Few names are more synonymous with South by Southwest than the Duplass brothers. After two decades as regulars, it seems hard to imagine there’s anything new for them to do. But at this year’s festival Jay Duplass breaks new ground: The Baltimorons is his first film as a solo director.
“This movie came from me turning 50,” he told the Chronicle. Or rather, he elaborated, “Two years ago I had a sort of midlife crisis.” It was a strange time for filmmakers, in between the end of pandemic lockdown and the start of the strikes, and that’s when Duplass made a shocking realization. “I had not made an original movie in 12 years. There’s nothing wrong with that, unless you know me really well.”
It’s not like he’s been sitting on his hands: He’s been acting, writing, winning an Emmy as executive producer of Netflix’s Wild Wild Country, and directing on TV shows like Togetherness and Search Party. But his last film as a director was another SXSW selection, 2011’s Jeff, Who Lives at Home, and like every other film he’d made to that point it was co-directed with his younger brother, Mark. “My ultimate dream has always been the Coen Brothers 2.0,” he said, but plans change. In 2018, he and Mark co-wrote Like Brothers, a book “essentially about our emerging breakup as two brothers on this forced march, arms locked, making movies together.” There was no animus, but a growing acceptance that their strengths weren’t as co-directors. “Mark’s much more of an actor-producer than he ever was a director [and] that’s what I wanted to do,” he said. “And for a long time I didn’t think I could do it without Mark.”
Post-pandemic, getting back into features felt even more daunting, not least because the whole industry has changed so much. “Independent film has become like off-off-Broadway,” Jay said, “So I just decided that I needed to go back to my roots.”
That meant going back to what he called the “available materials filmmaking” of his 2005 feature debut, The Puffy Chair, made with Mark and their friend Katie Aselton (now Mark’s wife) from a script inspired by their lives. The Baltimorons had that same energy: He’d got to know and like actors Michael Strassner and Liz Larsen and, more importantly, developed a collaborative relationship that would let their lives and his own experiences become what he called “the potential energy” for the story of two strangers brought together by a cracked tooth, and finding in each other the strength to face old failures. “Within a few weeks of the strike ending we were on the streets of Baltimore, shooting, freezing our asses off at Christmastime in Baltimore. … It was rainy and snowy, and I learned a lot about wintry mix. Coming from New Orleans, it was torture.”
That’s where the continuing creative relationship with Mark came into play. As producer of The Baltimorons, Mark kept Jay honest to what the younger brother described as “a live-action Charlie Brown movie.” Jay recalled that he considered pushing production back to the spring, giving him more prep time and a chance of better weather and more daylight for the many outdoor sequences. “[Mark] was like, ‘No. It has to be a Christmas movie. You need the contrast of scary, dark Baltimore and the twinkly lights in the distance, and the hopefulness of it.’”
The Baltimorons
Narrative Spotlight, World Premiere
Saturday 15, 2pm, Alamo South Lamar
This article appears in March 14 • 2025.
