A 19-year-old Jesse Eisenberg at the first Tribeca Film Festival, where Roger Dodger premiered.
Photo: Getty Images
In 2002, 19-year-old Jesse Eisenberg got his Hollywood baptism at the inaugural Tribeca Film Festival, where his first starring movie, Roger Dodger, premiered. It was the first time he walked a red carpet, the first time he wore a suit of his own, and the first time he received a compliment from Gwyneth Paltrow. Roger Dodger, a thoughtful comedy in which Eisenberg plays a 16-year-old who turns to his libidinous uncle (Campbell Scott) to help him pick up women, went on to see modest success, including $1.9 million at the box office and three Independent Spirit Award nominations. To Eisenberg, the whole thing marked the start of adulthood.
I was supposed to start college that semester at NYU. Roger Dodger was starting at the same time, in September of that year. I begged my dad, “I really want to do this. It’s so good.” I remember coming home one day, and my dad said, “I read that script. I think it’d be a huge mistake if you don’t do it.” We were one of the first full movies to shoot after 9/11 in New York. We were shooting in October, and there were American flags on every taxicab. If you watch the movie now, it’s a time capsule.
I have memories of every second of Roger Dodger and of every person who worked on that crew. It was, in retrospect, the most misleading experience, because I assumed every project would be like that. Then I went on to projects that were artistically good but run by assholes or creatively terrible but run by nice people.
At the time, I was living in New Jersey with my parents and driving a broken Honda Civic to and from the city. It was the first time I ever made out with a woman. I had kisses in a TV show when I was 16, but never with tongue. The nature of this kiss was such that it required a more intense session. We shot it over the course of two nights. So that was, let’s call it, 18 hours of kissing. Of course, I fell in love with Jennifer Beals, the actress. She’s so great — great actor, very nice person. It wasn’t mutual, but of course, I thought, Now we’re in love and we’ll see what happens. Now, I never would have asked her, “Do you want to date in real life?” But just in my head, I thought, This is the person in my life now. When we did press for the movie, they asked her, “Is Jesse Eisenberg a good kisser?” And she said, “He’s a very good actor.” And my dreams were crushed, because of course I was being asked the same question, and I said, “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. She’s a good kisser.”
Before the movie came out, I was still auditioning for one line in a bad commercial. I was doing an internship at a documentary-film company, and I was a terrible intern. One morning, I ate my sister’s Ex-Lax thinking it was a chocolate bar. I had the worst day of my life at the internship. There was a cinematographer who would purposely make me carry all of his bags and then run into me to test me and yell at me for being careless with his bags. I was being tortured. I remember thinking, I have to be an actor. This is such an awful life.
I remember thinking, If this movie can play at the Quad Cinema, I will retire in success. Then the movie went to the Tribeca Film Festival and won the Best Narrative Feature Award, and I remember thinking, I am not the kind of actor who practices an awards speech in the mirror. I’m the kind of actor who, if I am very, very lucky, would get to be in the ensemble of Les Miz for 20 years and live in midtown.
The day before the movie premiered at Tribeca, I went to Elizabeth Berkley’s husband’s Madison Avenue store. Elizabeth Berkley is married to Greg Lauren, whose uncle is Ralph Lauren. So Ralph Lauren’s people fitted me for a suit on Madison Avenue, and Elizabeth Berkley, who I’d watched on television growing up, was there. They treated me like a king, and they gave me a striped blue suit with these special elastic cuff links at this very expensive store, and I was just nervous that I might have to pay for this. They assured me I didn’t have to pay for it. I just remember feeling like the belle of the ball. I was like the girl in The Princess Diaries.
I felt like I took a backdoor entrance to something that was both exhilarating and destabilizing. At some point, I wound up at a bar — I must have been 19 — with Campbell Scott, and Sam Rockwell was there. I had a fake ID, and I drank two beers and was basically physically and mentally incapacitated for what seemed like potentially weeks, and it was just amazing. In school, I was very shy and nervous. I never went on a date with anybody. And here I am now in this movie. In a way, it was validating, because I’m like the hero of the movie, but also exposing because now the world could see the things I’ve always been ashamed of. It’s a blessing and a curse, because now the world thinks they know you. They have an intimate connection with you in a way that feels destabilizing and disempowering. But on the other hand, you can get more jobs.
I quit the internship and started auditioning for things. I got a part in this Wes Craven movie called Cursed — a bad movie but a leading part in a big Hollywood movie. I felt like I was set because I could prove to my dad that I could make a living from this and defer college again.
At the time, I remember Tribeca being called an “up-and-coming” neighborhood and that Robert De Niro had Nobu, a sushi restaurant, which is raw fish. Everybody wanted to go to it, but you probably couldn’t get in, so you would more likely go to Nobu Next Door, which was easier to go to. This had no bearing on my life whatsoever, but it was just this story I heard. Then about a year and a half later, I went to Nobu, and Gwyneth Paltrow walked up to me and said, “My husband and I loved you in Roger Dodger.”
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