Updated October 21, 2024 at 09:43 AM ET
A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: In the summer of 2012, I was overdue with my first child, and so I went to the movies to get my mind off the fact that, you know, everything was about to totally change. The movie was called Safety Not Guaranteed, and Mark Duplass plays this guy who is dead set on traveling through time.
He's the kind of person who is dismissed and laughed at, and he is so vulnerable. Like, his heart's just walking around in the world, exposed, and at any second it could be crushed into a million pieces. But it's not. The script treats him with so much dignity, and he's alright in the end. The credits rolled, and when the movie finished, people filed out, and I sat there and sobbed. Really sobbed.
Having a baby is a bizarre thing. Maybe you've heard people say this: It's like your heart is walking around outside your body. It's so vulnerable, just like Duplass's character in Safety Not Guaranteed. And I think when I watched that movie, I needed to be reassured that this baby I was going to bring into the world would encounter kindness. That his tender heart or his wild imagination would be nurtured, not cast off.
That vulnerability shows up in all of Duplass's creative projects. He and his brother Jay have produced dozens of shows and movies together. Duplass goes back and forth between acting and writing and producing. He's gotten two Emmy nominations for his role as Chip Black on The Morning Show.
He's got two new projects out right now. One is a docuseries that he and his brother executive produced called Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal on Hulu. The other is a show he produced and co-wrote called Penelope. It's about a teenage girl who runs away from home to try to survive in the woods by herself.
This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.
Question 1: What period of your life do you often daydream about?
Mark Duplass: When I was 20 years old, I took a semester off of college at the University of Texas. This was 1997. And I was very inspired by independent artists, whether they were in the music scene or the film scene. And I used to work as a busboy at a restaurant — I'd saved up about $2,000. I decided, "I'm going to record my own record and I'm going to press a thousand CDs and I'm going to book my own tour and live out of my van." And everybody thought it was crazy. But I just, I really felt compelled to do this.
So I booked a four-and-a-half-month tour. A lot of it was just, like, open mic nights or whatever I could get and a lot of unpaid gigs. But that time — no cell phone, traveling by a Rand McNally map, getting lost a bunch, showing up, not having anywhere to sleep, offering a free CD to anyone who would put me up — the vulnerability of exposing myself in that way, giving myself into the energy and the belief that if I just jump off of this cliff with a little bit of naivete and earnestness, the world will catch me and it will take care of me. And it did.
I would go two to three days sometimes without speaking to someone. I didn't have a phone in order to escape. So I sat with myself in a way that no 20-year-old, I think, today is offered the luxury — I wanna call it a luxury — to be able to do. And some of that was the inspiration, honestly, behind making my show Penelope — you know, I want to put somebody out in the woods, which is very similar to some of the time that I had to just sit, and be, and just be quiet.
Question 2: How do you manage envy?
Duplass: This sounds maybe more reductive than it should, but the more successful I get, the less I have to face envy in my career. I had a lot of it early on. Like, I had a really hard time being able to enjoy, like, John Krasinski and Zach Braff because I was like, “They're taking up my spots!” and it made me mad, you know?
It's actually not really a big problem for me at this point. But it does rear its head every now and then. I talk a lot about my own journeys with mental health on social media and whatnot. So I have to go really to the source, which is what's happening inside of me.
So it's less about I'm feeling envious about this person because their independent film really knocked it out of the park and mine didn't this year, and I'm feeling bad about myself. I really just have to go inward.
And for me, there's a couple of just really simple solutions, which is, “Did you get your eight hours of sleep? Did you get at least 20 to 30 minutes of rigorous exercise to get your endorphins going? Have you done your meditation? Are you eating good foods?” And as long as I get those basic things in, I stay relatively centered.
Rachel Martin: So envy is just part of the cornucopia of emotions and mental health stuff you're managing?
Duplass: Yes. The way I describe my life is like: if I wake up feeling something — whether it's jealous, envy, sadness, overwhelm — I do something I call “the scan.” I look up at the ceiling and I throw all the elements of my life up on the ceiling, and I'm like, “OK, marriage, kids, work life, my jealousy, my envy, my this, my that,” and usually if there's like one or two things wrong, that means there's something wrong with those things. And I'll pick those things out and I'll solve them. But for me, usually what it is, is they all look wrong to me. And I realize: it's not that overnight everything went wrong. It's something going on inside of me that I need to retool so that I can then look at them with clearer eyes.
Question 3: Are you good at knowing when something should end?
Duplass: Wow. Here’s what I’ll say to that. My journey as an artist and a creative person for most of my life has been lockstep with my brother [Jay Duplass]. And what that has meant is that I have only had to learn how to do a certain amount of things well, because I had a partner who could do those other things.
For instance, I still cannot open a box and put anything together — vacuum cleaner, anything — because Jay was older, smarter and he always did that for me. So I have these weird gaps because I was in such close lockstep with someone for so long. One of those things is the finishing of art. I am not good at it.
Martin: What do you mean? Get specific.
Duplass: OK. You and I are hanging out and we're like, “Let's make a movie together,” and we come up with a concept. There's almost no one better than me who will team build and begin this process better. I will look around and say, “This person should be our DP. We're going to shoot it in this house. We're going to make it for $50,000. There's no way it'll lose money.”
I take that concept, I go and write a pretty good B to B-minus first draft very quickly. So I have this power where I can just galvanize things and get them to the 85% completion mark extremely well.
And then, like a relay race, you're watching me with the baton trying to pass it off and my legs just start giving out on me and I need a closer. And Jay has always been my closer and he is excellent at it.
But, you know, about five years ago, Jay really requested some creative space from being lockstep, making creativity together. So while we still produce together as a company, you know, I lost my closer and my partner.
So now I'm doing two things. I seek other partners who can fit that for me, because I truly believe you don't have to do everything to be a good artist — you just got to do a couple of things really well and fit into the puzzle.
But I'm also challenging myself to grow as an artist and see if I can also learn how to close. And I may just discover, “Hey, it's not what you do well, that's OK. Leave it.” But it's not in my natural DNA.
Martin: Were you OK with that ending though?
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