{"id":9244,"date":"2019-07-16T15:01:02","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T22:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog-proxy.atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/?p=9244"},"modified":"2019-07-18T11:59:16","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T18:59:16","slug":"the-art-of-self-defense-interview-jesse-eisenberg-discusses-what-it-means-to-be-a-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/art-of-self-defense-jesse-eisenberg-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;The Art Of Self-Defense&#8217; Interview: Jesse Eisenberg On What It Means To Be A Man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For his latest role, Jesse Eisenberg plays introverted accountant Casey Davies, whose life is suddenly and violently changed after being attacked. While the characters he\u2019s known for playing are usually awkward and socially inept, Eisenberg has always had a grounded, relatable quality, and it&#8217;s no different with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.atomtickets.com\/movies\/the-art-of-self-defense\/267467\"><em>The Art of Self-Defense<\/em><\/a>. Though the film explores toxic masculinity and its adverse effects on society through the microcosm of a karate dojo, Eisenberg\u2019s Casey shows us how it can change and even corrupt those in a vulnerable state.<\/p>\n<p>Before the movie&#8217;s release this weekend (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/the-art-of-self-defense-review\/\">you can read our review here<\/a>), Atom Tickets spoke with Eisenberg about Casey and the complexities that came with the role.\u00a0Warning: Spoilers are ahead.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I&#8217;d love to know what your first impressions were when you read the script. The story is very different from what we typically see when topics like toxic masculinity, hazing and trauma of male characters are the central themes.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jesse Eisenberg:<\/strong> Well, I had the most unusual experience with this project, which is that the first ten pages of this movie are misleading in some ways. I think the first ten minutes of the movie almost kind of trick the audience into thinking that this is going to be a kind of typical sports movie, where the weak protagonist gains his inner strength from athletics, and the movie ends up completely subverting that idea. The movie then becomes this kind of dark, brilliant satire on, you know, the dangers of masculinity, on misogyny, and sexism in our culture and on violence, and to me, it\u2019s this unbelievably hysterical, and also very potent satire on the kind of modern ideas of masculinity.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Yeah, it\u2019s not a straightforward comedy because the laughs that you do get \u2013 or the ones I did \u2013 come at the oddest moments, or you laugh because things are so awkward and laughter is the only way to release the tension.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JE:<\/strong> Yes, exactly.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7Bms6Hba-3A?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Casey is very introverted but attempts to socialize with the chauvinistic, misogynistic men he works with. It was interesting to see an introverted character trying to belong with them. What do you think it was about them that made him want to connect with them? Was it about wanting a sense of belonging, or wanting to appear more masculine?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JE:<\/strong> I think the character is incredibly timid and desperate to belong and confused about what it means to be a man, and because the movie takes place in this strange universe where everything seems kind of earnest, and blunt and scary at the same time, his views on masculinity are absurd. He reads a magazine called <em>MAN<\/em>, where there\u2019s an advertisement saying that a man must own a wolf to be a man, or the wolf is a pet for a man.<\/p>\n<p>His ideas about masculinity are strange and confused, and then he meets this guy who runs this karate class who\u2019s like a cult leader, who tells him with perfect confidence everything he\u2019s (Casey) ever wanted to know about being a man. Of course, as an audience, we\u2019re laughing at it because it sounds ridiculous. But Casey, my character, is treating it with total sincerity. He believes everything the Sensei is telling him, and unfortunately enacts a lot of it, which is brutal and violent and dangerous.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Do you think the reason Casey bought into what Sensei was telling him, even though as you said it\u2019s ridiculous and absurd, is because this was the first male role model who seems interested in him?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JE:<\/strong> Yeah. The director Riley Stearns made a movie before this movie called <em>Faults<\/em>, and it\u2019s about a cult, and so when I read <em>The Art of Self-Defense<\/em>, I viewed it initially as a movie about a cult. Casey is the perfect kind of cult member. You know, he\u2019s somebody who\u2019s lonely, who\u2019s looking for meaning in his life, who doesn\u2019t have many people in his life around him to tell him, \u201cYou know, joining a cult is a bad idea.