The Watch - 'Game of Thrones,' and Mark Duplass on ‘Room 104’ and Collaboration (Ep. 174)

Episode Date: August 7, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss last night’s epic 'Game of Thrones' episode, "The Spoils of War" (1:00), before sitting down with Mark Duplass of ‘Togetherness’ and ‘The One I Love’ to discuss his new HBO series 'Room 104,' his experience in Hollywood, and the value of collaboration (24:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan, and I am an editor at the ringer.com, and joining me in the studio in a flame retardant suit. It's Andy Greenwald! Have they invented that in Westeros? No. Although, you know, the way that Betty Off and Weiss going, maybe they will.

That's what I'm saying. I feel like Kyberton could come up with that real quick. Andy, this is The Watch. We are part of the Ringer podcast network. subscribe to as many Ringer podcast as humanly possible. House of Carbs, Jam Session, Bachelor Party, Masked Man, Achievement-oriented, Big Picture, MLB show, NFL show, NBA show. What about the Rewatchables? The Rewatchables.

I'm psyched about this. That's coming soon. Ringer FC, our new soccer podcast launching this week in out of the Premier League. We have so much stuff for you guys to listen to. We have a ton of stuff for you guys to read. Big week over at the Ringer.com. So please check us out this week. We got a lot of stuff going on.

NFL preview, premierly preview, Game of Thrones Writing. I'm here with Andy Greenwald. We do talk the Thrones together with Mallory and Jason. Last night was a great show. I love this table setting. Can we set one more placemat here? Sure. Because later in the show, Mark Duplas is going to join us. That's great. You did a night. You said, hey, the centerpiece, let's move it to the left inch. That's actually, we have a lazy Susan set up. This was really great. We talked to Mark on Friday

about his new HBO, he and his brother, Jay's new HBO anthology series Room 104. And it was more than that in our conversation. Yeah, we talked a lot about how to work with limits. I think that was sort of the theme. Which is something I've been operating on for about five years now. I limit you. You hold me back.

Andy, I want to talk a little bit about Thrones. We're going to jump to a couple of other random tidbits. We're going to go Thrones, a couple of little small things, and then we'll get to Mark in about 20 minutes. So one of the best things I saw. online. The Throne's social media, the memes are great. Gallagher had a great one last night of Jamie tap in his head, you know. That was a good one. I also like the one we put out of Jamie being like, this is fine. Yes. But Megan Schuster retweeted this last night. I can't remember who was the originator of this, but it was basically pointing out how is it that Jamie is running on a horse

in ankle deep water? Yeah. And then somebody Brian Dawkins is of him, and he winds up in like the bottom of like hunt for red October. Yeah. What is the geography here? Is that what you're asking? What's the sort of topogor? Like what's the oceanography of this? Like,

yeah. And like even people, and I'm sure by the time binge mode goes up on Wednesday, they will have completely mapped this out. But even people who are very familiar with the lay of the land like Mal and Jason. By the way, I just saw Jason at the commissary here on the lot. Was he levitating?

He was basically practicing cartography. He had he had so much. Many pieces of blue architecture paper in front of him. Yeah, because it's a TV show. Yeah. It's a TV show now maybe more than it has felt like in recent years. And I think that's been an interesting conversation that's been happening around our office this morning. And I think even last night as we were watching, there was some, oh, okay.

So like the Dothraki just kind of like went around. Sure. They floated on and nobody noticed like a horde of Dothrakees moving across the landscape. They teleported. Yeah. There's just like Jamie's more concerned with like getting this wheat across the the bridge than he is like about how to watch the great Harris Whittles. Give me that wheat.

Yeah. So I don't know. I mean like I wanted to talk to you a little bit today about some of the, you know, there's dragons. So logic gaps are fine. But there's some TV storytelling stuff that's coming into play. I'm happy you brought this up. Before we, before I answer that, let me just say that the one thing that that put my mind at ease

a little bit. I think this was expressed last night on our show, but it's worth saying. saying again in terms of the geography was that it's because Lord Tarley comes back and says to Jamie the gold is mostly through the gates of King's Landing, it suggests that they were very close to Kings Landing.

