by Mark Duplass
We didn’t want to end up in the Waiting Place, and we already had a failed feature film under our belt with Vince Del Rio. So we decided to make another short and slowly increase the scope of our work. Keep it safe and comfortable but try to grow a little bit. This next short would have (wait for it)…two actors instead of one. It would still be made for under $100 in a few hours. And it would also take place in a kitchen. We added Katie Aselton (Mark’s then-girlfriend) as an actor opposite Mark, and we got a real boom operator to get decent sound (John Robinette, the drummer from Mark’s band, Volcano, I’m Still Excited!!). We also bought a $3,000 twenty-four-frame DV camera and rented it out to pay it off.
The new short was called Scrapple (actually, we initially called it Scrabble, but a large company quickly let us know this name was spoken for…so we quickly changed the title). The film was about a couple who fights over a board game as the truth about their failing relationship comes spilling out. This also went to Sundance (in 2004) and did very well at the festival. By now our agents were beating down our doors for a good feature script to package, so we started to discuss what kind of feature we would want to make…how to draw upon the success of This Is John and Scrapple and avoid the pitfalls of Vince Del Rio.
The first one we came up with failed spectacularly at both sets of criteria. It was a surrealist black comedy thriller called Unlimited Night and Weekend Minutes. It picked up right where This Is John left off, except after the cut to black…a gunshot was heard! And John Ashford woke up on a desolate island. Uncertain whether he was in the afterlife, an alternate universe, or a dream, John explored the island for signs of life. He met a love interest, a Mr. Miyagi–esque mentor, and a villainous monster-man hybrid named Bik, and somehow remained in contact with an agoraphobic Verizon Wireless representative (via his cellphone), who ultimately helped John Ashford transcend his fears and become the hero he always hoped he would be.
We wrote a draft of this, sent it to our agent, who very politely (his voice filled with tons of regret for ever signing us) let us know that this was an “unpackageable” film and that we should try something else. This was a bummer, but we understood, and then submitted the second script we were working on, which was called, unbelievably, Boobs in the Night. Written for Paul Giamatti to star (he still doesn’t know this—hi, Paul!), it was a comedic drama set in the world of Girls Gone Wild and followed an ex–porn addict who tries to exact revenge on the people who beat him up while on spring break. This movie was also “not quite right” for our agent to package and we began to get the sense that maybe we weren’t as Hollywood as we thought.
Soon we realized that the only way we were going to keep moving forward was to keep making films ourselves. We learned from Linklater and Rodriguez in Austin that you could make a truly cheap feature on your own, so we set about trying to write something that was doable on a micro-budget. Having blown our previous savings on Vince Del Rio, we asked our parents whether they would stake us a $10,000 loan to make this feature if we could write one that was worthy. As always, they were incredibly supportive and agreed to lend us the money.
Now all we had to do was come up with the movie.
From: mark duplass
To: jay duplass
Subject:
do u ever feel like u have to act different with me when there are other people around?
From: jay duplass
To: mark duplass
Subject: RE:
kinda. do u feel like it’s just me that does it?
From: mark duplass
To: jay duplass
Subject: RE:
NO! sorry. didn’t mean it to come across as an accusation. ha. email sucks. what I meant was I feel like we both do it. it’s been bothering me lately and I don’t know why it’s happening. glad to hear that u also feel it. wanna get into it?
From: jay duplass
To: mark duplass
Subject: RE:
fo sho. u start?
From: mark duplass
To: jay duplass
Subject: RE:
for me it bothers me bc I feel most comfortable around you when it’s just the two of us. and then the energy totally shifts when someone else comes into the room. it’s like I have to change our dynamic to open up the world to fit everyone else in it or something. does that resonate at all with u?
From: jay duplass
To: mark duplass
Subject: RE:
100%. it’s like we’re in the middle of telling each other a story that u and I both know intimately, and then we have to go all the way back to the beginning and tell everyone else the “setup” to get people on board. which works for them, but leaves u and me in the weird spot of hearing part of the story we’ve already heard 1,000 times.
From: mark duplass
To: jay duplass
Subject: RE:
yes! and even worse is that we have to pretend like we’re hearing it for the first time so that we can get along with the new people in the room. it’s really kinda fucked up. and I don’t know how to get around it.
From: jay duplass
To: mark duplass
Subject: RE:
me neither. but I’m glad u r bringing this up. I did something really fucked up the other day that I wasn’t gonna admit but now feel like maybe I can. don’t get mad. but at the big “night before” party I actually saw you across the room. I was in the middle of a good conversation with someone I had just met and I was in that party mode where I wanted to meet new people (which is rare for me). And I deliberately didn’t go over and say hi to you. And I didn’t really understand why I did it and it kinda bothered me. But now I’m realizing it was probably because I was in the mode to hang with and meet new people and that’s just kinda hard to do sometimes if you and I are in our weird little internal brother mode.
