Jesse Eisenberg had to throw out his playbook to direct Kieran Culkin in ‘A Real Pain’

PARK CITY, UTAH >> Jesse Eisenberg had not seen “Succession” when he was writing his new film “A Real Pain.” But his sister Hallie Eisenberg knew from years of watching Roman Roy that Kieran Culkin would be perfect.

The film, which premieres at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, follows two very mismatched cousins, one anxiety ridden and rule following and the other a more spontaneous spirit, on a trip to Poland. They’re reuniting to see where their late grandmother was from and also explore some Holocaust locations.

Eisenberg had wanted to play the spontaneous one, which was similar to a character he’d played on stage in “The Spoils” in England. But he was gently talked out of it. It was, he realized, a taxing role that might be too much to handle while also directing. And so, Culkin became aspirational.

They’d met previously through their mutual friend Emma Stone, who also produced “A Real Pain,” but he really didn’t know him well. And he’d quickly discover that casting Culkin and directing him, even getting him on set, was a different kind of challenge that he hadn’t expected.

Three weeks before shooting, when Eisenberg was “knee-deep in securing locations,” Culkin told him he was thinking of dropping out. He didn’t drop out, but he also arrived on set only a day before filming, telling Eisenberg simply that he understood the character and that he also works best without blocking.

“I had spent months blocking out the scenes with Polish actors,” Eisenberg said. “Halfway through day one we had to change our plan. And it was completely to the advantage of the movie because Kieran is such a live wire. He’s such a spontaneous actor and he’s so brilliantly funny. To kind of hem him in with my pre-planned shot list would have killed the spontaneity and the energy of the movie.”

It both “flummoxed and elated” his cinematographer who had never worked with an actor who didn’t adhere to marks. But, Eisenberg said, the scenes where they could ditch the dolly and just follow Culkin “sparkled.”

“I love both characters so much,” Eisenberg said. “I suspect audiences will just assume I’m very much like the character I play. But both are people I know. At once I am kind of the nervous person in the room who wishes I can get out of my own head. And on the other hand, I am a performer.”

“A Real Pain,” which is seeking distribution at the festival, is both funny and profound – an odd couple your group.” trip and an exploration of ideas He enlisted the help of renowned of modern pain in the face of historical Polish film producer Ewa family traumas. Puszczynska, who was fresh off

Eisenberg has been wanting to “The Zone of Interest,” which would set a movie in Poland for about 18 be essential both in legitimizing years. The first play he’d written was this American production abroad about a self-centered young American and in managing logistics for a very who goes to Poland to stay with complex shoot. his cousin, a survivor of the war, to “We are in a different location every take advantage of a free room in an day and every location has challenges. exotic locale. It was based in part We are in airports, on trains, on an experience he’d actually had. in city centers, at monuments, at a On stage, Vanessa Redgrave played concentration camp. The first feature his cousin. film to be able to film at this

“I tried for years to adapt that concentration camp,” he said. “It into a movie, and it was never was just this incredibly ambitious good,” Eisenberg said. production. And thank goodness we

It took on various iterations too, had the best producers in the country including one about cousins who shepherding it.” are more contemporaries going Those in the tour group, led by to Mongolia for Tablet Magazine. a character played by “White Lotus” But it wasn’t until he saw an advertisement star Will Sharpe, are mostly that said “Auschwitz retired Jewish Americans (Jennifer Tour (with lunch)” that the story Grey among them). But Eisenberg cracked open. also wanted to broaden the

“I remember thinking, oh, that’s story and included a character, the story. It’s these kind of middle-class Eloge, (Kurt Egyiawan) based on trips to the most horrific a friend of his who survived the places on Earth where the interpersonal Rwandan genocide and later converted dynamics of the group to Judaism in Winnipeg. His could be explored against a backdrop hope is that “A Real Pain” speaks of real historical trauma,” he to a cross-cultural, universal experience said “You can explore the dramatic — though he’s also worried irony of taking one of these trips, that sounds too much like a but staying in the Radisson Hotel. commercial. What he really wants, Seeing Auschwitz during the day though, is for audiences to find it and drinking wine at night with *funny.