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An Evening with the Duplass Brothers | From a $3 Short Film to Netflix & HBO

I had the pleasure the other night to see two of my inspirations speak on stage. Mark and Jay Duplass or as they are known The Duplass Brothers, were at a book signing for their new book, Like Brothers, and gave an awesome talk about how they got started, playing the Hollywood game and making up your own rules.

Many of you know that the Duplass Brothers are the reason why I got off my ass and made my first feature film This is Meg. Their “just go out and do it” attitude inspired me to go and do it. This further inspired me to make my latest film On the Corner of Ego and Desire. If you haven’t seen their $3 short film, This is John, that got into Sundance and launched their careers take a look:

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Here’s a bit on their new book Like Brothers:

How do you work with someone you love without killing each other? Whether producing, writing, directing, or acting, the Duplass Brothers have made their mark in the world of independent film and television on the strength of their quirky and empathetic approach to storytelling. Now, for the first time, Mark and Jay take readers on a tour of their lifelong personal and professional partnership in LIKE BROTHERS , a unique memoir told in essays that share the secrets of their success, the joys and frustrations of intimate collaboration, and the lessons they’ve learned the hard way.



Part coming-of-age memoir, part underdog story, and part insider account of succeeding in Hollywood on their own terms, LIKE BROTHERS, is also a surprisingly practical roadmap to a rewarding creative partnership. From a childhood spent wielding an oversized home video camera in the suburbs of New Orleans to their shared years at the University of Texas in early ‘90s Austin, and from the breakthrough short they made on a $3 budget to the night their feature film Baghead became the center of a Sundance bidding war, Mark and Jay tell the story of a bond that’s resilient, affectionate, mutually empowering, and only mildly dysfunctional. They are brutally honest about how their closeness sabotaged their youthful romantic relationships, about the jealousy each felt when the other stole the spotlight as an actor (Mark in The League, Jay in Transparent), and about the challenges they faced on the set of their beloved HBO series, Togetherness—namely, too much togetherness.

From their obsession with people-watching at airports to their always-evolving “top 10 films of all-time” list to their personal email conversations to their defense of Air Supply, LIKE BROTHERS is as openhearted and lovably offbeat as Mark and Jay themselves.

I highly recommend any and all filmmakers and screenwriters read this book. Click here to take a read.

If you haven’t had a chance to listen to Mark Duplass give this game-changing keynote at the 2015 SXSW Film Festival you are in for a treat. Sit back and take a listen.

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Enjoy an evening with the Duplass Brothers.

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Welcome to the indie film has a podcast episode number 241. No one can stop you from doing exactly what you want to do. If you can accept that the calvary won’t come and if you can be that calorie, it gives you a chance to be happy Mark duplass of the Duplass Brothers broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It’s the indie film hustle podcast where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film business. And here’s your host Alex Ferrari. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I am your humble host Alex Ferrari today’s. Is brought to you by Black Box black box is a new platform and community. That is all about Financial Freedom for filmmakers like you if you join block box, you will be transformed from being a worker to being a maker of your own content and you’ll be making steady passive income from the global market Black Box currently allows you to upload your stock footage once get it too many Global agencies and then allows you to share that passive income stream with your collaborators whether you want to submit old footage that’s been. Around in your hard drives or create brand new content black box is for you. It’s really quite revolutionary with black box filmmakers can concentrate on making great content while block box takes care of all the business BS just visit w-w-w Today’s Show is also sponsored by Studio unknown. Studio known as a crack team of audio post professionals known for Quality sound on any Indie budget whether you need a lush surround sound mix or a quick Festival submission pass Studio known can help you with all of your posts sound needs from sound design and mix to fully and even a custom score contact Studio known and mention the indie film also podcast and you’ll get 50% off one day of ADR or 10% off your complete post sound package. Just go to Studio unknown. Today’s episode is extremely special guys because I was privileged to sit and listen to two of uh, honestly my Idols people that filmmakers at really got me off my ass to go make my first film. This is Meg and continue to inspire me on my second feature on the corner of ego and desire. And those guys are the duplass brothers. They were the first time that I heard what they did with puffy chair their first feature film where they just went out and did it and didn’t really wait around for permission and just kind of went and did it and didn’t really care about how it looked or whatever they cared more about story and performance and and it really just inspired me. So I had an opportunity to see them give us a lecture at one of their book signings. For their new amazing book like brothers. I’ve read the book and it tells the entire story of how they um, made it into Hollywood and how they changed the rules of how they are making films and it’s really inspirational. Uh, and also a whole other sections of the book are all about working with Brothers working with a siblings and how to get along and how to collaborate. And uh, and that whole world is well, so it’s a wonderful read and I wanted to uh to hear what these guys have to say. And I was able to record most of their talk. I’m gonna I’m gonna give you a little lead in to where the recordings going to pick up there talkin about their very first short film, which is called. This is John and they did it back in 2003. And basically the way it was is they were both sitting in there, uh little apartment in Austin, Texas and Mark. To Jay and said today we’re making a movie and Jay was like, what are you talkin about? We don’t have a 60 millimeter camera. We don’t have crew. We don’t have lights. We don’t have actors. He goes. I don’t care. We’re gonna go make a movie. Let’s grab Mom and Dad’s video camera home video camera. I’m gonna go to the store and get a tape for three dollars and you’ve got 15 minutes to come up with a story. And he bolted so since he didn’t have a lot of time to figure out a story he came up with the idea of basically what happened to him earlier in the week where he was trying to set his outgoing message on his answering machine and literally having a nervous breakdown about it. And that is where we pick up the story. Uh where the boys are talkin so really enjoy the rest of this, uh episode Guys. These guys are super inspirational and I’m gonna have a bunch of cool stuff at the end of the episode. You can see the three dollar short film. And a ton of more resources and more talks that Mark and Jay do uh in the show notes and all that kind of stuff and I’ll talk a little bit more about that later. But until then enjoy the Duplass Brothers and I was um, trying over and over again. I couldn’t get it right and I pretty much had a nervous breakdown and when Mars another mod mild you might want to queue it up now because this is. What we’re going to show. Um, so um, I told Mark the idea and he said cool and he got dressed in my Kelly. I was doing like temp work. It was called The Kelly people like you would you know, I have one button up shirt and some. Laughs that’s all I owned other than like, you know just sweatpants at that point and he put the shirt on and he looked at the tag and we saw on the tag. He said John Burton we were like that’s your in and he walked outside. He said roll camera. Um, I’m coming in. This is the move. Into the map is that we shot 120-minute tape our friend David, uh, bro another brother. I can help this head that then after about seven minutes and we feel like you know, it was gonna be the greatest in the world, but we definitely felt like we had broken through and told something that was very specifically. Let’s watch it again very specific to us very unique to our Sensibility. Try to be as we were just making fun of ourselves and the way we do things. Um, so we’re like What do we do with this? We don’t know and then we submitted it to like a couple of film festivals on a lark one of which was Sundance and we got into Sundance that year and um, it was the worst looking movie than ever played is a dead pixel right at the center of the frame. Um, but it was. The worst sounding movie which also gets rid of that going for us. Um, but it really connected with people that was something in it. And I think we have tried to stay as close to this process. Um as we can which is basically, you know aren’t us our young filmmakers always asking it’s like, you know, how do I get started and besides family for 12 years, which was trying to tell them to avoid its kind of that thing where like, there’s little. This is you’re having with your loved one or your best friend or someone that’s doing the morning and you’re like giggling uncontrollably about something you’re confessing to them when you get like, you know, if the Shivers the shower remembering something horrible and embarrassment you did like if you can identify and share and communicate like that tends to be like kind of what where the stuff is. So we’ve basically been trying to do that since do you think you recognize. The moment then maybe finally broken through in life discovered what your voice could be? No, Alice Alice just depressed and obliterated. Now you have we did more like something interesting. I when I didn’t know at the time, I mean, I was just blanketed by Decades of failure, you know, I mean, uh, when I did know is that we had captured something that we had never captured before like something happen. In front of me and it was very private and personal to me and Mark. This was nothing that I would have told anybody else in the world. So fucking embarrassing, you know, um, so I knew that that had happened I knew that it was real because Mark was only a few years younger than me. He was hot on my tail. So having that nervous breakdown, it was easy for him to tap into it. The first time we’d ever captured a performance like that and um, we just knew. Also, but we after want to take we walked away from it. We were like, okay, we got that whatever that was. We got that. Um, but it was so different for anything that we had ever conceived or thought we would do, you know, and then when it played at Sundance and you guys the crowd at this reaction and also another reaction, which you didn’t have because we’re live right now, but half the Sundance crab was also like scared he was going to kill himself like. I was seriously like the questions we were getting like that was the most hilarious we’ve seen in Sundance. But also we were afraid he was gonna shoot himself in the head. Um, so like this weird thing and it was really not anything smart about us. It was just we saw people laugh at us hard and we were like, I guess that’s what they want from us. Just keep doing that. But then how did you sort of push that forward? Somebody’s recapture and expand that very carefully. Yeah, we really try to stay close to it. Our next film was another short film this