Candids from The Social Network Junket

Last weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to fly to New York to cover The Social Network.

Ummm, seriously? New York, baby daddy JT, Jesse Eisenberg, and the chance to see what was already being hailed as one of the best films of the year?

Done and done.

While the entire trip was insanely idyllic (I'll post more photos very soon), here are a few behind-the-scenes shots from the trip to accompany my feature and Fox News appearance.

My room at The Regency on 61st and Park could have rented for $3000 a month by New York standards. And what was I going to do with two massive beds? At first I debated setting and alarm for 4am, thinking I'd shout "Rotate!" and swap in my sleep, but instead I decided to make more practical use and jump back and forth until I was panting, spent and uncontrollably giggling.

The next morning, bright and shiny, we journalists converged on The Harvard Club, the same spot we'd gotten liquored up the night before at the film's after party, to grill the movie's stars and writer, Aaron Sorkin. Note the elephant head mounted on the wall. That ain't fake, ya'll.

Anxiously awaiting the arrival of JT, Eisenberg, Sorkin, Spiderman 2.0 Andrew Garfield and Armie Hammer, one of the most tropical men I've had the pleasure of admiring in far too long.

Ned, who came through looking extra spiffy, was my un-official escort for the weekend. A girl couldn't ask for better.
Armie Hammer, Justin Timberlake, Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Aaron Sorkin.

Now there's a Social Network I'd like to be part of.

I can't stress enough what an outstanding movie The Social Network is. Eisenberg moves into the ranks of my favorite leading men with this role, superbly sculpted by Fincher and Sorkin. Go. NOW! It's brilliant.

Jesse Eisenberg's Peanut Fears After "The Social Network" on Lips and Ears

I wanted to squeeze Jesse Eisenberg's adorable, insanely talented, little face after he busted out a Peanut's reference at The Social Network junket in New York last week.

Here's what he said (I come in after the Clooney bit):

"The Social Network" of Timberlake, Sorkin and Eisenberg

Amongst greatness, the best and brightest flourish.

Could that be a slogan for an Ivy League enclave? Absolutely, but it’s also what makes The Social Network, set in the hallowed halls of Harvard, one of the best films of this year, if not the decade (though it pains me to side with Peter Travers in such gushing praise).

Consider the films’ pedigree; written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing), directed by David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club), starring Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake and newly minted megastar Andrew Garfield (aka: Spiderman 2.0), The Social Network, an adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book about the founding of Facebook, The Accidental Billionaires, is a parade of some of Hollywood’s most captivating talent turning in work of the highest caliber.

On a balmy September afternoon in Manhattan, Sorkin, Timberlake and Eisenberg settle into embossed leather chairs at the Harvard Club under oil paintings of white haired men sporting General Custer mustaches and taxidermy, including an elephant head, trunk flaring, to discuss the film which is already considered a sure Oscar contender.

Sorkin has long asserted that his writing is simply people sitting in rooms talking, so how was he able to make mindnumbingly mundane moments, things like blogging and depositions, frenetic, wrought and pulsating in the film?

“Well, they’re not sitting in rooms talking, they’re standing in rooms talking and that’s how I infuse it with a Michael Bay-type energy,” Sorkin deadpans. “My parents took me to plays starting when I was too little to understand what the plays were about, like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf when I was eight years old. Because I didn’t understand the story on onstage, I fell in love with the sound of dialogue, it sounded like music to me, and I wanted to imitate that when I wrote.”

Fans of the writer’s previous work will instantly recognize his hand in The Social Network’s opening scene, a patently Sorkin rapid-fire exchange which finds Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Eisenberg) in the midst of a breakup conversation with Erica Albright (Rooney Mara).

“I wanted to start out at 100 miles an hour, in the middle of a conversation, so that the audience would have to run a little just to keep up with us,” Sorkin explains. “And then sequences like the one that follows where Mark is blogging, drinking and hacking; David shot it and cut it and [Nine Inch Nails frontman] Trent Reznor scored it like it was bank robbery, like an action sequence.”

“We performed that scene 99 times,” Eisenberg points out quickly and without venom. “[Fincher] refused to do it the extra time to make it an even hundred. For an actor, that’s what you want. That’s what’s thrilling.”

