GETTING EMOTIONAL WITH THE DUPLASS BROTHERS 

Michael Brown Sr. and the Agony of the Black Father in America

co-creators talk to us about how they work so well together, how they cope with success, and how often they cry (a lot).

On Mark (left): two-button cotton jacket ($750) by L.B.M. 1911; cotton t-shirt ($64) by AG; cotton jeans ($89) by Levi\'s; suede boots ($298) by Brooks Brothers // On Jay (right): two-button cotton jacket ($750) by L.B.M. 1911; cotton shirt ($295) by Massimo Alba; cotton jeans ($188) by AG; canvas slip-ons ($70), Vault by Vans. (Photograph by Aaron Richter)

A preview of our January/February 2015 issue, on newsstands soon.

Filmmaking brothers Mark and Jay Duplass are sensitive guys. Depth of feeling is a theme throughout their work, which includes films like

, about young men trying to navigate a world that doesn\'t take it easy on the tender, the male midwife characters they play on

(premiering January 11), follows a couple (Melanie Lynskey and Mark) and their fuckup friends (Amanda Peet and the wonderful Steve Zissis) as they flail through the aimlessness of adulthood in Los Angeles.

ESQUIRE: Maybe it’s just because Mark acts so much more, but I feel like the public perception of you is a Penn and Teller, Jay and Silent Bob, Jack and Meg White kind of vibe. Do you foster that perception?

MARK DUPLASS: We don’t foster it. I would say, historically, just by me being an actor, sometimes people assume that about us. But I think it’s not necessarily like that in our normal, everyday life. Whoever is in the better mood tends to come forward. Like for instance, if we’re heading into a shoot day and we both show up at the same time, I don’t have to say anything and Jay doesn’t have to say anything for that person to know who’s kind of going to lead the charge today. We call it “president and vice president mode.”

ESQ: Do you think that people on set are aware of the shifting dynamic?

JAY DUPLASS: When I talk to crewmembers, they feel like we’re pretty interchangeable. The process is very organic and sort of this caveman way that we make movies, which is that we make it up as we go, and we pick up slack for each other and start sort of functioning as this singular being. Like, sometimes someone will have stronger energy. Mark does tend to have a little bit more outward energy than me, and I tend to have a little bit more inward, sort of emotional energy.

MD: That’s gonna shift in thirty minutes when I go into my sugar crash. Literally. It will.

JD: And then I’ll pick up the slack and I’ll be a little more forward with it. I’ve talked to a few of our actors about it. Like, “Yeah, it doesn’t really matter who’s talking to me at any given point in time.” I’m just discovering this now as you’re asking it, but it’s definitely constant subconscious communication.

MD: It’s like parenting. Like for those people who have kids, you start sussing out what the other parent is doing with the child that day, and if they’re coming in heavy and they’re less patient, you start being more patient and sensitive and scooping it up. And if they’re getting steamrolled, and you’re like, "Well, I gotta fuckin’ lay down the law here." You know?

JD: On set we’re always just kind of weirdly working with energy. Like let’s say you have a scene one day where the actor comes in and they’re just in a bad mood ‘cause they had to get up at four in the morning and makeup was late and so they sat around for 45 minutes. They’re fucking pissed off and they’re tired. They had a really hard scene last night. And the scene calls for them today to be really peppy. We know immediately that it’s probably not gonna be peppy. And so we’ll just start feeling that actor out and we’ll see what happens in the first take. And if it’s a big deal, maybe Mark and I will talk about it. Like, “This dude’s never gonna be peppy. But you know what’s really interesting? Is how creepy he looks when he’s trying to be peppy. And I think we can use that right now. We can totally use that.” And because we are obsessed with the minutiae of how people behave and how they’re dealing with each other, we’re acknowledging a reality of what it is and then doing a little witchcraft to kind kick it back into our story.

MD: It’s a big EST session, is really what’s happening. It’s 1973.

JD: You don’t live in California. Let us tell you some stuff.

MD: We don’t really know. It’s like a very sensitive new age culture of people really obsessed with feelings. We share that DNA.

JD: It’s like feelings taken to a philosophical level. It’s like the study of feelings.

MD: We’re in the business of feelings over here at Duplass Brothers Productions.

JD: Our autobiography is called “Feelings and the People Who Feel Them.”

MD: “Sensitive Feelings and the Sensitive People Who Feel Them Sensitively.”

ESQ: I’ve interviewed married people before, but you guys are the most in-sync couple I’ve talked with. Are your wives like, “You’ve already found your soul mate, ­ where do I fit in?”

MD: It’s been an issue throughout our whole lives. Not just our wives, but our girlfriends, even our parents. And we’ve had conversations with sets of twins before about the nature of what it means to be so connected to some person. And if that person is not your spouse, who’s supposed to be your number one, basically, what does that mean?