time. It had two actors in it really branching out. I didn’t kitchen is still and um, and then we went to Sundance with that and then we thought okay, uh, it might be time for us to consider making a feature film but like last feature we made it was terrible. We were so scared we had that. Like PTSD so we’re like we know how to make a seven-minute seen work. Let’s make a movie. That’s like let’s do the map 12 7 minutes. That will be an 84 minute movie. We feel like we can pull it off and then we again went right into jai’s available material School of thinking where I was like, I was a musician and I have an um, my wife Katie lived in this very small town in Maine where we could shoot a lot of stuff and people. Friendly to us and we you know were like, oh, this is Furniture Store going out of business we can get to matching recliners provide $100 light one of them on fire. I don’t think fucking awesome. That’ll be like the big effect of the booby. Um, and so we cobbled together the puffy chair out of that and and what was funny about that. So we really thought like most people did like that would be a stepping stone to getting us into how they want to traditional filmmaking where we could make money. Um, and so when we have a puppy at Sundance and we sold that we got agents and we moved to LA and it was this whole rigmarole of like well now you’re like now you’ve done your Sundance movies and you can be a feature film maker at the studio system and that was wildly different than we expected. And I mean one of the things in the book that I appreciated too much is just the practicality of a lot of you guys are talkin about me. The book is just how to pay your rent. Was it important for you guys to start to keep that sort of like not to both practical stuff in the book. And do you think being aware of that stuff is one of the foundational ways that you have the success that you maybe didn’t overextend you, you know, you kept it too like oh, I have a van to let you yeah, and I think that that process is endemic to Our Success that. List sort of I mean it really boiled everything down to uh, what we think is important in storytelling which is you know story acting I mean filmmaking it’s you know, it’s great. If you have a gorgeous film but like you can have gorgeous film historian acting sucks. No one cares, but if you have a film that has good story and acting and looks like absolute shit people will still. The movie maybe like some you know nerving Czar not going to like it but like, you know if they feel and we felt that and we honestly that process of I mean when we made these movies three dollars, the second one was like 50 bucks. You know, um, the puffy chair was $10,000 to produce and it was truly. What is the cheapest amount of money that we can make this booty for? You know, like don’t use movie Magic budgeting software start with a piece of loose-leaf and write the 14 things down that you have to buy so that the movie can happen and then people who don’t want to be part of a rinky-dink movie like that. You want to eliminate them from your set it like weirdly boiled. Think out to like, you know, Mark was talkin about the Puppeteer and he’s available materials and Katie it was with Mark and she had to do it. Um, and like I had this friend who played the brother and it was the criteria was like that’s really interesting and he’ll do anything for him made the movie will do anything’ we say because he’s got nothing going on. He was like at the time he was like anyone come to my apartment and Sharon. We have this beautiful like how and we have continued that now, I mean like when we make a movie, even if we meant to be in the studio system Mark, and I we will pull the budget back. I mean we made Cyrus for Searchlight. No one had ever made a movie in the studio system for seven million dollars. I mean they were like, yeah, we’ve never gotten that under 10 and we were like we can get it under 10. We can make that movie now for $300,000. Um, but you know, we were trying to be Minted as Studio people at that time, but that today that is our philosophy is make the movie as cheaply as humanly possible so that you know, for instance if you make a movie and you go to Sundance if you make the movie for $200,000 and it has a couple of famous people in it, it’s going to make its money back. Um, and if you get really lucky maybe sell it for a million dollars and then everything makes a ton of. Ton of money and that was kind of like we realized when we made like our little movie bag had and subsequent smaller movies like the one I love and the overnight creepy movies that we make in everything. We make them so cheaply we actually people kind of like, that’s so great. You have this Artistic integrity and you don’t care about money like maconha do care about money. It’s kind of important because it helps us continue to make more movies. We fund our own movies and we make more making those movies by owning them and making them ourselves that if we did getting a paycheck from a studio and it guarantees that creative control, so it’s become kind of seminal for our model. I think we thought I made Cyrus and Jeff lives at home. It’s hard to make a studio. You gotta find a lot to get what you want done. We thought if we keep doing this we’re going to be burned up by the time you’re 50. So we kind of took a step back down to the Sunday world and the independent world and that’s pretty much what we do now is try and make these movies on our own dime and and make them very cheaply because you get to kind of stay around, you know, like if your movie doesn’t blow up it’s not a big deal because it didn’t cost that much money and that’s really important to stay vital and we. Like the message we’re hearing and the benefit world right now is like nobody will give me any way to make my movie up to 12 million dollar movie. I want to make with no stars. It’s about incest and rape. I like I think you should make that movie for $1,000 and then sell for $10,000 and you’ll be a wild success. Nobody should give you 12 million to make that movie. It’s not the right time. So we kind of felt like being pranked. Fiscally responsible something that we want to put out any book is it’s a big part of serving our creative. What’s really interesting about the two of you and the way they work is that I feel like in your trajectory you sort of like just snuck in the door. But while the the the idea was you make a short film festival you think a festival you would sell it then someone would get to work with a distributor Studio like you guys are following the path that you were supposed to. You can tell me if you feel like that was working or not. But it seems like you made a decision to like go down to sort of other path and to work in a different way and like once you kind of got in and you started working in the conventional way what chain like why didn’t you just like continue down the pack? I mean, we were incredibly steadfast in curating the way that we made things together. I mean we make things unusually we work in. Sort of like weird communism. I mean we are anti on tour. We are we have visions about things but like because there’s two of us. It’s not about the dictate the dictatorial vision. It’s more like Hey, we’re here. We’re trying to capture this feeling let’s try and get some lightning on a set like that thing happened. It doesn’t work at a studio world doesn’t work like that. But we did a lot of things like for instance when we work the studio world, but are like, oh when you say cut 50 people Rush on set we can. But and also we can’t have 50 people staring in our actors because we make these intimate movies and what we’d like we have to offer or like genuine performances. So we cleared everybody off the set. We put them in a garage that had honours and they didn’t like it very much but when they saw the footage they were like, okay we get we get what you’re doing. So everything’s sort of worked moving into the studio system where the bus stopped was with the studio heads and we’re talkin. I mean like we’re talkin about. For smart people who have been a part of making very good movies who were giving us a seven million dollar movie based on him $10,000 feature. So we were making a huge leap, which we also recommend people don’t do but the main difference is that we we had to have a million conversations about what we were making our process is a process of discovery. And so there were making a nail down all these things and when we could nail. Down they assumed that we were weak and that we didn’t have Vision. They want to ask that you know the answer to everything that’s going to make your movie good before you go in and here’s the deal a lot of people that can go in those rooms with base coat baseball caps chewing gum who are very eloquent and can answer those questions very well and confidently and they’re not always the best filmmakers which is crazy and we thought like well, you know what’s worked for our collaboration Through The Years validation listening admitting that we maybe not know. And we did that with the studio heads. That was the exact impression. We goddess like they don’t really know what they’re doing and they’re and it wasn’t until something crazy happened. I mean look, we’re still friends with all these people and we love them and transcended this but unlike day four or five of filming Cyrus were coming from the Independent World. We’re directing Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei Academy Award nominee, John C Reilly and light Joanie. All right off of Superbad and the middle of movie startup. And so we’re trying to earn their trust. We’re doing grades and classify tells us that they want us to shoot the first scene we shot because it’s too Brown and two down and when it has broke those to the apartment and we’re like this is going to be tough for us to tell our actors that that they were going to shoot the scene a couple our trust and it really came to a head. And I kind of lost my temper and I started screaming and I was just like doing the thing is supposed certainly I spoke I was doing the thing on accident that the baseball hat gum-chewing directors do and in that moment. They were like, oh they have Vision. Look at this. They know everything and that kills just like this is what is required to do this and hindsight. We were being naive when you have someone. Is money and a lot of money you need to secure it for them and make them feel good. Like it’s going to make their money back. That’s why when people hear that like, you know, there was this whole article going around a couple weeks ago about how we had like one to turn down a Marvel movie and they’re like, wow, that’s crazy. But we were like if we’re to we had trouble directly seven million dollars if we were to have to deal with like a 200 million dollar product. You have to be responsible to them. It’s almost not about being smart at that point about servicing a product, you know, so we were. I need to thinking like I love our movie Let’s Go to scum it on set. I understand why they need to know that so now I’m just tuck ourselves away. Just say hey totally get it. Let’s just do our thing. We’ll make a cheap way and we’ll kind of gouge you when we sell it back to your idea you guys leaving tomorrow because I always thought it would be like everybody’s waiting in the van or something. We’re pretty sure we made a mark on movie. It’d be like there’d be a really long like eight minutes seen before he leaves his house and he’s really confiding in his wife about how bad he looks in his and he can’t possibly go out there and he’s doing he’s got low testosterone and he has to take a little medication. And also one of you motherfuckers is not cleaning the blender in this house is going to come to a head right now. I just think we. Like realize you have to spend three years of your life and doing only that and we like to make like 15 things a year it spread ourselves around. So we always feel like