Zoë Eisenberg is a screenwriter, director and novelist. But she has been paid to put words together since high school.
“I've always been writing,” she told Aloha State Daily. “My mother thought I was good at it in high school and I was a brat, and so the only way that she could get me to write was to pay me. There was a period of time where that's how I would get my allowance.”
This week, Eisenberg’s film “Chaperone” will head to big screens on Hawaiʻi Island, Oʻahu and Maui. It was named the best breakout feature for the Slamdance Film Festival in 2024.
With music by Taimane and an entirely American Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pasifika cast, the movie is headed to theaters across the islands Sept. 11 through Sept. 28. In the next few weeks, the movie will screen at Palace Theater on Hawaiʻi Island starting Thursday, Sept. 11, Consolidated Theatres on Oʻahu starting Friday, Sept. 12, and ProArts Playhouse on Maui starting Saturday, Sept. 13, among other locations. It will be available digitally nationwide through FilmHub starting Friday, Oct. 3.
“It's so exciting because we premiered this film with festivals in January 2024, so quite some time ago,” Eisenberg said. “Since then, we've played in 22 different cities and my team and the cast and I have gotten to go to all these different places, but we've only had three screenings in Hawaiʻi, and they were all with film festivals. It's exciting to now have it be a broader release because everyone who worked on this film is from here, and the cast is all tied to Hawaiʻi. It just feels like a homecoming.”
The age-gap story focuses on Misha, a 29-year-old who explores a relationship with a teenager who mistakes her for a high school student.
“When I first started writing it, that wasn't even a genre,” Eisenberg said. “But now, all of a sudden we're seeing ʻMay December,’ we're seeing ʻBabygirl,’ even ʻLicorice Pizza.’ We're seeing all of these age-gap films with an older woman and a younger man, which is exciting because it's clearly in the zeitgeist. But I started writing this in 2018 when I was just about to turn 30, and a high school kid mistook me for a teenager and asked me out. And I was like: ʻI'm old. I'm married. This is hilariously awkward.’”
Eisenberg declined the advances and then became “creatively fixated” on what kind of woman would think this is a good idea, she said. The movie is set in Hilo, where conversations are punctuated by a chorus of coqui frogs and high school kids enjoy a swim near a waterfall after a hike.
Eisenberg lives about an hour outside of Hilo and runs a small business located in town.
“I've basically been here since I graduated college, so my entire life as an adult has been here,” she said. “It doesn't get to play itself on screen very often in larger films.”
When she is not writing, Eisenberg is also the cofounder and creative director of Aerial Arts Hawai’i, which performs at the Palace Theater, among other locations. Palace Theater is where the main character, Misha, works at the start of the movie.
In real life, Eisenberg has been producing shows at Palace Theater since 2018. Her husband, Phillips Payson, is now the Palace Theater’s executive director. “Chaperone” features some aerial performances in the theater as part of the movie.
It took Eisenberg about seven months to write the script, she said. Previously a magazine editor, she worked East Coast hours. Eisenberg would wake at 4:30 a.m. and work until the office closed and then switch to her screenwriting or fiction work.
“It's a busy day, for sure,” she said. “I'm lucky enough now — I am about five years into working as a full-time creative, so I feel really grateful for that, so I don't wake up so early anymore.”
Eisenberg is also a novelist. Last year, her debut novel “Significant Others,” was published by HarperCollins within three weeks of “Chaperone.”
“That book is the friendship breakup,” Eisenberg said. “It's between two women who decide they want to have a baby together. They are best friends. They've been best friends since college, and it doesn't go the way that they think it will. But I see a lot of overlap between ʻChaperone’ and ‘Significant Others,’ and pretty much everything I write in that I'm constantly being told the women in the stories are unlikable. But that's a very problematic statement, in my opinion, to be making about women who make self-destructive choices because we see men do this all the time in film and in TV, and it's very normal to us.”
As part of the theatrical run for “Chaperone,” Eisenberg and members of the cast will attend the screening at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 11, at Palace Theater in Hilo and host a discussion. On Friday, Sept. 12, she will also join cast and crew for the first showing at Consolidated Theatres at Ward. That evening will include a 15-minute set from Taimane, introductory comments from the Hawaiʻi Film Alliance and a post screening Q+A with cast and crew. Get tickets.
Katie Helland can be reached at katie@alohastatedaily.com.
