1. The real friendship begins once the work is done
A Real Pain shot for just under two months in May and June 2023, before opening at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024. Almost exactly a year after the premiere, the film is out around the world, and Culkin and Eisenberg have spent a lot more time together. “When we shot, we were sort of just making the movie,” Culkin tells me. “I’ve learned so much more about this guy since then.”
Eisenberg, for the first time of many, quips back: “I’m like an onion, you just keep on peeling me. And it still smells terrible, and makes you cry.” But in all seriousness—Culkin acknowledges that Eisenberg is “still exactly who I thought you were when we first made the film, it’s just more of it. Nerves and anxiety.”
On the red carpet for the film’s European premiere at last year’s BFI London Film Festival, Culkin told me that acting alongside his director “definitely took some adjusting.” He added: “He’d start saying things and I’d have to remember that he’d taken one hat off and had to put on the other one. It was the only question mark: I’ve seen him in movies, I know he’s a great actor; I’d read the script and knew he was a brilliant writer. So let’s see how he is as a director.
“I saw his first movie and it was good, but you never know. But the way he ran the set was awesome: he really looked out for other people’s opinions, which is what you want. We’re all making the movie.” That may be true, but as their recent game of Guess Your Movie showed, as Aaron writes: “jesse eisenberg and kieran culkin is my dream blunt rotation.”