we wouldn’t be happy doing that. They wouldn’t be happy with us for sure because we’d be fuzzy and talking about Discovery maybe like two hundred million dollars. So just don’t worry, which I would totally understand they’d also be like read the fucking comic book bro. He’s already written until you and to the larger point of that and this is part. Back to where Janet are right now that’s like our collaboration for so many years because we had failed and we found this is John right? And so we were like what’s kind of steer in the two of us. We got to protected make sure it doesn’t get that of it bad. But then as we got a little better and our craft and circuit realize like we don’t want to just tell only the stories that we could tell we realize we wanted to collaborate with a lot more people and that’s how we started producing people’s things which is like. I mean, honestly, I really started with our friends needed money and we were the only people have money so we would give it to them but but it led to like oh, this is really great. Like we could produce some would be like Tangerine which we are not authorities to tell that kind of story well, but Shaun Baker kills it and he just needed our guidance and our money and some protection and so that has allowed us to you know, make a show like while country which we like can’t make that but we can foster that govern that but you can’t. That when you’re directing while because you just you can’t spray yourself around like that that’s spreading around and collaborate philosophy is allowed us some of that space we’re looking for where we can like develop relationships with other people and have those kinds of intimacy. So it’s been very good for us and now Cyrus and Jeff at home. To know how the you just think of those movies and how you feel about that just in the sense that they see now I pass the you sort of didn’t take I don’t know for you. They felt like that was some sort of creative cul-de-sac deflator going to get stuck making movies like that or someone goes through. These should have been yours Pinnacle and the springboard to like even bigger movement and you guys didn’t drink up guys. So how do you feel about whatever? That sort of like Phantom limb is now well, I mean, I think you know when we were coming up in one of the other brothers, but we let go of that we’re still building on a big writer director holding on to each other and moving into what we wanted to do and back then this was the dream for independent filmmakers is to move through Sundance and comment to Fox Ursula and make sideways. You know, that’s what everybody was trying to do is make 10 to 20 million dollar great artistic. He’s with big movie stars. Um, and when we arrived that model died, I mean basically, you know to to do the math of it, um, you know Cyrus, um was 7 million, they only made 10 million dollars and a lot of people were very surprised. But because people lose critically acclaimed it was very funny. It was very moving. It was everything that movie like that supposed to be. We’re like two million dollars and then when we met Jeff was at home, I think Jeff is at home only made four million dollars and that same right after Jeff is at home. We produce safety net guarantee, which was a $750,000 that also made four billion dollars and it didn’t have wildly famous people in it. Like Jason Segel me. Yeah, and so we. We were coming into that time. I mean, I we’re just very adaptable. Yeah, we’re just yet. We just are aware. I mean, I think maybe the one thing that has kept us alive. All this time is like we are able to look outside of ourselves when we made shitty movies in our 20s. We were like, oh another shitty movie and we weren’t like hey, you have to see my movie. It’s so good because I made it and you must see it. We have to get it out of the world. We’re like no it’s a shitty movie. We need to move on. And similarly when we arrived and I were like these movies aren’t working anymore and we were meeting those people and they were like, yeah, these movies aren’t really working and we kind of knew that like if we were to try to stay there the budgets would get tighter the studios would come down a little hard on you to make sure they can make the money back. It was happening to be the rising of Netflix and a streaming model and realizing we could sell movies that we made independently at Sundance and it was a white glow of thing where it was like the energy feels. Good to be over here. I think Jen are essentially a little bit more comfortable more comfortable kind of under forecasting and over performing in that way. You know, like we really like showing up to Sundance and knowing like listen, we made this cheap movie. There’s no way it’s not going to make its money back do well and like maybe blow up but like it’s certainly not going to be a disappointment in that regard, you know, and um, I think we felt that if we tried to stay in the saris Jeff Elizabeth home realm or it. A really burn us out because it because we’re love those movies in and we got to make the Louise were under fight so hard to do it and now we have to fight and it’s just this will last longer I think and then and this is maybe it suited with the Mana you guys are where you are. Just for you as people and this is a book but you’re able to have this really fantastic work life balance. You seem like you’re able to be true humans in a way that if you were on that crime of making the movies or even when you were making together, it was may be harder for you. And is that something that also been important for you? Just the two of you to discover is like the way to be people as well as yeah. I mean, we’ve been talkin a lot about it lately. I’m in this weird phase where like I’m not really acting in a lot of things and I’m not actively directing anyting because that requires 12 to 14 hours a day on set my kids are 10 and 6 and it’s fucking board game homemade pizzas off the powers time and our house and like I don’t want to miss that shit and so as a writer and a producer I can be kind of more 95, you know, James really had discovered his love of acting recently. He’s able to go explore that and do that and. And I think our feeling now is like we have this wonderful company of people who can do a lot for us. We learned how to delegate Authority and how to make things work and the answer for for me is always like if there is a 20% chance that um, I should say this more clearly like I think about doing something, you know, I look at it. I say, okay what happens if I want this I want this to someone and there’s a 20% chance that they’ll do it better or worse. Me it’s going to be a wash so I’m going to punt it and let them do it. And then I look at the things out like uniquely qualified to do like the things that were really feel like I’m special at which for me is like, I’m great at Obama draft that first draft that’s like a b-minus really fast. I’m good at I give it to my friends and they tell them what to do with it. And I’m really good at like building the architecture a little projects like each movie or TV show is like a little startup and I can see it. I’m like, oh, it’s Elisabeth Moss will be me. They’ll be some sci-fi. Shooting technique house and when I know I can see the whole thing, you know, so I stay in that and everything else. I um, I’ve had like a reverse mid-life crisis realizing that I like acting and uh, I’m coming out guys coming out of that acting closet. No one knows how to deal with so weird actor now, Everybody’s like all actors are trying to get where you are so they can have creative control. Like what are you doing? I don’t want to hold the whole universe in my arms. I want I want just want to be one guy and like jump off a cliff. I don’t know. It’s it’s definitely an unusual path. Um, and I don’t know I feel like I’m I’m I’m kind of the clearly very comfortable with it super. I’m kind of a guy my family. I’ve always been the guy where words have been used such as history on it. I’m the person with a lot of feelings and people who like can you have all those feelings for making us uncomfortable and now I get for that you can have I’m just do it in your room. Yeah. Um, yeah, so I’m I’ve just been enjoying I don’t know it’s weird that I discovered it so late and I’m kind of excited about, you know exploring. Trying to do as much as possible. And so we’ve got some questions from the audience we have before the the program moved to read we’re gonna go through a few of the audience. So the uh, the first one, um, how do you see your roles individually and together in shaping the future of the industry what sort of impact would you like to leave? But we feel a future industry, uh rests squarely on our shoulders white men. Is uh, it’s really up to us. I second book is going to be a rule book. We give you a fucking ticket. That’s right. I mean, I think that like Jay and I have a little bit of survivors deals of like we suck we struggled for a long time when we see a lot of developing artists and people who really have great ideas. Imagine we want to help them and I think so there’s a lot of mentoring going on with us right now whether that’s producing number people’s works or. I’m just kind of in a more traditional sense. And this book is even a part of that. It’s just like trying to offer what we have two people and our platform to let them tell their stories and and lift them up. And I think that like, you know, if if we have something unique to offer at this point, it really is similar to what we saw Richard linklater when we were 18 and 14 years old, which is like he was in his late 20s, and he was wearing jeans. Pocket tee shirt that was ribbed at bad. So I’ll cut hair and he wasn’t that well spoken and we looked at him. We’re like with this fucking guy can do it we can do it. I think that there’s something about um our story and which is true. It’s just like we just waited at the bus stop for for forever. We never left the bus stop. We always stayed and you’ll catch the bus at the bus stop in the concept of keeping things simple and cheap because. We do we are passionate about the democratization of the filmmaking process like right now if you have an iPhone and a laptop, you can make a gorgeous movie that can change the world that is fully possible in anyone in this world can do that. Uh, and I still am I just had a phone call with a guy who’s making his first feature for $700,000. I was like don’t make 10 features for $70,000 you moron I don’t. Here but we are very passionate about helping people avoid the stumbling blocks that we’ve had and helping people really realize that a budget really can start with a piece of loose-leaf paper. And also there’s a collections here having to do with short films in park. Do you think there is a link do you like the shortest short film possible or is a little longer and then also do you think they should. Self-contained artistic expression like its own thing or do you see them as like the short that I plan to make um, the first part of that question. So when you gave us great advice long time I go they say make sure it’s not long and I thought that was really smart. Don’t make Ashley. Yeah. So if you’re talkin about play reverse engineering your creativity into a model that’s going to be sustainable make comedic shorts under five minutes because that’s the most. Programmable thing the film festival standpoint and in terms of whether it should be a standalone piece of art or whether like a microcosm of your feature my very strong response to that. It’s like get out of your head immediately on that think about what is a possible string of two to three minutes of footage that might represent your special sauce might be entertaining and just go from there. But we think shorts are great. I mean, it’s like, uh, the one my first question that I asked, People when they ask me like hey, I made some stuff trying to make a feature. Which should I do? My first question is have you made anything that you