In the "Bag"

Filmmaking siblings Jay and Mark Duplass are the kind of guys you can't help but like. Direct, charming, self-effacing and absolutely as sharp as tacs, these two directors know what they're doing and aren't afraid to talk about it. No two ways about it, I like them, and after spending 30 minutes (give or take) with the pair earlier this afternoon I can't imagine anyone else feeling any different.

I was there to talk about the duo's follow-up to their acclaimed debut The Puffy Chair, the highly unusual and decidedly different four-character drama-slash-comedy-slash-thriller Baghead. A solidly effective low budget B-movie with an ingenious (and very well earned) third actor twist, this is one of the only pictures I can ever recall watching and having a fellow critic accidently slap me smack-dab right in the face because something on-screen startled her. Of all the pictures Sony Pictures Classics has sent to this year's SIFF (The Children of Huang Shi, The Wackness, Brick Lane, Frozen River and When Did You Last See Your Father?) this one just might be the very best. Granted, I still haven't seen two of those, but off the ones I have watched the Duplass' brothers opus is the one I definitely can't stop thinking about.

It's a simple enough premise. Four barely working actors; Chad (Steve Zissis), Matt (Ross Partridge), Michelle (Greta Gerwig) and Catherine (Elise Muller); head off for a weekend in the country at a secluded cottage to write the script for an independent feature which will launch all fo their careers and hopefully make them stars. Things begin to get odd when a mysterious stranger appears outside wearing a paper bag over his head. That mystery grows dangerous as the weekend comes to an end, the true motives of the disturbingly quiet masked figure putting all of them squarely atop the razor's edge.

"One of the crew members of our last feature The Puffy Chair, I don't remember who it was, had the idea that a bag on someone's head could be scary," said Mark during our mid-afternoon chat up in the SIFF hospitality suite in the downtown W Hotel. "[They] came up with the idea while we were trapsing around the woods shooting and we were all having this conversation about what is the scariest thing you could think of. His response was about sitting in your living room, reading a book, it's quiet and you look over at the window and there is a guy with a bag over his head staring back at you."

"We all started laughing and saying it was pretty funny, and then we all ended up having nightmares that night thinking about it," he laughs. "We were all talking about it the next morning at breakfast and were like, yeah, that's fucking terrifying. But, then, you know where you're out [in the woods] it's a real rural area and there are a lot of windows and there's no one else around and there's nothing you can do, and we suddenly got really excited about the idea that it could be both funny and scary at the same time. That's where the real inspiration came from, being scared but being annoyed at yourself at the same time because you're scared over something that on the [surface] seems just so stupid."

"The way that our collaboration works is that it's really hard to make a movie," adds Jay speaking about how the pair manages to work so closely together with such apparent ease. "It's kind of like the two of us equals one actual filmmaker, and I don't want to run down a road that Mark doesn't want to go down. It's painful enough, a struggle enough, trying to do it [make a movie] with it being just the two of us and we want to make sure that we're both connected on it, that we're both excited about it, because I think that's what keeps us going through the insanity of making Independent Films."

"There are those moments when we're behind the camera together and we're looking at each other and realizing that something amazing is happening. And we connect on that. Really, that's what [making movies] is all about."

The movie opens in limited release at the end of July, so look for my full review and the rest of the interview over on the main site at that time. Until then, keep an eye out for Baghead. It isn't going to change your life but it is going to make you laugh, get you to think, get connected to some wonderfuly flawed personalities and force you to jump up out of your chair in deliciously primitive tension. Just don't slap the person next to you when you jump in your seat due to all the simple, alomst old-school scares. Take it from me, getting whacked in the face at a movie theater hurts!