Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti talk about the funniest scene you'll see in a movie this year

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Set us as preferred 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.

Movies The ‘Ripley’ and ‘All of Us Strangers’ star steps up in a performance of depth as Ian Charleson, the Scottish actor who took on Hamlet at the end of his life.The next day, sitting down to grab a quick bite with Moore and Giamatti, that giddy feeling had not dissipated, though, truth be told, they knew this scene was an all-timer from the moment they read it.Let’s set the stage for you in a way that won’t spoil this constantly surprising film when it arrives in theaters in December and starts piling up acclaim and awards for all concerned.

Moore plays Mona, a meek, thoroughly unseen wife and mother who impulsively decides to audition for a community theater production of a musical titled “Nosy Neighbors,” despite having no experience apart from singing in the church choir when she was 13.The director Jerry (Giamatti) cuts her tryout short, sending her home, only to relent w...