can hold in your hand or it’s not dating anymore. It’s a link or whatever but you have a link that you can send to people and say this is who I am. I’m proud of this. I feel this is an example of my potential and most people will will not say yes to that question and I think that is everyone. Job is to make something great that you esteem as great that you are proud of it. And you say I’d like to build my filmmaking career on on this and the clarify that we do feel like most of the things we receive from people when they try to give us stuff. It is people who have made something that is not great yet and there are mystified why it’s not getting programmed or working and they’re spending all their time trying to Market their B- movie instead of spending all their time when we get to making $3. Films until you make the a movie and I guarantee you when you make that a movie you will not be stopped when you make the great movie. You can’t be stuck. We’ve seen that with our own stuff. We have movies that we have like really like and we like going out and Market them and push them with everything and then not a lot of people see them and then there are other things that were like, uh, just a little drop on Netflix in enough promoting and then people catch it and blow us up because they wanted it so less time marketing more time making good stuff and then just as pretty. What are you guys looking for? Like oh people are coming to you with you know project. What are the things that you feel like you respond? It’s tough because we everybody always asks us. How do you do so many things? Like do you guys ever sleep? And the thing is we run our company in an odd way where we don’t accept submissions. We don’t read things from people. We don’t read scripts that are agents have sent us to produce the things that we make almost I mean is a few exceptions, but I think that we met. Our Birth by us and our company with people that we have either worked with before that we trust and so we we almost make 100% of what we develop and that’s what the efficiency comes from. That was a hard lesson. Like we moved to Hollywood after we had the puppy chair and our agents were like all these scripts that you can get to uh by to direct and we like to spend time reading 100 scripts and then we read them and then we’re done. We’re like none of these are right for us. All the time reading scripture just gone and made a movie. So we really try to just generate things and it’s hard but when people come to us and say will you look at my movie? Will you help me our hearts are like breaking for them, but we’re like basically saying like look you kind of need to like get that first thing on your own and get your own, you know short film down to get that programmed and like finding yourself. That’s another question we have here. What do you what do you say to a filmmaker who doesn’t believe that he or she sort of hasn’t inside of themselves to make the movie that they’re trying to give me we say maybe you’re not filmmaker. Yeah. I mean that’s not our experience. Usually it’s probably because people are very people who are coming up to us are probably more confident, but most people we find are probably over contract. I mean maybe just for our tapes because we think. All the time. I mean, it’s like every time we make a movie we’re just like oh God, please don’t mess up. Please clean. I mean, it’s not like we’ve arrived anywhere where terrified is very very very hard to make a really great movie. And so that’s why we beat the shit out of ourselves and you know have everyone consult with us and when we go nuts before we like put a movie into the world, I mean if you don’t have the confidence, I would just say reduce everything make a tiny movie. Your best friend and make them do what you want to see them do and I think you know to clarify that point. It’s like can get on like a soap box in three like go out there and make it move in and power. But like we want to be clear sometimes at a lot of people like they kind of feel like they want to do it and they feel like it might be easy and they’re not sure so we do try to be clear these be like look this may not be the thing for you. It may not be your form. It may not be that is okay and we yeah, right, correct. The time who thinks writing you think directing is fun. You probably made some shitty ass baby. I’m not kidding. I mean, that’s why I’m doing a lot of acting right now. It is hard Mark has the best metaphor. I’ve heard word like if writing and directing is like being the mother of a difficult child and raising it to fruition. Um being an actor is the drunk uncle shows up at Christmas and wins the day I mean, And then goes home and doesn’t have to take care of anybody watching Netflix. Yeah, it’s a really really I mean directing in particular is is the hardest thing I can imagine. I mean it’s to really really hard thing to do and I’m always like skeptical when I’m on a set as a director with having a great time. I was like, you’re not paying attention right now and you’re not watching I mean Mark and I. I mean marks a little better than me. But like we’re pretty antisocial onset people like hey, can we come and set we’re like fuck? No. I mean like seriously, we made Cyrus really Scott produce if you wanted to come to set and we told them no we couldn’t handle it. We were just like we have our hands full. I think we need is like Ridley Scott watching us direct John C, Reilly Jonah Hill and then. Another person. You’re honestly is it ever too late? I don’t think so at all. I mean, you know, I think for us and Jay hit this a little bit but like the most exciting thing about the filmmaking world right now is like someone who is 13 years old or 85 years old can literally just pick up their iPad and make a movie and I truly believe that that movie can win the Oscar because the technology is there and people are ready to accept any. The star system is broken down just like just because Matthew McConaughey in a movie people don’t come see it anymore. So they’re looking for green unique Original Stories and I really think it can break through. You know, um, I think it’s a little bit of a tough time because because there are so many movies out there now because of that it’s a little harder to to cut through like Jay and I honestly we’re in a really good place in 2005 to have the fucking chair because it was a little less competitive. I think if we submit the package Sundance in 2019, it doesn’t get you know, um, and so it’s a little tougher but it is exciting that I think honestly anybody can come true. Yeah. I don’t think people I mean, I feel like I don’t hear this being talked about enough that like very Jenkins was a quote-unquote mumblecore filmmaker. Alongside Mark. We were a festival towards with him his previous movie to Moonlight was best for me. It’s a really good movie. It’s a nice solid core movie, um for an African-American who has not made a Crusher great movie to make basically a million 1 million dollar movie about gay black men in America in to win the Oscar is insane. It’s unheard. It’s like considering where he came from in the context of all that and that a 1.2 million dollar movie. Look that good. All of that to me is is super exciting. I mean, I know there’s a lot of things to be scared about in terms of like what’s happening to film but the process has been democratized in a great way. We have a long way to go for sure, but it’s happening and then I’m gonna say. Question for for myself and to do with the book and just how you guys think of it. Do you see just as some kind of farewell like it’s in some ways is the book the way for you guys to kind of say goodbye to the duplass brothers and to let everybody meet Mark and I think there’s a little bit of like comedian individuation of Mark and Jay. Um, but it’s definitely not a goodbye to the two of us. I think that like. The if I had to kind of be reductive about it, I would just say um, we’re in marriage right now really still love each other. Uh, we’re gonna sleep with some other people feel real good. But we will the sex is always best with the two of us really running back back home to that and I think that you know, the reason we wanted to share in this book is that we felt like, Long time everybody’s asking us. How do you work with your sibling without killing each other and we’ve been trying to do that in our own interviews like this for years and we felt like we had to write in 320 page book to even scratch the surface of it. Um, but I think that a lot of people think that it’s a lot easier than it is for us and we wanted to kind of open that up to people and let them know that like, it’s really hard but it’s so weird. Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely I would say it’s like. Goodbye to that last step and do everything together. We’re going to write the recommending together. I mean that that is changing. But you know as a company is US supporting each other in terms of doing the things that that we want to do and helping each other do it. That’s great. But I mean to be honest for me, it feels like uh, I get my brother back and more Hello to jail you guys. Just don’t get to be there. We’re going on – we’re hanging out and like we have it before CJ. I can hear you guys. It’s so much. It’s a whole other panel and we’re best so much. I tell you we all need inspiration. And the duplass brothers are that especially for me, uh about just guys who are just persistent and just you know, they had 10 years 12 years of failure before they finally got something to get off the ground and that Persistence of of going after it and making it and figuring things out for themselves and not falling into what everybody else wanted them to do, but for them to find their own voice their own way of doing. Things and I respect that tremendously, uh, and and they are under still an oddity in the Hollywood world and then the Hollywood System. They still uh walk to the beat of Their Own Drum and and are successful doing it and working with Netflix and working with HBO and working with, you know, huge companies and doing what they want to do. So again, and I’ve I’ve preached this so so so many times on the show. Don’t go and make a seventh out. Don’t go make a $700,000 first feature go make 10 $70,000 features. And I wouldn’t even go farther than that and and and you can actually go and make a 20 features with that kind of money or 10 or 15 features with that kind of money and learn along the way where you can actually set yourself up for Success. Um, especially in today’s world and what you’re trying and what the business is looking like today and what the marketplace is looking for today. So again, um, and if you and I want to really stress if you have not read. Their book like brothers. It is a wonderful read I put it up there with Rebel Without a crew director. Robert Rodriguez is mythical book on El Mariachi in the making of El Mariachi. It is definitely up there. And in many ways I feel that is a little bit more realistic of what these guys. Did they took every day. Uh gear and made their movie and made two short film then made a feature and then went into the Hollywood System figured it out after two movies at the way Hollywood wanted them to be they just weren’t comfortable with so they pulled back when back into the Indie world, uh, and then started doing things the way they wanted to do it and and told Hollywood. Hey if you’re going to work with us, this is how we work. And have complete creative control along the way and make money and help their friends. It is is honestly the it’s a win-win it’s a dream style way of making films and definitely check out their book. I’m gonna put links to the book in the in the show notes at any time. And also in the show notes, I’m going to put a link to uh, Mark duplass of the Duplass Brothers legendary now keynote at the 2015 South by Southwest Film Festival where he basically says the Calvin is not coming and it is a must-see