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30 Minutes or Less

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) is a pizza deliverer who lives a fairly ordinary, boring life -- until he crosses paths with two aspiring criminal masterminds (Danny McBride, Nick Swardson), who kidnap him, strap a bomb to his chest and force him to rob a bank for them. Nick doesn't get much time to pull off the difficult task, so he enlists the aid of Chet (Aziz Ansari), his estranged pal. As time ticks away, Nick and Chet face many obstacles, not the least of which is their volatile relationship.

Opened August 12, 2011

Runtime:1 hr. 23 min.

 

Q&A with Actor Jesse Eisenberg

 

(Q) : What have you been up to?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : I've been doing publicity for this movie for a while on and off this last week in California just trying to get the word out, because apparently no one knows about it.
 
(Q) : So we've seen the trailer, but maybe you can walk us through a little bit what "30 Minutes or Less" is actually about.
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : That was not misleading or anything, but I play a pizza delivery guy, he leads a boring life, he hates his job, and then he's on the outs with his best friend, who Aziz Ansari plays, who's an elementary school teacher. I'm out on a regular run, I get kidnapped by these smalltime criminals, Danny McBride and Nick Swardson, and they strap a bomb to my chest and force me to rob a bank for them in 10 hours. So I go and ask Aziz for help and then it's really a story about these two kind of regular, lazy guys who are forced to rob a bank and the silly things they have to do in order to accomplish that.
 
(Q) : Danny McBride and Ruben Fleischer both describe this film as sort of a double buddy comedy. Is that the way that you approached it as well when you first got the script or when you started production?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : That's kind of a nice way to couch it in a funny genre I guess, but that's not how I think of it. It is really like two separate movies because Danny McBride and Nick Swardson are equally in the movie, so structurally you check in with them, then you come back to us, and they have their own storyline.
 
(Q) : When they're doing their stuff on their side and you're doing your stuff with Aziz do you ever want to know what they're doing on their side? Would that make your job easier at all?

(Jesse Eisenberg) : At the risk of being more pretentious than this kind of thing warrants, my character doesn't know what they're doing so in a way it's better to not know what they're doing and only meet them when I have to meet them. It's strange because in the movie my character is going through a real situation and I'm asked as an actor to play it realistically so the movie has a storyline that you can follow and not just play it comically.

And then I was working with Danny and Nick who are so naturally funny and I'm supposed to only see them as frightening, and the responsible thing to do as an actor is to kind of not think of them as funny personally, and that's very difficult because they're really funny guys.
 
(Q) : Because this movie is a dark comedy in a lot of ways. It's also a heist film. How did these genre overlaps come into conversation before you guys started making this movie?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : The movie is primarily a comedy and the action stuff, of which there is a lot, and the heist stuff, of which there is a lot, comes from a comedic place. The comedy is more what these kind of lazy, slacker guys do in this same situation. So all the action stuff we do is supposed to be funny because it comes from these regular guys and it's not supposed to look slick.
 
(Q) : Did you actually wear the bomb vest under your jacket even when we didn't have to see it? Was that always a performance enhancing prop that you wore?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Yeah, whenever you're acting in something you're using your imagination for 95% of it, because lights are on you and the other actor is not the person and all that stuff, so it's helpful to have anything physical to make it a little more real, so in this movie my character is wearing this very tight vest, and wearing this very tight thing allowed me in some small way to feel what that might feel like; where it pinches, where it itches, all this stuff that I'm sure is nowhere in the movie and totally irrelevant, but during the long days of filming allowed me to keep it real.
 
(Q) : And you're also working with Aziz obviously. How much of your job is just trying not to crack up at his jokes?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Yeah, Aziz is really funny and doesn't do the same thing twice in a row. It's difficult to not laugh when I am not focused on my job, like when I am not thinking about what the scene is for my character. And when I am thinking about what the scene is for my character then all the stuff he's saying is kind of filtered through that.

So if he's making a long speech like that and I'm rushing against this clock and he's saying things about going on a picnic or something, then my character would be really irritated by that. So if I'm focused on what I'm supposed to be doing then I would play that as kind of being irritated by it. When I'm not focused on it and I'm focusing on watching Aziz be funny then yeah, it's impossible.
 
(Q) : And you also reunited with Ruben Fleischer on this film. How complicated is that? Were you trying to re-up yourselves? Was there pressure after "Zombieland" to improve on that or were you trying to turn a corner and do something totally different? What kind of shorthand do you develop with a director like that to improve the second time around?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg): Right, Ruben directed "Zombieland," that was his first movie, this was his second movie. I know for him after "Zombieland," because it was directed so well and had such a unique style and a fresh voice for a director he got sent every movie that was being made at the time, comedies and also dramas, and he like this the most out of everything he read.

