Mark and Jay Duplass, creators of the mumblecore classic the Puffy Chair, took a bit of a chance with their new film Baghead. The Puffy Chair drew critical acclaim for its documentary-like portrayal of a relationship on the skids, played out as a road movie. The brothers move in a different direction with Baghead, which might be described as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice meets the Blair Witch Project.

 

We had a chance to talk with Mark and Jay recently after a screening of Baghead at the Seattle International Film Festival. The audience loved this entertaining shaggy dog tale of 4 actors who spend a weekend in a remote cabin trying to write a screenplay that they hope will make them stars. Their creative work and their complicated romantic entanglements are occasionally interrupted by the appearance of a silent, threatening figure who wears a bag over his head. Is Baghead a psychotic stranger, or actually one of them, trying to stir up trouble?

 

 

While the film is basically a comedy, it deftly shifts into Hitchcockian gear about two-thirds of the way in. Did the Duplasses have any concerns about taking on the horror/suspense genre? “If you call concerned shitting your pants on a daily basis, yeah,” Mark replied. “The hardest part was managing the 3 tones – it’s a comedy, it’s a scary movie, and it’s about relationships.”

The project came about as a reaction to “torture porn” like the Saw franchise, which the brothers find “mean and gross.” They wanted to make something that was scary and high concept but not gory. They started by asking themselves, “What’s the scariest situation you can imagine?” The answer was, “You’re stranded in a cabin in the woods, and a guy appears at the window with a bag over his head …”

 

Although the horror angle is a departure from the Puffy Chair, other elements are similar: minimal production values (Baghead was shot with only 1 camera) and a collective approach to creativity. Much of the dialogue was improvised by the actors, who developed the relationships among the characters during filming by bringing in their own experiences. Behind the camera, the brothers worked as a team with the rest of the crew; Jay held the camera and Mark held the microphone. 

 

 

The Puffy Chair was made for only $15,000, and was distributed primarily by Netflix, meaning most people who have seen it watched it on TV. The brothers didn’t much mind trading the big screen for a big audience, as “our cinematography is about faces, not landscapes.” Baghead is a different story, as the film was picked up for distribution by Sony after it screened at Sundance and will play this summer in at least one hundred theaters nationally.

 

The brothers are now in talks with major studios about working together on other projects. They’re not worried about being asked to change their indie style, though, because “the people who are working with us loved the Puffy Chair and don’t want something completely different,” Mark said. (Or was it Jay? It’s hard to tell them apart on the telephone; they dismiss the dilemma with the claim that “we share a brain.”) While the studios want them to employ “glossier” production values and well-known actors, they also want to retain the intimate, documentary feel.

 

We asked the brothers what they would spend money on if given free reign by a studio. They immediately agreed they would hire name actors to attract bigger audiences, especially those “who seem like normal people but are great actors” – such as John C. Reilly and Philip Seymour Hoffman. “All our movies are about anonymous people,” said Jay (or was it Mark?). “We want to stay away from people whose presences are greater than their own personal humanity.”

 

 

The Duplasses recently returned to their home town of New Orleans to shoot the Do-Deca-Pentathlon, their version of a sports movie, which of course is also about a relationship – this time, between two competitive brothers. We forgot to ask if their parents appear in it, as they did in the Puffy Chair. The brothers did mention that the elder Duplasses have been very encouraging of their sons’ ambitions. “They told us, ‘don’t get day jobs, let us support you so you can follow your dreams,’ Mark recounted. “We’ve already paid our mom back as she’s the only one in her gardening group that appears regularly on Showtime.”