for every filmmaker out. There has to watch this amazing hour-long Kino. That Mark duplass puts on at the festival. It is mind-blowing. It really really is. So a lot of filmmakers ask me. What should I do? First? Go make a three dollar short film go do it right. Now while you’re listening to this start figuring out what you’re going to go shoot this weekend and go shoot a three dollar feature three dot feature. No three short film. And after you can you feel that you’ve got something you got that special sauce that thing that makes you you and you’ve got that voice. That’s a on that film don’t care how it looks just put it on put it on there and like Jay duplass of the Duplass Brothers said people will forgive a bad-looking movie and a bounce sounding movie if the story is there and when you’re starting out, that’s what you got to do. Get the story done because we could always add the technical stuff. Look how many beautifully technical movies there are in Hollywood that are garbage because the story is not there but it looks beautiful. We’re looking for stories. That’s what Hollywood’s looking for. So master that first then worry about all the other aspects of filmmaking which you will learn along the way as well. And in the show notes a couple extra bonus videos in their of the boys as well. And again definitely check out their book like brothers is definitely an amazing read and as always keep that hustle going keep that dream alive, and I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the indie film hustle podcast at indie film hustle. Welcome to the indie film has a podcast episode number 241. No one can stop you from doing exactly what you want to do. If you can accept that the calvary won’t come and if you can be that calorie, it gives you a chance to be happy Mark duplass of the Duplass Brothers broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It’s the indie film hustle podcast where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film business. And here’s your host Alex Ferrari. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I am your humble host Alex Ferrari today’s. Is brought to you by Black Box black box is a new platform and community. That is all about Financial Freedom for filmmakers like you if you join block box, you will be transformed from being a worker to being a maker of your own content and you’ll be making steady passive income from the global market Black Box currently allows you to upload your stock footage once get it too many Global agencies and then allows you to share that passive income stream with your collaborators whether you want to submit old footage that’s been. Around in your hard drives or create brand new content black box is for you. It’s really quite revolutionary with black box filmmakers can concentrate on making great content while block box takes care of all the business BS just visit w-w-w Today’s Show is also sponsored by Studio unknown. Studio known as a crack team of audio post professionals known for Quality sound on any Indie budget whether you need a lush surround sound mix or a quick Festival submission pass Studio known can help you with all of your posts sound needs from sound design and mix to fully and even a custom score contact Studio known and mention the indie film also podcast and you’ll get 50% off one day of ADR or 10% off your complete post sound package. Just go to Studio unknown. Today’s episode is extremely special guys because I was privileged to sit and listen to two of uh, honestly my Idols people that filmmakers at really got me off my ass to go make my first film. This is Meg and continue to inspire me on my second feature on the corner of ego and desire. And those guys are the duplass brothers. They were the first time that I heard what they did with puffy chair their first feature film where they just went out and did it and didn’t really wait around for permission and just kind of went and did it and didn’t really care about how it looked or whatever they cared more about story and performance and and it really just inspired me. So I had an opportunity to see them give us a lecture at one of their book signings. For their new amazing book like brothers. I’ve read the book and it tells the entire story of how they um, made it into Hollywood and how they changed the rules of how they are making films and it’s really inspirational. Uh, and also a whole other sections of the book are all about working with Brothers working with a siblings and how to get along and how to collaborate. And uh, and that whole world is well, so it’s a wonderful read and I wanted to uh to hear what these guys have to say. And I was able to record most of their talk. I’m gonna I’m gonna give you a little lead in to where the recordings going to pick up there talkin about their very first short film, which is called. This is John and they did it back in 2003. And basically the way it was is they were both sitting in there, uh little apartment in Austin, Texas and Mark. To Jay and said today we’re making a movie and Jay was like, what are you talkin about? We don’t have a 60 millimeter camera. We don’t have crew. We don’t have lights. We don’t have actors. He goes. I don’t care. We’re gonna go make a movie. Let’s grab Mom and Dad’s video camera home video camera. I’m gonna go to the store and get a tape for three dollars and you’ve got 15 minutes to come up with a story. And he bolted so since he didn’t have a lot of time to figure out a story he came up with the idea of basically what happened to him earlier in the week where he was trying to set his outgoing message on his answering machine and literally having a nervous breakdown about it. And that is where we pick up the story. Uh where the boys are talkin so really enjoy the rest of this, uh episode Guys. These guys are super inspirational and I’m gonna have a bunch of cool stuff at the end of the episode. You can see the three dollar short film. And a ton of more resources and more talks that Mark and Jay do uh in the show notes and all that kind of stuff and I’ll talk a little bit more about that later. But until then enjoy the Duplass Brothers and I was um, trying over and over again. I couldn’t get it right and I pretty much had a nervous breakdown and when Mars another mod mild you might want to queue it up now because this is. What we’re going to show. Um, so um, I told Mark the idea and he said cool and he got dressed in my Kelly. I was doing like temp work. It was called The Kelly people like you would you know, I have one button up shirt and some. Laughs that’s all I owned other than like, you know just sweatpants at that point and he put the shirt on and he looked at the tag and we saw on the tag. He said John Burton we were like that’s your in and he walked outside. He said roll camera. Um, I’m coming in. This is the move. Into the map is that we shot 120-minute tape our friend David, uh, bro another brother. I can help this head that then after about seven minutes and we feel like you know, it was gonna be the greatest in the world, but we definitely felt like we had broken through and told something that was very specifically. Let’s watch it again very specific to us very unique to our Sensibility. Try to be as we were just making fun of ourselves and the way we do things. Um, so we’re like What do we do with this? We don’t know and then we submitted it to like a couple of film festivals on a lark one of which was Sundance and we got into Sundance that year and um, it was the worst looking movie than ever played is a dead pixel right at the center of the frame. Um, but it was. The worst sounding movie which also gets rid of that going for us. Um, but it really connected with people that was something in it. And I think we have tried to stay as close to this process. Um as we can which is basically, you know aren’t us our young filmmakers always asking it’s like, you know, how do I get started and besides family for 12 years, which was trying to tell them to avoid its kind of that thing where like, there’s little. This is you’re having with your loved one or your best friend or someone that’s doing the morning and you’re like giggling uncontrollably about something you’re confessing to them when you get like, you know, if the Shivers the shower remembering something horrible and embarrassment you did like if you can identify and share and communicate like that tends to be like kind of what where the stuff is. So we’ve basically been trying to do that since do you think you recognize. The moment then maybe finally broken through in life discovered what your voice could be? No, Alice Alice just depressed and obliterated. Now you have we did more like something interesting. I when I didn’t know at the time, I mean, I was just blanketed by Decades of failure, you know, I mean, uh, when I did know is that we had captured something that we had never captured before like something happen. In front of me and it was very private and personal to me and Mark. This was nothing that I would have told anybody else in the world. So fucking embarrassing, you know, um, so I knew that that had happened I knew that it was real because Mark was only a few years younger than me. He was hot on my tail. So having that nervous breakdown, it was easy for him to tap into it. The first time we’d ever captured a performance like that and um, we just knew. Also, but we after want to take we walked away from it. We were like, okay, we got that whatever that was. We got that. Um, but it was so different for anything that we had ever conceived or thought we would do, you know, and then when it played at Sundance and you guys the crowd at this reaction and also another reaction, which you didn’t have because we’re live right now, but half the Sundance crab was also like scared he was going to kill himself like. I was seriously like the questions we were getting like that was the most hilarious we’ve seen in Sundance. But also we were afraid he was gonna shoot himself in the head. Um, so like this weird thing and it was really not anything smart about us. It was just we saw people laugh at us hard and we were like, I guess that’s what they want from us. Just keep doing that. But then how did you sort of push that forward? Somebody’s recapture and expand that very carefully. Yeah, we really try to stay close to it. Our next film was another short film this time. It had two actors in it really branching out. I didn’t kitchen is still and um, and then we went to Sundance with that and then we thought okay, uh, it might be time for us to consider making a feature film but like last feature we made it was terrible. We were so scared we had that. Like PTSD so we’re like we know how to make a seven-minute seen work. Let’s make a movie. That’s like let’s do the map 12 7 minutes. That will be an 84 minute movie. We feel like we can pull it off and then we again went right into jai’s available material School of thinking where I was like, I was a musician and I have an um, my wife Katie lived in this very small town in Maine where we could shoot a lot of stuff and people. Friendly to us and we you know were like, oh, this is Furniture Store going out of business we can get to matching recliners provide $100 light one of them on fire. I don’t think fucking awesome. That’ll be like the big effect of the booby. Um, and so we cobbled together the puffy chair out of that and and what was funny about that. So we really thought like most people did like that would be a stepping stone to getting us into how they want to traditional filmmaking where we could make money. Um, and so when we have a puppy at Sundance and we sold that we got agents and we moved to LA and it was this whole rigmarole of like well now you’re like now you’ve done your Sundance movies and you can be a feature film maker at the studio system and that was wildly different than we expected. And I mean one of the things in the book that I appreciated too much is just the practicality of a lot of you