MANILA, Philippines — Jesse Eisenberg sold his whip-smart road trip movie to Disney for a reported $10 million Sunday — as his second film at the Sundance festival, a bizarre scatological tale about Sasquatches, caused audience walkouts.
It has been a busy weekend at the Utah-based indie movie fest for the actor, best known for his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, but who is increasingly turning his hand to directing.
A Real Pain is Eisenberg’s second feature as director, and the first in which he also stars —- alongside Kieran Culkin, who is fresh off his Emmy win last weekend for Succession.
The heartfelt comedy about two American cousins visiting Poland to honor their late grandmother who survived the Holocaust was inspired by Eisenberg’s own Polish family’s backstory.
“I think if I wrote something that was not (personal), I don’t think I would feel anything for it, and it probably wouldn’t be as good,” Eisenberg told AFP.
“Or maybe I’d be happier and I wouldn’t feel nervous about everything! I don’t know.”
Less than 24 hours after its well-received premiere, A Real Pain was bought by Disney-owned Searchlight, in the festival’s biggest deal so far, and will hit theaters later this year.
Eisenberg and Culkin star as wildly different cousins who are brought back together by the trip.
Eisenberg’s David is happily married and successful while Culkin’s Benji is unemployed and drifting.
Yet David is nervous and aloof while Benji’s blunt, outspoken charisma endears him to everyone around them.
“I connected with the character immediately, which almost never happens,” said Culkin.
“I think it’s happened three times ever, in my life,” including his beloved role as Roman Roy in Succession, he added.
The pair join a guided tour of Polish Jewish sites — a luxurious, all-inclusive trip which jars against the harrowing ancestral trauma they are confronted with on a visit to a Nazi concentration camp.
The movie’s producers, who include Emma Stone, negotiated extensively to get rare filming access to the Majdanek camp.
Eisenberg said a trip he took to Poland in 2008 had raised questions like “What if I lived here? What if the war didn’t happen? What if history didn’t change so drastically and I was here... what would I be doing?”
Shooting at locations “where my family is from, places that I find really beautiful in Poland... the movie is like my dream come true,” he said.
‘Endure’
Presumably less personal was Eisenberg’s other Sundance film, Sasquatch Sunset, in which he and Riley Keough don hirsute full-body costumes and makeup to play two members of a family of Bigfoots.
The 90-minute movie has no dialogue, and mainly consists of the ape-like creatures mating, masturbating, excreting and — on occasion — dying in gory circumstances.
At a press screening attended by AFP, at least a dozen audience members walked out within the first half hour.
“Your ability to laugh, appreciate or endure Sasquatch Sunset will depend on your tolerance for slapstick humor,” noted a Hollywood Reporter review of the film, also produced by Eisenberg.
The Daily Beast said the “litany” of “ghastly bodily functions, fluids, and feral flamboyance” was too long to list.
Sundance runs until Jan. 28.