Mark Duplass Talks 'Creep,' and How He Works So Well With Family
He often works with his wife Katie and brother Jay on shows and movies.
— -- Mark Duplass has the type of successful career every film student or aspiring actor dreams of. His projects, which he often writes, produces and acts in, are always carefully chosen like "Safety Not Guaranteed," "Togetherness" and of course hits like "The League."
But this air of creativity and exploration without selling out wasn't actually planned when Duplass first started in the film business.
"I feel really fulfilled but I didn't design it that way," he said. "I kind of fell into it. I just kind of happened to be the person who was really scared to make bad art."
Duplass, who adds a business acumen to all the projects he creates, said early on in his career that "my Spidey sense was going up when studios started calling saying, 'You wanna make this movie with this?' ... I said, 'All these movies are bad.'"
Taking on bad movies for a paycheck was just a rabbit hole Duplass, 38, didn't want to go down.
In fact, he later found out that if you make a film or series in an efficient way, financially, and "own the thing. I ended up actually making more money for my friends and my crew and myself than if I had done it in traditional Hollywood way ... I'm lucky enough to be in a time, where you can make a movie for a couple of hundred thousand dollars, make a profit and live to fight another day."
"I'm only gonna take on something I'm absolutely in love with creativity or I love the person so much that I have to help them," he said. "It's almost like this thing of I have survivor guilt because of all the years I spent struggling. If I have the opportunity to give someone in their 20's help to not suffer the way I did, I have to do it."
One such grassroots project is the film "Creep," which hit iTunes earlier in the month for an exclusive release before it spread to other streaming platforms.
"It was the most arts and craft films I've ever made in that we started with a three-page outline and a rough idea of something that we thought might end up being a movie ... I wanted tot try and act in a crazy role I had never done before," he said.
Duplass stars alongside Patrick Brice in a movie about the possible downsides of Craigslist. Even though the first cut wasn't exactly what they wanted after just six days of shooting, "there was something in there ... why is it that we trust these random people from Craigslist ... Our sense is going off that something might be wrong but we wanna be polite, we don't want to offend them."
Duplass said he's had some weird run-ins of his own using Craigslist.
"One time I picked up a loft bed in New York and the personal space from the guy I picked it up from was real close. He started opening up to me very quickly about divorce and there was some crying. I remember thinking this is beautiful technology has brought me together with this stranger ... at the same time, if i don't get out of here, i might never leave this place," he said.
But the actor adds that things can go very well. He's had friends who have found love and marriage in weeks of sites like Match.com.
Something else Duplass is known for is that he has seamlessly blended his home life into his work life. That's not something that happens often in Hollywood.
Working with his brother Jay on "Togetherness," he says "is tremendous."
"There are so many wonderful things about it and there are so many really hard things about it," he continued. "At the end of the day, Jay and I feel compelled to be together and work together, we just believe when we are together, things improve. I see that 10 times a day working on any set with him. I'll have an idea, I start working on it, I'll get excited about it and I'll come back ... Jay will be right there and say, 'That's great. that's great, you're missing this.' And he's always right."
In case you haven't noticed, he also stars with his wife Katie Aselton on "The League."
"We love it, we've also made like 3 movies together," he said. "We always talk about how hard it would be if we were married to like an ER doctor. We could never come home and complain about our highfalutin problems ... we understand each other so deeply and at the end of the day, Id rather sleep next to someone who is in it with me, rather than someone I had to drag through."
