both alone and collectively? Tell us to explore these questions. |
| 0:20.9 | We have a very special guest. |
| 0:22.6 | Jesse Eisenberg is a writer of plays, short stories, and screenplays, |
| 0:26.2 | who's also an accomplished actor and director. |
| 0:28.9 | He's the writer, director, and star of his film A Real Pain. |
| 0:32.0 | Welcome to script notes, Jesse Eisenberg. |
| 0:33.8 | Thank you so much, John. |
| 0:34.8 | It's a real privilege to be on the show and to talk to you. |
| 0:37.8 | I decided to have you here. Congrats on your WJ nomination. Oh, thanks. |
| 0:40.8 | Yesterday. Thanks for a lot. So I want to talk to you about your movie, about the writing of it, the journey to making it into a movie. But also, if we can, I'd like to answer two listener questions that we got in. Sure. One about signature styles and simultaneous perspectives. And then we do a bonus segment at the end. |
| 0:55.8 | And I'd love to talk to you about the radio drama as a form. |
| 0:59.4 | Because it's weird. |
| 1:00.1 | It's like scripted ads. |
| 1:00.6 | We've been doing this for 12 years. |
| 1:02.0 | But we've never actually talked about the audio drama. |
| 1:03.8 | And you're actually a person who has written and performed in those. |
| 1:06.3 | So I want to talk to you about that as a thing. |
| 1:08.8 | Oh, great. Oh, I would love to. Cool. We're recording this on Thursday afternoon, January 16th, and we've just gotten word that |
| 1:16.0 | David Lynch has died today, which is the writer-director behind Blue Velvet, Mahalo |
... |
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