Like Brothers Read online

  But we also want to say…CONGRATULATIONS! Because, in our opinion, you may just be part of a dying breed. There will be fewer and fewer of you, and because of that and so much more, you are truly special.

  Here’s our theory:

  When our parents got married, it was a time when people mostly married young. And in many cases, they married without fully vetting whether they would be a good matrimonial fit. Let’s face it, they often got married because their religion said “no sex before marriage” and they really just wanted to start humping and not go to hell for it. They got married because they were sexually attracted to each other. And that attraction was often a result of the “opposites attract” theory. So when we were made, we were made from very different individuals who came together mostly because they liked the way the other smelled, as opposed to any long-lasting traits that made for a sustainable partnership. Hence, the two different people inside of us.

  This new generation is different. They are taking longer and longer to find their mate. They are more thoughtful about finding the right partner, and they often don’t get married until age forty or later and have kids soon after. Because of this, they are truly dialing in the perfect mate for themselves. As a result, the people who join up in this generation tend to have many core elements aligned, such as hobbies, interests, family-work values, and personality type. And when this generation has kids, those kids will be a product of the somewhat homogenized personality aspects of their parents. Thus they will be more “of a piece” and suffer less of the frenetic, multiple-personality-esque weird Wooginess that we suffer.

  As much as it is a somewhat painful existence to live with the Woog hovering over us, we also kind of love it. We feel that the combination of our goofy, creative, fun-loving mother and our incredibly efficient, intelligent, ass-kicking, type-A attorney father has made us…unique. Our silly, creative engine burns through our mom, and our ability to make it a practical, sustainable business for us and our friends comes directly from our dad.

  There was a great bumper sticker in Austin when we lived there that celebrated a zip code of unique Austinites from a specific time and place. It said “78704, Keep Austin Weird.” We take comfort in that bumper sticker when the Woogieman comes to get us. We don’t fight him as much. In fact, we try to let him in now, and celebrate the emotional kaleidoscope in which we live.

  WITHIN SIX MONTHS of cable’s arrival in 1984, we were hooked. But not in the way our peers were hooked. We lived in a suburb of New Orleans called Metairie, which offered cheap land and wide streets for families with young kids. On weekends, most of those kids rode their bikes, bought candy from the Time Saver across the street, and talked about Star Wars. And while we did some of that, we were more taken by some of the other programming that HBO had to offer. What many people don’t remember about the early days of HBO is that the programming wasn’t exactly curated for the time of day it was airing. So we’d wake up on Saturday, start with a viewing of Kramer vs. Kramer. Then we’d roll right into Gandhi, or Ordinary People. And then lighten the mood with The Deer Hunter or Sophie’s Choice before finishing the afternoon off with Coming Home. Every now and then we’d take in Fletch or Every Which Way but Loose, but mostly we were watching the hard-hitting dramas of the seventies and eighties. And we loved them. But not in a pretentious “We’re more erudite than Star Wars” kinda way. We just loved watching people emote, and feel, and we deeply connected with the spirits of those dealing with divorce, hunger, PTSD, and death. It wasn’t that we were morbid either, we were just…into it.

  Around the same time, our dad brought home our first video camera. This was huge. Not metaphorically. Literally. The thing was a beast. And, like most dads in the eighties, he was terrible with electronics and couldn’t figure out how to use it, so he basically left it in our hands. Jay, being the older-smarter-stronger one, picked up the manual and became the first one to figure it all out. (Side note: To this day, I do not know how to read an owner’s manual or assemble anything, because Jay was always there to do it.) But Jay needed a second person to carry the separate VTR tape deck (which attached to the camera via an enormous cable) and ideally act in the “films” he was brewing. I got the job. And thus began the two-person filmmaking team known as the Duplass Brothers, circa 1985 (ages twelve and eight).

  Now, let’s be clear. There are tales of the childhood films of the Coen Brothers and Spielberg showing the seeds of the great filmmakers they would eventually become. Our films were not like those. Ours were dull, boring, uninspired, and fairly stupid. We re-created The Blob by throwing our beanbag down the stairs. We took a stab at remaking The Invisible Man by taking quick shots of an empty pair of shoes walking around our living room. We randomly filmed our ears for a while. Yeah.

  Eventually, however, we cracked our first narrative: the story of a young karate master whose home was invaded by a burglar. The film itself is lost to us forever, but we remember the story perfectly, so we’ve taken the liberty of re-creating the script here. For posterity. And because it still makes us laugh.

  INT. MODEST HOME—DAY

  A KARATE MASTER, played by an eight-year-old Mark Duplass, casually saunters around his living room, thinking about stuff. He takes in his surroundings and accomplishments with an air of self-satisfaction. He also wears his KARATE GI, though he appears to be doing no karate at the moment. [NOTE: The Karate Kid had just come out and we were taking karate lessons. We had a rented gi. We felt we had to use it.]

