Mark and Jay Duplass have been making movies together for almost their whole lives. More mainstream viewers may know Mark from The League but you film nerds know that these brother's are machines, turning out films that are funny, smart, devastating and unique. They have no intention of ever slowing down.
I talked with Mark and Jay about their latest triumph The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, Jeff, Who Lives At Home, and future projects. It was truly a pleasure to talk to them, as you wil tell, because we all nerd out pretty hard over movies (isn't that what FilmOlogy is all about?)
First of all, I really loved the film Do-Deca. I thought it was just really, really fresh and exactly what we’ve come to expect from a Duplass brothers movie. When did you come up with the concept for this movie?
Jay Duplass: We actually grew up down the street from two brothers who created a do-deca pentathlon and so the concept is actually totally based in reality, as ridiculous as that might sound. Mark and I have always been obsessed with those two guys and the fact that they actually did this and the whole concept of them being very born close in age, constantly competing and creating a special event. Half of it is to commemorate the greatness of the competition between them and the other half is to beat the crap out of each other under sporting purposes. It wasn’t really until four or five years ago when we kind of came up with this idea that they would actually reignite the games twenty years later. It felt like we had a movie there.
Did you let those guys know? Did you get into contact with them that you were, you know, stealing their idea?
Mark Duplass (laughs): Absolutely. We actually had them come out to Los Angeles and we filmed them their own do-deca pentathlon redux, which will be included as a very special feature on the DVD when it comes out.
Excellent! So I’m sure that they were really thrilled with the movie.
MD: They were! They really liked it. The characters weren’t really based on those guys, but it was definitely fun for them to watch and see little bits and pieces of themselves.
The biggest crux of the movie is brotherly competition. You guys work together all the time—can you relate to elements of that or is it more fluid when you two decide to go at a project together?
JD: It’s definitely fluid when we decide to go at a project together. We’ve been collaborating since we were three and six. In general, we certainly still do compete in sports, but when it comes to movies, we join forces against a greater evil, which is the movie itself. Because once you start one, it kind of turns into this monster that’s threatening to destroy you. We find it easy to not fight because if you spend half a second fighting, the monster will hit you over the side of the head and you’ll never recover.
That sounds great, I guess?
JD: It’s hard. It’s really hard without someone there who’s got your back.
Absolutely. Do you switch off on the directing or writing or just go at it together and usually have the same idea?
MD: We usually share the same ideas and if there’s a disagreement, the general principle is that in five minutes, we see which one of us is more passionate and the more passionate usually wins out.
You can see that there’s a lot of passion in each story that you’re presenting. You guys are attributed to creating “mumblecore”, which I think is a really impressive genre. How do you feel about this new world that you guys have created?
JD: Well, it’s a little weird for us because a lot of people are under the impression that two filmmakers got together to create mumblecore. Which is reasonable because the most notable, previous film movement Dogma was exactly that. People united together under literally a set of commandments on how to make a certain type of film. I don’t think any of the filmmakers associated with mumblecore came up with any ideas. It really was a confluence of the DVX100 camera coming out around 2004; you could shoot video cheaply and it would look pretty good. Mark and I actually feel that we are doing things very differently from mumblecore. For instance, none of our actors mumble. They seem to be extremely driven and passionate, almost to a ludicrous extent about what it is that they want and Mark and I are really glad about that. We want our movies to reach as many people as possible. We want to invite as many people into our films and I think that for that reason, calling anything exclusive is exclusionary. People get the impression, “Oh I don’t even understand that, so that movie must not be for me” and obviously Mark and I are making popular movies. We’re just doing them in our own little caveman way, making movies about the things that he and I have always been obsessed with.
What I like about you guys’ films together is that the topics range from everything but that the truth of it is sincere reactions between human beings. Do you guys start off with this idea about a fission between one or two people and then kind of go from there?
