Those familiar with mumblecore founder Mark Duplass may be shocked to find him showing up as the leading actor in cinema’s latest horror flick. But then he has always been full of surprises.
“When I saw the script I saw a movie that could be a really big movie that scares the shit out of a lot people” explains Duplass from Los Angeles to discuss The Lazarus Effect — a dark drama that centres on a scientist who brushes up against a few moral decisions when he discovers how to bring people (in this case his wife played by Olivia Wilde) back from the dead.
“There’s certainly a wish-fulfillment quality” adds Duplass to the reasons he was attracted to the scary story. “But I also think there’s this societal thing at play. There are very few things we can’t get the answers to anymore just by pulling out our phone and Googling it. This is certainly one thing that we just can’t know and it’s nice to be able to chase that down with imaginative storytelling.”
As one-half of the minds behind mumblecore classics like The Puffy Chair and Cyrus Duplass is certainly an unlikely participant in terror — but he’s not the only one. Director David Gelb was also not an obvious choice when it came to capturing such a frightening fable on screen. After all his best known work is the 2011 award-winning documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi — a food-porn portrait of an 85-year-old sushi master. Not exactly spooky stuff.
“When I found out that David Gelb — a very sensitive and smart documentary filmmaker — was going to direct it and that he wanted me specifically in the movie because he likes naturalistic performances I thought this could be a good marriage” says Duplass. “(Producer) Jason Blum will be the first to tell you that he didn’t want David on this movie. Jason Blum will also be the first to tell you he knew he was wrong the first cut of the movie he saw.”
The truth is Duplass himself has been difficult to pin down ever since he and his brother arrived on the scene with the 2005 indie favourite The Puffy Chair. While his sibling Jay has mostly remained out of the spotlight until recently Mark has slowly cut an acting career by fulfilling a wish-list of pet projects — cast in television series like The Mindy Project or showing up on the big-screen in everything from slapstick comedies like Tammy or Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-nominated drama Zero Dark Thirty.
“I crossed that one off my list” says Duplass about working with Bigelow on the 2012 adaptation about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. “That experience blew my mind because she honours and appreciates naturalistic performances but puts them inside of these epic political international storylines. I really appreciate her synthesis of skill sets.”
While Duplass is clearly enjoying his foray into mainstream movies he still sticks close to his roots. And as much as studio scripts pile up on his agent’s desk the New Orleans-born talent insists he’ll always come back to the character-driven drama that he helped forge and continues to construct.
In fact as excited as he is to discuss his mainstream horror debut Duplass’s voice amps up even more when asked about the brothers’ HBO show Togetherness. The comedy about a markedly mundane marriage is currently making waves on the prestigious network and Duplass is clearly excited about conceiving the series’ second season.
“It was one of the peak creative experiences of my life” says Duplass. Although he insists it proved a challenge learning to write for HBO the education has been such that mainstream movie stardom may have to wait — television is where the future lies for the mumblecore mates.
“It’s a better vehicle for the type of things Jay and I are interested in — which is really people and the epically small interactions that happen between them. And the amount of time we have to spend with those characters — not worry about expositing them and closing them up in 90 minutes like a movie — is really appealing to us so I’m really digging the form.”
THE LAZARUS EFFECT directed by David Gelb starring Olivia Wilde Mark Duplass and Evan Peters opens on Friday February 27.
