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  5) This one may be the most important. And the hardest. It’s called Fuck Love Story. If you remember, Love Story was a book published in 1970 that was made into an even more popular film due to its catchy tagline: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” We don’t know what kind of world Erich Segal was living in, but in our world this is a very dangerous motto to live by. We would venture to say the exact opposite is true. Love, for us, means always having to say you’re sorry. And we don’t mean that you need to be a pushover for love to survive. We mean that love is deeply complex; love is about being generous, thoughtful, and humble. Love is about saying “I’m sorry,” even if you desperately feel that you are one hundred percent right and have done nothing wrong. And the reason to say these words is because this is how the healing begins. This is the direct pathway back to the fun, goofy, loving energy that you both want back. And if you can somehow swallow your ego and muster these words, you are a goddamn hero. You are running into a burning building to save that last person even though you might die doing it. You are fighting the good fight, and that is what romantic love is all about.

  DEAR DANIEL,

  I cannot remember your last name. That in itself says way too much about the way I handled our living situation in 1995–1996.

  In case you don’t remember my last name, I am Mark Duplass. I was your freshman roommate at the University of Texas at Austin. Jester West dormitory. Fourteenth floor? Possibly. Can’t remember. I had a soul patch and sideburns and a ridiculous haircut that consisted of long, curly locks that seemed to sprout forth from the back of my head like a mangled artichoke. I was in terrific physical shape, wore hemp necklaces, thrift store T-shirts, and an occasional pair of Tevas. I was upbeat and excited about my life. I listened to Dave Matthews Band on repeat and often preached the virtues of his lyrics: carpe diem, romance, positivity, and effervescence. I was, in short, an annoying, cocky eighteen-year-old kid who thought he had it all figured out. I could only see myself and my bright shining future. And I fear that, in this way and possibly a few more, I may have been insufferable to you.

  But that is not what I want to apologize for. We were all idiots at eighteen years of age in some way or another, and I have forgiven myself for these mild atrocities. What I still struggle with today is how I treated you.

  You were not like me. Yes, you had curly hair too. But that is where our similarities ended. You were the unhealthy kind of thin. Not athletic. You were shy. You seemed to be overwhelmed by the world and the changes we were all going through as college freshmen. I often found you alone in our shared dorm room, in the dark, lying on your bed, listening to PJ Harvey or the Red House Painters.

  When I came in to that particular scene, I remember thinking, “Jesus, let’s get some lights on and up this mood, yo!” And that is what I did. Turned on the jarring overhead fluorescent lights. Encouraged some different music. Offered one of my beers that I had stashed in the back of the mini fridge. And waxed philosophical about how awesome life was in an attempt to bring you up to my energy level.

  What I did not do, not even once, was ask how you were doing. Or stop and listen to PJ Harvey’s melancholic lyrics and realize that you may have been going through something similar. I never once offered to let you sit in the dark for a little bit longer so that you could move through whatever you were experiencing. Or, even better, give you some space and go somewhere else for an hour or so. I could only see my way of seeing the world…bright lights, Dave Matthews, forced positivity.

  The funny thing is that the Red House Painters have become one of my favorite bands as I’ve gotten older. And I think about you a lot when I listen to them. Because I like to sit in the dark when I listen to them too. And I am often overwhelmed by the world and the very nostalgic melancholy that I assume you were feeling back in 1995.

  So I first want to say thank you for introducing me to the wonderful world of Mark Kozelek and the Red House Painters. I love the music. I am comfortable now in its sadness and don’t feel the need to fight it anymore. More important, though, I want to say I’m sorry for not being a friend to you. For not even trying to understand you. For blasting weird, insensitive light into your dark, shy inner world. I get it now. But back then I simply did not understand it or make a legitimate attempt to understand it. I was a bit of a jam band hippie douchebag who was just trying to block out the darkness because I was, essentially, afraid of it. And for that, I am truly sorry.

  Your freshman-year roommate,

  Mark

  (PART 3)*

  And then there were twelve. And this is where it began to suck. We collectively agreed that all the films were representative of our taste. We also agreed that the films were empirically great and thus worthy of being included in the Top 10. We couldn’t look to “the numbers” for a solution as we each had an equal amount of individual favorites and shared favorites at this point.

  So we decided to play the game of inches. Instead of trying to get two films off the list, we would try to eliminate one. Each of us was tasked with picking the one he thought should go—and providing three reasonable arguments. Just like high school debate. But somehow (impossibly) dorkier.

  We each spent an hour trying to convince the other of our respective choices. Neither of us budged.

  Twelve movies. Ten slots. Two brothers. One list.

