Jesse Eisenberg is not immune to writer’s block. It hit the actor, director and writer 25 pages into a screenplay based on one of his short stories. Then an unlikely cure appeared on his computer screen: a pop-up ad for “Auschwitz tours (with lunch).”
That moment was the catalyst for his recent film “A Real Pain,” which tells the story of two cousins (played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) who embark on a heritage trip through Poland following the loss of their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor.
Speaking with documentary filmmaker Peter Stein to more than 400 people on Tuesday night at the JCC of San Francisco, Eisenberg shared his insights on the film’s production and his creative process as its director and writer.
Since its 2024 premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, “A Real Pain” has been nominated for 30 awards, including an Oscar for best original screenplay and for best supporting actor, which Culkin won.
Eisenberg’s own film career dates back to the 2002 film “Roger Dodger,” a reference that drew cheers from some longtime fans in the JCC audience — to Eisenberg’s pleasant surprise.
Throughout the talk, Eisenberg tied the inspiration behind “A Real Pain” to his personal journey of Jewish self-discovery, which he acknowledged began only after he became an adult and more established in his career.
“In some ways, I retroactively became more Jewish,” said Eisenberg, 41. “I wanted to write for the New Yorker magazine, I wanted to make movies about people who complain, and it didn’t occur to me ever that these are Jewish things.”
And write for the New Yorker he has; the magazine has so far published 23 of his short stories and personal essays. He also has written for Tablet Magazine, which in 2017 published the short story that became “A Real Pain.”
That story — about two friends traveling to Mongolia — was also an exploration of their “toxic friendship,” Eisenberg explained.
Then the Auschwitz tours ad appeared, and the story completely changed.
At first, Eisenberg thought the ad was a “gross” example of what he called “Holocaust tourism,” but eventually he came to realize its greater value in making Holocaust education accessible to anyone willing to learn.
“There’s something ironic and cynical about traveling first class to Auschwitz, and there’s also something really wonderful that these kinds of tours exist [for] a lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise go to Poland,” he said.
As a result, Eisenberg was able to find the deeper meaning his screenplay needed: instead of friends, the two protagonists would be cousins; instead of Mongolia, the film would be set in Poland, where his own family came from.
Eisenberg’s personal search for his roots in Poland led him to a modest house in Krasnystaw, a small town located about 30 miles southwest of Lublin. It is the same house — where some of his family lived until they fled in 1938 — that is featured near the end of “A Real Pain.”
Shooting the film in the same place where his family endured immense trauma was a confusing experience for Eisenberg.
“On the one hand, my family’s history here is so awful,” he said. “Our trailers were parked across the street from the cemetery where they took the Jews of Krasnystaw and shot them.”
Yet the project itself gave Eisenberg what he described as an “eerie sense of empowerment.” He came to Poland specifically to shed more light on the history of Polish Jewry and sought to do so in the most honest, respectful way possible, he said.
That sincerity was crucial in convincing the state museum at the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin to allow Eisenberg to shoot part of “A Real Pain” there, in order to depict what a present-day visit to the camp would actually look like.
The alternative –– a million-dollar replica build of the camp –– was out of the question for Eisenberg.
“Who builds concentration camps now? Who’s the guy you call? And why is he allowed to practice architecture?” he said.
Campaigning to shoot on location was difficult but “revelatory,” Eisenberg said, recalling his collaboration with the museum’s staff, who provided direct input on the scenes that take place at the camp.
“These brilliant young academics, they’re not Jewish, and they devote their lives to preserving Jewish history,” he said. “I remember just thinking, ‘These are the most incredible people in the world. These people do far more for my family memorial than I do.’”