I have spouted off quite a lot in the past couple of years about my love of all Mark Duplass-related projects--as a director (with his brother Jay) of such works as THE PUFFY CHAIR, CYRUS, JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME, and the upcoming DO-DECA-PENTATHLON, to his TV work on the great (and returning) FX series "The League," to his film acting work in such films as HUMPDAY and the upcoming PEOPLE LIKE US and YOUR SISTER'S SISTER.
But back in March at the SXSW Film Festival, I was on hand to talk to Mark about the wonderfully charming and thought-provoking comedy SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED, which co-stars Aubrey Plaza (who was also on hand), who plays the brusk April on "Parks and Recreation" and has done great supporting work in MYSTERY TEAM, SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD and FUNNY PEOPLE, and I hear she absolutely kills in the recently completed THE TO DO LIST, where she gets to talk really dirty.
One of the biggest surprises about SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED was Plaza's warm, yet still strange, performance as Darius, a magazine intern who goes undercover to discover the identity and motivations of a man (Duplass) who placed a very strange classified ad in the newspaper regarding seeking a partner for time travel.
Capone: Hi, I’m Steve. It’s good to meet you.
Aubrey Plaza: Hi. It’s nice to meet you.
Mark Duplass: It’s excellent to see you again, Mr. Steve.
Capone: When you first read the script--Mark, I know you read it more as a producer the first time around--but when you looked at the characters that you were going to play, what was it about them that you kind of latched onto and said “Okay, I can do something with this and I can build on this”? Do you remember?
AP: I know for me, I just liked the transformation that she has in the movie. I was definitely looking to do something where I’m different from a lot of the other things I’ve done in the past, and there’s just something really organic about where she starts in the beginning and where she ends up. It felt really real and earned, and I just fell in love with that.
Capone: Did you like her how she is in the beginning? Did you like her as a person at the beginning of the story as opposed to the much more likable person she is by the end?
AP: Yeah, I think she's damaged and closed-off person, but I liked her philosophically. I think there are little moments where you can see that something’s going on in there, like in the elevator when she’s trying to talk to that guy. I think she’s likable in a different way.
Capone: Yeah, and what about your character, Mark?
MD: I didn’t really read it thinking about the character at first. I came as a producer, but I just loved the script and I loved the movie. Then when Collin and I started talking about me playing the role, I read it again and I was like “Okay, there’s this cool opportunity to take this really quirky kind of potentially crazy character and maybe if we rooted it a little bit and played it maybe a little more straight and with a little more emotion, it could be something really special.”
I was hopeful of that, but I wasn’t sure how it would go, and it wasn’t until we did this random reading a couple of days before we started shooting, and it was very cool, because I don’t really get a lot out of readings normally at all, but it felt very different when we read it that first time. It was like “Whoa, there’s a NAPOLEON DYNAMITE movie here, but then there’s this other movie that’s like “Oh ha-ha, the funny crazy guy who thinks he can time travel,” but then you’re like “He’s a really damaged person,” and you think about the nature of time travel and why people want to do that. They're trying to escape something or get to a better place, and all of a sudden the movie was like “Oh, this is going to have some emotional resonance if we play it this way.”
Capone: Everybody in the film has an unhealthy relationship with time in general in that some people want to go back and fix something, and then some people don’t really see where their life is going. Was that something that you were drawn to, that undercurrent of “We all have this really horrible relationship with the past, present, and future?”
AP: Yeah, I think that that’s what makes it cool. There are these really awesome themes throughout the whole movie--literal time travel and all of the emotional stuff, especially with Jake [Johnson]’s character. The characters are so different, but they all are kind of dealing with the same thing.
Capone: The way that you play your character, Mark, it could have gone 18 different ways.
MD: I agree.
Capone: I mean it could have gone crazy. It could have gone scary. It could have gone silly. How did you find the right balance there? Because that’s a tricky thing, especially in a movie that has a lot of comedy in it.
MD: Yeah. It was mostly an instinctual thing honestly; there weren’t discussion from an intellectual place of “We should do this. We should do this,” we would just bomb right into the scene and see how it felt. I tended to lean towards banking on our chemistry and establish the core of the story, which was I thought Aubrey’s character being drawn into a world of non-cynicism and pure fist-pumping belief, and that’s a little bit crazy, but it’s totally infectious, particularly when you are at a place like Seattle Magazine, which could basically be The Onion, the land of making fun of people in cynical, sarcastic ways.
Capone: I’m not sure if The Onion has reporters, though. They do have writers. I get you.
MD: So that was what I tried to stay focused on.
AP: I think also, if I can answer for you, Mark. I feel like his character works because he never played it for the joke. He just played it honestly, and I think he respected Kenneth and played every moment real, so it wasn’t ever coming from a place of insincerity. You never felt like he wasn’t sincere, so maybe that’s why it wasn’t scary or creepy, because he was going for the truth.
Capone: I think it’s the first time the characters meet in the grocery store, right?
MD: That’s when we come face to face.
Capone: Yeah, that’s a great scene. I think it really sets the flavor of the relationship.
MD: I agree with you.
AP: Yeah, I love that scene.
Capone: Can you just talk about doing that scene? Did it seem like it was important at the time, or did you realize it later in terms of the tonal relationship quality.
MD: I do agree with you that that scene sets the tone for the film and really kicks off the fun part of that relationship. We shot it very quickly, which was interesting and some times the good ones just go, where you’re like “Whoa, this works. This is going.” But there were some very cool elements of discovery in that scene, like putting the soup can up was Aubrey’s idea.
