SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/478870
2 6 S X S W o r l d | F I L M / I A M A R C H 2 0 1 5 | S X S W. C O M eeting Jay and Mark Duplass at the production offices of their HBO hit Togetherness on the legendary Sunset Bronson lot in Holly wood, the offices are both bustling and quiet; a writer's meeting takes place in a crowded conference room, but the rest of the office doesn't even have art on the walls. Considering what the writing-producing-directing duo have going on, it is understandable that there hasn't quite been the time to put up decor: Mark Duplass, the more recognizable face of the two brothers, is giving a keynote address at SXSW Film 2015; they're behind four separate films at SXSW in 2015 as executive producers; finally, Jay is not only producing but also playing the lead in Manson Family Vacation, part of his shift to acting after years behind the camera. As Jay explains, "I never did it before, and friends have just started putting me in things. I'm very, very picky about it, but when it's great stuff like Transparent, I love it. It took me by surprise to be 40 years old and finding something you love that you'd never done before, because the nature of what we do is me filming everything. For Manson Family Vacation, which I'm in, (J. Davis,) one of my best friends, is the writer-director; he is an editor, he is a great fan of films, he's never made anything in his entire life, and he was telling me this story: He was abandoned by his father, and his grandparents raised him, and they had a book about Charles Manson in the house; he was reading when he was a child, and his grandfather took the book away from him and put it on the highest shelf and said 'Don't ever read that again.' " Mark cuts in with a laugh: "Which always works ..." " ... But it tells me the story of how he came to be obsessed with Charles Manson, and the idea and the concept of what it would mean to create your own family, and that family ties don't mean that much. It occurred to me that this movie is his life story ..." Mark, interjecting again, sums up their approach to producing: "... and then what we do is we say, 'If you can find a way to tell the story in two apartments, three streets, four cars and one house, you got a movie.' " It is a low-overhead, high-passion approach to moviemaking that has defined the Duplass' films, even as their own budgets and expo- sure go up. And Mark, for one, has no problem being honest about the brothers' path to success, especially when it confounds even him: "We're fairly foolish about the way we've made our careers. It's one way of doing things. It's all we know. And we actually kind of enjoy proselytizing about our path, because we feel our path to be an empowering one. " But an office on a lot doesn't mean an end to economizing, finding freedom in limitations and worrying about pizza as an important line-item in the budget; as Mark explains, "We still feel in it, and maybe that makes us just whiny and unappreciative of all the won- derful things that have come to our life. We don't feel divorced from struggle and strife now that we have a show on HBO." Jay interjects: "It's more struggle and strife, because now the whole world is looking to you to create something really special and magical, and as you know, making a piece of art that is very special and magical and unique and different from all other pieces of art is wildly rare." Mark agrees: "You're lucky if you do it once." If there is one reason for Mark Duplass to be excited about giving a keynote address, it is the fact that he can point to a similar talk from a filmmaker that set him on the path that he and his brother are walking even now: "Jay and I remember seeing Richard Linklater talk about making Slacker in 1991, and seeing him in a torn pair of blue jeans and a t-shirt and thinking 'He's a normal guy! He's just like me, and I feel As Time and the Duplass Brothers Move Forward, Some Things Remain The Same ... by JameS rocchi M M I C H A E L L E W I S M I C H A E L L E W I S J ay ( L) a n d M a rk D u p la s s