  American Movie

  Raising Arizona

  Tootsie

  Rocky

  Hoop Dreams (JD)

  The Crying Game

  Dumb and Dumber

  The Cruise

  Henry Fool

  The Horse Boy

  You Can Count on Me

  Close-Up (MD)

  * To be continued…

  FROM JOSH IN The Puffy Chair to John in Cyrus to Jeff in Jeff, Who Lives at Home, our stories’ antiheroes are often called “lovable losers” by press and viewers. And this character archetype is one that both of us simultaneously love and resent. We truly love the unconventional protagonist’s journey but resent that those characters are often reductively labeled as “losers” so that people can process them. Why can’t they just be called people? That are sometimes lovable and sometimes not. Depending on who you are as a viewer. Depending on your mood that day. People whose lives you can experience and from whom you can learn a little something. Who make you feel a little differently. This approach to character is, in our opinion, storytelling at its best. Stories that don’t clearly tell you what to feel about your protagonist. Stories that take you deep inside someone that you wouldn’t normally look twice at on the street. Stories that, in short, simply put you in someone else’s shoes for a bit so you can see the world through their strange, unexpected lens….

  * * *

  —

  You are a boy, almost a man. You are fifteen. You are wearing a blue denim jacket with a self-sewn Megadeth patch on the back. Your gray jeans are acid-washed, but not well, because you also did them yourself. Because your parents are poor. And you worked at your cousin’s auto-body shop to save money for clothes and concerts for this summer. This is a summer you have been looking forward to for a long time. Because you hate school. Because you don’t really fit in. And because the girls there don’t like you. They call you Rat Face or sometimes Zit Face and also Pig.

  But tonight this does not concern you as much as it normally does. Because tonight you have saved enough money to see your favorite new band. Your favorite new band is called Iron Maiden. It is 1980, and they have just released their first, self-titled record. The way it makes you feel when you listen to it is inexplicable. It is not separate from you. It is a part of you. The rare combination of death metal, prog rock, rock opera singing, and heartfelt lyrics…it’s as if it were made for you. No, scratch that. It’s as if you made it. Somehow. Through Iron Maiden. And it has come back to you, in thanks, to let you
enjoy it. Tonight. Friday night. At the XYZ. A place that doesn’t often ask for ID, thank God. Because you are only fifteen and have no legal business being inside this club, except for the fact that no one belongs here more than you.

  But fuck all of this because here comes the band. Oh my God. You knew it. You just…you fucking knew it. Of course they would start with “Running Free.” That drumbeat. You’d recognize it anywhere. One of the few drumbeats that you can play with minimal precision. Because you don’t have enough money for drums and can only play on a makeshift set of empty paint cans you have assembled in your shared bedroom with your dipshit little sister, who is always ratting you out for bringing chocolate into your room. But, again, fuck all this. Because “Running Free” is in full swing now….

  I’ve got nowhere to call my own, hit the gas, and here I go.

  I’m running free, yeah, I’m running free.

  And you can’t believe they sound better live than they do on the actual album but of course you can believe it because they are Iron FUCKING Maiden and this is the way they always were and always will be. And you know now more than ever that this is who you are, and this is where you belong, and that all these pretty girls around you who don’t give a shit about you and look at those red marks on your face with disgust will never know the true beauty of you and Iron Maiden and how you are inextricably linked for all time. And you are confident that even though they smell delicious and that your raging boner thinks it is meant for them, it is not. Because they are not good enough for your boner. Your boner belongs with the gods tonight. And if it can’t be with the gods, then, well, it can be with you and your hand back in your bedroom, after your stupid little sister goes to sleep and you get to have your boner and your chocolate and your memory of this perfect night with Iron Maiden, who, holy fuck, you still can’t believe they sound this good live but of course you can believe it and—OH FUCK! Now they’re gonna go right into “Phantom of the Opera”! The seven-minute prog opus that anchors the entire album. Of course they’d play it second…because when you have greatness like that in your back pocket you can’t just sit on it, you have to let it REIGN!

  And oh my God look at these girls nodding their heads. They probably don’t even know this record. But they want Iron Maiden to think they do cuz maybe they can go backstage and…do whatever they would want to do with the band after the show. Like they’re the real fans. And they’re just dancing. And not even noticing that you can smell them and that they’re actually rubbing against you, even though they were looking at you with those disgusted faces right before the show started and didn’t want anything to do with you, now they’re just “accidentally” rubbing up against you but you know deep down that you don’t need them or want them even though they are so fucking hot and smell so good….You know the eternal value of your boner and that you are smarter than your boner and you won’t let it get excited about these dumb girls even though they smell so good and are so beautiful and the music is so incredible and it’s almost like a perfect unexpected moment of God stuff and devil stuff that both weirdly seem so right to you right now—oh God, she just looked at me and smiled—oh God—oh FUUUUUUUUUCK!