Capone: That feels very improvised. It was so funny.
MD: Yeah. I think those scenes are the best, when our objectives are so clear in that scene that we could do little things and add them as we went, like dropping the can behind the back and then playing with the can and then she came up with it.
AP: I felt like I knew that scene was really special, because it’s the first time that Darius actually has a thing that she cares about. So in my head, that was a really important moment for her. But I also was weirdly inspired by this scene in CORRINA, CORRINA, which is a really random reference.
[Everyone Laughs]
MD: This movie is just like CORRINA, CORRINA. That’s what it is.
AP: Like Whoopi Goldberg is basically gaining the trust of the girl, Tina Majorino, and she like throws an apple. Literally, I did that exact same thing as Whoopi Goldberg. I did it, because I felt like there was a thing where there’s something funny about like her kind of reeling him in, and I totally stole that from Whoopi Goldberg.
Capone: Oh my gosh. Maybe if you go on "The View" you can tell her that story.
AP: I love her so much, you have no idea. My dream is to go on "The View."
MD: You are going to go on "The View" and then you are going to walk off and halfway after you walk off you will turn around and bomb her with an apple.
AP: Bomb her with like a vase.
MD: It’s going to be fucking amazing.
Capone: The other great scene and another turning point scene is where you’re singing that song with the zither. Tell me about that song. Was that written?
MD: That was written by Ryan Miller, who was our composer and is part of the band called Guster and is good friends with Collin [Trevorrow, director]. This is actually the first score he’s ever done, and I thought he did a great job too. He did the score and the song. So they sent it to me ahead of time, so that I could learn how to play the instrument.
Capone: So you’re actually playing in that?
MD: Yeah. It sounds cheesy, but again that could have easily been a super ironic moment, but I wanted it to be sweet and beautiful, if it could be. I just went for it and hoped that it would play and I think that it does in some places. It’s really all about the purity of Kenneth at the end of the day for me; he is not afraid to look like a fool and I am, and I am very careful of what I say and I move with all kinds of… My brother and I call them “pillows.” It’s like “Do you move through this world with pillows, so you can protect yourself, or do you just throw them away?” And Kenneth has no pillows, and that song is the epitome of that, I think.
Capone: It’s a classic Nicolas Sparks moment. It's pure romance. There’s no irony to it.
AP: And that was the first time that I heard it, too.
Capone: Really?
AP: He didn’t want me to hear it until that moment, so I could have a real reaction to it.
MD: “I’m going to try to blow you away.”
Capone: Did you cry? I forget.
AP: I felt like I was. I don’t remember.
Capone: I almost think like you were.
MD: Aubrey has good crying moments in this movie.
Capone: There’s a few. That’s why I’m having trouble remembering if that was one of them.
AP: It was pretty powerful when he sang it for the first time. Some people in the audience laugh when he’s singing, but not in a laughing-at-him way, they are laughing because it’s ridiculous how good he is. You can’t really get past that.
Capone: And a nice singing voice, too. That’s another little unearthed talent.
MD: Thank you.
Capone: I just wanted to talk really quick about some stuff you’ve got coming up.
MD: “In the hopper.”
Capone: In the hopper. I know you’ve got like 50 things, but Katie [Aselton, Mark's wife and "The Leage" co-star] hasn’t had a baby yet, right?
MD: Nope, we are having ours in about seven weeks.
AP: That’s right, I keep forgetting that.
Capone: I know you’ve got a new/old film with Jay. I’m actually seeing it tomorrow.
MD: THE DO-DECA-PENTATHLON? That’s sort of like the last film in the unofficial trilogy of our micro-budget cinema of PUFFY CHAIR and BAGHEAD and this now, THE DO-DECA-PENTATHLON. We shot it four years ago and we didn’t have a chance to finish it due to CYRUS and JEFF. So we finally got around to it, and that’s premiering here. It'll come out in the summer, and then there’s a movie I’m in that’s called DARLING COMPANION that comes out in April.
Capone: The [Lawrence] Kasdan film.
MD: My movie, JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME opens next Friday which I’m really proud of. It’s the favorite thing I’ve ever made.
Capone: It is so good.
MD: And then in June, this comes out along with YOUR SISTER’S SISTER, which is the Lynn Shelton movie.
Capone: And then when does BLACK ROCK [which Mark wrote, directed by and starring Aselton].
MD: BLACK ROCK sold out of Sundance and is being released in the fall thanks to LD Entertainment.
Capone: Okay, and Audrey, I know you have THE TO DO LIST.
AP: Yeah, I don’t know when that’s coming out. I hope this summer. I’m seeing it for the first time next week.
Capone: So you haven’t seen it? Okay.
AP: No.
Capone: I’ve heard it’s just filthy.
AP: I think it’s very dirty.
[Everyone Laughs]
AP: It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen.
Capone: And then the Roman Coppola film [A GLIMPSE INSIDE THE MIND OF CHARLES SWAN III] sounds really cool. I liked his other film, CQ.
AP: Yeah. I think it’s going to be really, really cool.
Capone: Why do you play in that one?
AP: I play Charlie Sheen’s assistant, and he’s kind of going through a nervous breakdown in the movie, and it’s set in like a '70s almost fantasy world. Bill Murray plays his business manager. We're all like trying to get him to get his shit together.
Capone: All right, well best of luck with this one.