“That was David’s process,” Timberlake interjects. “Working digitally with this film,” which was shot on a Red One camera, “it was almost like he would use the first twenty to twenty-five [takes] as a rehearsal and if something good came out of it, it was more of a fluke in his mind that what he was trying to get. You’d get to the 25th or 26th take and he’d say, ‘Great. Print that. Erase everything else.’ And you’d be like, ‘Whoooa! Wait. Really? Oookay, so we’re starting over?’ But while feeling like you were running wind sprints which turned into a marathon, it was freeing to be a part of that process.”

“We’re asked about the great number of takes as if the actors are in opposition to it,” Eisenberg says. “Every actor I know would stay there all day if there was film in the camera. This film was a blessing and we were thrilled for the time we got actually acting and not sitting around waiting to act.”

Sorkin reveals Fincher also vetoed any flouncy, typical Hollywood perks you’d expect to see on a set, like directors’ chairs, big trailers or an overflowing craft service table.

“David didn’t believe in frills or bells and whistles,” Sorkin says. “On this movie you sat on the floor when you weren’t working. David doesn’t like to spend money if it doesn’t go onscreen.”
“The money for this film went to the time to make it,” Timberlake adds. “It’s so amazing for a director to say, I want time for my actors to act and for me to watch them act and direct them. He’s one of the bravest directors you could ever be lucky enough to work with.”

The Social Network opens October 1.

What's Playing: May 21st

Opening in theaters this week...

May 21

Shrek: The Final Chapter (Dreamworks Animation)


The fourth Shrek installment, this time in 3D, finds Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers) sick of domestic life with Fiona (Cameron Diaz) and their kids. After asking bamboozling Rumpelstiltskin to help him get back to feeling like a real ogre again, he finds himself in an alternate version of Far Far Away where Rumpelstiltskin is king, ogres are hunted, and he and Fiona have never met. All alone once again, he sets out to restore his world.

MacGruber (Rogue Pictures)

It’s not often a Saturday Night Live sketch successfully survives the trip from small to big screen. With the exception of The Blues Brothers and Wayne’s World, most attempts have been disastrous (Superstar, A Night at the Roxbury, It’s Pat: The Movie). With any luck, Macgruber will join the leagues of the former, rather than the later. First time director Jorma Taccone has been very successful with SNL Digital Shorts, but will that translate to this rip off of MacGyver starring Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, Val Kilmer and Ryan Philippe?

Holy Rollers (First Independent Pictures)

Inspired by the true story of a young Hassidic Jew in Brooklyn (Jesse Eisenberg) who became an Ecstacy courier thanks to a friend with ties to an Israeli drug cartel (The Hangover’s Justin Bartha). Told to “mind your business and act Jewish,” he finds the ultimate cover and entre into an exciting new life.

Jesse Eisenberg is a Holy Roller

Despite what you may think, Holy Rollers isn’t about grandmas heading to Pentecostal church bingo, nor does it have anything to do with a virginal roller derby team. It’s the true story of young Hassidic Jews who smuggled Ecstasy from Amsterdam to Brooklyn in the late 1990s.

Jesse Eisenberg stars as Sam Gold, a good Jewish boy studying to be a rabbi and awaiting approval for his arranged marriage. But when he’s rejected by the family of his would-be bride for what he thinks are financial shortcomings, he allows himself to be sucked over to the dark side by his neighbor, Yosef (The Hangover’s Justin Bartha), who has ties to an Israeli drug cartel. Told to “mind your business and act Jewish,” Sam finds his religion is the perfect cover for an unsuspected drug runner in the middle of a major crisis of faith.

Watching the movie, it has shades of The Believer, the film that launched Ryan Gosling’s career. Many people felt Gosling was able to connect with the role of a Neo-Nazi Jew because he was raised Mormon and could understand, not necessarily zealotry, but what an intense religious connection can mean. Similarly, screenwriter Antonio Macia is a converted Mormon who’s gone on lengthy missions. Could it be that his background is one of the reasons he wanted to write this film?

"The other thing about him is he grew up in a Catholic family,” Eisenberg points out. “He chose Mormonism himself, which I think makes it that much more interesting. He’s is very interested in religion. He has, this is something I have trouble relating to, very complicated ties to his faith; conflicts in it, great affection. When he wrote the script, the great conflict for my character of faith and blind faith, how much does he feel invested spiritually in Judaism and does he feel it strongly enough to stray? That was the main interest for Antonio.”