a SIFF 2010 interview

Finding the Funny
Indie Auteur Jay Duplass on Creating Cyrus

To say I’m a fan of the Duplass brothers Mark and Jay would be something of an understatement. I adored their 2005 debut The Puffy Chair, thrilled to their 2008 follow-up Baghead and recently proclaimed their foray into studio financed filmmaking Cyrus the funniest movie of 2010 (so far).

Brothers Jay and Mark Duplass on the set of Cyrus

I’d actually interviewed the brothers during the Seattle International Film Festival during the promotional tour of their sophomore effort, hanging with them for almost an hour chatting about their film, their creative process and just about anything else the three of us could think of. But just because we shared a history that didn’t make me any less excited to speak with Jay during his recent visit to us here in the land of Starbucks and the Space Needle, sitting down with him again just as wonderful the second time around.

Sara Michelle Fetters: You know, the last time we were here chatting you and Mark admitted you were worried you might get overwhelmed by bigger budgets, bigger crews and bigger stars and that you liked working on small scales like with both The Puffy Chair and Baghead. With Cyrus you had all three of those things to deal with. Were you overwhelmed? Did it get to you two at all?

Jay Duplass: Yes, we were, but all of the pre-warring and pre-planning we did helped. We had to manufacture our tiny, little intimate sets by removing everyone and putting them in a video village, just recreating this tiny, little thing that we used to do.

Sara Michelle: What struck me here, when we talked about Baghead you had stated that you always wanted to put people in awkward situations, you wanted to see how that develops and you want to see how audiences respond to that. With Cyrus, it’s almost like you take those tendencies to their absolute extreme yet somehow manage to keep things human and relatable. What sort of struggle was it to pull that off?

Jay Duplass: We went far with this one, really far. It’s an arduous process [and] it might be the most laborious part of what it is we do. It’s why our edits take nine months, much like a documentary. When we’re on set there are a couple of key elements. First thing is that we don’t worry about it too much, we follow our hearts, we follow our instincts and we follow the instincts of the actors. Nothing is off limits. We’ll try anything. Anything. If somebody wants to do it, we’re going to do it.

That being said, I think one of the other things that’s a key element that we’ve only started to realize and is potentially unique to us is that we genuinely love all of our characters. Without a doubt, Cyrus is the most extreme character we have ever created but at the heart of him – and Jonah [Hill] was in on this with us – is a kid who is terrified of losing his mom. It’s the only significant relationship he has in his life and I think subconsciously comes across. All this crazy stuff that he’s doing is really just because he wants love and he wants to protect that love that he has.

Sara Michelle: I think what killed me most about this film is that there are so many opportunities for the characters to have the audience turn on them, to absolutely hate them, especially Cyrus. Yet somehow you keep feeling for these guys, you want to see them find their way.

Jay Duplass: Exactly. But that’s how we feel about them [the characters]. It’s wonderful that you feel that because we don’t ultimately control it too much intellectually, we just to trust that if that’s how we genuinely feel than that will guide us, guide the actors and guide the audience towards those feelings. That’s what this movie is about. These aren’t bad people, these are people who are in a really tough situation and they’re just trying to find their way.

Sara Michelle: You wrote this for John C. Reilly.

Jay Duplass: It was a dumb thing to do.

Sara Michelle: What if he had said no? What if he had turned you down?

Jay Duplass: I seriously think we would have canned the project. It’s just very difficult to imagine anyone else in the role. John [the character] does some seriously questionable things in the movie. He’s going head-to-head with a woman’s son who seems like he has a lot of skills but actually does not. You realize [Cyrus] is a very vulnerable human being.

I don’t know what it is about John [C. Reilly] but you just love [him]. You believe in him. He has a lot of integrity. He’s a puppy dog and a sweetheart and we knew that the audience would be with him, that they’d be along for the ride and that they’d forgive him. Just sort of be on his side.

Beyond that, the movie got funnier but also gained more depth emotionally, got more vulnerable, thanks to John. All of the elements that [Mark and I] like to do got more fulfilled when we imagined John C. Reilly in the role, no one else even came close.

Sara Michelle: Cyrus felt to me almost like a Robert Altman film at his very best at times. It felt like anything could happen, that everything was on the table.

Jay Duplass: What you just said is probably the crux of what we’re trying to achieve in filmmaking. For us, you probably even more than us because you see so many more movies, within the first five minutes of a movie we can pretty much tell you how the whole plot is going to end up. Usually the best treat we get is that either A or B will happen at then end and that we really don’t know. That’s kind of nice. That’s kind of a treat.

For us, when we walk into an Altman movie, you literally think to yourself, “I have no idea what’s going to happen.” That makes me scared. That makes me genuinely uncomfortable. All of the sudden all bets are off and no one is safe. And that is awesome. Absolutely awesome.

That’s what we want when we go to a movie theatre and that is what we are trying to create with [our films], and the only way we know how to create it is to craft an environment on our sets where these actors are living in that world. They don’t know what is going to happen. We don’t know what is going to happen. It like the world we’ve created is a documentary. We’re looking at our worlds and these characters in the same way that a documentary filmmaker would. We want anything to be able to happen.

Sara Michelle: That said, there has to be that worry at the back of you mind that, even though the film is getting great reviews and done well at festivals that general audiences aren’t necessarily going to feel the same. These dark, introspective comedies don’t always translate well for mass audiences. They tend to stay away.

Jay Duplass: I’m definitely worried. But our first weekend [at the box office] was amazing, and we wanted to stay connected to the process so we’ve been Q&A’ing public screenings in Los Angeles randomly and just connecting with the audience.

We’re not dictatorial, auteurist directors in the way a lot of people would assume we would be because our style is so specific. We are instead absolutely obsessed with how the movie is affecting you. We do feel like that, in the end, this is a piece of art that is a communication between us and you guys and we want that communication to be as robust and as emotionally deep as it can be.  

Luckily, people love the movie. They don’t necessarily understand why, but they know that they felt a lot and that they laughed a lot when they were feeling it and that’s by far the most important thing to us.

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