Movies

In Duplass brothers' hands, 'indie' takes on new meaning

By Chris Garcia
AMERICAN-STATESMAN FILM WRITER
Tuesday, October 10, 2006

The puffy chair in "The Puffy Chair," the feature film debut by one-time Austinites Jay and Mark Duplass, is a ratty thing, its fuzzy burgundy upholstery soiled, its matted seat bearing the permanent smoosh mark of one big, unbudging derriere.

The Duplass brothers, New Orleans natives who studied film at the University of Texas in the 1990s, are themselves sitting in chairs far nicer than their film's moldered recliner. These days, they have ritzy perches in an office on the Universal lot in Hollywood. They are being offered — and are turning down — $50 million movies to direct, electing instead to write their own screenplay, which Universal is financing for the brothers to direct. They are getting paid "every step of the way," their office is in a classic showbiz bungalow and they are very excited.

"A bungalow, dude!" says Jay Duplass, 33. "We just say the word 'bungalow' and laugh."

Mark Duplass, 29, adds, "We wake up and go, Don't they know who they've hired?"

Maybe they don't know who they've hired, but that's how post-indie revolution Hollywood operates. Young filmmakers produce an attention-grabbing music video or short film or rough-hewn feature, win festival awards, get an agent, then watch hefty offers pour in. Studios jostle to snatch the next big thing.

But the Duplass brothers, well-known and well-liked in the Austin film scene they left a few years ago, are doing it with a headstrong independent brio. They're sick of the endless and fruitless meetings with studio honchos, who generally hand them dumb ideas needing a lot of work.

"They're usually movies that spend all the money on big stars and have a little bit left over, so they want young directors," Mark Duplass says during a conference call with Jay Duplass from Los Angeles.

"The premise," Jay Duplass adds, "is always, 'We have this script, we have this money and we have this star. The movie is being made in three months, and we know the script is not as good as it can be. So if you guys want to rewrite it and direct it, you can have it.' "

This is not how the Duplass brothers work. They share a distinctly personal vision that's proud of its jagged hems and isn't looking for a slick Hollywood polish.

"It's not like, 'Oh, we only want to do art,' " Mark Duplass explains. "Everybody loves us right now because we're the guys who made a great movie for $10,000. If you go out and make a bad movie in Hollywood for $50 million, everybody hates you."

"You eventually know why you're here doing what you're doing," Jay Duplass says. "This is not a money game. If we were in it to make money, we'd be investment bankers."

Jay Duplass lived in Austin for 13 years, Mark Duplass for five years. They moved separately to New York, then settled last year in Los Angeles clutching impressive resumés.

The brothers, who work fast and cheap, have gone to some 40 festivals with their short films, which star Mark Duplass, are directed by Jay Duplass and written and produced by both of them. After the homemade short "This is John" played the Sundance Film Festival in 2003, they landed a deal with the fabled William Morris Agency. They returned to Sundance in 2004 with "Scrabble," which was "shot in a kitchen for a few dollars." Last year, their most ambitious short, "The Intervention," won two awards, including the Silver Bear, at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Last year also brought "The Puffy Chair" to Sundance, where it wowed audiences with its sly indie charms, unpredictable situational comedy and honest, even harsh, examination of a young couple's relationship. The movie also won an Audience Award at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Critics raved, "The Puffy Chair" earned two nominations at this year's Independent Spirit Awards and was acquired by Roadside Attractions and Netflix for theatrical distribution. "The Puffy Chair" opened Friday at the Arbor and Alamo South.

Of course, the vintage La-Z-Boy chair is not the star of the Duplasses' unflinching romantic dramedy. It functions instead as a classic MacGuffin, an outwardly immaterial object that propels the characters into the narrative's action. For his father's birthday, a young guy (Mark Duplass) buys a chair like the one his family had when he was growing up, taking him, his girlfriend (Kathryn Aselton, Mark Duplass's fiancée) and his brother (Rhett Wilkins) on a road trip to retrieve the chair.

Like the romantic relationship that is the story's real journey, the chair seems like a great idea and even looks good in photos. But once the guy meets the chair up close, its flaws are insurmountable. Though the chair might be both MacGuffin and metaphor, the brothers also see it as just a goofy prop.

"If you're making a relationship movie, watch out for pretentiousness," Mark Duplass says. "So we needed something big and absurd to bring out the comedy and the essence of what we're all about. These are very serious problems that plague this couple, but if you look at it the right way, it's really hilarious, too."

The Duplasses' movies are shot like documentaries, at real locations (such as their apartments), with friends and almost no crew or cash. The privations have helped forged their aesthetic, which is streamlined and urgent and real, lurching toward chaos before leaning back into shaky order, not unlike the early work of John Cassavetes, Richard Linklater or Kevin Smith.

Jay Duplass directs and operates the camera — digital video that shoots 24 frames a second — while the performers are allowed to spin and expand their dialogue through improvisation. There is no blocking and no rehearsals.

"We basically shoot the rehearsal," Mark Duplass says. "The first and second takes tend to give us what we need."

They work together not unlike other brother filmmaker duos, such as the Hughes, Maysles, Coen, Polish, Warchowski, Dardenne and Austin's Zellner brothers, David and Nathan. Mark and Jay Duplass brainstorm stories, then Mark Duplass writes the script. They edited "The Puffy Chair" with Jay Deuby, on whom they heap ample credit. The brothers get along fine, they say, despite fears of one of them running off with more success than the other.

It's the doing and making that the Duplass brothers live for, a driven philosophy that put them and "The Puffy Chair" right where they wanted. Quit dawdling. Get busy. Make your movie any way you must. It's advice they still heed, even in the cushy bungalow of a major motion picture studio in sunny Hollywood.

Says Jay Duplass, "If we have to make our movie with our own money and shoot it on digital video, we're going to do it, no matter if we have backing."

That's a very independent — a very Austin — attitude in such a notoriously myopic business environment. It's a declaration of freedom that promises the Duplass brothers will keep making movies until, if ever, they feel like stopping.

cgarcia@statesman.com; 445-3649