This attack did not happen in the shadow of High Garden. Time had passed as they had moved from High Garden where they were at the beginning of the episode, and Braun says give me that castle to where they were almost home. And as we know, they're at Dragonstone. So that's really, that's not like the A train all the way from Inwood

to Queens. This is like taking the Times Square shuttle. Sure. You know, back when the subway was a working organism. But even an award of Dothraki and the Times Square shuttle would be like, oh, hey, I wonder what those guys are here for. I've been literally been on the Times Square shuttle with no one but Dothrake. Those are just Mets fans. I don't judge.

So, look, I think you can sort of squint and it could make sense. But here's my counter to your point. Yes, there are a lot of convenient things happening quickly now. But I would counter by saying this. Last night was exhilarating and incredibly pleasurable.

No complaints. Because of the way it worked us over the way a TV show does. We have spent four weeks and four episodes this season. This is what we do. Dissecting it, pouring over every frame. Let me be clear. We don't always do the pouring over every frame, but we work with Jason and Mallory,

who lovingly pour over every frame. peer over their shoulders and try to soak up some knowledge. We watched the show with them every week also. Last night, during the last 10 minutes of the episode, everybody was levitating. Yeah, man. That was really fun. My heart was really pounding in my chest, like legitimately. It was so fun to be watching it.

And it was fun to see our scholars having fun with it, too. And, you know, I think that I saw some light criticism of the episode, which honestly just kind of felt knee-jerk. this kind of criticism to say, well, but no one we know really died. And everyone conveniently escaped to fight another day, from Braun to the dragon to Dickon. Like everybody that we truly care about, you know, Amazon spin-off coming. I love Dickon. That everybody survived, and that's kind of convenient. Where did you get that one?

That's TV. I'm a little tired, but there's still a couple jewels in the dust up there. But I loved it. I welcomed that. I loved it. No, I'm not saying I just love the. episode, I love that everyone conveniently survived, because there was a feeling of pleasure in this episode that is not often, we don't often get from Game of Thrones because, and again, this is

to Game of Thrones' credit. I'm not wishing it was a different show, but these moments of exhilaration often come at a cost. If you just go back last season to Battle of the Bastards, the good guy won, but the good guy literally had to climb out of a mountain of his friend's corpses to do it. And we lost one, one the giant. Yeah, but those guys for the most part were red shirts. We lost the giant. I mean, there's always a little, yeah, I mean, this is still mass entertainment, but there are always a couple of dings along the way. Last night was thrilling because we all got through it.

There's more to come. And because, and this is a point I brought up last night as well, that because of the way the show has woven this story tapestry over the last few years, we care about people on both sides. No caveats. We were psyched for Braun to survive and somehow be able to operate this. and we didn't want him to kill the dragon or Danny. Right.

And okay, so here's the way I would put the way the show feels a little bit different now than it did in the beginning. Sean was talking about this earlier. Fantasy was talking a little bit about this earlier about how subversive the show was when it first started, right? And you could make the argument that when they first, the first few seasons of the show, they, and when I say they, I mean the people who are making the TV show had the greatest coloring book you could possibly want. and their job was just shaded in. Their job was to cast. Their job was to execute these stories and these huge battles.

No small feet. Yeah, no small feet. Of course. And pace it and tell the story in an effective way and frankly maybe improve the dialogue a bit. Possibly. Which is not to minimize the accomplishment of what it is because I do think it's one of, it's one of my favorite shows that's ever been on television. But we are now past the book.

And I think that somewhat, that feeling of subversion not only is like a little bit gone, but I would venture to say kind of can't come back. This show can't end with the Night King dropping a bowling ball and being like, I'm finished. Yeah. You know, like that would be fucked up. People wouldn't like that. Like, we might think we would like that. But, and I was, you know, I was texting with friends last night.

