Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn. Do you have an insecurity that you hide from the world?

Something really personal and intimate? In his New Short Story collection, the actor

and now also author Jesse Eisenberg imagines a school bully who's researched his victims

especially so that he can tap in to those emotional weak spots.

I wonder what a bully who did his research would pick on about you.

It would be more than four pages.

Oh yeah, I mean the goodness gracious. I was not prepared for this and I don't mean in

this interview, I was not existentially prepared for this question.

He's going to dig deep though and he's going to tell us it's Bullseye.

The Bullseye is a production of MaximumFun.org.

Coming up, I'll talk to Jesse Eisenberg about writing, anxiety and getting that first

break. It's the difference really in a way like when I think about writing something,

it's the difference between the blank page and page one which is a much bigger difference

than page one and page one hundred because once you have page one it's everything, it's

a context, it's a tone, it's everything. And once you're in a movie that people see

and gives you some notice, it creates a kind of platform to be able to have a career.

Then later I'll talk to Brian Regan, one of the all-time greats of stand-up comedy about

his new special. He might be the most famous stand-up in the United States, who's famous

for his stand-up. He's never had a TV show. It might be because the meetings don't always

go that great. Sometimes when you go into these network meetings and stuff like that,

they're not really familiar with me or my comedy. They just feel like, alright, you've

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