Jesse Eisenberg hadn’t seen “Succession” before casting Kieran Culkin to play his cousin in his Holocaust-memorial road movie “A Real Pain.” So the writer/director told IndieWire back in January 2024 when “A Real Pain” world-premiered at Sundance. As Eisenberg revealed to IndieWire during an October interview promoting the film ahead of its November release, he still hasn’t watched the HBO show that won Kieran Culkin a Best Actor Emmy for portraying zeitgeist-addled nepo baby Roman Roy. “‘Succession’ is a cultural phenomenon that I’ll definitely watch in my life, especially if I get some kind of flu where I am in bed, whatever,” Eisenberg told IndieWire.
“When you have a fever, that’s a good time to watch the show,” Culkin replied.
But the one Culkin project, film or TV, Eisenberg has seen is Kenneth Lonergan’s 2011 cult classic “Margaret,” released with a theatrical cut after five years in the edit that left its director unnsatisfied. But now, the New York coming-of-age drama (especially its three-hour director’s version) is regarded as one of the great films of the 21st century.
OK, if you count Culkin’s small role as cousin Fuller McAllister in his brother Macaulay’s first two “Home Alone” movies, there is at least one other Kieran Culkin project Eisenberg has seen.
“Margaret” follows Anna Paquin in post-September 11 New York City as an idealistically minded high schooler who inadvertently causes a bus crash that kills Allison Janney’s character and shatters her ideals. The movie filmed in 2005 but Lonergan struggled to deliver a cut that he and the studio (then Fox Searchlight) could agree upon. Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker stepped in to deliver a theater-friendly version for limited release in 2011. Later, a three-hour director’s cut was released that preserved Lonergan’s vision. Culkin, in both versions, plays a high school classmate of Lisa’s (Paquin) who takes her virginity, leading her in the director’s cut to get an abortion. Culkin recently saw that cut at the Paris Theatre in New York, and he stresses that viewers should seek out the director’s cut only.
“I did see it. That’s what I saw Kieran in,” Eisenberg said. “It’s fantastic. I watched it while we were editing [‘A Real Pain’]. Phenomenal. I love it so much.”
“The versions are very different. I get that Kenny’s cut is pretty long, but I would say it’s a masterpiece,” Culkin said. “There are things in the theatrical cut that change the story and completely change who [Anna Paquin’s] character is and fuck it up. There’s a part where she confronts her teacher [played by Matt Damon] and says she got an abortion. In Kenny’s cut, you see her going to get one. In this other cut, it doesn’t, so she could be lying to freak him out. It changes what the movie is. There are a few things like that where I go, ‘There’s a reason why this guy had a clear vision.’”
That moment in the theatrical cut could be interpreted as Lisa [Paquin] making a joke to get a rise out of her teacher — but the director’s cut shows the events as true. “Isn’t that crazy? Because that’s just not what it is. It changes it. Imagine being the writer or the filmmaker, and somebody did that. That’s a huge change. The fact that you sat there and watched that — that’s shitty.”
“A Real Pain” opens in theaters November 1.