JD: I think it’s not an intellectual to make it about that. We usually start with a main character that we feel would be interesting to watch for 90 minutes—or, in our case, 80-some odd minutes. We love inter-personal dynamics and passive-aggressive behavior that is steeped in love and hatred and all those wonderful things. To us, they’re dramatic and funny and I think that’s the key to what we feel like we have to offer: the ability to see the comedic and dramatic in most situations. We try to find all-out bliss when we’re making movies and do the things that we life. If we put enough love into it, hopefully it can translate to the audience.
I think it definitely does translate because you’re laughing, but you also feel like crying sometimes. Were you guys planning on releasing The Do-Deca in accordance with the Olympics this year?
MD: No, that was a lucky byproduct. We had a special case with this film where we shot the movie in 2008 right before the 2008 Olympics and we got lucky enough to get green lit for our first studio movie Cyrus right after we finished shooting. Our main crew members shifted over to the first movie we got paid to make and everybody was excited about it. We got back-to-back green lit for Jeff, Who Lives at Home which was also exciting. Before we knew it, we were editing Jeff, Who Lives at Home and it had been three years since we shot Do-Deca so we started getting a little bit homesick for the movie. As soon as we finished editing Jeff, we shifted right back to Do-Deca and it just so happens that we get to release it right before the Olympics, which is pretty appropriate.
You mentioned that you were “homesick” for this movie; do you find that a lot on projects, that you guys start to get a little sidetracked with other things? Do you always find you want to go back to old projects or just start fresh?
JD: This is the first time that’s really happened to us. We’re normally pretty microcosmic in our approach to filmmaking where if we like something, we’re like, “Gotta go make it! Gotta go make it!” The only other film that had a long gestation was Jeff, Who Lives at Home which is the last movie we directed. That was something we wrote a while ago, but we didn’t feel like we had either the skill set or even the popularity that was needed to make the movie until much later.
I’ve read some other interviews that you guys have done and you talk a little bit about the business side of it, like the finances. You mentioned Jeff, Who Lives at Home and Cyrus were the first movies you were getting paid to do. Do you find that financing right now for independent features is more difficult or easier? Do you guys do Kickstarter? How do you guys bring your films up?
JD: We have individually paid for all our films. It started with The Puffy Chair in 2005. We shot it in 2004 and it was just a $15,000 movie. We pooled our resources and money and our parents helped us, but the rest of the films were funded. We make our independent, small stuff so cheaply that we’re able to fund it with our own money that we make writing movies in Hollywood. We’ve really been lucky to not have to spend all that time and energy taking out independent financing because that’s a whole other game and situation. We don’t really know the scope of that and honestly our whole MO when we shoot an independent film is, “We’re going to make this.” We don’t start with a budget, we start with an idea and start with “what do we have to pay for” and that ends up being our budget. We don’t have departments; it’s just fifteen incredible people together—that includes our best, most talented actors—and we just make it in a communal sort of way. We attribute position afterwards. It’s really just an “available materials by any means necessary” mode that we go into.
That sounds incredible—and fun, actually! That’s guerrilla filmmaking in the sense of just doing it with your friends.
JD: Definitely a way to stave off the frustration of waiting around to get your movies made. It’s always a little difficult and you get your hands dirty, but at least you won’t feel like you’re waiting forever to make a movie.
Do you guys feel like you’re ever going to film, like actual celluloid? Is that going to be next on your to-do list?
MD: Never say never. That’s something we talk about just because of the pure practicality of how we shoot. Digital is very good for us because of the long run times while we’re improvising, not having to worry about a 10-minute film mag running our on us. Secondarily, it actually makes a big difference because our cameras are so close to the actor’s faces. The microphone’s right there, so we get much better sound out of our sounds and a much more intimate sound. There’s always a nice digital hum that we can remove in post. For a lot of creative reasons, digital just works for us.
That’s becoming the new dividing line in the film world. Every filmmaker I’ve talked to recently says that it’s an individual decision and that there are pros and cons to both.
MD: Absolutely. We’re not against it by any means, it’s just doesn’t necessarily work for us right now.
