Jesse Eisenberg

Around 9pm at the New Museum on Bowery, Radar editor Maer Roshan, dressed in an extremely well-fitting John Varvatos suit, was standing next to the bar. The suit was dark, but it wasn't entirely clear what color it was in a dimly lit room on the ground floor.

Mr. Roshan's magazine was throwing a party intended to honor "the most exciting rogues, renegades, and rule-breakers of the year." Film-maker Craig Brewer, writer Shalom Auslander, and Squid and the Whale star Jesse Eisenberg, among other rogues, renegades, and rule-breakers, were in attendance.

As Mr. Roshan surveyed the room, he considered the best time of year to host a party. "Summer, I think."  read more »

Jesse Eisenberg, who recently spoke to the Observer about his Off-Broadway play Scarcity, will star as drug-dealing Hasidic Jew in the comic drama Holy Rollers.

The Hollywood Reporter tells us:

The film, one of the first to emerge from the burgeoning "Jewsploitation" genre, is ripped from true-crime headlines and follows an impressionable youth (Eisenberg) from an Orthodox Brooklyn community. He's lured into becoming an Ecstasy dealer by a friend ([Justin] Bartha) with ties to an Israeli drug cartel. Newcomer Danny Abeckaser is set to play the owner of a club where they do their decidedly unkosher business.

Set in 1999, Antonio Macia's screenplay was loosely inspired by real-life 1990s-era crimes where Hasidim were recruited as mules to smuggle drugs into the U.S. Production is slated to begin in the spring in New York.

“It’s like a messy play, nothing feels concrete,” said Jesse Eisenberg about Scarcity, an off Broadway show at the Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater stage.  read more »

Kindred Spirits    read more »

Kindred Spirits

“I do yoga and I try to get Tom to join in,” said Kathy Freston.  read more »

In this week's paper:

Let The Transom take you deep inside the first world, where Viacom king Tom Freston does a mean downward-facing dog; where any public interest in the shooting of The Devil Wears Prada evaporates when Meryl Streep isn't on set; where Jesse Eisenberg, the young star of The Squid and the Whale is not yet glib with reporters; and also where Marc Levin's new documentary gets, or requests, the heat from the Nation of Islam.

Cool Hand Judy! As Judy Miller goes free, the vultures are circling the New York Times, says Bill Keller—and we have met the vultures and they are us. The Devil Writes Nada: million-dollar hack chick lit-er Lauren Weisberger is the luckiest gal alive. Hysterics—never the Hysterics— are the teenage prep school sophisti-kid rock band of Brooklyn. The Transom would like to adopt them all.

Jason Binn bought a really expensive apartment. Relatedly: The Transom figures that a two-million-dollar apartment is the kind of thing that really brings solace when one is wheezing on one's deathbed.  read more »

Finally, we are not unconvinced that sending George Gurley to couples therapy and publishing the transcripts is an experiment that has gone truly, horribly wrong. Seriously. The Transom is reminded of the time it totalled a Jeep Cherokee in Denver; the hood mashing ever closer, the pressure of the steering wheel in the sternum... but this car crash may be, The Transom fears, fatal.

A venture-capital firm managed by former American Express chief executive James D.  read more »