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He has no real core convictions, then he meets this guy, Sensei, who is seductive and persuasive and confident and mysterious, and my character completely falls in line with his teaching. And so, yeah, I think what\u2019s really attractive about Sensei to Casey is his confidence, when Casey is a person who\u2019s looking for a strong man in his life, just like somebody who joins a cult is looking for some direction and unfortunately they sometimes fall in with somebody who\u2019s dangerous and manipulative. Casey completely buys into everything Sensei says, even when it puts Casey in grave danger.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-9246\" src=\"http:\/\/blog-proxy.atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Jesse-Eisenberg-The-Art-of-Self-Defense-1024x512.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Jesse-Eisenberg-The-Art-of-Self-Defense-1024x512.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Jesse-Eisenberg-The-Art-of-Self-Defense-300x150.jpg 300w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Jesse-Eisenberg-The-Art-of-Self-Defense-768x384.jpg 768w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Jesse-Eisenberg-The-Art-of-Self-Defense-1000x500.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Jesse-Eisenberg-The-Art-of-Self-Defense-500x250.jpg 500w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Jesse-Eisenberg-The-Art-of-Self-Defense-1080x540.jpg 1080w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Jesse-Eisenberg-The-Art-of-Self-Defense.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>There&#8217;s a dichotomy in Casey. He starts out very timid, and then with the assault he kinds of regresses. He becomes reclusive and doesn\u2019t want to go back to work. But you see this very dramatic shift in him after he meets Sensei, where even though he\u2019s still timid, his physicality changes, he moves with more confidence. How did you go about developing that change in Casey?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JE:<\/strong> Part of the humor of the movies comes from Casey just following the orders of the Sensei, which oftentimes put Casey in the position of being an aggressive, brutish guy, so I kind of think of it like the shy kid on the playground with the aggressive dad who tells the shy kid to go and punch some other kid to stand up for himself. So, the kid does it, but without the real conviction of somebody who\u2019s aggressive, and that\u2019s kind of what Casey is. He punches his boss in the throat because Sensei tells him to do it, but without the kind of conviction of somebody who hates his boss.<\/p>\n<p><strong>There\u2019s also the mindset that Casey has, where he becomes completely engrossed in being a yellow belt, and for him it changes everything. His personality changes, and it influences his personal taste, as well. When you saw that change in him what did you think?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JE:<\/strong> Yeah, exactly. It\u2019s like\u2026the way I think of it is somebody who finally found this thing that they\u2019re looking for, and completely immerses themselves because it has been missing in their life for so long that they now dive in fully, and that\u2019s kind of what Casey does. He stops going in to work, he completely abandons everything in his life just so he can be with this karate teacher at this strange dojo.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Casey\u2019s relationship with Anna is very interesting because she\u2019s the first and only woman we see him interacting with, and she\u2019s this extremely strong woman physically, and I guess you can say emotionally, too, because the moments of vulnerability that we see from her always happen with him. She warns him, \u201cI don\u2019t want this for you,\u201d and tells him to leave. Why do you think he didn\u2019t heed her warning after everything that had happened previously?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JE:<\/strong> I think Casey\u2019s very conflicted and he doesn\u2019t know who\u2026you know he\u2019s somebody without a great sense of personal conviction, and so his allegiance becomes torn. As you say, the only woman in the movie is a brown belt who will never be able to become a black belt just because she\u2019s a woman and the dojo is run by this misogynistic guy. So even though Casey has no set of core beliefs, he still feels that that\u2019s unfair, and as the movie progresses his allegiance starts to shift a bit between Sensei and Anna, who are telling him different things. Sensei is incredibly confident so Casey is inclined to follow his orders, but at the same time feels like some of what he\u2019s saying is becoming increasingly dangerous.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-9189\" src=\"http:\/\/blog-proxy.atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/art-of-self-defense-1024x640.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/art-of-self-defense-1024x640.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/art-of-self-defense-300x188.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/art-of-self-defense-768x480.