guys are talkin about me. The book is just how to pay your rent. Was it important for you guys to start to keep that sort of like not to both practical stuff in the book. And do you think being aware of that stuff is one of the foundational ways that you have the success that you maybe didn’t overextend you, you know, you kept it too like oh, I have a van to let you yeah, and I think that that process is endemic to Our Success that. List sort of I mean it really boiled everything down to uh, what we think is important in storytelling which is you know story acting I mean filmmaking it’s you know, it’s great. If you have a gorgeous film but like you can have gorgeous film historian acting sucks. No one cares, but if you have a film that has good story and acting and looks like absolute shit people will still. The movie maybe like some you know nerving Czar not going to like it but like, you know if they feel and we felt that and we honestly that process of I mean when we made these movies three dollars, the second one was like 50 bucks. You know, um, the puffy chair was $10,000 to produce and it was truly. What is the cheapest amount of money that we can make this booty for? You know, like don’t use movie Magic budgeting software start with a piece of loose-leaf and write the 14 things down that you have to buy so that the movie can happen and then people who don’t want to be part of a rinky-dink movie like that. You want to eliminate them from your set it like weirdly boiled. Think out to like, you know, Mark was talkin about the Puppeteer and he’s available materials and Katie it was with Mark and she had to do it. Um, and like I had this friend who played the brother and it was the criteria was like that’s really interesting and he’ll do anything for him made the movie will do anything’ we say because he’s got nothing going on. He was like at the time he was like anyone come to my apartment and Sharon. We have this beautiful like how and we have continued that now, I mean like when we make a movie, even if we meant to be in the studio system Mark, and I we will pull the budget back. I mean we made Cyrus for Searchlight. No one had ever made a movie in the studio system for seven million dollars. I mean they were like, yeah, we’ve never gotten that under 10 and we were like we can get it under 10. We can make that movie now for $300,000. Um, but you know, we were trying to be Minted as Studio people at that time, but that today that is our philosophy is make the movie as cheaply as humanly possible so that you know, for instance if you make a movie and you go to Sundance if you make the movie for $200,000 and it has a couple of famous people in it, it’s going to make its money back. Um, and if you get really lucky maybe sell it for a million dollars and then everything makes a ton of. Ton of money and that was kind of like we realized when we made like our little movie bag had and subsequent smaller movies like the one I love and the overnight creepy movies that we make in everything. We make them so cheaply we actually people kind of like, that’s so great. You have this Artistic integrity and you don’t care about money like maconha do care about money. It’s kind of important because it helps us continue to make more movies. We fund our own movies and we make more making those movies by owning them and making them ourselves that if we did getting a paycheck from a studio and it guarantees that creative control, so it’s become kind of seminal for our model. I think we thought I made Cyrus and Jeff lives at home. It’s hard to make a studio. You gotta find a lot to get what you want done. We thought if we keep doing this we’re going to be burned up by the time you’re 50. So we kind of took a step back down to the Sunday world and the independent world and that’s pretty much what we do now is try and make these movies on our own dime and and make them very cheaply because you get to kind of stay around, you know, like if your movie doesn’t blow up it’s not a big deal because it didn’t cost that much money and that’s really important to stay vital and we. Like the message we’re hearing and the benefit world right now is like nobody will give me any way to make my movie up to 12 million dollar movie. I want to make with no stars. It’s about incest and rape. I like I think you should make that movie for $1,000 and then sell for $10,000 and you’ll be a wild success. Nobody should give you 12 million to make that movie. It’s not the right time. So we kind of felt like being pranked. Fiscally responsible something that we want to put out any book is it’s a big part of serving our creative. What’s really interesting about the two of you and the way they work is that I feel like in your trajectory you sort of like just snuck in the door. But while the the the idea was you make a short film festival you think a festival you would sell it then someone would get to work with a distributor Studio like you guys are following the path that you were supposed to. You can tell me if you feel like that was working or not. But it seems like you made a decision to like go down to sort of other path and to work in a different way and like once you kind of got in and you started working in the conventional way what chain like why didn’t you just like continue down the pack? I mean, we were incredibly steadfast in curating the way that we made things together. I mean we make things unusually we work in. Sort of like weird communism. I mean we are anti on tour. We are we have visions about things but like because there’s two of us. It’s not about the dictate the dictatorial vision. It’s more like Hey, we’re here. We’re trying to capture this feeling let’s try and get some lightning on a set like that thing happened. It doesn’t work at a studio world doesn’t work like that. But we did a lot of things like for instance when we work the studio world, but are like, oh when you say cut 50 people Rush on set we can. But and also we can’t have 50 people staring in our actors because we make these intimate movies and what we’d like we have to offer or like genuine performances. So we cleared everybody off the set. We put them in a garage that had honours and they didn’t like it very much but when they saw the footage they were like, okay we get we get what you’re doing. So everything’s sort of worked moving into the studio system where the bus stopped was with the studio heads and we’re talkin. I mean like we’re talkin about. For smart people who have been a part of making very good movies who were giving us a seven million dollar movie based on him $10,000 feature. So we were making a huge leap, which we also recommend people don’t do but the main difference is that we we had to have a million conversations about what we were making our process is a process of discovery. And so there were making a nail down all these things and when we could nail. Down they assumed that we were weak and that we didn’t have Vision. They want to ask that you know the answer to everything that’s going to make your movie good before you go in and here’s the deal a lot of people that can go in those rooms with base coat baseball caps chewing gum who are very eloquent and can answer those questions very well and confidently and they’re not always the best filmmakers which is crazy and we thought like well, you know what’s worked for our collaboration Through The Years validation listening admitting that we maybe not know. And we did that with the studio heads. That was the exact impression. We goddess like they don’t really know what they’re doing and they’re and it wasn’t until something crazy happened. I mean look, we’re still friends with all these people and we love them and transcended this but unlike day four or five of filming Cyrus were coming from the Independent World. We’re directing Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei Academy Award nominee, John C Reilly and light Joanie. All right off of Superbad and the middle of movie startup. And so we’re trying to earn their trust. We’re doing grades and classify tells us that they want us to shoot the first scene we shot because it’s too Brown and two down and when it has broke those to the apartment and we’re like this is going to be tough for us to tell our actors that that they were going to shoot the scene a couple our trust and it really came to a head. And I kind of lost my temper and I started screaming and I was just like doing the thing is supposed certainly I spoke I was doing the thing on accident that the baseball hat gum-chewing directors do and in that moment. They were like, oh they have Vision. Look at this. They know everything and that kills just like this is what is required to do this and hindsight. We were being naive when you have someone. Is money and a lot of money you need to secure it for them and make them feel good. Like it’s going to make their money back. That’s why when people hear that like, you know, there was this whole article going around a couple weeks ago about how we had like one to turn down a Marvel movie and they’re like, wow, that’s crazy. But we were like if we’re to we had trouble directly seven million dollars if we were to have to deal with like a 200 million dollar product. You have to be responsible to them. It’s almost not about being smart at that point about servicing a product, you know, so we were. I need to thinking like I love our movie Let’s Go to scum it on set. I understand why they need to know that so now I’m just tuck ourselves away. Just say hey totally get it. Let’s just do our thing. We’ll make a cheap way and we’ll kind of gouge you when we sell it back to your idea you guys leaving tomorrow because I always thought it would be like everybody’s waiting in the van or something. We’re pretty sure we made a mark on movie. It’d be like there’d be a really long like eight minutes seen before he leaves his house and he’s really confiding in his wife about how bad he looks in his and he can’t possibly go out there and he’s doing he’s got low testosterone and he has to take a little medication. And also one of you motherfuckers is not cleaning the blender in this house is going to come to a head right now. I just think we. Like realize you have to spend three years of your life and doing only that and we like to make like 15 things a year it spread ourselves around. So we always feel like we wouldn’t be happy doing that. They wouldn’t be happy with us for sure because we’d be fuzzy and talking about Discovery maybe like two hundred million dollars. So just don’t worry, which I would totally understand they’d also be like read the fucking comic book bro. He’s already written until you and to the larger point of that and this is part. Back to where Janet are right now that’s like our collaboration for so many years because we had failed and we found this is John right? And so we were like what’s kind of steer in the two of us. We got to protected make sure it doesn’t get that of it bad. But then as we got a little better and our craft and circuit realize like we don’t want to just tell only the stories that we could tell we realize we wanted to collaborate with a lot more people and that’s how we started producing people’s things which is like. I mean, honestly, I really started with our friends needed money and we were the only people have money so we would give it to them but but it led to like oh, this is really great. Like we could produce some would be like Tangerine which we are not authorities to tell that kind of story well, but Shaun Baker kills it and he just needed our guidance and our money and some protection and so that has allowed us to you know, make a show like while country which we like can’t make that but we can foster that govern that but you can’t. That when you’re directing while because you just you can’t spray yourself around like that that’s spreading around and collaborate philosophy is allowed us some of that space we’re looking for where we can like