{"id":5059,"date":"2025-09-07T05:07:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T05:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/5059\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T05:07:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T05:07:09","slug":"jay-duplass-interview-on-the-baltimorons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/5059\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Duplass Interview on ‘The Baltimorons’"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Joel Coen went solo he co-wrote \u201cThe Tragedy of Macbeth\u201d with his wife Frances McDormand. When Ethan Coen went solo he co-wrote \u201cDrive-Away Dolls\u201d and \u201cHoney Don\u2019t\u201d with his wife Tricia Cooke. When Josh Safdie went solo he co-wrote \u201cMarty Supreme\u201d with Ronald Bronstein. (Benny wrote his solo movie \u201cThe Smashing Machine\u201d <\/a>by himself.) And when Jay Duplass<\/a> went solo he co-wrote the romantic comedy \u201cThe Baltimorons\u201d<\/a> (September 5, IFC) with new writing partner Michael Strassner, who stars in this Baltimore Christmas fable inspired by the comic\u2019s own story. The movie took home the audience award at SXSW.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been 14 years since Jay and Mark Duplass<\/a> directed an original movie together. They still produce together (\u201cTogetherness\u201d) and act in various projects, <\/a>including in Jay\u2019s case, \u201cTransparent,\u201d \u201cDying for Sex,\u201d and \u201cIndustry.\u201d But Jay has been itching to get back into the director\u2019s chair \u2014 and Mark hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\"Channing<\/a> \"Wake<\/a> <\/p>\n

We talked about Jay\u2019s return to the director\u2019s chair with \u201cThe Baltimorons<\/a>\u201d on Zoom. \u201cLook, all I ever wanted to do was be a Coen brothers,\u201d Jay Duplass said said. \u201cAfter I saw \u2018Raising Arizona\u2019 in 1987, I just wanted Mark and I to be the Coen brothers 2.0. We tried to be them. We failed. We got to do five movies in our own little documentary-style way from 2005 to 2011, but so many things co-opted that momentum. One of them is my brother becoming a famous actor. Another one was we entered the mini-major world right when it started to decline. We made \u2018Cyrus\u2019 with Fox Searchlight in 2010. And \u2018Jeff Who Lives at Home\u2019 with Paramount Vantage, and things were closing up. Big marquee filmmakers started coming into that space, because that was the only vestige for them. And and then we started doing premium TV. We did \u2018Togetherness,\u2019 because it was a way for more up and coming filmmakers to make money doing TV and I got cast in \u2018Transparent,\u2019 and accidentally became an actor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Directing was all that Jay had ever wanted to do. But as the years ticked by, about seven years in, they realized: Jay wants to make movies. Mark doesn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

\u201c[With] directing, you\u2019ve got to really fucking want it,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to want it bad because it\u2019s so consuming. I always joke that it comes out to minimum wage at the end of the day, because it\u2019s the amount of detail, if you\u2019re going all the way with it. And it became clear that that\u2019s not what Mark wanted to do, and it was what I wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JayJay Duplass & Mark Duplass on the set of \u201cTogetherness\u201dJohn P. Johnson\/HBO<\/p>\n

The untangling was complicated. The brothers had to break up officially as directors in the DGA. \u201cYou get a divorce,\u201d he said. Then Duplass went into scriptwriting mode. And then the pandemic hit. \u201cAt that point in time, a Covid budget for an independent film<\/a> cost more than the freaking independent film,\u201d he said. \u201cSo that didn\u2019t happen. I was ready to go. And that ended. And then the strikes came. A couple of years ago, I had woken up to: \u2018I haven\u2019t made a movie in over a decade. I\u2019m 50 years old. People are not excited about movies right now.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking movies is my thing,\u201d he said. \u201cUltimately, I needed to design a movie that couldn\u2019t be stopped. It needed to be able to be paid for by myself. And luckily, Mark helped me with it, and he produced it and supported me. But I ultimately had to find what I was going to do. And went back to the old, old days of \u201cThe Puffy Chair.\u2019 What do I have? At that time: I have my brother, I have his girlfriend, I have my friend. We have a van. They\u2019re desperate to make their lives come together. This is what we have, available materials, method of filmmaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Strassner was the new element. Duplass discovered him on Instagram. \u201cI curate it heavily,\u201d said Duplass. \u201cIt\u2019s just comedy. That\u2019s all it is. It\u2019s just comedy bumps. So Michael Strassner started coming over the airwaves, and in the pandemic, he was just making me laugh, this giant, sensitive, sweet, heartfelt guy in the body of a 1970s NFL linebacker. I followed him, he DMed me. I mentored him and his short film, and I started to realize how smart he was. He was much more than just a big improv actor. I learned about his suicide attempt and how that got him sober and how the only reason he was still alive is because the belt broke.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how \u201cThe Baltimorons\u201d starts. Strassner also told Duplass about how he came up in Baltimore, and how he had some friends there who were languishing through the pandemic and the strikes, and just wanted to make a movie, and how nobody had made a movie in Baltimore in a long time that was about Baltimore. \u201cIt started coming to me,\u201d said Duplass. \u201cThis is the movie that I can get back in. But even still, independent films are off-off Broadway now. I\u2019m probably going to lose money on this. This is going to be a shot in the dark to see if I can remind people that I do know how to make movies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duplass knew he wanted Strassner to be in the movie. But he also knew that they needed to write it together. \u201cIt\u2019s his origin story,\u201d Duplass said, \u201cand he knows everything about Baltimore. He knows everything about getting sober. He knows everything about sketch comedy. That\u2019s the landscape of the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The\u2018The Baltimorons\u2019Independent Film Company<\/p>\n

