Jesse Eisenberg on Floyd Collins

This interview appeared on New York City Center's website in June 2015.

MATT WEINSTOCK: You once said that until you were 11 you only listened to musicals. Why?
JESSE EISENBERG: Other kinds of music scared me. My sister got me a Green Day CD once and I hid in the closet from it, cause it was so scary. They were yelling. (pause) I don’t know. Growing up, I just liked musical theater. Then when I got to be a young teenager—maybe 13 or so—I found musicals that were a little more interesting than what I had been exposed to, like Stephen Sondheim and Floyd Collins.

What do you admire about Floyd Collins?
They created an inherently dramatic circumstance. The characters are acting in a melodramatic way, but it feels totally right and in line with their circumstances. And because it’s written about this 1925 Kentucky spelunker, the songs have very unusual influences that you don't often hear in musical theater. One great song in it is “’Tween a Rock An’ a Hard Place.” I mean, that's not a song you typically hear in a musical. And even the ballad at the beginning. These songs all feel like country songs—but written by someone who clearly knows musical theater. It’s just this really wonderful confluence of genres that make it feel not like a cheesy musical. And also not like jingoistic country music.

What other songs are you fond of?
The second track on the CD, “The Call,” where Floyd is singing [in the cave along with his echoes], and it’s on some kind of loop machine. I’d never heard anything like that. I guess it was produced in the 90s, and that's a pretty technologically advanced thing to be able to do—and for a singer, a pretty difficult thing to be able to do. I’m still shocked that it was done live every night.

You mention the CD, which I’m guessing you listened to before you saw the show live. How did you envision the show in your head?
I think I envisioned the show not existing in solid mass. I listened to it as this general disembodied voice for so long. And it was strange…I imagine it must feel this way when people go into concerts of their favorite artists; you either really love it and it’s some kind of transcendental religious experience, or you can only hear the mistakes that the person’s making, the deviations from the album that you loved so much. That was kind of my experience with Floyd Collins. The production I saw was wonderful, and the singers were all gorgeous and talented, but it was kind of grating on my ear because I had listened to the original recording so much. (pause) That’s the wonderful thing about the musical theater. You know, I’m in a play now, and when the play’s over, there’s no evidence of it, whereas with musical theater, almost the most important evidence still exists.

What production of Floyd Collins did you see?
My friend and I found out that it was being performed in Philadelphia [in 1999], so we planned a road trip. And then the night before the road trip, his car got broken into and was missing windows. It was the middle of winter, so we were wondering, “Will we still go to Floyd Collins?” And then we persevered and went to Floyd Collins. It was a three-hour drive, and he parked his car with some plastic bags in the windows. (pause) Now that I’m telling it, it sounds less dramatic. It’s not exactly the Bataan Death March. It was just slightly cold on the way down. But it was such a memorable experience to go see a show like that.

The show only ran 25 performances Off-Broadway. Since you write musicals yourself, have you ever looked at Floyd Collins through a critical lens—what you might change, what you might fix?
There’s one song that I don’t like, which is at the end. He sings, “Get comfortable, Carmichael.” It seems like it’s out of nowhere. I would cut that song out. Everything else is so good. What about you?

Well, it’s interesting—Adam Guettel was asked about the media-circus element of Floyd Collins, and he said, “That aspect of the story I wasn’t as interested in as Tina. I was very concerned with knowing who Floyd was.” I think you can feel that. I wonder what the show would’ve been like as a 90-minute aria that never left the cave—just Floyd and his echoes.
That is very interesting. I see what you're saying. There is a kind of tension in the thing, where we have to keep going out of the cave to witness these, let's say, stock fights. I see that tension. And the stuff that’s really, really wonderful about the show has nothing to do with that. Although the carnival sequence is really nice.

Are there any musical roles you’d like to play?
The one musical I wanted to do was Parade. They asked me to do it this year, cause they were thinking of doing some concert of it, and I got to sing some of the songs for Jason Robert Brown. It was great. But then I was shooting in China, so I couldn’t do it. That’s the one musical I would really like to have done. And it’s demanding vocally, but less than you would think.

What other contemporary musicals do you like?
I like A New Brain; I like Side Show. On a five-day road trip with my family driving down to Florida, I listened to Side Show exclusively. I wrote screenplays before I wrote plays—none of which were produced—and my first screenplay, I wrote entirely to the “Yes” song from A New Brain. This was after September 11, and I thought I was gonna die, and I was just holed up in my room. I played the song on a loop. I probably listened to it upwards of a thousand times.

That’s amazing. What was the screenplay about?
I mean, it was totally unrelated. It was about these two young guys who go on a cross-country bowling trip. It was a comedy for young people. It got optioned, but it never got made or anything. I think that after September 11, a lot of art—probably most of it terrible—was inspired by the concern that we were all gonna die. I had just found A New Brain, and I was listening to it, and part of my unconscious responded to this positivistic song.

What happened to Me Time, your musical “satire about self-indulgence”? Are you still writing it?
I did readings for years with Alex Timbers directing. And then Alex got very busy with his stuff, and I got busy with my stuff, and it kind of fell by the wayside—although I want to get back to it. I really like it; it’s very funny, and there are good songs. I imagine it’s the kind of thing that I’ll end up having to put on myself in my living room or something. I can’t imagine anybody would want to produce it.

Floyd Collins, and another musical you’re fond of, Pacific Overtures, were both written by upper class Jewish New Yorkers. But they were writing so far outside of themselves. Is that something that you think about as a writer? Writing outside of the world you know?
Exclusively. That’s all I think about. My last play [The Revisionist] took place in Poland and the main character was a 78-year-old Polish woman played by Vanessa Redgrave, and my current play, I’m kind of the central character, but the story you’re following is of a Nepalese immigrant who I based on my friend Kalyan, who lives in Katmandu. The only stories worth telling to me are the stories of my interactions with people from other places. I live in New York, so you’re exposed to people, and you become curious about them. In terms of Sondheim and Pacific Overtures, it’s this really unusual departure. You’re getting a window into another place, and yet it’s told with the accessibility and, let’s say, the keen eye that I can relate to. But not in a patronizing way. My degree in school was anthropology, and studying it, you try to have the most unbiased perspective on a situation. Pacific Overtures is really interesting, cause it’s told from a very unusual perspective. I think he tried to write it in the style of a Japanese man who’d taken some English lessons. And, I’ll tell you, the best song in that show is “Someone in a Tree.” I always thought that was the most brilliant song. It still resounds with me. It’s about the individual’s value in a given context, and it’s so existentially clever. I try to play it for new friends to gauge their intelligence.

Does that weed out a lot of people?
(laughs) Yeah, yeah. Not everybody takes.