And I think what he likes, which is what I like to is that he's able to make these movies that are interesting, there's an interesting plot, they're visually arresting, and yet the characters are all real. So in this movie I was kind of asked to play a realistic character in the context of something that's very big and funny and fast paced and accessible.
 
(Q) : I think this next clip might illustrate this dynamic.

(Q) : How many bears did you go through in that scene?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : I don't know. They take all the actors and put them in a hotel when they do that shot. We were all safely tucked away in a pool.
 
(Q) : You did a lot of your own driving on this film, right?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Yes. Getting back to what I was saying before, about the action kind of coming from the same place as the comedy comes from, which is like the juxtaposition of these two lazy guys in this action movie made it so that I would do the driving.

So I guess a lot of times in movies today they would do it on the computer, but it's kind of more clumsy looking if the actors are actually sitting there. Like if Vin Diesel actually drove the car in "The Fast and the Furious" he probably wouldn't be as famous, because you look just silly in a car chase if you're an actor doing it, so that's what we did for this.
 
(Q) : Describe the process of actually training to drive these cars, because from what I read you actually had to be reined in a little bit.
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : We all live in New York, so I don't know how many people drive cars here, we should probably take a poll afterwards, but I never drive. I ride a bicycle, and you're by nature reckless on a bicycle, and then they put me in a car and put stunt drivers around me and put me on a closed road, so I was not doing anything correctly or safely.

It was fun though because the way they designed all these action sequences, me and Aziz are in this car and they surrounded us with stunt drivers who all know to just get out of the way, so we were allowed to do anything we want, and we did.
 
(Q) : We have one more clip we're going to get to, and then we're going to get to some questions in just a moment.

(Q) : Similar case that has sort of kind of been referenced about this?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg): Yeah, I of course found out in the last week. When they sent us the script I had no idea that there was this real story. My only reaction to that is that's such a tragic situation and my heart goes out to the family for that awful situation. When they sent it to us we saw it as these fictional characters and this great vehicle for them to rob a bank.

It's such a funny situation of these regular guys being forced to rob a bank and how do you realistically get them into the place of having to rob a bank, and that's what the bomb provides the vehicle for and all the comedy comes from that. I didn't know about that at the time.
 
(Q) : Seeing the computer in that scene reminded me of another joke that's in this film that you got off Facebook. Was that a joke on purpose in reference to "Social Network" and your relationship with that film?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg): No. So in the movie this girl mentions to me that she saw somebody on Facebook and I think my character says something like "I don't look at that stuff, I'm off the grid." I would never want to make reference to another movie because that would be so dumb and self-aggrandizing.

My character in this movie is a pizza delivery guy so he spends all of his time in his car by himself. He's a loner and he thinks of himself as somebody who misses things like Facebook that allow people to interact in a happy way because he's miserable, so that's why I said it. I mean I think it would be the dumbest thing in the world to make a joke about another movie. I mean, it's just so stupid, it would ruin it.
 
(Q) : Did you do the voice work for "Rio" before you made "Social Network" or after?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : During. I was doing "The Social Network" and on the weekends I would do this animated movie. And it was fun because "The Social Network" is such an intense character, and there was an animated movie and there are very few intense characters in animated movies because they're for children and they would leave.
 
(Q) : How conscious a decision was it for you to follow something like "Social Network" with "Rio" and with this?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Not conscious at all. I think people prescribe greater choice to actors than they actually have. "The Social Network" I auditioned for, this movie I had to audition for a bunch of times, and as an actor you're the face of something so I think people generally associate you and think you had a lot more to do with it than you actually did, but the truth is a lot of what you did is to be the face of it. I just want to be involved in good things, whether or not they come out in some consecutive order that's helpful to me is not up to me.
 
(Q) : You're being asked to be in things. You're in the Woody Allen film coming up. Did Woody Allen come to you and say "Hey, I want you in 'The Bop Decameron'"?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Yeah, he pounded down my door. I get asked to do things, but the truth is most of the stuff that actors get sent are two things; one is that they're not real movies, they're movies that people want to make so they try to get actors who have been in other popular things to sign on so that they can maybe get the money, and chances are those things never happen anyway.

And then the other thing is that most movies that get made are bad anyway so you don't want to be in them in the first place. So the things that are good are so rare. This was such an amazing script, everybody who read it felt that way, and everybody who read it had to audition for it many times. There are famous people in this movie; everybody had to audition for it many times.

My first audition was with Aziz, who was already cast, and I had to read with him to see if our chemistry worked, so if it didn't work I wouldn't be in it. So it's not like I chose to be in a comedy because I was in a drama last year. I probably auditioned for something terrible the next day and didn't get it.
 
