Jay Duplass couldn’t help himself.
The 52-year-old New Orleans native — best known for his creative collaborations with his younger brother Mark and acting roles in Amazon’s “Transparent” and FX’s “Dying for Sex” — had been working on a script for a film with a bigger budget and scope than the low-budget comedies he and his sibling made their names with (“The Puffy Chair,” “Cyrus,” etc.). Then he connected with Michael Strassner, an actor-comedian he discovered via his comic Instagram videos, the creative dominoes fell, and in short order he found himself braving the December cold in Maryland directing “The Baltimorons,” about a six-months-sober improv comedian (Strassner) who cracks a tooth on Christmas Eve and spontaneously embarks on a night of adventure and unexpected romance with his dentist (Liz Larsen).
“I felt tremendous untapped potential energy,” Duplass told the audience at the Fremont Theater on Sunday, where he was honored with the 31st Annual San Luis Obispo International Film Festival’s Spotlight Award prior to a screening of the film. “I intuitively felt that [Strassner and Larsen] would have incredible chemistry. I felt the push of the universe saying, make this movie, make it now, don’t worry about the budget. Let it be small. Let it be what it is. Don’t worry about everybody saying that independent film is dead, that film is dead, that theatrical distribution is dead.”
So far, the trend-defying instincts that drove Duplass to make “The Baltimorons” — which marks the first original movie he’s directed in 14 years and the first without his brother Mark as co-director — have been on-the-money. The film won the Audience Award at the SXSW Film Festival in March and earned enthusiastic reviews from critics, and Duplass subsequently sold the U.S. and Canadian rights to IFC Films and Sapan Studio, which will release the theatrically later this year.
Although Duplass has said he and brother Mark have gone through a “conscious uncoupling,” they’re still partners in their prolific East Los Angeles-based company Duplass Brothers Productions, responsible for a long list of projects including the HBO series “Togetherness” and “Somebody Somewhere” and the feature documentary “Not Going Quietly.”
“There’s a really big interview with Terry Gross about how hard that was, but how careful we were to make sure that we took care of each other and doing it,” said Duplass of their decision to part ways as co-directors. “But it took a really long time.”
“The Baltimorons” is the product of a creative crisis Duplass experienced coming out of the pandemic.
“It was incredibly difficult to make anything at that time,” explained Duplass. “And, when I emerged, I started having that feeling that we all have in Hollywood, which is not what have you done, but what have you done lately? And I was surprised by it, that there wasn’t much traction, but I think I was also coming to terms with the fact that it’s very hard to get any traction with any movie these days. We’re competing with TikTok right now, we’re not just competing with peak television. So, then the strikes happened… I turned 50, and I was coming to terms with the fact that, like, man, it’s going to be tougher than ever to make a film. And so I kind of went back to my ‘The Puffy Chair’ roots and I just thought to myself … you know, is there somebody that I know whose life story or origin story at least I can begin with and use them? Somebody really talented? And I had become friends with Michael Strassner, who is the star of this film, who’s a giant movie star in the making.”
When asked what his dream project would be if he were given unlimited funds to make a movie on any subject, in any genre, Duplass was unsure how to respond.
“The dream project is the next project. It is the next one that will actually happen. And then I will put my whole being into [it],” he said. “There’s kind of like no saving for later. There are things that are out there in my mind that I know I will need $30 million for, but I wouldn’t say it’s like the one.”
Duplass was much more emphatic with it came to answering the final question of the discussion: Who would win a three-way cage fight between the Duplass Brothers, the Coen Brothers and the Safdie Brothers?
“The Coen Brothers … they’re just too damn soft. Too old, too soft,” said Duplass. “The Safdie Brothers are murderous, yet extremely out of shape. The Duplass Brothers have to do a lot of exercise and self-regulation in order to not be depressed all the time, and we are fit as fuck.”
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