From: mark duplass
To: jay duplass
Subject: RE:
ha! I love that u ducked me at a party. not mad. totally get it. that’s part and parcel with this other part of it for me…sometimes I have a hard time being with u at a party bc we are so similar in our “social voices”? like we have the same jokes and party stories and similar party energy and I feel like when we’re both doing it at the same time it feels odd. like, if you’re feeling particularly “on” I just kinda sit back and let u do it. or vice versa.
From: jay duplass
To: mark duplass
Subject: RE:
totally. side note: does anyone else have these conversations? are we weird?
From: mark duplass
To: jay duplass
Subject: RE:
I think we might be weird. But I kinda don’t care.
From: jay duplass
To: mark duplass
Subject: RE:
me neither. so, any solutions come to mind?
From: mark duplass
To: jay duplass
Subject: RE:
I guess maybe we give each other permission to duck each other every now and then at a party and to also allow ourselves to feel weird and not worry about it too much when we try to enmesh with other people?
From: jay duplass
To: mark duplass
Subject: RE:
I’m down. kinda makes us sound super unhealthy and co-dependent. which is probably true. oh well.
love u,
peepee johnson the elder
LOOKING BACK AT that time after we made our first two Sundance shorts and were writing the insane failed scripts that were Unlimited Night and Weekend Minutes and Boobs in the Night, it’s clear to us now what we were trying to do. Even though our first two short films were personal, small stories based on elements of our own lives, we still did not trust or believe in our hearts tha
t those stories were “film-worthy.” Thus the ridiculous, ostentatious plotting of the two abovementioned feature scripts. Luckily, it only took us two wasted attempts to figure this out, and we were able to refocus on what was working for us…drawing from our lives and the specific sense of humor and sadness we felt in the world. Today we call this mining the “epically small” elements of our lives. Back then, though, we were still scared and floundering…just trying to make a feature film that didn’t suck.
After our parents generously agreed to lend us the $10,000 cost for a new feature film, Jay and I realized that we had everything we needed to start production. We owned our camera outright (we had rented it out enough to pay it off). We had a good boom microphone (which we had also rented out to pay off). And we had a system for the rest of the gear that was ethically questionable (but highly functional) where we would buy work lights and extension cords from a certain big-box hardware store and return them before thirty days for our money back. So basically we were set. Good to go. Time to make a movie.
And this is where things got tricky. As artists and entrepreneurs, we often spend a lot of our time dreaming of what we could do if only we had the money, the connections, and the opportunities. This is often just a defense mechanism to cover up the fact that we may, deep down, just not be good enough. And when you are suddenly faced with the fact that you have all the practical tools you need to make your dreams come true, it can often be a crippling and humbling experience. Thus we found ourselves fully equipped to make our feature, but story inspiration was not coming.
So we did what we had learned to do when things got hard and confusing. We took walks. And an interesting thing happened. Every time we scheduled a “creative session” to work on our movie, one of us ended up preempting the creative talk because we were having some sort of relationship troubles that needed discussing. It became a joke after a while. And not just for us. Among our friends (we were all in our mid- to late twenties at the time) it seemed everyone was in some sort of relationship that was on the precipice of growing or dying. The big question everyone was facing was essentially “We’ve been dating for a while now. It seems we need to shit or get off the pot. Are we planning to go the distance? And if not, shouldn’t we just break up and not waste any more of our good years on something that isn’t going to last?”
And the more we thought about this, the more we felt that this whole area should serve as the subject matter for our new movie. It was what we knew, and we were in a unique position to be an authority on this topic. We would place a young couple at the center of our movie who was dealing with this very issue…and that would be our central story. We wanted it to have the raw, emotional truth of a John Cassavetes film but also carry our sense of goofiness and humor. We didn’t want people to have to eat their vegetables with this one. Or at least if they were vegetables, they would be roasted with lots of salt and olive oil and be super crispy and fun! (Can’t believe we just wrote that, but you get it.)
We then set about the casting. Yes. We know. We didn’t have characters or a script yet, so how could we cast? Well, our idea was to decide who would be in the film first. Find people we liked, who we knew were talented, easygoing, and fun to be with…and then write the roles specifically for those people. In this way, we could tailor the parts to avoid their weaknesses and focus on their strengths. We knew Jay would hold the camera and I would be in it, as that process had worked well in our previous two short films, and having one of the filmmakers acting inside the scenes to guide any improvisations was extremely helpful. We also knew Katie was the best actress in our orbit and that she and I had good onscreen chemistry (based on our short film Scrapple), so she was the next one pinned down. Then Jay had the idea that we should include a third person, so it wasn’t all just relationship talk. Someone inherently funny but not in an “I’m trying to be funny” way. Someone whose personal style would greatly contrast with mine and provide humor and counterpoint by the sheer difference in personality. Jay had worked with Rhett Wilkins in an acting class in Austin, and he was the perfect fit. His dreamy, relaxed energy would be a great combat zone for the more type-A alpha vibe I planned for the character of Josh.
