Room service:
What really goes on behind doors in Room 104.
Film-making duo Mark and Jay Duplass are checking into a cheap motel room for their latest TV series. The brothers, the brains behind Togetherness, The Puffy Chair
and Jeff Who Lives At Home, describe the 12-part offering, screening on SoHo, as “the Russian roulette of television”.
That’s because what you see will vary from week to week for the HBO-made series.
All 12 episodes have a different story and different characters with genres ranging from comedy, to horror to drama with one story without dialogue and told entirely through modern dance.
In addition, most of the episodes feature unknown actors, all are shot within the confines of a single room and all are set to the same music, although it can be played on different instruments.
“It’s great for us to be able to get weird and have HBO give us the money to do it,” says Mark.
The series follows hard on the heels of the cancelled Togetherness with the brothers pitching their latest idea as, “We have this new show and we can make it really cheaply. But it is going to be wilder and a little bit more of a risk,” says Mark.
“And to their credit they (HBO) said, ‘You know what, we’ve got to figure out what our next Game
Of Thrones is going to be. You go ahead and just make your weird show, as long as you make it cheap’. And that’s what we did.”
For the New Orleans-born pair, it is a form of budget film-making
that harks back to their first movie, a $10,000 production called The
Puffy Chair in which Mark played a struggling musician who travels from New York to Atlanta to claim a vintage recliner he won in an e-Bay auction.
“Quite frankly, I think we might have had too much money to make
Togetherness. Getting back to our roots and just making a show with the minimum that is needed to do it kind of inspired us all,” says Mark.
The brothers have been collaborating on film projects since they were boys playing with their father’s VHS camera.
Jay says that while such a close working partnership might put a stress on their personal relationship, it is still indispensable from an artistic point of view.
“It’s hard to make movies. It’s hard to make TV. And being able to share that experience with somebody who shares your sense of humour and your sensibility and that you communicate with somewhat telepathically ... I think that’s why you see a lot of sibling teams,” says Jay.
The idea for Room 104 first surfaced more than a decade ago, inspired by their frequent travels together, but they admit at that stage they didn’t have the clout to get the series off the ground.
“One thing that’s cool about motel rooms is anybody is the lead character in a story. Motels are a small chance to reinvent yourself,” says Mark. “I drop my towels on the floor when I’m in motels. And then five minutes later, I’m like, ‘A housekeeper has to pick this up. What the **** are you doing?’ And then I pick it up and I realise I was being someone else there for that second. All so dramatic.” But if the time wasn’t right for such a series 10 years ago, Mark believes the success of shows such as Black Mirror, a British series consisting of standalone, sharp, satirical tales, has helped change the television landscape.
“I think the major thing playing in our favour is they (HBO) trust us as creators,” says Mark.
“They are a huge network chasing their next big show. They don’t have the time to curate heavily all their small shows.
“I think Room 104 is a lottery ticket for HBO. It’s cheap. Scratch it off and see what happens.”
“One thing that’s cool about motel rooms is anybody is the lead character in a story.” – Mark Duplass