The Duplass Brothers haven't made many movies the average movie-goer has probably heard of. The Puffy Chair and Baghead made an impression on the indie scene and established the brothers' passion for odd characters and situations fixated in, as they call it, "epically small" situations. That level of semi-obscurity may be a thing of the past once Cyrus eventually hits theaters. John C. Reilly stars as a loveable loser who thinks he may have found a new lease on life once he meets Molly (Marisa Tomei). And then he meets Cyrus (Jonah Hill), her 21-year-old, home-schooled son who still lives with her...and who isn't crazy about changing the status quo. The Duplass brothers sat down with us during the Cyrus press day at SXSW to talk about human behavior, keeping actors on their toes, their future projects (including Jeff Who Lives at Home, a comedy starring Jason Segel and Ed Helms.
What was the kernel idea for this movie? Was there a character or a scene that came about first?
Mark Duplass: It was, "We want to make a love story." So then we were like, how do you make a love story interesting? That lead us to the love triangle. That's interesting, but it's still been done a lot. And then we started coming up with stuff like, the unlikeliest protagonist of a love story is John. It's no coincidence that the character's name is John, and he's being played by John C. Reilly.
Scratch off question two...
Mark: We were like, "I know we're thinking of John for this, but could anybody else possibly do this?" "No."
Jay: Which kind of put us in an awkward position.
That would have been bad if he passed and you kept asking the next guy, "Could you do it more like John C. Reilly?
Jay: That would be tough.
Mark: "More like John C. Reilly doing John." We kind of just evolved it to the point where we could find something in the love story that worked for us. Once we decided, "What if one of these elements of the love triangle is a non-romantic element," or even just more of an emotionally co-dependent thing between a mother and a son, that seems really interesting and kind of original, and will hopefully sustain our interest over the course of the two to three years it takes for us to make a movie.
What is your process like to develop an idea? Do you do outlines or note cards or just sit and discuss it?
Jay: Talking about it is basically what we do. Mark and have been telling each other stories and telling each other stories...you know, one of our friends does something really weird, and we'll literally wait all day before we can get together and I can tell him this one little nugget of something that happened.
Mark: We're obsessed with human behavior.
Jay: That's how it starts. We start telling each other a story, and once we have the full structure and spine of it, we'll put it on note cards and Mark will usually speak it into a dictaphone for the first draft. We'll start trading drafts at that point.
It did a good job walking the line between broader comedy and the more realistic stuff. How do you find that balance?
Mark: It's really just obeying our taste level and our instincts. We don't get too intellectual on it in terms of being result-oriented. We just...what do we love? What does this feel like? That felt like that went too far; rein it in. This could be more subtle. A lot of it happens in the editing process. We test our movies quite a bit, and our m.o. is that we the final product of this film to be the most subtle version possible that is still reading for the audience. We start real subtle, then we check it on people, then we go "They didn't get that, they didn't get that." So we pump it up a little. Get it to that sweet spot. We don't rely on ourselves at that point. We rely on our audience to tell us.
How much rehearsal do you guys like to do, and how much leeway do you allow for ad-libbing?
Jay: We don't do any rehearsal, and if the actors are comfortable with it, we don't even direct the first take.
Mark: We really like to leave the world open for whatever might happen on that first take, and we do tons of improv. We're not just improv'ing mindlessly in the wind. We're really clear about who our characters are and what they want in a scene, but how they go about getting it, how they're going to nuance their performance, and the words their going to use is up to them in that moment. That keeps the other actor on their toes, and we feel like that's a major ingredient that gives us the sort of verite sort of experience we're looking for. We're ad-libbing ways to achieve goals in the scene, basically.
When you were working on the script, was there any scene or line that you couldn't wait to film?
Mark: We were super psyched about shooting the first party scene where John does the "Don't You Want Me" dance. We wanted to see him let loose on that sucker. Then Jonah and John, their late-night kitchen talk on the PB and J, the sort of reversal on the "What are your intentions with my daughter?" scene. We knew that was going to be really fun.
I loved that Jonah dresses like a fortysomething dad.
Mark: You got it. I'm not sure how many people are picking up on it, but even his behavior in the movie, especially in the first half when he still has his shit together, is very fortysomething dad.
Was there anything in the finished film that worked better than you had anticipated?
Mark: Those montages that we did were not planned. They came out of us wanting to push certain elements in certain scenes were, with what we shot, we couldn't push it far enough, so we had to change the form. When we did that, we were like, "That was cool! Let's do two more of them." So that was a lot of remaining fluid and organic in your process, and still growing when you're in post.