Once we had our main cast, we set about discussing the plot. Like with the casting process, we approached this one a bit backward. We started to develop our “available materials” school of filmmaking without knowing it. By this we mean we looked at our lives and asked ourselves, “What do we own or have access to that we can use in the film for free?” We were all living in Brooklyn at the time, just a few miles from one another, so we began meeting at my apartment to discuss. A few obvious things jumped out at us:
1) DUH, MARK’S APARTMENT
This was a 750-square-foot place Mark rented along with three other guys. But they were all artists and close friends and would happily vacate whenever needed so we could shoot in there. Done.
2) KATIE’S APARTMENT
Likewise, Katie lived with our friend and fellow sympathetic artist Maggie Phillips (who would become our music supervisor on this film and almost every other project of ours in the future), and she was sensitive to the cause. Location #2, done.
3) MARK’S VAN
This ended up being a big deal. Not only was it a cool set piece, it was functional in that we could transport the entire cast and crew in the van. And it would act as the picture vehicle in the movie as well. And be our equipment truck. Three for one! Done.
4) THE TOWN OF MILBRIDGE, MAINE
Katie is from a small blue-collar fishing village in Maine of less than a thousand people. Her father, Carl, is the black-bag doctor everyone loves. We realized that trying to shoot exteriors anywhere near Manhattan would be a nightmare, but shooting in a small town where everyone loves Katie and would be actually interested in supporting a movie (instead of being annoyed by us) would be extremely helpful. Plus, we could all crash in Katie’s parents’ basement for free. So, the town of Milbridge, Maine. Done.
Once we realized we would shoot in Milbridge, we took a trip up there in the van and scouted all the cool-looking places we could shoot that were friendly to our cause. These included the local clam shack, an odd used-furniture depot next to an auto shop just outside of town, the local motel and restaurant, and Carl’s best friend Ozzie’s woodsy camp about thirty minutes away.
All of these elements went into the creative pot, and from there we started building the story. The town of Milbridge was generic-looking enough that we felt we could double it for multiple towns, so we decided on a road movie. A road movie where the central relationship would be tested and we would raise and ultimately answer the simple question “Is this couple going to get married, or will they break up?” Simple. Relevant to our generation. And something we were authorities on due to it being an epidemic among our current group of friends (including ourselves). The only thing we were missing was that fun, goofy element that would make the film different from your average eat-your-vegetables relationship drama that had been done so many times before. So we started discussing things that are just inherently funny. Or silly. And we remembered how obsessed with recliners our grandfather was when we were little. How big and impractical they were. How situated in a certain place in American history they were (at least for us). And how road movies usually have some sort of quest. A holy grail of sorts. When we started talking about this stupid recliner being the ultimate quest of the road trip, the movie started to feel very “us.”
From here, the script came relatively quickly to us and we felt good about what we had. We sent it to our agent, letting him know that we planned to make it ourselves. Oddly enough, he actually loved it and asked to “package” it for us. He felt it was something we could get a few movie stars in (not me, Katie, or Rhett) and get a few million dollars to do and then sell at Sundance (not unlike the model of Zach Braff’s Garden State, which had been so successful the previous year). He pledged his und
ying support, and for a moment we considered it. Why not let this powerful agent take our tiny movie up a few notches? Why not get paid to do it instead of borrowing money from our parents that we might never be able to pay back? It was tempting. But the horror stories of waiting years at the packaging bus stop weren’t enticing. We also believed in me, Katie, and Rhett as the leads and didn’t want to recast. And knowing that we had the tools we needed to make it our way and be able to control it creatively and practically from top to bottom was too good to pass up.
So we turned down our agent’s generous request (we could hear his jaw hit the floor on the other end of the line) and decided to make the movie on our own. We assembled a bare-bones cast and crew in addition to me, Jay, Katie, and Rhett. We added our third unofficial brother, Jay Deuby, as editor and our good friend and filmmaker John Bryant from Austin as an all-around utility player (hanging lights and holding the boom mic, among many other things). We would all work for free. We set a production date of summer 2004, which would give us enough time to edit and submit it for Sundance 2005, where we hoped to sell the film, then pay back our parents and share the profits among our six-person wrecking crew.
The film would be called The Lazy Boy. Which we soon realized was not only a stupid title, it was also a bad pun. So we decided to simplify it. Make it a touch goofier. Like the movie itself. We eventually settled on The Puffy Chair.
HI THERE. IT’S me, Mark. I’m alone. Jay is currently on set for Transparent. He has a cough. He is tired and overworked. So here is a good example of the many benefits of being in a partnership like the one we have. We do a lot of divide-and-conquering. It’s partially how we stay so prolific. Sometimes we even lie and say something is being done by both of us when really only one of us is doing it and the other is checking it to make sure it doesn’t suck. And the work rarely suffers. Anyhow, it’s just me on this one. Hope that’s cool. I’m actually kind of psyched. I have a story to tell that is personal and ultimately easier to tell on my own.