I was texting with friends last night and we were kind of trying to figure out like, go, do you think it's going to, like, is Terry going to die? Is Jamie? And it was, we're actually down to the magnificent seven now. Like, we don't want any of these people to go. I was, yeah, I was sort of toying with that idea too. And it'd be worth talking to Jason Mallory about when they wake up from their well-deserved slumber in a couple months. But, yeah, I think that the conversation for the last year,

year plus was like what what a terrible L for George R. Martin to have these guys lap him and finish his story. And then we would say that, you know, I wonder if, I mean, Jason sort of straight up, straight up thinks he's never going to finish the books now. But is he now going to make things needlessly complicated and obtuse just to do a different version of the story? Emerging kind of is this possibility in my mind of how this could still work as a complementary as complementary works. Yeah. Because even if the end result is the same, he can talk about how long it took people to get places. He can add side quests and adventures and go into the psyche of characters that we no longer have time

to dwell on, you know? And in so doing, he might be able to complicate a narrative that will likely emerge at the end of this series once the hosanas are done, which is to say, the hero's kind of won in the end. I mean, I'm not saying everyone left on the show is going to survive. Obviously not. And I don't just mean because I don't think the Lannisters are making it to next season. What I mean is some Starks are going to be fine. I don't think John Snow and Dineris are going to die for John Snow

again. I don't think I'm spoiling anything to say that. And I've said this from the beginning. I'm fine with that. I'm fine with this show surprising us, dazzling us, upending our expectations. And then I don't even know what word to use. It's not exactly restoring our expectations, but

but tweaking them and playing to them, you know, I think that if you look at the arc of fantasy storytelling and this show itself, if DeNaris ends this series on the Iron Throne, that's having a woman win in that way is in and of itself a surprise. The way that she's winning is in and of itself a surprise. I think that one way in which it could still be subversive is that, and they've talked a lot, the characters have discussed this a lot on this show about, how the reason why they're kind of throwing their lot behind people like John and

DeNaris is that they have a vision for a more just and peaceful world, a better world. They don't care that you're a Targary and they don't care if you're a Stark or not or snow or like whatever. They see your vision for life on this continent or this world to be just like a more pleasant experience. And no matter who's sitting on the throne at the end, it will be interesting to see whether or not the world is better for it. Yeah.

I think that would be interesting. Now personally, like, I'm on the record to say my preferred ending for this series is the Night King Baby on an Ice Dragon with a Valerian steel dagger in between its teeth lands on in King's Landing and goes, I'm the captain now. I think that's good.

I thought that he would do that and then turn to the camera and say, did I do that in like full Urkel voice? Look who's talking! Yeah, I'm into that. I also kind of like the idea of Tyrion waking up in an inn in Vermont next to Suzanne Plachette. That's good stuff.

I think there's just a lot of opportunity here. Nobody's done that before. No one has ever done that. That's not about subversion. I know, right? Okay, Game of Thrones, we got that. By the way, Thursday, 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. 1 p.m. Eastern time.

We're doing a special midweek episode of Talk the Thrones. Midseason. Midseason episode. Again, dole some awards out. Give away some hardware. And you can find that on we'll be tweeting it. The ringer will be tweeting it. Yeah, you can't miss it.

But, yeah, it's crazy that we are now over halfway done this season. Yeah. That is very surprising. See you in 2024 when they come back. Yeah, that's the other thing. We don't know when the show's coming back. But I'll say like, before we move on, the show has continued to surprise.

I did think that we're always trying, you know, this is maybe, I don't know if everyone does this. I think it's a product of how everyone watches TV now, but maybe. Trying to figure it out. Trying to figure it out, but also trying to get a feel for it. This is sort of what we do now because we have to, you know, stand up and talk about at live every week now, but the show has done a good job this season of surprising us, and I don't know if that's because they weren't able to find a rhythm, and I'm praising that,

you know, as a plus. But I'll say it again. Like, this was definitely an all-time good episode, and it was an all-time good episode last night because of the thrills of the last 10 minutes, but more so because of the engaging storytelling in the quieter scenes leading up to that. It was an episode that could do both. So last night when we finished Talk to Thrones, Greenwald had what we call in the biz a heart out. Yeah. Why don't you tell the people where you went? I grabbed a slice.