  Fuck.

  Shit.

  Really.

  Come on.

  And you know it. Immediately.

  You know that you moaned out loud. And that even though she didn’t hear you moan she could see you out of the corner of her eye. She could see you smiling and then closing your eyes in the existential gorgeous pain of you coming in your pants. She knew what happened.

  Fuck.

  And now it’s like…different somehow. The music. It’s different. You are different. She is different. She is somehow…more important. Bigger in the room. A force. Almost like…like she owns Iron Maiden now. Like, even though she doesn’t even own the album or know any of the words, she stole your boner and she took Iron Maiden from your soul. And she’s not gonna give it back. And it crushes you. And you fucking hate yourself for still being fifteen and for things like this making you cry and run out of the XYZ so no one can see you cry. And you ride your bike really fucking fast home and ignore the tears even though they might actually be freezing onto your cheeks in the bitter cold fast air coming at you. And you come right through the front door and you want to get to your room before your parents can ask “How was it?” but they catch you before you get there and ask the question and you gruffly say “Fine” and go to your (shared) room so your parents can’t see you crying and your sister can’t see you crying and you lie in your bed and you put your headphones on and you put on Iron Maiden’s self-titled record in one last, desperate attempt to take it back from that shitty, vapid, hot, awesome-smelling girl who stole your boner and accidentally took Iron Maiden along with it. And you lie…and you lie…and you just lie…and you hope…and you hope…and you just hope…and you actually start to pray. Which you haven’t done since you were five years old. And you pray that it will get easier. Somehow. Easier. And you don’t believe it. But you pray. And you let “Prowler,” the opening track, take you away.

  AFTER THE FAILURE of our first feature film, Vince Del Rio, we had a hard time. We were still confused as to what went wrong with the film. We were now in our mid- and late twenties and the struggling-artist lifestyle was becoming less cute and more scary. All of our high school and college friends had found their footing and were experiencing varying degrees of success, all of which were astronomically greater than our own. That sucked. Even our parents, who were our strongest supporters, were beginning to plant the seeds of the “backup career” conversation.

  As for us, we were still living in our crappy South Austin apartment, trying desperately to hold on to our dream before it drifted away. We spent half our days working at our editing business, which was barely enough to keep us afloat, and half our days taking walks, watching our favorite movies…searching endlessly for something that would help us “get there.”

  One day, as we were sitting in our typically depressed couch posture watching Raising Arizona for the thousandth time, Mark stood up, turned off the TV, and stared at me.

  MARK: We are making a movie today.

  JAY: About what?

  MARK: I don’t know.

  (Pause.)

  JAY: Uh…okay. I’m down for it, but…

  MARK: But what?

  JAY: We don’t have a camera.

  MARK: We still have Mom and Dad’s.

  (This was the camera we ultimately deemed unworthy to shoot even the behind-the-scenes footage for Vince Del Rio because it was so crappy.)

  JAY: But we don’t have, like…a crew…or even a boom guy.

  MARK: I don’t care. We have to do something. Gimme $3. I’m going to 7-Eleven to get a mini-DV tape, and when I come back I want you to come up with a movie idea for us.

  Mark, as usual, raced out before I could protest, not letting his own nerves and worries about the process show in front of me. He needed to project confidence to get us moving. This is part of our rhythm to this day.

  I, on the other hand, was left holding the bag. A simultaneously annoying and empowering thing that Mark constantly does to me. He pushes me off cliffs and runs away, and I have to figure out the next move. I openly hate it and secretly love it because it shows how much Mark deeply believes in me. So I sat down and thought about what we might make. I banged my brain for an idea that didn’t need much in terms of setting and production value. Maybe even something personal. Before long, an idea popped into my head. While in preproduction for Vince Del Rio, I had set up an answering service for the film. While recording the outgoing greeting, I kept messing up and rerecording it. It devolved into a bit of an existential crisis for me by the fiftieth try, and something about the whole process landed me in my bedroom crying that night.

  Mark stormed back in with the tape and I greeted him with this concept of r
ecording an outgoing greeting, failing, and having a semi–nervous breakdown in the process. Mark immediately lit up.

  MARK: This is brilliant.

  JAY: Great! Let’s write the script.

  MARK: Wait. I don’t want to slow us down. We have momentum. What if I just wing it?

  (Pause.)

  MARK: Like, you hold the camera and I’m gonna walk into that kitchen and just…improvise it. Like we did with Brandt and the Karate Master when we were kids. I’ll try to record an answering machine greeting and fail at it. And you just film me. And you can even talk to me during the take to throw ideas and dialogue at me as we go. Like we used to do when we were little.

  JAY: (smiling) Except this time you don’t have to break your shoulder holding the VTR.