  Suddenly, the Karate Master HEARS A NOISE. He sees something offscreen that scares him and causes him to flee to another room, but we don’t get to see what he sees. [NOTE: We were not aware that we should have shot and shown what he actually saw.]

  Then, finally, we see the BURGLAR, played by our neighbor Brandt, who didn’t really want to be doing this. The Burglar slooooo­ooooo­ooooo­owly turns the door handle and walks into the living room. The cameraman (Jay) follows him in, filming him from the side as he looks around the living room. He pulls out a “cigarette” (blue Bic pen) and “lights” it (mimed).

  Suddenly, the Karate Master appears in the kitchen, just beyond the Burglar and his cigarette. He sees the Burglar and runs toward him. He jumps into the air, kicking the cigarette out of the Burglar’s hand! [NOTE: We shot this about seven times, each time moving the cigarette farther and farther from Brandt’s face so I wouldn’t injure him with my poorly aimed kick. The resulting shot pictured Brandt holding the cigarette about five feet from his face before I kicked it loose. It was unfortunately a bit leading as to what would eventually happen, but we did get the shot.]

  There is a quick scuffle (very quick, too quick) and the Burglar throws the Karate Master out of the house.

  CUT TO:

  Sometime later. Much later. So much later that the Burglar now seems to have taken ownership of the house at this point? Sure. In fact, he is so comfortable that he seems to be casually lifting weights on the floor of the living room. [NOTE: These were three-pound pink hand weights that came with our mother’s Jane Fonda workout video set.]

  In an impeccably composed wide shot, the Karate Master comes flying into the living room, not unlike Cato in the Pink Panther films, and jumps on top of the Burglar. [NOTE: We did this shot in one take. I accidentally dropped my knee into Brandt’s crotch. The pain he experienced and the yelp he emitted were, according to Jay, “like gold.” We kept it in the original film. Just one of those happy accidents. Happy for Jay, at least. Not for Brandt.]

  CUT TO:

  More time has passed. [NOTE: These transitions of the early Duplass Brothers cinema are quite jarring. Probably a “choice.” Now we are in…]

  INT. MODEST HOME—DINING ROOM—DAY

  The Karate Master has assumed control of his home once more. He is setting up dinner for himself (bowl of cornflakes) but he is unaware that a mysterious presence lurks just beyond him. [NOTE: Even though t
he Burglar is directly in my sight, Jay tells me to pretend that I don’t see him. A brief argument ensues about the plausibility of this scenario. Jay tells me that it’ll be fine, but I can’t bear to perform the untrue nature of Jay’s direction. Then Brandt tells us he’s leaving in five minutes to go to JCPenney with his mom. So I cave and we simply get on with it.]

  When the Karate Master finally “sees” the Burglar, he notices that this time the Burglar is holding a knife. A knife that already has blood (ketchup) on it, though he hasn’t killed the Karate Master yet? Sure. Not quite sensical, but it was super dramatic, so we went with it.

  As the Burglar closes in on our clearly doomed Karate Master, the Burglar utters these final, chilling words:

  BURGLAR: These days, you cannot…trust…anyone.

  CUT TO BLACK

  THE END

  We watched the film over and over that day. Three scenes. Five minutes. All working together to fulfill a dramatic climax. We were so proud of ourselves. We showed it to our parents, who did what proved to be the perfect thing. They neither praised nor dismissed it. They simply observed, gently supported the effort, and quickly left us to figure out the next steps.

  That night, we slept together in one of our twin beds, as we always did at that age.

  “Mark?”

  “Yeah?”

  “When you brought in the bowl of cornflakes for the dining room scene, why did you pick the spot by the window?”

  (I consider Jay’s question.)

  “I don’t know. It just felt like where I should do it. Why?”

  “I was curious because that’s exactly where I imagined you should go, but I forgot to tell you to go there before we started filming. But you still kinda knew to go there.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  (I am only eight and not quite getting it yet.)

  “Do you ever feel like…like we share the same brain sometimes?”

  “Totally. Like we’re the Corsican Brothers or something?”

  “Exactly! I miss that movie. Why don’t they show that anymore?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s like they keep showing Ordinary People and they can only show one movie about brothers.”

  (I grow quiet for a moment. It may be time for us to finally drift off to sleep.)

  “Jay…I don’t think I want to watch Ordinary People anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “It…the brother part. It makes me really sad.”

  “I understand. It makes me sad too.”

  (Jay, always the fantastic older brother, picks up the mood for us.)

  “Maybe we can make a movie about brothers next weekend.”

  “That would be cool.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  We both say good night at the same time and fall off to sleep. And we know exactly what you’re thinking right now. That the whole situation we just described is a load of bullshit. No eight-year-old and twelve-year-old brothers sleep in the same twin bed. And even if they did, they certainly wouldn’t speak to each other so lovingly.

  But we did.

