Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti Were So ‘Perfect’ in ‘The Debut’ That They Cut Shooting Time Short

There are many aspects about both Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti that stand out. There’s the breadth of work both actors have turned in over the course of their decades-long careers — plus the Oscar wins, nominations, and other accolades — but the one that most thrilled their “The Debut” writer/director Jesse Eisenberg was how quickly they could nail a take.

“Oh, my God. Paul and Julianne, I feel like I have trouble describing this to people who don’t make movies every day, because it’s so unusual. But normally, when you’re making a movie, especially the people who are the leads, they take five or six takes, meaning you do the scene five or six times before they become comfortable with their prop and now their lines. And now they realize that the light’s going to be there. And you very rarely, if never, ever find two actors who on their first takes are perfect with their performance, with props, with lines,” said the recently Oscar-nominated “A Real Pain” filmmaker while speaking to the audience at the Middleburg Film Festival, where “The Debut” served as the opening night film.

Eisenberg happened to be seated next to Moore as he was extolling on the skill of both her and her co-star (who unfortunately was out sick). “With every moment, what you’re seeing in this movie is the first and second take of the two lead performers to the point, where the first two days we had scheduled on the schedule — we were trying for eight days of musical numbers, big ensemble — we shot them in one day,” he said.

The filmmaker (and newly minted songwriter) previously spoke to IndieWire, explaining that although “The Debut” has actors of Moore and Giamatti’s caliber, it was still an independent film at the end of the day. “This is a small budget movie. [Nobody got paid oodles of money],” he said. “When you have actors like this, they’re great. When they were good, we would go to the next scene.” And the budget remains more than stable.

At Middleburg, Eisenberg again said that the reason he was comfortable making “The Debut” that way, shooting one or two takes of each scene of the humorous movie musical hybrid, “is all because they were perfect. And it’s like you see the first take and you’re like, ‘We can do it again, but we would waste film? It’s perfect.’ So it was all that.”