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/art-of-self-defense-500x313.jpeg 500w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/art-of-self-defense-400x250.jpeg 400w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/art-of-self-defense.jpeg 1080w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>This film is the most physical one you\u2019ve done since <em>Zombieland<\/em>, and you had to train in martial arts. Mindy Kelly (fight choreographer) told me you and the others had a very limited time to train so she trained you at the level of a yellow belt. How intense was that for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JE:<\/strong> Well, Mindy, as you know from speaking to her, is one of the best martial artists in the world and she\u2019s a really great teacher. Because she has so much respect for martial arts and because she does it at such a high level, I think she expected a lot from me. We had like a three-week training period which for me felt really intense. Luckily, my character is kind of a novice, whereas Imogen Poots, who plays Anna, had to become a brown belt and Imogen did a great job. Mindy trained her to such a great degree that Imogen could do a lot of her own complicated moves in the movie. The other thing that training did for me was teach me about the discipline behind martial arts, and that was helpful because Casey in the movie is eager for discipline and looks to Sensei to give him some structure in his life. So, it was helpful for me to experience what that feels like, to be a person who\u2019s not used to being in a karate class and then kind of thrust into a completely different set of expectations.<\/p>\n<p><strong>If we look at how the film ended, with Sensei gone and Casey being the one to get rid of him, what do you think would\u2019ve been the next step for Casey?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JE:<\/strong> I think Casey realizes towards the end of the movie that Sensei is actually kind of a con-artist and a dangerous person, who\u2019s manipulating and exploiting those around him, and so if the movie were to continue, I think Casey would be able to find all the things he likes about karate, which is the camaraderie, the structure and the artful part of martial arts. But be able to marry it with some ethics, whether that means helping Anna to secure her place at the top, whether it means maybe working with students, which is what he ends up doing at the end of the movie, and running a class that is not based violence, lies, deception and manipulation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I found it interesting that he &#8211; as I would say &#8211; bequeathed Anna her rightfully earned black belt, and he seems to be assimilated to the life of the dojo. They\u2019ve all seemed to have accepted their fates come what may. For you, when you read the ending of the script, what were your thoughts on what Casey&#8217;s mindset would be?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JE<\/strong>: I guess his mindset would probably be\u2026I don\u2019t know, I\u2019m just picturing myself in those situations and thinking like there was a poison at the heart of the dojo, but that doesn\u2019t mean the whole dojo has to shut down. It just means you have to kind of get rid of the poison, and I think Casey is able to realize that he can have the best of both worlds of having a great experience at this place that was once pretty toxic.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Because the film is about Casey &#8211; and I guess you could say Anna to a certain extent \u2013 discovering who they are, and finding out new things about themselves, for you, was there anything you learned about yourself while preparing and shooting the film?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JE:<\/strong> I guess it just made me think about man\u2019s place in society and the best way to be an ally to women, cause that\u2019s what ultimately happens to Casey. He realizes the best way to be masculine is you know, to sometimes to rid yourself of the things we think of as masculine.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So you learned it\u2019s about allyship and when to step back.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JE: Yes, exactly.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Art of Self-Defense<\/em> is currently in limited theaters and expands this weekend.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.atomtickets.com\/movies\/the-art-of-self-defense\/267467?ref=insidertickets\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7948\" src=\"http:\/\/blog-proxy.atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Get-Tickets.png\" alt=\"get tickets\" width=\"200\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For his latest role, Jesse Eisenberg plays introverted accountant Casey Davies, whose life is suddenly and violently changed after being attacked. While the characters he\u2019s known for playing are usually awkward and socially inept, Eisenberg has always had a grounded, relatable quality, and it&#8217;s no different with The Art of Self-Defense. Though the film explores [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":9248,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[40,37],"class_list":["post-9244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","tag-featuredpage","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9244"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9250,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9244\/revisions\/9250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}