Jesse Eisenberg: A ride through Adventureland

Jesse Eisenberg is looking slightly nervous. Perhaps the day-long press junket is starting to take its toll, perhaps the three journalists sitting in front of him are particularly challenging in their questions or perhaps this is just how Jesse Eisenberg usually looks. I’m going for the third option. The 25-year-old actor and star of Greg Mottola’s latest coming-of-age flick Adventureland has really got the self-deprecating, neurotic guise down to a tee. “I hate myself in movies. I feel like I’ve ruined all the things I’ve done…” he exclaims mid-way through the interview. Protestations from the journalist next to me are not making Eisenberg look any more comfortable. Yet it’s difficult to substantiate Eisenberg’s fears, having starred in the Oscar nominated The Squid and the Whale back in 2005, as well as the critically acclaimed Rodger Dodger (2002) and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village (2004). He’s totted up the sort of experience most young actors would be proud of.

Adventureland is equally deserving of merit. It’s 1987 and the summer after James Brennan (Eisenberg) has graduated from University. When his parents land in financial difficulty, James’ source of income for his planned trip to Europe is cut off, forcing him to take a job at the local theme park. Here he makes friends with dorky Joel (Martin Starr), the too-cool-for-school Mike (Ryan Reynolds), the popular Lisa P (Margarita Levieva) and the angst-ridden yet enigmatic Em (Kristen Stewart). Audiences might be expecting something in the vein of Mottola’s hugely successful Superbad, but Adventureland is quite different. The film is a far gentler comedy that treads the line between ‘quirky’ indie flick and silly gross-out without ever succumbing to the clichés of either. The result is a refreshingly honest story, and it’s this aspect which stood out for Eisenberg on first reading the script. “The most appealing thing was how the characters were so authentically drawn … [they] were depicted respectively and even the smallest of parts somehow seemed three-dimensional.” He describes his own character as “trying to reconcile being naïve in the world with being educated and having lofty goals of going to grad school and travelling to Europe”, something which doesn’t quite fit with where he finds himself in the summer after he graduates. It’s a conflict which Eisenberg says everyone faces “I feel that personally, like I want to do these great things and when [instead] I’m like auditioning for some stupid movie. So it’s like I feel this …all the time.”

In light of Eisenberg’s neurotic streak it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that the actor is a fan of Woody Allen. Would he take up a role in one of Allen’s future projects, should the opportunity arise? “Yeah, I guess so, no-one ever says no to him, right?” he says. Although we’d imagine it wouldn’t be without some inner torment, “I feel like if somebody’s really great, I don’t want to be in their movie because then I’d feel like I’d screw it up. I wouldn’t want to be in a Steven Spielberg movie. I feel like I wouldn’t want to screw up a Steven Spielberg movie…” Coincidentally, Woody Allen recently saw Adventureland (Mottola’s wife is Allen’s assistant) and emailed the director to say how much he liked the film and to comment, in typical Allen fashion, that he “imagines the box office receipts would be in inverse proportion to its quality”. That surely seems like an endorsement to be proud of and one that even Eisenberg couldn’t refute, “No, it’s a great honour” he admits, if a little cautiously.