  *

  We were once asked to come up with a list of our all-time Top 10 films. Then we laughed that person out of the room. Because it’s difficult enough for one filmmaker to come up with a list of Top 10 films, but to ask for a consolidated list that represents both of our favorites…that’s just cruel. But we thought about this potential undertaking on and off through the years, and we felt we may have been ducking an interesting challenge. So we decided to take a crack at it by listing our individual favorites and then, not unlike a jury, trying to compile one overall list that satisfied us both. It began like this (and took way longer than we imagined):

  MARK’S TOP 10 FILMS

  American Movie

  Raising Arizona

  Starman

  Same Time, Next Year

  Tootsie

  Rocky

  Hoop Dreams

  The Crying Game

  Dumb and Dumber

  The Cruise

  JAY’S TOP 10 FILMS

  Rocky

  American Movie

  Margaret

  Raising Arizona

  Henry Fool

  The Horse Boy

  You Can Count on Me

  The Black Stallion

  Dumb and Dumber

  Close-Up

  * To be continued…

  THERE’S AN INTERESTING ritual in the film industry called the “general meeting.” Not sure if other industries have this, or a version of it, but it fascinates us to this day. A general meeting usually comes about because one of the parties is a fan of (or trying to get something from) the other party. For instance, if we loved someone’s short film and wanted to meet them to discuss possibly working together, we would ask them for “a general.” Likewise, if a studio or producer was a fan of our work, they might ask us for the same. Sweet and harmless. But not really.

  In our first year in Los Angeles, we took about a hundred general meetings. Possibly more. And a rhythm started to develop. We would drive across town to their offices. Wait for a bit. Then we’d all sit together and do some general ass-kissing and getting to know each other. And, at the end of the meeting, we would inevitably all say something to the effect of “We should definitely find something to do together.”

  As you might imagine, very rarely did we actually find something to do together. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that not one of our general meetings has directly resulted in doing anything more than driving home and wondering if we wasted a couple of hours. Maybe wasted is a strong word, but we are filmmakers and we have to work extremely hard and long hours to get our stuff made, so at the very least we began to question whether we should be putting our time into something more fruitful.

  And as we questioned this age-old ritual of the general meeting, something more disturbing occurred to us: People in this town (and possibly in this industry altogether) spend about ninety-nine percent of their time talking about the potential of making something. And a large chunk of that time is spent in a general meeting that will most likely never amount to anything. And no one seemed to be talking about this problem. Wasn’t this an obvious waste of time that was easily identifiable? From our perspective, yes. So we made a decision: Maybe we should cut down on the general meetings.

  When we proposed this concept to our representatives, they were shocked. Won’t people be offended if we don’t take the general meetings they ask of us? Even if not, how would we make those long-term connections that would ultimately lead to success in the industry? The feeling we got, overall, was one of “This is just not done.” We were on speakerphone during this call with our reps, looking at each other in amazement. It was as if we were trying to extract ourselves from some sort of cult that might bludgeon us to death if we tried to leave the compound. So we did what we normally do in these situations. We took a walk.

  MARK: I feel like they’re gonna be mad at us if we don’t take the generals.

  JAY: Totally. But…I don’t know. My deep gut says this is wrong. That this whole process is just…

  MARK: Bloated and inefficient and false?

  JAY: Yeah. I mean, how many hours do you think we’ve spent, travel included, doing these meetings?

  (A little math. It starts to dawn on us.)

  JAY: Two hundred? Maybe more?

  MARK: Yep. And how long does it take us to write a solid draft of a script?

  (Quiet. A realization. Then, a sadder kind of quiet.)

  Yep. It hit us like a heavy sack of diarrhea (sorry, gross, but it really got to us). In all the time we had spent ass-kissing and talking bullshit in those general meetings,
we could have written another script and basically eradicated the need for those meetings.

  After the initial shock and embarrassment, however, we became emboldened.

  We walked back to Jay’s house, called our representatives, and led with our chins. We told them we had decided we wanted to make films, not talk about them. We even came up with a clever and overly dramatic moniker for our newly birthed philosophy: We wanted to “make movies, not meetings.” We laid it all out there and let them know, in no uncertain terms, that we would not be taking general meetings. We didn’t want to be difficult, but we had our own way of doing things and we needed to do what our gut told us was right. Much to our surprise, our representatives were very understanding and respectful on the phone. They were clear on our stance and validated everything we had to say. It was a small victory but an important one.

  A few weeks later, our main representatives ended up leaving that agency to go to an even bigger one. We were not invited to come along with them.

  AS OUR CAREERS started to take off, we found ourselves spending more and more time traveling. We’d fly around the world to attend film festivals or to promote a new project. And we started to lament how much time it was taking away from our actual filmmaking and writing. What we didn’t realize until later is that many of the seeds of our film stories were being birthed in our travel downtime. Particularly at airports, which are fantastic for people-watching. Not only are people generally at their worst while traveling, but they are forced to sit very still and quiet with each other, so their body language becomes incredibly demonstrative of their relationship dynamics.