I took off the makeup. Classic New York move. Took off the makeup. Put on the clown makeup. Uh-huh. Because I was going to ItCon, a Stephen King fan fest. And, uh, no, I, I caught a ride sharing app. Was like the four people who saw Dark Tower?

Did they go to? They were all theirs. They were bused directly there. Cool. Um, I, uh, I, uh, I got. on a ride-sharing app, and I went up to the Hollywood Bowl to see Spoon and Bell and Sebastian. It was like Matador Palooza. It was our youth. This is our youth up there. And I have to say, Chris, it made me, it was a wonderful night under the stars, great concert, great set.

And, um, big tape trading community in the Bell and Sebastian world. Listen, it made me feel a lot of emotions about, about my life and about you as well. Oh, man. Because Hollywood Bowl is a, I'd never been there before. It's a very beautiful venue. It's very nice. It's also so L.A. in that, of course, you're sitting outside and it's beautiful, but everything just kind of works in a way that is so confusing to someone who still has a little New York in him. Even afterwards, when we're leaving, and people are like masses, streaming masses of, you know, like, see 90 kids are like storming down Highland, no longer kids. Quote, yeah, no longer kids. And people are like, every so often someone steps into the street and like a kindly person is like, excuse me, man. And,

could you please stay on the sidewalk? And the person's like, oh, certainly, of course. This would never, never work on the East Coast. But I was just thinking that this band that I saw play this massive show at the Hollywood Bowl, I remember seeing for the first time with you 19 earth years ago at a lecture hall at BU. At BU. And just thinking of a band that can scale from one thing, you know, from that to this in 20 years, and be able to play this was really amazing.

Thinking also of just the, like, do you remember afterwards, we saw Stuart Murdoch, the singer of Bell and Sebastian, get into a screaming fight with Isabel Campbell, who was his then girlfriend and was the, like, cellist, and then she, like, stormed off. Was it really, like, that big, was it a screaming fight? We saw them fighting, you know, and then she missed the next two shows, like in Philly or whatever.

And then also afterwards you took us to your spot in Boston. Deli House. Deli House. It was close. We walked there, right? Yeah. But it was, it's a thing when you realize, because, and this is the universal part of it, that I think that people, hopefully this is still a thing for younger people.

There are the bands that sort of define very fraught periods of your life, and I mean fraud in like a nice way. Like when you're in high school, when you're in college, the bands you listen to then sort of define you. And also time is very compressed. So I remember thinking, like, do you remember when like you two put out Akhtung Baby and Zoroa, and then they went dark, and they, like, came back with pop.

Mm-hmm. I think three years elapsed. But I remember when they came back, I was like, my God, they have literally been to Mars. They went on a mission to Mars, and came back, three years now is nothing. So just to think about the length and breadth of a band's career and still being able to, like, go see them,

and it was a wonderful evening. What a lovely little anecdote. I love that. You ever think about years like that? I think about that all the time, man. I guess also because we're in the business now of like coronating things, you know, everything is an anniversary. And so I'm constantly confronted with, you know, before, I think even as recently as five years ago, I was like, sure, yeah, like 10 year anniversary. It's not a big deal.

And now like everything is 20 and 25. Yeah, that's right. And it's just staggering. I have a, I have a lot of memories of going to visit your series of Boston Residencies and being like, look, I just cop this new Bell and Sebastian EP. on Jeepster records for $25. And you'd be like, cool, here's the new promissoring album. I was like, no thanks. Or here's a festival of dead deer 10 inch with like a serrated edge.

