It’s amazing what one Kieran Culkin performance can do for a filmmaker. Take Jesse Eisenberg: Before Culkin absolutely dominated A Real Pain, we would have rolled our eyes writing about a new project from the actor-director (we didn’t care for When You Finish Saving the World, sadly). Now? We’re confident that his latest feature, The Debut, will be well worth everyone’s time, even though Culkin’s not in it. Did we write this lede to annoy Jesse Eisenberg? No, we’d never do that. Seriously. Would he even read it? Hey, you never know when you’re going to get an angry message in your inbox from the one-time Lex Luthor. Or would he hack your Facebook account? No idea, but we’re willing to see if he can get around our two-factor authentication.
All jokes aside, Eisenberg showed off some real chops with A Real Pain, and reuniting with Julianne Moore for a new project can only mean good things. Especially when she’s having a battle of wits and egos with Paul Giamatti over method acting in a small-town community theater. A24 dropped a side-splitting trailer for the project earlier on Tuesday, and yeah, it looks pretty great. We’d say Moore, please,” but we’ve already made Eisenberg sit through our bad gags.
Peep it:
Here’s a synopsis for The Debut:
“When Mona Friedman is cast in a bit part at a small community theater, she transforms from a shy, unassuming housewife into a zealous method actor willing to do anything to protect the artistic integrity of her marginal role—even if it means waging war against the show’s domineering director.”
The Debut will dominate screens at some point this Fall, though A24 hasn’t settled on specifics just yet. This also feels like a festival debut, so who knows? Maybe it’ll be at TIFF this year. That’d be pretty fun.