develop relationships with other people and have those kinds of intimacy. So it’s been very good for us and now Cyrus and Jeff at home. To know how the you just think of those movies and how you feel about that just in the sense that they see now I pass the you sort of didn’t take I don’t know for you. They felt like that was some sort of creative cul-de-sac deflator going to get stuck making movies like that or someone goes through. These should have been yours Pinnacle and the springboard to like even bigger movement and you guys didn’t drink up guys. So how do you feel about whatever? That sort of like Phantom limb is now well, I mean, I think you know when we were coming up in one of the other brothers, but we let go of that we’re still building on a big writer director holding on to each other and moving into what we wanted to do and back then this was the dream for independent filmmakers is to move through Sundance and comment to Fox Ursula and make sideways. You know, that’s what everybody was trying to do is make 10 to 20 million dollar great artistic. He’s with big movie stars. Um, and when we arrived that model died, I mean basically, you know to to do the math of it, um, you know Cyrus, um was 7 million, they only made 10 million dollars and a lot of people were very surprised. But because people lose critically acclaimed it was very funny. It was very moving. It was everything that movie like that supposed to be. We’re like two million dollars and then when we met Jeff was at home, I think Jeff is at home only made four million dollars and that same right after Jeff is at home. We produce safety net guarantee, which was a $750,000 that also made four billion dollars and it didn’t have wildly famous people in it. Like Jason Segel me. Yeah, and so we. We were coming into that time. I mean, I we’re just very adaptable. Yeah, we’re just yet. We just are aware. I mean, I think maybe the one thing that has kept us alive. All this time is like we are able to look outside of ourselves when we made shitty movies in our 20s. We were like, oh another shitty movie and we weren’t like hey, you have to see my movie. It’s so good because I made it and you must see it. We have to get it out of the world. We’re like no it’s a shitty movie. We need to move on. And similarly when we arrived and I were like these movies aren’t working anymore and we were meeting those people and they were like, yeah, these movies aren’t really working and we kind of knew that like if we were to try to stay there the budgets would get tighter the studios would come down a little hard on you to make sure they can make the money back. It was happening to be the rising of Netflix and a streaming model and realizing we could sell movies that we made independently at Sundance and it was a white glow of thing where it was like the energy feels. Good to be over here. I think Jen are essentially a little bit more comfortable more comfortable kind of under forecasting and over performing in that way. You know, like we really like showing up to Sundance and knowing like listen, we made this cheap movie. There’s no way it’s not going to make its money back do well and like maybe blow up but like it’s certainly not going to be a disappointment in that regard, you know, and um, I think we felt that if we tried to stay in the saris Jeff Elizabeth home realm or it. A really burn us out because it because we’re love those movies in and we got to make the Louise were under fight so hard to do it and now we have to fight and it’s just this will last longer I think and then and this is maybe it suited with the Mana you guys are where you are. Just for you as people and this is a book but you’re able to have this really fantastic work life balance. You seem like you’re able to be true humans in a way that if you were on that crime of making the movies or even when you were making together, it was may be harder for you. And is that something that also been important for you? Just the two of you to discover is like the way to be people as well as yeah. I mean, we’ve been talkin a lot about it lately. I’m in this weird phase where like I’m not really acting in a lot of things and I’m not actively directing anyting because that requires 12 to 14 hours a day on set my kids are 10 and 6 and it’s fucking board game homemade pizzas off the powers time and our house and like I don’t want to miss that shit and so as a writer and a producer I can be kind of more 95, you know, James really had discovered his love of acting recently. He’s able to go explore that and do that and. And I think our feeling now is like we have this wonderful company of people who can do a lot for us. We learned how to delegate Authority and how to make things work and the answer for for me is always like if there is a 20% chance that um, I should say this more clearly like I think about doing something, you know, I look at it. I say, okay what happens if I want this I want this to someone and there’s a 20% chance that they’ll do it better or worse. Me it’s going to be a wash so I’m going to punt it and let them do it. And then I look at the things out like uniquely qualified to do like the things that were really feel like I’m special at which for me is like, I’m great at Obama draft that first draft that’s like a b-minus really fast. I’m good at I give it to my friends and they tell them what to do with it. And I’m really good at like building the architecture a little projects like each movie or TV show is like a little startup and I can see it. I’m like, oh, it’s Elisabeth Moss will be me. They’ll be some sci-fi. Shooting technique house and when I know I can see the whole thing, you know, so I stay in that and everything else. I um, I’ve had like a reverse mid-life crisis realizing that I like acting and uh, I’m coming out guys coming out of that acting closet. No one knows how to deal with so weird actor now, Everybody’s like all actors are trying to get where you are so they can have creative control. Like what are you doing? I don’t want to hold the whole universe in my arms. I want I want just want to be one guy and like jump off a cliff. I don’t know. It’s it’s definitely an unusual path. Um, and I don’t know I feel like I’m I’m I’m kind of the clearly very comfortable with it super. I’m kind of a guy my family. I’ve always been the guy where words have been used such as history on it. I’m the person with a lot of feelings and people who like can you have all those feelings for making us uncomfortable and now I get for that you can have I’m just do it in your room. Yeah. Um, yeah, so I’m I’ve just been enjoying I don’t know it’s weird that I discovered it so late and I’m kind of excited about, you know exploring. Trying to do as much as possible. And so we’ve got some questions from the audience we have before the the program moved to read we’re gonna go through a few of the audience. So the uh, the first one, um, how do you see your roles individually and together in shaping the future of the industry what sort of impact would you like to leave? But we feel a future industry, uh rests squarely on our shoulders white men. Is uh, it’s really up to us. I second book is going to be a rule book. We give you a fucking ticket. That’s right. I mean, I think that like Jay and I have a little bit of survivors deals of like we suck we struggled for a long time when we see a lot of developing artists and people who really have great ideas. Imagine we want to help them and I think so there’s a lot of mentoring going on with us right now whether that’s producing number people’s works or. I’m just kind of in a more traditional sense. And this book is even a part of that. It’s just like trying to offer what we have two people and our platform to let them tell their stories and and lift them up. And I think that like, you know, if if we have something unique to offer at this point, it really is similar to what we saw Richard linklater when we were 18 and 14 years old, which is like he was in his late 20s, and he was wearing jeans. Pocket tee shirt that was ribbed at bad. So I’ll cut hair and he wasn’t that well spoken and we looked at him. We’re like with this fucking guy can do it we can do it. I think that there’s something about um our story and which is true. It’s just like we just waited at the bus stop for for forever. We never left the bus stop. We always stayed and you’ll catch the bus at the bus stop in the concept of keeping things simple and cheap because. We do we are passionate about the democratization of the filmmaking process like right now if you have an iPhone and a laptop, you can make a gorgeous movie that can change the world that is fully possible in anyone in this world can do that. Uh, and I still am I just had a phone call with a guy who’s making his first feature for $700,000. I was like don’t make 10 features for $70,000 you moron I don’t. Here but we are very passionate about helping people avoid the stumbling blocks that we’ve had and helping people really realize that a budget really can start with a piece of loose-leaf paper. And also there’s a collections here having to do with short films in park. Do you think there is a link do you like the shortest short film possible or is a little longer and then also do you think they should. Self-contained artistic expression like its own thing or do you see them as like the short that I plan to make um, the first part of that question. So when you gave us great advice long time I go they say make sure it’s not long and I thought that was really smart. Don’t make Ashley. Yeah. So if you’re talkin about play reverse engineering your creativity into a model that’s going to be sustainable make comedic shorts under five minutes because that’s the most. Programmable thing the film festival standpoint and in terms of whether it should be a standalone piece of art or whether like a microcosm of your feature my very strong response to that. It’s like get out of your head immediately on that think about what is a possible string of two to three minutes of footage that might represent your special sauce might be entertaining and just go from there. But we think shorts are great. I mean, it’s like, uh, the one my first question that I asked, People when they ask me like hey, I made some stuff trying to make a feature. Which should I do? My first question is have you made anything that you can hold in your hand or it’s not dating anymore. It’s a link or whatever but you have a link that you can send to people and say this is who I am. I’m proud of this. I feel this is an example of my potential and most people will will not say yes to that question and I think that is everyone. Job is to make something great that you esteem as great that you are proud of it. And you say I’d like to build my filmmaking career on on this and the clarify that we do feel like most of the things we receive from people when they try to give us stuff. It is people who have made something that is not great yet and there are mystified why it’s not getting programmed or working and they’re spending all their time trying to Market their B- movie instead of spending all their time when we get to making $3. Films until you make the a movie and I guarantee you when you make that a movie you will not be stopped when you make the great movie. You can’t be stuck. We’ve seen that with our own stuff. We have movies that we have like really like and we like going out and Market them and push them with everything and then not a lot of people see them and then there are other things that were like, uh, just a little drop on Netflix in enough promoting and then people catch it and blow us up because they wanted it so less time marketing more time making good stuff and then just as pretty. What are you guys looking for? Like oh people are coming to you with you know project. What are the things that you feel like you respond? It’s tough because we everybody always asks us. How do you do so many things? Like do you guys