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Rare is the tale that rewards its audience with as much catharsis as its characters experience in their own story, but that's exactly what Jesse Eisenberg delivers in the Audible Original, When You Finish Saving the World.
It's the story of an American family of three grappling with love, loss and change expanding over three decades of their lives. The five-hour audio production is written and performed by Academy Award-nominated actor Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Zombieland) and also stars Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) and Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart).
The story first introduces us to Nathan (Eisenberg), a new father struggling to connect emotionally with his infant son, Ziggy. Eisenberg told Newsweek he has "great sympathy for men in Nathan's position," and, although he doesn't struggle to connect emotionally with his own child, he said his firsthand experience of parenting a newborn helped shape Nathan's perspective. (Eisenberg and his wife, Anna Strout, welcomed a baby boy in April, 2017.)
The sequence of events in When You Finish Saving the World move seamlessly from Nathan's speaking for the family's circumstances in 2017, and then fast-forwards to the year 2032 when his then teenage son (Wolfhard) reveals what the future looks like for both his family and the world around them, and then rewinds back to the year 2002 to expound on Nathan's formidable and brilliant wife, Rachel (Dever), before she met her husband or knew the child who would someday change her world.
Eisenberg tells Newsweek that he spent several months writing the story and even longer researching what the world could look like more than a decade in the future. "When I started to conceive of a kid in 2032," Eisenberg said, "I was reading a lot about predictions for the future. Andrew Yang was running an interesting presidential campaign and talking about the future of jobs and a universal basic income. So I started to focus on themes of capitalism vs. social service and technology vs. a return to a tech-free life."
Depictions of the future also meant Eisenberg's inventing an entirely new teenage vernacular—a "dictionary of slang," he called it—that's no less ridiculous or ingenious than the way teens speak today. "The difficulty with creating the slang was that every time I would think of a word, I would look on Urban Dictionary and find that it already exists," Eisenberg said.
He also did exhaustive research—including meeting with U.S. veterans—to better understand the state of American Military operations during the Iraq War—a notable feature in Rachel's backstory. "All of the military stories are true and I lined it up with what was going on in the U.S. so that Rachel could have these strange dual experiences of being on a liberal college campus while having a boyfriend stationed overseas," Eisenberg told Newsweek, adding: "she's stuck in an impossible place—on a campus of anti-war kids who have no connection to the military, and the love of her life. We're seeing the awakening of a young woman thrown into an untenable situation."
The story touches on many difficult themes, another being the benefits of psychotherapy and speaking truth to one's feelings. Eisenberg explained: "When I was writing, I kept thinking about the value of therapy and how it can be so helpful to simply verbally exorcise whatever it is that's plaguing a person. Each character in this book has a revelation that is exclusively derived from saying their problems aloud."
Despite only just being released as an audiobook, a movie adaptation is already in the works, which Eisenberg will also write and direct. Oscar winner Julianne Moore (The Kids Are All Right) and Wolfhard are attached to star, with Eisenberg's Zombieland alum, Emma Stone (La La Land), set to produce.
As an actor, producer, director, and playwright, Eisenberg is no stranger to either side of the camera. He earned an Oscar nomination for portraying Facebook's controversial founder, Mark Zuckerberg, in David Fincher's The Social Network. "It's funny," Eisenberg told Newsweek, "I'm associated with Facebook because I am in the movie about it, but I also don't have a Facebook page myself. So when I read about Facebook in the news, I am one of the few people on earth for whom the news of vulnerable personal data doesn't apply."
Eisenberg has also portrayed Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman and Justice League and revealed to Newsweek that we'll probably only see an extra 35 seconds or so of his character "doing something" in the upcoming Snyder Cut of the film. "I know Zach (Snyder) is really happy that his version of the movie will be released. I really like his creative approach and I loved working on the movie," Eisenberg said.
When asked what he hopes will resonate the most with audiences about When You Finish Saving the World, Eisenberg answered: "I think the advantage of viewing a story from the perspective of three different characters is that it reminds us, in a macro way, that no one perspective is correct. When you read (or listen) to a story told in first person, you become an unconscious defender of the protagonist. However, if you flip it and tell the story from a competing character, who also has a valid perspective, it becomes more complicated. The story is no longer about a hero and villain, but about complex individuals who are making the best choices they can."
When You Finish Saving the World is available exclusively on Audible beginning August 4, 2020.
