Julianne Moore, Paul Giamatti on making the funniest scene of the year
TELLURIDE, Colo. — Standing ovations at film festivals are a rite: part appreciation, part obligation, part a need to stretch your legs after sitting for a couple of hours. But for an audience to explode and roar their approval in the middle of a movie? That rarely, if ever, happens. Except it did, midway through the Telluride Film Festival world premiere of Jesse Eisenberg‘s delightful comedy “The Debut.” The applause followed a scene between Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti that took its audience on such an exhilarating journey that there was almost no choice but to cheer in admiration, as if to say: What did we just see? Sitting in the theater, Eisenberg, producer Emma Stone and Paul Giamatti looked at each other and asked themselves the same question but for a different reason. “It was hard to process and, at the same time, just so affirming,” Eisenberg told me a couple of hours after the premiere. The next day, sitting down to grab a quick bite with Moore and Giamatti, that giddy feeling had not dissipated, …
