Although they play diametrically opposed cousins within the just lately launched movie “A Real Pain,” Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg could also be extra like-minded of their sensibilities than individuals would possibly suppose. Participating in a reside chat for Self-importance Honest’s “Little Gold Men” podcast at SCAD Savannah Movie Competition, Culkin mentioned his appreciation for Eisenberg’s directing type and the way it made stepping behind the lens a extra approachable chance for him.
“Somebody asked recently if it made me feel like I want to direct, which I don’t. I don’t have that thing in me, but I get why the question is asked. We’re about the same age, we’ve been acting for a very long time. This made me look at it and the way he did it and go, ‘Well, OK, I don’t want to, but if I did, I would want to do it the way he did it,’” stated Culkin. “He was very much in charge. It’s his movie, but he really leaned on all the departments and everybody there — and not just the heads of departments. He would ask somebody in one department what they thought of the shot, even though it has nothing to do with what it is they do. There was this feeling of, ‘We’re all making a movie. It’s his movie, but we’re all making his movie.’ It was really nice to feel like there was that collaboration, that our opinion was heard.”
Regardless of this freedom to contribute, Culkin did notice he was attempting assist Eisenberg’s imaginative and prescient come to life and never attempting so as to add new parts or instincts in the way in which he would on “Succession.”
“[On ‘Succession’] we were given that freedom to talk over each other and just throw shit at the wall and see what happened. It was so much fun. I was scared going into a movie with a filmmaker who wrote it and was directing it,” Culkin stated to the group at SCAD. “It’s his one vision, and to know that I’m now just doing that — we’re not all making this thing, we’re making his. I was a little bit afraid of coverage and pickup shots and fucking T marks and shit that I had been used to doing my whole life, [but] that we weren’t doing anymore on our show.”
And talking of going through fears, Culkin is returning to Broadway this spring after an absence of over a decade for a brand new revival of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.” He co-stars alongside “Better Call Saul” leads Bob Odenkirk and Michael McKean, in addition to comic Invoice Burr, and whereas he used to seek out working in theater “so freeing,” he now finds it considerably “restricting.”
“Once I figure out the blocking and everything, now I’m just doing the same thing eight times a week — and I’m terrified of what that is,” stated Culkin. “I don’t think I’m ever excited going into a job. It’s just terror.”
“A Real Pain” is now in theaters, launched by Searchlight Photos.
