Duplass brothers branch out with new projects
If you’re a fan of the Duplass brothers, this is your month.
The fruitful filmmaking duo is back with two unique projects: a memoir, “Like Brothers“, about their closeknit creative partnership; and Netflix’s “Evil Genius,” a four-episode true-crime series that retraces the sadistic “pizza bomber heist” in Erie, Pennsylvania., in 2003. The mystery begins with the murder of Brian Wells, a middle-aged deliveryman who was killed by an explosive collar strapped to his neck as part of a plot involving a bank robbery and scavenger hunt.
Mark, 41, and Jay Duplass, 45, are best known for their starring roles in HBO’s “Togetherness” and Amazon’s “Transparent,” respectively, and recently produced the Netflix docuseries “Wild, Wild Country.” They chat about their latest projects.
Question: Was the “pizza bomber heist” a case that you guys followed closely on the news as it happened, or something that caught your interest later?
Mark Duplass: We knew a little bit about the story. That image of that collar bomb and that cane gun always stuck with us. And then serendipitously, our really close friend, Josh Braun, who was instrumental in bringing “Wild, Wild Country” to us, also brought us this series and put us together with the filmmakers. Ultimately, it is their show and that’s I think what we’re most proud of with both “Wild, Wild Country” and “Evil Genius.”
Q: Within the documentary, you have these odd sorts of characters like Brian, whose scavengerhunt obsession literally blows up in his face, and Marjorie, this former girl next door who becomes a hoarder and a murderer. They almost seem like they could be lifted straight from one of your stories.
MD: There’s no doubt that Jay and I have a love of outliers. The characters that populate “Evil Genius” are certainly the people that you see in a Rite Aid and wonder what’s going on with them, because they just have a look that’s like a click or two off. We’ve always been drawn to those characters, not in a way that is to make fun of them but to truly understand them and try to see what makes them tick.
Q: You embraced Netflix early on and are now making films with them. But there are some who complain about lots of great movies getting “lost” or “buried” due to a lack of promotion and the sheer volume of content that’s streaming. Do you have any thoughts or ideas for a solution?
MD: I understand that opinion, I sympathize with it and think there’s a lot of credence to that. (But) independent filmmaking was never supposed to be a world where you automatically deserve money, attention and a ton of PR for your movie. Netflix, Amazon, these people are paying good prices for small, unique movies. And they’re putting them on a platform where millions of people across 180 countries can see them essentially for free, and the eyeballs over the course of time that you’re getting on the movie are wildly more than you would get in the traditional platform. (We’re) just grateful to be here and that someone is distributing (our) movie in the first place.
Q: Switching gears to “Like Brothers,” I admired how candid you guys were — not only in expressing your immense love for each other, but also those moments when you felt jealous or wanted your own space. How did writing this affect your relationship?
MD: We are in a much better place now than when we started the book. When we started writing, we imagined that it was going to be more of a treatise on the wonderful nature of our collaboration. While we were writing, “Togetherness” got cancelled and it threw a bomb into our relationship and made us reexamine what we wanted from it. It not only improved the book, but our relationship in the long run.
Jay Duplass: Throughout the process of really examining our careers and how we got to where we got to, (we realized) our friendship was really suffering. So upon finishing the book, the biggest thing that changed was we decided to spend more time just hanging out and less much less time in the forced march of having to make things in lockstep together.
Q: You printed a number of drafts of your top 10 films in the book. Are there any movies you wish you could restore to the list?
JD: About 150,000. That happened at a moment in time and we were totally convinced that it was representative.
MD: Yeah, for me, it’s such a flowing process of what goes on there. I got strep throat and I watched “Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight” all in a row, and now I’m like, “All three of those should be on the list.”