ever sleep? And the thing is we run our company in an odd way where we don’t accept submissions. We don’t read things from people. We don’t read scripts that are agents have sent us to produce the things that we make almost I mean is a few exceptions, but I think that we met. Our Birth by us and our company with people that we have either worked with before that we trust and so we we almost make 100% of what we develop and that’s what the efficiency comes from. That was a hard lesson. Like we moved to Hollywood after we had the puppy chair and our agents were like all these scripts that you can get to uh by to direct and we like to spend time reading 100 scripts and then we read them and then we’re done. We’re like none of these are right for us. All the time reading scripture just gone and made a movie. So we really try to just generate things and it’s hard but when people come to us and say will you look at my movie? Will you help me our hearts are like breaking for them, but we’re like basically saying like look you kind of need to like get that first thing on your own and get your own, you know short film down to get that programmed and like finding yourself. That’s another question we have here. What do you what do you say to a filmmaker who doesn’t believe that he or she sort of hasn’t inside of themselves to make the movie that they’re trying to give me we say maybe you’re not filmmaker. Yeah. I mean that’s not our experience. Usually it’s probably because people are very people who are coming up to us are probably more confident, but most people we find are probably over contract. I mean maybe just for our tapes because we think. All the time. I mean, it’s like every time we make a movie we’re just like oh God, please don’t mess up. Please clean. I mean, it’s not like we’ve arrived anywhere where terrified is very very very hard to make a really great movie. And so that’s why we beat the shit out of ourselves and you know have everyone consult with us and when we go nuts before we like put a movie into the world, I mean if you don’t have the confidence, I would just say reduce everything make a tiny movie. Your best friend and make them do what you want to see them do and I think you know to clarify that point. It’s like can get on like a soap box in three like go out there and make it move in and power. But like we want to be clear sometimes at a lot of people like they kind of feel like they want to do it and they feel like it might be easy and they’re not sure so we do try to be clear these be like look this may not be the thing for you. It may not be your form. It may not be that is okay and we yeah, right, correct. The time who thinks writing you think directing is fun. You probably made some shitty ass baby. I’m not kidding. I mean, that’s why I’m doing a lot of acting right now. It is hard Mark has the best metaphor. I’ve heard word like if writing and directing is like being the mother of a difficult child and raising it to fruition. Um being an actor is the drunk uncle shows up at Christmas and wins the day I mean, And then goes home and doesn’t have to take care of anybody watching Netflix. Yeah, it’s a really really I mean directing in particular is is the hardest thing I can imagine. I mean it’s to really really hard thing to do and I’m always like skeptical when I’m on a set as a director with having a great time. I was like, you’re not paying attention right now and you’re not watching I mean Mark and I. I mean marks a little better than me. But like we’re pretty antisocial onset people like hey, can we come and set we’re like fuck? No. I mean like seriously, we made Cyrus really Scott produce if you wanted to come to set and we told them no we couldn’t handle it. We were just like we have our hands full. I think we need is like Ridley Scott watching us direct John C, Reilly Jonah Hill and then. Another person. You’re honestly is it ever too late? I don’t think so at all. I mean, you know, I think for us and Jay hit this a little bit but like the most exciting thing about the filmmaking world right now is like someone who is 13 years old or 85 years old can literally just pick up their iPad and make a movie and I truly believe that that movie can win the Oscar because the technology is there and people are ready to accept any. The star system is broken down just like just because Matthew McConaughey in a movie people don’t come see it anymore. So they’re looking for green unique Original Stories and I really think it can break through. You know, um, I think it’s a little bit of a tough time because because there are so many movies out there now because of that it’s a little harder to to cut through like Jay and I honestly we’re in a really good place in 2005 to have the fucking chair because it was a little less competitive. I think if we submit the package Sundance in 2019, it doesn’t get you know, um, and so it’s a little tougher but it is exciting that I think honestly anybody can come true. Yeah. I don’t think people I mean, I feel like I don’t hear this being talked about enough that like very Jenkins was a quote-unquote mumblecore filmmaker. Alongside Mark. We were a festival towards with him his previous movie to Moonlight was best for me. It’s a really good movie. It’s a nice solid core movie, um for an African-American who has not made a Crusher great movie to make basically a million 1 million dollar movie about gay black men in America in to win the Oscar is insane. It’s unheard. It’s like considering where he came from in the context of all that and that a 1.2 million dollar movie. Look that good. All of that to me is is super exciting. I mean, I know there’s a lot of things to be scared about in terms of like what’s happening to film but the process has been democratized in a great way. We have a long way to go for sure, but it’s happening and then I’m gonna say. Question for for myself and to do with the book and just how you guys think of it. Do you see just as some kind of farewell like it’s in some ways is the book the way for you guys to kind of say goodbye to the duplass brothers and to let everybody meet Mark and I think there’s a little bit of like comedian individuation of Mark and Jay. Um, but it’s definitely not a goodbye to the two of us. I think that like. The if I had to kind of be reductive about it, I would just say um, we’re in marriage right now really still love each other. Uh, we’re gonna sleep with some other people feel real good. But we will the sex is always best with the two of us really running back back home to that and I think that you know, the reason we wanted to share in this book is that we felt like, Long time everybody’s asking us. How do you work with your sibling without killing each other and we’ve been trying to do that in our own interviews like this for years and we felt like we had to write in 320 page book to even scratch the surface of it. Um, but I think that a lot of people think that it’s a lot easier than it is for us and we wanted to kind of open that up to people and let them know that like, it’s really hard but it’s so weird. Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely I would say it’s like. Goodbye to that last step and do everything together. We’re going to write the recommending together. I mean that that is changing. But you know as a company is US supporting each other in terms of doing the things that that we want to do and helping each other do it. That’s great. But I mean to be honest for me, it feels like uh, I get my brother back and more Hello to jail you guys. Just don’t get to be there. We’re going on – we’re hanging out and like we have it before CJ. I can hear you guys. It’s so much. It’s a whole other panel and we’re best so much. I tell you we all need inspiration. And the duplass brothers are that especially for me, uh about just guys who are just persistent and just you know, they had 10 years 12 years of failure before they finally got something to get off the ground and that Persistence of of going after it and making it and figuring things out for themselves and not falling into what everybody else wanted them to do, but for them to find their own voice their own way of doing. Things and I respect that tremendously, uh, and and they are under still an oddity in the Hollywood world and then the Hollywood System. They still uh walk to the beat of Their Own Drum and and are successful doing it and working with Netflix and working with HBO and working with, you know, huge companies and doing what they want to do. So again, and I’ve I’ve preached this so so so many times on the show. Don’t go and make a seventh out. Don’t go make a $700,000 first feature go make 10 $70,000 features. And I wouldn’t even go farther than that and and and you can actually go and make a 20 features with that kind of money or 10 or 15 features with that kind of money and learn along the way where you can actually set yourself up for Success. Um, especially in today’s world and what you’re trying and what the business is looking like today and what the marketplace is looking for today. So again, um, and if you and I want to really stress if you have not read. Their book like brothers. It is a wonderful read I put it up there with Rebel Without a crew director. Robert Rodriguez is mythical book on El Mariachi in the making of El Mariachi. It is definitely up there. And in many ways I feel that is a little bit more realistic of what these guys. Did they took every day. Uh gear and made their movie and made two short film then made a feature and then went into the Hollywood System figured it out after two movies at the way Hollywood wanted them to be they just weren’t comfortable with so they pulled back when back into the Indie world, uh, and then started doing things the way they wanted to do it and and told Hollywood. Hey if you’re going to work with us, this is how we work. And have complete creative control along the way and make money and help their friends. It is is honestly the it’s a win-win it’s a dream style way of making films and definitely check out their book. I’m gonna put links to the book in the in the show notes at any time. And also in the show notes, I’m going to put a link to uh, Mark duplass of the Duplass Brothers legendary now keynote at the 2015 South by Southwest Film Festival where he basically says the Calvin is not coming and it is a must-see for every filmmaker out. There has to watch this amazing hour-long Kino. That Mark duplass puts on at the festival. It is mind-blowing. It really really is. So a lot of filmmakers ask me. What should I do? First? Go make a three dollar short film go do it right. Now while you’re listening to this start figuring out what you’re going to go shoot this weekend and go shoot a three dollar feature three dot feature. No three short film. And after you can you feel that you’ve got something you got that special sauce that thing that makes you you and you’ve got that voice. That’s a on that film don’t care how it looks just put it on put it on there and like Jay duplass of the Duplass Brothers said people will forgive a bad-looking movie and a bounce sounding movie if the story is there and when you’re starting out, that’s what you got to do. Get the story done because we could always add the technical stuff. Look how many beautifully technical movies there are in Hollywood that are garbage because the story is not there but it looks beautiful. We’re looking for stories. That’s what Hollywood’s looking for. So master that first then worry about all the other aspects of filmmaking which you will learn along the way as well. And in the show notes a couple extra bonus videos in their of the boys as well. And again definitely check out their book like brothers is definitely an amazing read and as always keep that hustle going keep that dream alive, and I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the indie film hustle podcast at indie film hustle.

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