, actually, is that the two main guys are essentially soul mates, and what does that mean to the character that Mark plays, Brett, who is supposed to be in an egalitarian modern marriage where you’re giving everything to that person, but it’s not in the cards. It’s not like he’s cheating—he’s not cheating at all—but there’s emotional cheating going on with his best buddy.

It’s cool though, because it’s rare for siblings to stay close into middle age. I mean, I would say an average of very close relationship of siblings in their late thirties would be like, “We watch football on Sundays together and we drink beer.” If you did that every Sunday all year, everyone would be like, “Oh my God, you guys are so close.” We hang out every day, but the cool thing is we get to explore new frontiers together. There’s so much to making a movie. You fly around the country and you go on location scouts and then you build this thing and you have battles together against people who are trying to stop you from doing what you’re trying to do.

ESQ: You’ve clearly figured out how to grind out a film. Do people ask you for advice all the time?

MD: We get ten emails a day that say, “I would love to meet up and have coffee and I would love to pick your brain about independent filmmaking.” And what we used to do was lie and say, “Oh, that sounds so great, I would love to do that, and let’s do it when I’m not busy later.” And just keep putting them off with excuses. And we hate that because it drags people on. So now we say, “I would love to be in a life where we could do this, but I’m not living that life. Every moment we spend not working is spent with our wives and children, who we already don’t give enough time to, so there’s never, ever gonna be enough time for coffee. I’m so sorry, but I can’t do it.” But we then email each person to say, “But if you have five questions you would like to ask us, we can do it over email.” Because that’s probably what it is. And it’s always the same five questions, and we also have five answers prepared.

MD: You know, “If I don’t have any connections in the industry, how do I get started?” “Once I make my movie, how do I get it shown?” “How do you get money to make your movies?” “How did you find out exactly what your voice was going to be?” Something that people tend to miss which took us a while to figure out is your quote-unquote “voice” probably has something to do with the last conversation you had between 1am and 3am in the morning with your siblings or your spouse or your best friends, where you were laughing a lot and kind of cried a bit and there was a weird hug.

JD: Yeah, your voice is not necessarily what you watch. We love the Coen brothers. We were obsessed with the Coen brothers, and we tried to be the Coen brothers so desperately that it actually fucked us up. It, like, literally delayed us from reaching what it is that we feel like we have to offer. It turns out, our style is the polar opposite. They’re like the most controlled, stylized filmmakers working today, and we’re probably the least controlled, least stylized filmmakers working today.

MD: Did we tell you that we’re sensitive? Have we expressed this to you? It’s not a brag; this is a warning.

"Our wives will tell you. It is not fun to be married to a really sensitive dude.”

JD: It might sound like we’re trying to say, “Oh, we’re so sensitive.” No. We’re saying, “This is a warning. Our wives will tell you. It is not fun to be married to a really sensitive dude.”

MD: Oh, I cry all the fucking time. Are you kidding? I cried on Metro North last night.

MD: I went up to Beacon because I was curious about it as a community. And it was raining, and I started reading Knausgaard’s

MD: This is the first time we’re getting competitive.

JD: I went to see my friend Gaby Hoffmann, who I’m in this TV show

with, and I hadn’t seen her in two-and-a-half months—and she walked in, she was like crazy pregnant. And I was like, "Oh my God, there’s baby in there." And she hugged me and… It’s not hard.

ESQ: If you guys ever need a release, I would recommend watching

MD: I’m not making this up. I read it on a plane. And the stewardess came up to me and asked me if everything was okay. I’m not kidding you. Because I was disturbing the other passengers with my howls.

JD: There’s also a show, just in case, called

, and it’s about a man who helps people find their birth parents. And let me tell you, I am not fucking joking with you, you are guaranteed three ugly cries within a thirty-minute programming slot. It’s better than any therapy you could do. We come home from a hard day at work, and you’re just like, We gotta watch

MD: We love it. We love producing movies with younger filmmakers who are really smart and exciting. And part of it is selfish, too, because we get juiced up on that energy.

"The sadness of success is a thing. When you climb to the mountaintop and you’re trying to get there your whole life and you get there. \'I’m gonna be so happy now. Oh shit, I’m just at the top of a mountain.\'"

MD: It sounds crazy, because it’s not like we’re massively successful, but the sadness of success is a thing. When you climb to the mountaintop and you’re trying to get there your whole life and you get there. "I’m gonna be so happy now. Oh shit, I’m just at the top of a mountain." And so us juice-ifying on younger filmmakers and stuff is nice.

ESQ: Do you know what it kind of sounds like? On the

podcast, Dan Savage says even if you’re in the happiest marriage, if you just go fuck somebody else once in awhile, it brings a lot of juice to your marriage.

MD: We’re getting hand jobs from young filmmakers, and it’s really working out for us. We give them too.

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