When Joel Coen went solo, he wrote “The tragedy of Macbeth” with his wife Frances McDormand. When Ethan Coen went solo he wrote “Drive-Away Dolls” and “Honey Don’t” with his wife Tricia Cooke. When Josh Safdie went solo, he wrote “Marty Supreme” with Ronald Bronstein. (Benny wrote his solo film “The crushing machine” by itself.) and when Jay DUPLASS Went solo he wrote together the romantic comedy “Baltimorons” (September 5, IFC) with the new writing partner Michael Strassner, who plays in this Baltimore Christmas Fable inspired by the comedian’s own story. The movie took home the Audience Award at SXSW.
It’s been 14 years since Jay and Mark DUPLASS directed an original film together. They still produce together (“consensus”) and act in different projects, Including in Jay’s case “Transparent”, “Dying for Sex” and “Industry.” But Jay has itching to get back to the director’s chairman – and Mark has not.
We talked about Jay’s return to the director’s chairman with ”Baltimorons“On zoom.” Look, all I ever wanted to do was to be a coen -brothers, “said Jay Duplass.” After I saw “raise Arizona” in 1987, I just wanted land and I would be Coen Brothers 2.0. We tried to be them. We failed. We had to make five films in our own small documentary way from 2005 to 2011, but so many things coordinated that momentum. One of them is that my brother becomes a famous actor. Another was that we entered the mini-major world just as it began to decrease. We did ‘Cyrus’ with Fox Searchlight 2010. And ‘Jeff who lives at home’ with Paramount Vantage, and things were closed. Big Marquee movie creators started to enter that space, because it was the only west for them. And and then we started doing premium TV. We did “consensus”, as it was a way for more up and upcoming filmmakers to make money doing TV and I became a cast in “transparent” and became a mistake actor. ”
Direction was all that Jay had ever wanted to do. But as the years ticked off, about seven years in, they realized: Jay wants to make movies. Mark does not.
“(With) director, you really have to fucking want it,” he said. “You have to want it bad because it is so consumed. I always joke that it will come to the minimum wage at the end of the day, because that is the amount of details, if you go all the way with it. And it became clear that it was not what Mark wanted to do, and that was what I wanted to do.”
Otangling was complicated. The brothers had to break out officially as board members in DGA. “You get a divorce,” he said. Then the duplass went in screenwriter mode. And then the pandemic here. “At that time, a covid budget for an independent film Costed more than the freaking independent film, “he said.” So it didn’t happen. I was ready to go. And it ended. And then the strikes came. A couple of years ago I had woken up to: ‘I haven’t made a movie for over a decade. I’m 50 years old. People are not happy about movies right now. “”
“Making movies is my thing,” he said. “In the end, I needed to design a movie that couldn’t be stopped. It needed to be paid by myself. And happily helped me with it and he produced it and supported me. But I finally had to find what I would do. And went back to the old, old days of” The Puffy Chair. “What do I have? At that time: I have my brother, I have his girlfriend, I have my friend. We have a van. They are desperate to make their lives meet. This is what we have, available materials, movie method.”
Michael Strassner was the new element. Duplass discovered him on Instagram. “I greatly summarize it,” Duplass said. “It’s just comedy. That’s all it is. It’s just comedy bulars. So Michael Strassner started to get over the air waves, and in Pandemin, he just made me laugh, this giant, sensitive, cute, cordial guy in the body of a 1970s NFL Linebacker. I followed him. Suicide attempts and how it got him sober and how the only reason he still lived is because the belt broke.
That’s how “The Baltimorons” begins. Strassner also told Duplass about how he came up in Baltimore, and how he had some friends there who disappeared through the pandemic and strikes, and just wanted to make a movie, and how no one had made a movie in Baltimore in a long time about Baltimore. “It started to come to me,” Duplass said. “This is the movie that I can come in again. But even if independent movies are off-off Broadway now. I will probably lose money on this. This will be a shot in the dark to see if I can remind people that I know how to make movies.”
Duplass knew he wanted Strassner to be in the movie. But he also knew they needed to write it together. “It is his origin story,” said Duplass, “and he knows everything about Baltimore. He knows all about being sober. He knows everything about skis comedy. It’s the landscape in the film.”
Strassner’s romantic interest is Liz Larsen, a Broadway actress who played in “Transparent: The Musical.” “She was a freaking knockout, jaw lip, beat your socks, funny, heartfelt, made me laugh, made me cry,” Duplass said. He went behind the scene and said, “I will make a movie with you one day.” And she said, “Yes, right.”
Duplass sat down with her at the end of the strike and said, “I am falling off a cliff and never becoming a filmmaker again, and I will go to Baltimore and make a movie. I want you to do it with me.”
In “The Baltimorons”, Strassner’s character has a medical emergency on Christmas Eve and is discontinued with the only workaholic in Baltimore. Through a string of funny circumstances, the older woman continues to have to run him places, and since she has no plans herself, she joins the ride.
“It’s an adventure through Baltimore on Christmas Eve,” Duplass said. “They are both suspended from their family holiday events, and it looks like it will be the worst Christmas ever. And the movie is about their unusual partnership when it comes to getting stuck on Christmas Eve and trying to find out if they can make some limit of any serious lemons.
Larsen makes a magnetic leading lady. There is a line in the movie where she says: “You know, when I turned 50, I met the menopause, I became a grandmother and my husband left me for a younger woman. Boom, boom, boom. I don’t even know who the hell I’m anymore.”
Duplass incorporated not only some of Strassner’s story, but also Larsens. “She’s this little little thing that is a total spitfire,” Duplass said. “Tough like nails. We’re out in Baltimore running around the streets in the middle of the 18 degree weather. We had no trailers or heating tents or anything.”
In many ways, it would have been easier to continue working as a spoiled Hollywood actor for rent. But it felt good to be back in the director’s chairman. “I’ve always taken the lead as a director,” Duplass said. “The writing part was scary. I was terrified that I would make a movie, and it would suck, and then everyone would be: ‘Oh, Mark was the special sauce.’ I got to experience the thing that everyone always told me: Hollywood is not about what have you done?
When “The Baltimorons” did not enter Sundance, Dupllass thought, “maybe it’s over,” he said. “Maybe this movie is not what I want it to be and will not do what I need to do.” While “The Baltimorons” has some dark edges, from the suicide attempt to the serious loneliness that both characters are struggling with, it is ultimately a sweet feel good girl. And it has a strong Metascore: 76. The film went on to win the SXSW Audience Award “against films with significantly higher budgets and with famous people in them,” he said. “This movie is the biggest crowdpleaser for all the movies I’ve made.”
After SXSW, they made their money back when they landed a theater agreement with IFC and Sapan Studio. The question for Indians that Duplass remains: “How do we get independent filmmaking back to cinemas?” he said. “And how do we get people back to independent film in cinemas?”
Next up: DUPLASS acts in Toronto in Megan Park’s follow-up of “My Old Ass”, TV series “Sterling Point.” And Duplass filmed his second solo function, True Story “See You When I See You”, at the end of last year and ends it before sending to festivals. Made by Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon, the movie Stars Cooper Raiff, David Duchovny, Hope Davis and Kaitlyn Dever.
True stories are a way to distinguish the authentic from false. “‘The Baltimorons’ is a fictional version of Michael’s life, but the history of origin is real,” Duplass said. “The origin of Liz’s story is real. It honors two people’s real lives. It comes through.”
