EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH JAY DUPLASS
This is an interview with Jay Duplass of the Duplass Brothers who recently released the movie “Baghead.”
CFN: Who came up with the term “mumblecore” and why doesn’t it involve actual mumbling?
JD: The lore is that Bujalski’s sound guy was annoyed with all the mumbling going on in “Mutual Appreciation.” We’re not sure if that’s true or not. We’re also not sure why we’re considered one of the fathers of the movement, because as you suggested, none of our characters mumble really.
CFN: Has anyone ever called you guys the poor man’s Cohen Brothers? Can we be the first?
JD: You can definitely be the first. You could even call us the “Small Penis Man’s Cohen Brothers.” As long as you compare us and put us in the same universe as them, we’re game.
CFN: Any interest in bigger budget movies?
JD: Yes. Because we would like to be paid big budgets. But, that being said, we have turned a lot of ‘em down because we want to make sure we keep making good movies, and a lot of the trappings of big budget stuff is a little to big for our britches right now… i.e., it’d be hard for us to navigate that stuff and still come out with what we think is a good movie. So, we’re taking our time, and developing slowly within the studio system, and continuing to make our own little movies along the way.
CFN: Will you guys be making any more short films?
JD: Probably not. But we’d never say never. It’s a great form and great fun. To be honest, you can just do so much more with a feature though. And, you can also sell a feature, which is a plus not to be ignored. In the end, it comes down to the fact that we can dig deeper and get more subtle with feature films when it comes to our characters, and that’s what we love to do most.
CFN: As brothers, if you guys have disagreements during the making of a film, do you resolve them with a fencing match or fist-a-cuffs? Or do you have to call your parents to break it up?
JD: We have our parents come out to set and separate us with an overly harsh punishment, so that we can redirect our anger towards them, join forces, and fight the bigger enemies of the world… like uncooperative plotlines and weather.
CFN: So, you’ve said that the crew makes their own food for everyone. Whose cooking do you like best?
JD: Mark’s wife Katie is unquestionably the best in the kitchen, but Mark is the best at the BBQ. Jay is the best at worrying about the next scene during mealtime.
CFN: What do you guys find to be the hardest part of this kind of film making? You know, other than the money part?
JD: The hardest part is not knowing whether your movie is going to work or not, because we leave so much open on set. Really, every movie is always teetering on the edge of not working, but if you take the more traditional approach using super tight scripts and locked down sets, it’s a more mechanical and joblike process. Not that that process yields more successful results in our opinion, but with our process, we’re painfully aware every moment that our movie is riding a fine line between something potentially exciting and something that might not work at all.
CFN: What’s been your favorite summer movie so far, other than yours?
JD: Iron Man. We could watch a twenty-minute real-time scene of Robert Downey Jr. eating Cheerios and be riveted the whole time. The guy is just so compelling to watch.
CFN: Which filmmaker do you admire the most and why?
JD: Any documentary filmmaker. Anyone who can wait and wait, and be at the mercy of the gods as to whether or not the thing will actually be a movie is totally admirable. Docs are sort of the purest thing one can do film-wise. We’d probably be doing it if each one didn’t take 4 or more years and pay nothing.
CFN: What made you want to be filmmakers?
JD: The advent of Cable to our New Orleans suburban neighborhood in 1983. There was no turning back.
CFN: What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen?
JD: A movie we made in our early twenties that no one else will ever see.
CFN: How did you guys get into the studio system from Austin, Texas? You did it without one lunch on Melrose, didn’t you?
JD: A $3 movie called “This is John” we made in our South Austin apartment in twenty minutes about a guy trying to perfect the personal greeting of his answering machine. That got us into Sundance 2003, but then we left Austin for New York after realizing 1/2 of sundance filmmakers live in Brooklyn. So we thought we had to move there. Then we realized that the film industry is in LA, so we live there now. We’re whores. We’d move to East Lansing Michigan if someone told us that’s where we needed to be to get paid to make movies. Not that we’ve ever been to East Lansing, but people tend to complain about it.
CFN: What do you guys do to relax?
JD: We don’t relax – we try to but we fail miserably… legs twitch, deep breaths are taken, and minds wander towards thoughts of stories and plots and characters. The only thing that works is family vacations with our parents and we do that about once a year.
CFN: How much of your scripts are written or beated out and how much is completely improvised?
JD: We actually write full-on scripts. But once we get on set, we improvise. The structures remain, as do the intentions of the characters. But the way things go down, the way characters approach getting what they want, changes a lot on set.
CFN: You said the idea for Baghead came from a crew member. Which crew member and did he get promoted?
JD: This will always remain a secret, and no they did not get promoted. Mainly because there is no more money to be made than the base level everyone gets paid and there are no positions on top of other positions really. We’re a communist state basically.
CFN: What’s next for you guys?
JD: Babies. Mark’s got one. Jay’s got one on the way in a few weeks. A good guess for future content would be movies about people dealing with babies.
Read Neil’s Review of Baghead!
