TELLURIDE, Colo.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Standing ovations at film festivals are a rite: part appreciation, part obligation, part a need to stretch your legs after sitting for a couple of hours. <\/p>\n
But for an audience to explode and roar their approval in the middle of a movie? That rarely, if ever, happens. <\/p>\n
Except it did, midway through the Telluride Film Festival world premiere of Jesse Eisenberg<\/a>\u2018s delightful comedy \u201cThe Debut.\u201d The applause followed a scene between Julianne Moore<\/a> and Paul Giamatti<\/a> that took its audience on such an exhilarating journey that there was almost no choice but to cheer in admiration, as if to say: What did we just see?<\/p>\n Sitting in the theater, Eisenberg, producer Emma Stone and Paul Giamatti looked at each other and asked themselves the same question but for a different reason. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was hard to process and, at the same time, just so affirming,\u201d Eisenberg told me a couple of hours after the premiere.<\/p>\n The next day, sitting down to grab a quick bite with Moore and Giamatti, that giddy feeling had not dissipated, though, truth be told, they knew this scene was an all-timer from the moment they read it. <\/p>\n Let\u2019s set the stage for you in a way that won\u2019t spoil this constantly surprising film when it arrives in theaters in December and starts piling up acclaim and awards for all concerned. <\/p>\n Moore plays Mona, a meek, thoroughly unseen wife and mother who impulsively decides to audition for a community theater production of a musical titled \u201cNosy Neighbors,\u201d despite having no experience apart from singing in the church choir when she was 13. The director Jerry (Giamatti) cuts her tryout short, sending her home, only to relent when the woman he\u2019d already cast (Bernadette Peters!) drops out and he has nowhere else to turn. <\/p>\n Mona is, as Moore puts it, a \u201cnice lady.\u201d But she\u2019s not a natural performer. She can\u2019t get into character playing Miss Danielle, the show\u2019s tough, toolbelt-wearing building super. So Jerry takes Mona aside because that\u2019s what he does. As her cast mates note, \u201cHe\u2019s going to drag you through the s\u2014 and the mud and you have to be ready for the s\u2014 and the mud.\u201d<\/p>\n It turns out, though, that Jerry is the one who isn\u2019t ready for what\u2019s about to happen. Sitting in a chair on the theater stage, Jerry holds an envelope containing cash, telling Mona that it\u2019s her job to make him hand over the rent. It\u2019s an acting-class exercise designed to make you listen, react and dig into your character\u2019s truth. Moore begins with a whisper and builds to a roar as Mona improvises a manic rant that involves rats and the plague. <\/p>\n Suffice to say, Jerry hands over the rent.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I read that scene, I stood up, put my iPad down and started doing laps around my dining room table,\u201d Moore remembers. \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe how beautiful it was. I was just like, \u2018Oh my God! Aaaaaaagh!\u2018\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIt was five pages long,\u201d Giamatti marvels. \u201cJerry just needs Mona to be better. And then he sees that maybe she could actually be kind of great. He cracks her open and he\u2019s like, \u2018Oh wow, who is this lady? Who the hell is this?\u2019 The funny thing about that scene is s\u2014 like that happens in classes.\u201d He turns to Moore. \u201cDid that ever happen to you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI had an audition for a university, actually, where they threw chairs in front of me while I did the monologue and made me climb over the chairs,\u201d Moore says, laughing. \u201cI look back on that now. I was 18 years old and I was like, \u201cWhat?\u2019 Yeah. It was really strange. They\u2019re trying to get you to react authentically and be alive.\u201d <\/p>\n She smiles at Giamatti. \u201cHopefully when you get to be our age, you don\u2019t need that.\u201d<\/p>\n Though the scene has Mona improvising, it was performed as written, down to every last pause. <\/p>\n \u201cEveryone keeps asking if we improvised and I\u2019m like, \u2018Hell, no,\u2019\u201d Moore says. \u201cJesse\u2019s like the Coens. Everything\u2019s there on the page.\u201d<\/p>\n Adds Giamatti, \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly specific. You follow his punctuation. The commas matter in his writing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s so f\u2014ing delightful about about working with Paul is that his sense of timing and rhythm is so tight,\u201d Moore continues. \u201cThat scene is a set piece that requires you to work in tandem and you need somebody to hit it back with the same intensity and the same speed.\u201d<\/p>\n When Eisenberg first met Moore, he told her flat-out, \u201cI don\u2019t want you to worry about this scene.\u201d He knew it was a bear, with pages and pages of lines, so he told her he\u2019d have a teleprompter on set. <\/p>\n \u201cThat section, all that crazy s\u2014 she goes off on, that would be really hard,\u201d Giamatti says. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd I was like, \u2018Phew, that\u2019s fantastic,\u2019 because I knew all I would do would be to worry about all those lines and be so scared,\u201d Moore says. \u201cBut because he said that to me, I never worried. And I didn\u2019t need the teleprompter.\u201d<\/p>\n They shot the scene in one morning, just Moore and Giamatti alone on the stage with the rest of the crew downstairs in the video village. There was an energy on set, spiked by an unusual number of visitors (\u201cPeople knew,\u201d Giamatti says) and then they went to work.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember the first time you really hit that speech and they called cut, I just couldn\u2019t stop grinning,\u201d Giamatti tells Moore. \u201cAnd I reached out and just kind of held you for a second because I was like, \u2018That was amazing.\u2019 I wanted to convey just how great it was, what you were doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Moore beams. \u201cI just love him. Just love him, love him, love him. I have so much gratitude for Paul.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo watch you be a bad actor was so hilarious and then you would you would modulate it and change it,\u201d Giamatti continues. \u201cWatching her was the experience that Jerry was having. It was such a joy.\u201d<\/p>\n The scene is the beginning of a simpatico relationship between Jerry and Mona, mentor and protege, predicated on the power of imagination and how it can make outcasts feel seen and heard. <\/p>\n \u201cEveryone wants to be known as who we are, even though it\u2019s so scary for us to really reveal it,\u201d Moore says. \u201cThere\u2019s a real mind-altering power in just being yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TELLURIDE, Colo.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Standing ovations at film festivals are a rite: part appreciation, part obligation, part a need to stretch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[62806,8774,286710,18,117,286708,286709,1796,19,17,90098,53841,86897,327,28824,286712,45266,286711,11943,3257],"class_list":["post-677437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-chair","tag-character","tag-director-jerry","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-funniest-scene","tag-giamatti","tag-hour","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jesse-eisenberg","tag-julianne-moore","tag-mona","tag-movies","tag-page","tag-part-appreciation","tag-paul-giamatti","tag-set-piece","tag-theater","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117231763075270124","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}