Strassner\u2019s romantic interest is Liz Larsen, a Broadway actress who starred in \u201cTransparent: The Musical.\u201d \u201cShe was a freaking knockout, jaw-dropping, knock your socks off, funny, heartfelt, made me laugh, made me cry,\u201d said Duplass. He went backstage and said: \u201cI\u2019m going to make a movie with you one day.\u201d And she said: \u201cYeah, right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duplass sat down with her at the end of the strike, and said, \u201cI\u2019m about to fall off a cliff and never be a movie-maker again, and I\u2019m going to go to Baltimore and make a movie. I want you to do it with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Baltimorons,\u201d Strassner\u2019s character has a medical emergency on Christmas Eve and winds up with the only workaholic dentist in Baltimore. Through a string of hilarious circumstances, the older woman keeps having to drive him places, and as she doesn\u2019t have any plans herself, she goes along for the ride. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an adventure through Baltimore on Christmas Eve,\u201d said Duplass. \u201cThey are both shut out of their family holiday events, and it looks like it\u2019s going to be the worst Christmas ever. And the movie is about their unusual partnership in terms of getting stuck together on Christmas Eve and trying to figure out if they can make some lemonade out of some serious lemons. We do a low-stakes heist scene where he has to get his shitty Cadillac out of a tow lot that\u2019s been shut down because it\u2019s holiday season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Larsen makes a magnetic leading lady. There\u2019s a line in the movie where she says, \u201cYou know, when I turned 50, I hit menopause, I became a grandmother, and my husband left me for a younger woman. Boom, boom, boom. I don\u2019t even know who the fuck I am anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duplass incorporated not only some of Strassner\u2019s story, but Larsen\u2019s as well. \u201cShe is this tiny little thing that\u2019s a total spitfire,\u201d said Duplass. \u201cTough as nails. We\u2019re out in Baltimore running around the streets in the middle of the night in 18 degree weather. We did not have any trailers or warming tents or anything.\u201d <\/p>\n

In many ways it would have been easier to continue working as a pampered Hollywood actor for hire. But it felt good to be back in the director\u2019s chair. \u201cI\u2019ve always taken the lead as the director,\u201d said Duplass. \u201cThe writing part was scary. I was terrified that I was going to make a movie, and it was going to suck, and then everybody was going to be: \u2018Oh, Mark was the special sauce.\u2019 I got to experience that thing that everybody always told me: Hollywood is not about what have you done? It\u2019s what have you done lately? And I had the double whammy of: Who knows if Jay can make a good movie without Mark?\u201d<\/p>\n

When \u201cThe Baltimorons\u201d didn\u2019t get into Sundance, Duplass thought, \u201cMaybe it\u2019s over,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe this movie is not what I want it to be and is not going to do what I need it to do.\u201d While \u201cThe Baltimorons\u201d has some dark edges, from the suicide attempt to the serious loneliness both characters are struggling with, it\u2019s ultimately a sweet feel-good flick. And it has a strong Metascore: 76.<\/a> The movie went on to win the SXSW audience award \u201cagainst movies with significantly higher budgets and with famous people in them,\u201d he said. \u201cThis movie is the biggest crowdpleaser of any movie that I\u2019ve made.\u201d<\/p>\n

After SXSW, they made their money back when they landed a theatrical deal with IFC and Sapan Studio. The question for indies like Duplass remains: \u201cHow do we get independent filmmaking back into movie theaters?\u201d he said. \u201cAnd how do we get people back into independent film in movie theaters?\u201d<\/p>\n

Next up: Duplass is acting in Toronto in Megan Park\u2019s follow-up to \u201cMy Old Ass,\u201d TV series \u201cSterling Point.\u201d<\/a> And Duplass filmed his second solo feature, true story \u201cSee You When I See You,\u201d at the end of last year and is finishing it up before submitting to festivals. Produced by Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon, the film stars Cooper Raiff, David Duchovny, Hope Davis, and Kaitlyn Dever.<\/p>\n

True stories are one way to differentiate the authentic from the fake. \u201c\u2018The Baltimorons\u2019 is a fictionalized version of Michael\u2019s life, but the origin story is real,\u201d said Duplass. \u201cThe origin of Liz\u2019s story is real. It honors two people\u2019s real lives. It comes through.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Joel Coen went solo he co-wrote \u201cThe Tragedy of Macbeth\u201d with his wife Frances McDormand. When Ethan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,1043,61,1694,60,5916,5917],"class_list":["post-5059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-ie","tag-interviews","tag-ireland","tag-jay-duplass","tag-the-baltimorons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}