Jesse Eisenberg wrote and directed the upcoming film, The Debut, but he also revealed that he wrote his own songs for the film. The actor, writer and director attended an early screening of the film on the Fox lot earlier this week and revealed his inspirations for songwriting for the film.
He said, “My brain goes to musical theater cliches more than it goes to like sports or women — my wife! One woman, one woman.” He elaborated, saying “The thing I can write is musical theater music…This is the extent of my talents and I worked really hard on it, but that’s my ceiling.”
While Eisenberg wrote the original songs for the film, he worked with composer Emile Mosseri to turn those lyrics into full songs. Eisenberg worked with Mosseri previously on his fiorst directorial outing, When You Finish Saving the World. Eisenberg recounted writing a song for Finn Wolfward’s character in the film and sending it to Mosseri to review.
He elaborated, “I sent it to Emile and Emile was so sweet, but he was like, ‘This is really good if he was doing musical theater music, and he’s more doing rock music. And so I was like, ‘OK, can you rewrite the music?” Emile Mosseri responded to this by saying Jesse Eisenberg was “very humble and very sort of downplays his musical prowess because he wrote these incredible songs.”
The Debut stars Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti and follows a housewife transforming into a breakout method actor by performing at her community theater. Director Jesse Eisenberg previously said the film was loosely based on his own life. One of the songs written for the film, “This City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Hasn’t Spit Me Out),” is expected to make a major awards push. The Debut hits theaters on December 11.
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