AUSTIN, Texas — Jesse Eisenberg has made a career playing neurotic, insecure young men who are coming of age on the East Coast in films such as "Rodger Dodger," "The Squid and the Whale" and "Adventureland."
In person, he is much the same — self-deprecating, radiating a fraught, hand-wringing energy. Wearing his trademark hooded sweatshirt, he sits with a slight slump and grasps his hands like a security blanket. He speaks with jittery speed, wired yet precise.
Sitting next to him is Woody Harrelson, a native Texan, who talks in a laid-back drawl while sporting a wily grin. He's all Southern cool and unfussy syntax, and his body language is backyard barbecue.
In the horror-comedy "Zombieland," the actors rub their antithetical traits against each other to generate a humorous odd-couple static. As two of the last survivors in a post-apocalyptic world populated by the raving, starving dead, Eisenberg cowers and uses a strict sense of logic to stay alive, while Harrelson employs an arsenal of weapons and a fusillade of take-charge, bad-boy attitude to squash attackers.
We briefly sat down with Harrelson and Eisenberg during Fantastic Fest, which featured a premiere of the movie.
Q: Are you guys zombie or horror film fans?
Jesse Eisenberg: No, no I'm not. I don't like those kinds of movies. I don't like horror movies or monster movies. I don't understand the appeal. I like movies about Jewish people in New York City complaining about their lives. But I loved this movie so much. I've seen it three times now, and I can't get over how much fun it is. I think it has to do with the fact that zombies are secondary to the movie and interesting characters and comedy are first.
Woody Harrelson: I feel the way Jesse does. Horror movies really scare me. Like seeing "28 Days Later" affected my dream life. I'm sensitive that way. It kind of gets into my brain. I try not to watch them.
Q: Vampires and zombies are enjoying a real resurgence in popularity. What sets "Zombieland" apart from the rest of all the zombie movies?
Harrelson: I think we are the "Citizen Kane" of action-comedy-zombie movies.
Eisenberg: This is one of the funniest movies I've seen in my life, and I think that's what separates it. It's mostly a comedy. I think people who like zombie movies will like it because it has zombies in it, but I don't think that's the point.
Q: In person and certainly in the film you two have a genuine chemistry, a sort of yin-yang energy but also an odd-couple friction. How did you cultivate that?
Eisenberg: The script was really great in creating two characters who are very different from each other, but in the circumstances they have to work together. To the director's credit, he let us improvise. Woody's an amazing comedic actor and that made it easy. He's hysterical.
Harrelson: Right away I felt comfortable with him. Sometimes you want to improvise with someone and it feels like playing handball against cardboard; and some people hit it back over the net twice as hard, and that's him.
Q: What does each of your characters bring to the party?
Eisenberg: My character is the brains of the operation, and he's like the muscle. And toward the end of the movie, I get a little muscle, and he gets some brains and starts following my rules.
Q: In the movie you guys get to blow off heavy artillery, smash zombies, trash a gift shop, run around an amusement park and, in a crucial plot point, eat Hostess treats. How much fun was it to shoot the film?
Eisenberg: It was great. Every day there was a new spectacle to look at. You'd go to the set and there'd be like 50 burned, overturned cars in the street. The next day you're trashing a store. It was fascinating to see what they'd cooked up each day.
Q: Fantastic Fest celebrates everything fanboy and geeky, and one of the issues horror fans bring up is the difference between "slow" zombies and "fast" zombies. Your movie features fast zombies, meaning they can run, not just stumble and shamble.
Eisenberg: It didn't occur to me until someone mentioned it yesterday. The writers were saying that the new trend was fast zombies from "28 Days Later" and that they were more threatening.
Q: Did you find them threatening, Woody?
Harrelson: Well, not personally, but I think it works for the film.
Eisenberg: I found them personally threatening, because I was being chased by some of the fastest people in the world, these stunt people. I was being chased by the guy who played (the stunt double for) Spider-Man. They don't get tired, because that's their job, and I'm used to doing movies about Jewish people in New York.
Chris Garcia writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: cgarcia(at)statesman.com.