Top 80 Quotes & Sayings by Mark Duplass - Page 2

If anybody normally has a 45 minute conference call about something, I'm 15 minutes late and then I'm out 15 minutes before everybody else, and I cut to the key information and I move on. I learned that from my dad and guys like Jason Blum, who know how to do that.

And, there are negatives and positives to it. Like, you know, just like a marriage, where you're like, "Well, this... you know, is the sex still as exciting as it was two years ago?"

We always joke now like, you know, the more experienced we get making stuff, we're like, "Never leave set without a shot of each of our lead characters driving in the car looking happy, looking moderately blank and looking sad." Because we know we're going to need these things.

We're just gonna keep making things and challenging ourselves to make them more cheaply and more renegade and more interesting. That's the only thing we might challenge ourselves to do in the age of so many movies and so many TV shows. We're aware that we're asking time of people to watch stuff, and that there's so much stuff to watch, so we're gonna try to offer you something unique. And it may not always succeed, but it will definitely be different.

A lot of it is found in the editing room and part of that is due to some of the improvisational tactics we employ on set. Part of it is that the shot goes a little bit long and they end up coming down to fit time.

I go to therapy once a week, that helps a lot. I have a really supportive family. I have two little kids, I'm married, I live close to my parents, my brother and his wife. I don't socialize a lot. I work and I have my kids, basically. I'm just, I would say, with all false modesty aside, I'm ruthlessly efficient with my time.

A TV show is an open universe, whereas a film is more of a closed universe. No disrespect to movies, there's just a lot of artifice in closing out emotional storylines after 90 minutes.

I know, we can barely fit them in. That is a big challenge. Treating four lead characters equally, within a 30-minute format, is definitely challenging.

I'm pretty unfussy when it comes to what a TV show should be, or what a movie should be. A lot of people are trying to maintain the theatrical experience for films. That's not really who we are or what we're about. We come from this fundamental understanding that we're just blessed that someone is giving us any money to make something in this town.

It's kinda crazy to say, but the way Jay [Duplass] and I stay afloat, because we don't make particularly commercial fare that makes a lot of money, is that we make things cheaply and we make things small. We would kind of be afraid to go make a $100 million movie because you have to do certain things to it to have it make its money back.

A lot of solo directors have a really strong creative producer with them. Jay and I have less of a need for that because we have each other.

I mean, it really has a lot to do with who is actually physically doing a lot of talking. And we've just noticed that as we've evolved we're still making all the decisions from this, like, "cave."

Most directors do work in pairs. There's usually some form of this, sometimes it literally comes down to you both show up in the morning and one of you is like, "I'm a little tired and overwhelmed today, so I might need you to just be a little step ahead of me and speak with more confidence because I'm not quite there." So, there's quite a bit of that in other teams.

I have family, I work with a lot of friends, but you'll never find me saying, "Hey, let's get a drink at 8:30 [pm]."

I like being nostalgic and maybe crying a little bit.

It's not so much less pressure, it's less work, which is really exciting to me. I'm just personally looking forward to being able to spend a little more time doing different things, so that's really great. Jay and I are writing a book this year which is really fun and so yeah, I am very excited to spend less crazy 12-hour days on set. Those were taxing times.

We get to get into the nitty-gritty and the minutiae of the way they relate now, and that's really valuable. We just have to make sure we don't repeat ourselves and we plot this thing so it doesn't dead end too much, and so that's the challenge really. It's like, how do you keep those balls in the air and make it exciting still?

When the initial little impulse comes it just tends to come. I wake up in the middle of the night, or I'll be swimming in the pool with my kids and just think, "Can't forget that one." Then there's the more organized side of the brain, which is when I choose to work on them. I've learned through a bunch of mentors how to demarcate the different times for your writing process. I keep multiple projects going at once and there's a time when no matter what you're doing, you have to stop and write it because it's coming.

We work in this cave, and we speak to each other sort of subconsciously and with like, weird cues and tangential brother speak, but it really comes down to if you are the person who is moving amongst the actors and talking to people more, the other one can have a little more time to really watch.

Everyone is having this experience right now, where your friend comes over and says, "Have you seen this?" And you're like, "No! Get off my back!" I can't watch everything, it's impossible. We have young kids, and we stay home on Friday nights, sometimes, you only have 23 minutes to watch something. This is that thing.