Was there anything that sticks out that the actors brought to their roles?
Jay: Most of that happens on set.
Mark: That's why we don't like to rehearse or direct the first take, because they'll come out of the gate--
Jay: They'll plan little grenades for us.
Mark: --that just blows everyone away, including the other actor, and the other actor's trying to shuck and jive with it. Those are our favorite things, even if it's something we don't use, it sets a tone on set that says, "Be ready, because anything could happen." That creates an energy in the viewership where you guys get to think, "I don't know what's going to happen here." Anything could happen here. If we're giving that to our audience, that makes us so happy, and that's what we want to do.
Was it always "Don't You Want Me" in that party scene?
Jay: It always was.
Mark: The form of having the guy sing, then the girl sings. And just the lyrics, for where John is in his life. We just love that song, and love the dark side of it. It's angst-y as shit, which is what our movie is. It's a comedy. It's John C. and Jonah. There's some weird shit in there, too.
Where did you come up with the idea of Jonah stealing the shoes? It's just such a specific and odd moment.
Mark: Yeah, that's very emblematic of the kind of things we like to work with. We call it the epically small things of life. It's just a chair, it's just a bag on a head, but in the right situation, it becomes very big.
Is there anything that you tried during the filming process that just really didn't work?
Jay: Constantly. Always.
Mark: Our whole process is constantly evaluating what's happening in front of us and deciding whether or not it's good enough or inspiring enough, whether it's going to carry people's interest and carry the movie to the next scene.
Jay: There were a bunch of movies that were really good in themselves, but were hurting the arc of the movie, so we had to cut them.
You wrote John's role with him in mind, but did you write Marisa Tomei's role with anybody in specific in mind?
Mark: She was the last major role to cast, a little bit after John and Jonah. When we met with her, she's incredibly intelligent and very, very strong. We knew it was going to be a very dude-centric set with me and Jay and John and Jonah, so we needed somebody who was to fight for her character and voice it very well. You know, we don't know how to write for a woman in her early forties who has a 21-year-old home-schooled son. Not that she knows that specifically, but there's an authenticity she brings to that role that we can only go so far with.
The same sort of question for Jonah: was he somebody that came along pretty early?
Mark: Pretty early, yeah. He loved The Puffy Chair, and he was the kind of person where you meet him and like 20 seconds later you're like, "We are kindred spirits." We see the world in the same way. He sees funny and sweet and beautiful stuff, and the strange, bizarre people in this world, that Jay and I just love. He's got it in spades.
How does your directing process work?
Jay: I shoot. Mark used to boom when we were making small movies. Now he's in the video village, just checking everything out. After every take Mark and I meet up and discuss what happened and what we liked and where we might want to go next.
Mark: Usually we try to direct our actors separately, both so we can cut down on time and also so they don't know what's happening in the next take, because we always like to keep them on their toes.
What have you guys got next?
Jay: We're making a movie right now. We're in pre-production in New Orleans on a movie called Jeff Who Lives at Home that's being produced by Jason Reitman. It's another little movie that Mark and I have created, our style. It's a little bigger in scope.
That's got Jason Segel and...?
Jay: Ed Helms, and Judy Greer's in it. It's basically about a thirty-year-old guy named Jeff who lives in his mom's basement--
You seem to have a pattern emerging here.
Jay: This guy's mom does not like him, though. She's definitely frustrated with him. She asks him to go get some wood glue from Home Depot, and he sets out into the world and runs into his older brother. They end up embarking on this epic quest for their destiny throughout the suburbs and strip malls of Baton Rouge.
Mark: Again, the epically small.
Alright, so who is the home-schooled friend that you're basing all of this on?
Mark: It's us, really. The home-schooled thing was really functional for us in terms of establishing, without doing a bunch of bullshit backstory and exposition, the nature of their attachment to each other. In one word, you get to read so much into it.
Jay: It says everything.
Aside from Jeff Who Lives at Home, is there anything down the road that you're excited about?
Mark: Yeah, there's a movie called Table 19 that we wrote for 21 Laps and for Fox Searchlight. Universe willing, we'd like to direct that after Jeff Who Lives at Home. If they haven't kicked us out of Hollywood by then.
Is there anything you can tell us about that one?
Mark: It's about that last table you go to for a wedding when you don't know where to put all the stragglers. It's sort of like a Breakfast Club vibe in a wedding movie.
