Movies

Jay and Mark Duplass could have easily directed a straightforward horror flick about a killer with a paper bag over his head. Hey, it's a scary idea, especially if you're spending the night in a cabin in the woods.

But the Duplass brothers, former Austin residents best known for the 2005 indie comedy The Puffy Chair, didn't just want to make a horror movie.

So they made Baghead, which indeed features the scary-guy-in-bag plotline but also weaves in romantic comedy, relationship drama and, most important, the idea of creative desperation.

The premise: Four actors, after having experienced the highs of a film festival, decide that they could write a successful, star-making movie if they just buckled down for a weekend and tried. So they head out to a cabin in the woods, get a little schnockered and come up with the idea for a horror movie about a bag-wearing killer. Of course, as soon as they have that image in their heads, freaky things happen. To say more would ruin it.

Baghead is the first major studio release for the Duplass brothers, who are now based in Los Angeles. Last month, we sat down with Jay, 35, and Mark, 31, to chat about the film and their creative process.

Is this your first foray into mild horror?

Jay: Oh, definitely. We're not even, like, fans of the horror genre. We just enjoy making movies about people and relationships. We have a documentary style where we make everything look as real as possible. You introduce some scary elements into that and hopefully the fear would be heightened just because you care about the people ... as opposed to "Look, there's a scary person outside. Let me take a shower." [Laughs.]

You're no longer living in Austin, but you went back there to make Baghead. What do you think makes for such a thriving film community there?

Mark: I think it's Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez. When we came to Austin in the late '90s, they were our heroes. Dazed and Confused was running at midnight screenings.

Jay: Austin Film Society is a big factor, too. It just seems like a film town. And there's also the fact that it's a cheap place to live. A poor artist can live there and cut their teeth on making movies.

There's a part of Baghead that sort of pokes fun at the film-festival scene. Did you ever get caught up in that subculture?

Jay: We're making fun of everyone who is a desperate filmmaker or actor, especially ourselves. We spent a lot of time on the festival circuit with Puffy Chair and shorts before that. At first the desperate actors are, like, the most annoying people in the world. And then you fall in love with them because they are so tenacious, and they're probably gonna fail, but they still do it anyway.

Mark: Plus, the Q&A after a film screening is such a funny process. It's the only time you get to talk about or celebrate your film. So you get, like, 15 minutes where people worship you. It's a chance for directors to talk about how amazing they are. [Laughs.]

And the director in Baghead totally basks in that.

Mark: Oh, we do too. We catch ourselves, very quickly, talking about how brilliant we are. In subtle terms, of course.

The trailer for Baghead doesn't seem to really sell the comedic aspects of the film. Do you cut your films' trailers yourselves?

Mark: We didn't this time. Sony is the biggest company we've worked for, and we figured they'd know how to represent a movie better than we ever could. And with this movie, the less you know about it or read about it, the better the viewing experience.

Jay: Also, we cut the trailer for our last movie and found that with our stuff, we don't have trailer moments. There's nothing really obvious that you could just drop in and be like "Ah, that's hilarious!"

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