You guys both have a lot of projects going coming in the next few weeks (Safety Not Guaranteed, Your Sister’s Sister, the DVD release of Jeff) . Are you hoping that it pushes Do-Deca up a little higher for distributing?
MD: There’s a bunch of movies Jay and I have in the rounds right now. It sounds kind of crazy, but as of this weekend we have fife movies in some form of release. There’s Your Sister’s Sister, which I produced and acted in; there’s Safety Not Guaranteed, which I produced and acted in as well; there’s People Like Us, which I play a role in; there’s Jeff, Who Lives at Home and now there’s Do-Deca Pentathlon releasing tomorrow on VOD. There’s a confluence of all these movies hopefully feeding off of each other. I really like The Do-Deca Pentathalon, which is only going to be released in a number of theaters. People are always asking, “Oh, I want to see your movies, but it’s not playing near me”, so for the first time we’ve decided to put this movie on VOD even before it hits theaters so that everyone has a chance to see it.
I think VOD is the wave of the future in a lot of ways and I’m really happy to see filmmakers make that available to the public. You guys have five films working right now and last year was a huge year for you guys as well. You have kids, The League…are you ever going to get a vacation?
JD: Mark and I find ways, like in The Do-Deca Pentathlon, to turn a vacation into a working vacation, but honestly we’re sort of locked and loaded on our careers and our families wright now. The main that that we’ve given up is that we don’t socialize ever anymore. Unless people are coming over and hanging out with us and our kids, you’ve gotta have it on lockdown. We both feel super lucky to be in this position to make movies right now and we’re both hungry people who have a lot of stories to tell. We don’t want to take it for granted.
What excites you about making films right now and what do you think the future holds for not just you, but for people who want to make films like you?
MD: We try to just stay focused on the positive side of what the film business is offering. There’s a lot of talk about how it’s hard to get independent films financed and a lot of these mid-range movies are not getting made. We agree with that, but the very, very bottom end has opened up. You can now make a really good-looking movie if you’re resourceful for $10,000 and I think it’s very empowering not just for us, but for young filmmakers who don’t have a name and who want to crack into the business. Nothing’s stopping you from picking up a camera and making a great movie. Sure there will be an influx of really terrible films, but that also means that some 15 year-old kid in a suburb of north Cleveland could pick up his dad’s video camera and make something incredible. That is super exciting.
What do you guys have next on the burner? Do you have projects in script form? Are you going into preproduction on anything?
MD: We’re doing a lot of writing. We’re doing a reboot of that movie Same Time Next Year for Scott Rudin, and we’re adapting this novel Mule for Todd Phllips’ company.
Those are some interesting projects coming up. Are you guys gonna try to do something a little more insular in the future when you can or is that pretty much it?
JD: We have a bunch of different types of objectives. Mark and I are still very interested in the small model that we kind of created with The Puffy Chair and we’re also talking with studios about much bigger things to do. For us, it really comes down to the story and the doors will open for whichever story we’re excited about. We’re very careful about what kind of stories we tell at which level, but we’re open to all models and many in between. We’re kind of juggling a lot in the air right now and we’ll see what’s going to stick.
I have all the faith that many things will stick for you guys.
JD/MD: Thank you.
What are you guys’ top three Ologies?
MD: Mine are: the smell of my three month old son’s head, gardening, and documentary films on Netflix Instantview.
I agree with all of those three. I mean, I’ve never smelled your son’s head but I’m sure he smells awesome.
MD: It’s fantastic. It’s a life-reaffirming smell.
JD: Mine are perfecting the things I already love: perfecting the carrot smoothie, finding the perfect temperature in a hot tub, and trying to—this sounds really silly—trying to pack as much as I can into a 20-minute workout in terms of sweating and making it work. Because when you’re a workaholic and a dad like we are, you don’t have as much time as you would like.
I have problems doing that and I don’t have kids and not making movies.
JD: We’re trying.
You can see The Do-Deca-Pentathlon on VOD right now, Safety Not Guarenteed and Your Sister's Sister are in select theaters. You should probably go see them all.
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