LiveWorld Transcripts

Boxtop presents

Actor Chris Eigeman
"Mr. Jealousy"

June 03, 1998

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Peter: What is the Paul Newman Award, could you tell us about it?

Chris Eigeman: Wow Peter, where did you find that? Paul Newman went to my college, and so every year one student was given an award for acting. I won it my senior year I won it for a play called Hello and Goodbye - by Athol Fugard. I don't know that I was all that good, but I had done so many plays there I think they felt obliged.

Marrrry: Have you thought about doing anything else - like directing or producing?

Chris Eigeman: Noah Baumbach and I wrote a sitcom for NBC, I guess two years ago which they bought but never made. I would like to try my hand at writing again. I don't want to start producing. Producing seems to be a job filled with headaches and annoying detail, both of which I try to avoid.

Jaxey: What did you do to prepare for your 'Disco' movie? Did you research that time period? And did you find out anything you didn't know?

Chris Eigeman: We looked at books and books of pictures of the late '70s and early '80s of Studio 54 and other NYC clubs. The surprise was that most of the people in the Discos looked pretty normal, not everybody was covered in glitter or naked or dressed as an Elizabethan Courtesan. So I guess that the surprise was how many people were actually wearing suits in the Disco

Parkbench: Chris are you old enough to remember disco? How did it feel with all the lights and the glitter and the polyester? Was it fun!?

Chris Eigeman: I am probably old enough to have experienced Disco, but because I grew up in Denver there wasn't a lot of opportunity Denver only had two Discos - one of them was a Steak Restaurant during the day and I guess at night they cleared the tables and dropped the Disco Ball. I remember as a kid in the mid '70s I wondered about this place, because my parents would go to this place, leaving me with miserable babysitters. I remember it was called the London Broil, which I thought was a great name for a Steak House and a Disco. By the time I got to New York, there still were clubs and I probably went to one or two of them. I hate the "velvet rope" so much that I rarely went.

Mysterygirl: Chris, tell us about your new movie, Mr. Jealousy?

Chris Eigeman: Mr. Jealousy is a movie with Anabella Sciorra and Eric Stoltz that was written and directed by Noah Baumbach, and I play Anabella's ex-boyfriend who's written a very popular bestseller - a bestseller that could possibly be about Anabella and Eric, who plays Anabella's current boyfriend, and he becomes obsessively jealous with me to the extent that he joins my group therapy under a different name to find out more about me. WOW confusing! Sounds more confusing than it is.

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