(Q) : With that said you are reuniting with Ruben Fleischer, so I guess how important was it to work with him again and have that opportunity? Did that factor in as well?

(Jesse Eisenberg) : Yeah, Ruben was directing this movie but he was also in a group of people that also had a say on who's in it and how it looks and what it's about. This movie was produced by Ben Stiller's company. I had never worked with them so they don't know me so I auditioned for them a few times. Ben Stiller's not in it but he has a production company that produces stuff. Ruben Fleischer directing it was a really appealing thing for me but it didn't mean that I would definitely be able to do it.
 
(Q) : I read that you might be considering working with Director Noah Baumbach again on a film with Ben Stiller called "While we're Young," I believe. Is that true? Is that film happening?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Yeah, I'm not sure what the status of it is yet, but it's wonderful. I did his movie a few years ago and he's so talented.
 
(Q) : I think you're the only one to work with Fred Durst and David Fincher and Woody Allen and all these guys.
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Actually Director David Fincher was Fred Durst's mentor; that's how I got into "The Social Network." I did a movie that Fred Durst directed which is a really sophisticated, dramatic movie. And he's from Limp Bizkit of course, the music is so different from the movie, but David Fincher was the one who took him into directing and taught him everything.

So that's how I got into "The Social Network," because David Fincher was in on the editing room during that movie. It's so strange, the movie industry. It's a lot smaller and that's probably the most emblematic story that I can tell to indicate how small it is.
 
(Q) : I never heard that before. Let's take some questions.
 
(Q) : What's your middle name?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Adam, like the first man.
 
(Q) : Are there any movies that we've seen that you auditioned for and didn't get?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Did you see "The Zookeeper"? I auditioned to play the lion who gives advice. No, yeah, I'm sure, but that's something I'll tell you about after the show.
 
(Q) : If you had a chance to do something else besides acting what would you do?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : I would be a bike messenger. I like being alone and riding a bike and moving efficiently, and that job incorporates all those things so well. And I like carrying packages to people's offices, and then as the day goes on having a lighter load.
 
(Q) : Where did you learn to act?

(Jesse Eisenberg) : Well I started doing children's theater when I was about eight or nine years old in my town in New Jersey. For formal acting training I went to a school on 48th Street, a performing arts high school here, and we had like two hours of acting a day and that was the first formal training I had and it was really helpful. The school is called PPAS; it's a really great school.

If anybody's looking for a school, that's a really wonderful performing arts school. There's also LaGuardia of course that my friend went to, and there are all these great magnet schools around New York City that have good training because the teachers are professional actors who are not working at the moment and they're teaching.
 
(Q) : Are you on Twitter?

(Jesse Eisenberg) : No.
 
(Q) : Why not? There's someone pretending to be you.
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Oh, there's someone pretending to be me. Yeah, that's them.
 
(Q) : What about Facebook?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Nope, nothing.
 
(Q) : Was it difficult to make the transition from such a serious film like "The Social Network" to a very comedic film like "30 Minutes or Less"? And also was there a lot of improvisation in this film as well?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Yeah, there was a lot of improvisation. The script was really great and it's easy to improvise when the characters are set up really well, so they dynamic between me and Aziz was really clear in the script. It was that his character kind of has healthcare and a steady job and my character hates my job so they have this very specific dynamic where I kind of feel a little angry at him, and it was really easy to improvise within that structure.

And then of course the three other guys working on the movie are all comedians so they were really great at that. In terms of the difference between a comedy and drama I don't think about it too much because my job doesn't really change. So my job is to do a scene realistically given the circumstances, and if that means the circumstances are dramatic or comedic that's really for the director to figure out. 

It's important for a movie like this because it's a comedy to just remember if I think of anything funny to say or do I should not stymie that, but that I should not let that compromise the realism of the scene.
 
(Q) : Your character seems to have a really crappy job, so what's the worst job you've ever had?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : I did musical theater when I was younger, so maybe collectively that's a bad job. But I never had a job like that, like where you really felt like it was not interesting at all. I mean I interned at a company once and I didn't like it, but I quit because I was interning and that's basically irrelevant if you want to do a job to make a living. Interning is not that job.
 
(Q) : I think over the past few years you've played a lot of really good characters. There was a recent "New York Times" article that was classifying all the different types of male roles in movies these days. They pretty much grouped you and Michael Cera into this wimp character, and I noticed that a lot of your characters they're very intelligent but kind of socially awkward at times. I was wondering if you agree that that's the character you like to play, or do you want to break out of that, or do you feel that's inaccurate?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : I don't read anything about myself because I can't control how other people perceive me, how that guy perceives me, and I don't care. There's too much written about movie actors, frankly, so I avoid all of it and focus on doing it, and I like what I do and I like what I've gotten to do. All that stuff just makes me sad. It's limiting.
 
(Q) : I heard that you were part of a Broadway play. Could you elaborate on that?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Yeah, I wrote a play that's going to be at a small theater here. I would tell you what it's about but it frankly is about all the things that she just mentioned so I'm kind of embarrassed to bring it up.
 
(Q) : Would you ever transition into directing or producing?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Maybe. I don't really know how to direct. One of the things that's great about working with somebody like Ruben Fleischer on a movie like this is he has a really good visual sense and ideas about style that I lack. And the movies I really like have no visual style so I don't think in those terms and I don't think I could bring much to directing unless it was working with actors in a way that maybe only an actor could do because they have some special insight into how to do that.

Ben Stiller I think is such an amazing actor and he produces stuff like this movie and other stuff that I think he feels like he just wants to shepherd along because he really likes it and he doesn't have an interest in acting in it or directing it but he just really likes it, like with this, so he's created this wonderful company to produce stuff that he really likes. So I could see maybe doing something like that.
 
(Q) : There's a picture of you in an Indiana University hat. Do you have any connection to the school?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Yeah, do you?
 
(Q) : Yeah, I went there. Okay, cool. I've heard you say in interviews that one part of acting that you love so much is the smaller productions and smaller audiences and stuff like that. Besides what you just wrote do you have any other plans to do any small productions here in New York?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : The advantage of doing something small is that there are very different and a lot more enjoyable financial constraints. When you do a movie like this, which is expensive and they have to pay for movie posters and park benches with the faces of the people on it all over New York City is that it just requires the actual product to be more accessible.

That doesn't mean it compromises the product, but when you do something that's smaller, like a play, it just has different financial requirements and therefore the product can be a little more tailored to maybe what the people in it would like. That's not to denigrate something that's commercial, it's just a different thing and a little more comfortable and there's a lot less pressure.
 
(Q) : What movie are you most proud of being in?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : I'm proud of the movies I felt good about. I don't watch the movies. I haven't seen this movie yet; this is the first time I've seen these clips. I don't watch the movies because the experience of watching it is so different than working on it. I've had days on movies sets where I felt really good about it, but then that day could be cut out of the movie and all the stuff you did is irrelevant in terms of it playing in a thing. So I don't really have a sense of that.

I got a lot of nice attention and notices for being in "The Social Network," but half the time in the movie I felt that I was doing terribly, so I don't remember that experience as something that made me feel really good on a day to day basis, even though the final product was received well. Whereas conversely I felt really great about certain things and the movie is just trashed by people. That's why I don't read reviews or articles about myself or even watch the movies, because the experience that I had is so inconsistent with the thing that it just makes me feel bad.
 
(Q) : One of my favorite movies of yours that really no one's ever seen or heard of is "The Living Wake." Do you remember that?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : Yeah, that maybe was my most fun experience. There's this great movie, it's probably online for free. It was like the most fun experience and I thought the movie is phenomenal and then it came out for two days somewhere and no one liked it except the three people that saw it and my mother and the people in it. So it's just totally inconsistent with the experience; that's why I don't like to watch things.
 
(Q) : I was wondering if you had any advice for aspiring actors? And I just wanted to know why you act and what's your favorite thing about it?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : I guess my advice would be that if you wanted to act that you should try to do it in any capacity, which means if your friend wants to read a little scene with you at their apartment you should want to do that. I don't mean to sound didactic, but I mean if you really wanted to act it should be fun to do in any capacity in any setting. The reason I say this is because I'm in these popular movies but that's not the only place I like to do it.

A lot of times people who only pursue acting to appear in the movies that they really like are really disappointed because in order to get into a movie that you really like it requires so many other people and so many weird, lucky things to have happen that it's basically almost impossible. And even the actors that are in the really good things that you like probably don't like that movie anyway because they're embarrassed that they're in it and they don't like the way their face looks from the side. So that would be my advice.

The reason I like it is because it allows me to express myself in a way that's a prescribed safe setting. I wake up every morning I feel like I want to cry. My life's not miserable or anything, but I feel a lot of emotional things a lot, and when you're an actor you get to do that in a very safe environment and it can be really cathartic in a wonderful way. So that's what I really like about it.
 
(Q) : How long did it take to film the movie?
 
(Jesse Eisenberg) : I guess like two and a half months. That's like a typical shoot. That's something like 45 days of actual work with time in between for preparation and stuff. It's long days, it's like 12 to 14 hours every day, very long.

 

End.