I remember very, very, very vividly. I was like going on quote unquote vacation. I was driving from Boston to Vermont to see my parents. And, you know, like I had basically put aside 60 bucks. I was working in Newberry Comics. And I was like, okay, I'm going to buy a bunch of CDs to listen to in the car. And I bought, if you're feeling sinister. and Tan Rapid by Magwai,

I remember we're in the same purchase. That is very, it's a Scottish too firm. I think I was like, hey man, you should check out these bands. No. No, no, because I went to, um, uh, I went to Glasgow in 97, and there were posters everywhere for the lazy line painter Jane EP. I actually played Glockenspiel on those early EPs. People don't know that.

Did I introduce you to Maguire maybe? Um, I think you were the, I think you were like that you should actually listen to this, even though you're scared of what you think they might sound. They were the first band we interviewed together in 98. That's right. I also want to just, was that 98 or 99? 99. I also just want to, before we move on, put this out like the secret into the universe.

You know, I was very excited. Stuart Murdoch from Bell and Sebastian was supposed to come in to record a podcast today. Yeah. I think he wasn't feeling well. His health was little off. He was a little mad that nobody died on Game Thrones last night. He just wanted to watch Talk to Thrones. No, I'm not saying this to put him on blast.

He's still on tour, but I just putting it in the universe. and I hope that it happens someday. Maybe he'll just call you up one day. Just be like, let's just do it. He'll just call, call me. Well, let's talk to Mark Duplas about his show Room 104, which is on Friday nights at 1130 on the HBO network. Yeah.

A fun anthology series. 25-minute episodes, basically. We'll just take a quick break to hear from our sponsors, and we'll be back with Mark Duplas. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Casper. The Casper is an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price. Supportive memory phones create an award-winning sleep surface with just the right sink and just the right bounce.

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We are so thrilled to be joined by actor. producer, director, gearhead, podcast aficionado, feng shui expert in terms of how much space you need, and co-creator of HBO's new anthology series Room 104, Mark Duplas, welcome. Hello, gentlemen.

What's up, man? How's it going? Thanks for coming by on a Friday. Thanks for having me on a Friday. We are very excited to talk to you about Room 104 and other topics, but we have to lead with something, which is that the real victims of the recent HBO hack

are, we are the victims. What happened? Because we were unable to watch more than one episode of Room 104 because the entire screener system collapsed. It went down. Yes, because the hackers were targeting, I believe, Room 104.

Yeah, they were really after Room 104. That's the show. They accidentally gleaned some Game of Thrones stuff, but they threw that away. False flag. And they are ransoming of episode two of Room 104, guys. And we considered ponying up for it because I think we both enjoyed the first episode very much.

Oh, excellent. Thanks, guys. Thanks for watching. We could explain it, but could you give our listeners a little bit more of a heads up about it? Because the first episode premiered last week, we're going to put this podcast up on Monday. So the listeners are ahead of us. They may have seen two episodes. They might have seen two.

But this is an anthology series set in this one room, but the tone can vary from episode to episode. Yeah, I think that when we started coming up with the idea for this show, we got excited about the idea that, you know, it would reboot itself every week in terms of different stories, different characters. but also changing the tone got really exciting for us. It's something I've never tried. I was always scared that it wouldn't work. But we have this wonderful relationship with HBO where basically I bring them ideas and they say that sounds really tricky

and that might not work. And I say, but I'll do it really cheaply. And they say, okay, you can try it on Friday night. And that's what we do. Friday night's 1130. Friday night, 1130 show. That's such a cool, like, We just don't have a lot of everything.

I mean, to the extent that even a time slot matters that much anymore. I don't know that it does. I'm not sure anymore. Even so, what was that show that used to be on, night flight? What was the show that was like the late night? I remember what used to be on cable TV at 11.30 p.m. Yes. Right.

It's like 302 and 33. Try to go back and forth between Cinemax and the next channel 400 times and see if you get it to unscramble. Yes, but this isn't about me. Yeah, but I like the Friday night at 1130. It feels apt for the show. Yeah, I mean, there's something, I guess, tonally appropriate in that it's a late-night show, and it's a little bit of a mixed bag. You never know what you're going to get. You're like, you might get a comedy.

You might get a thriller. You might get something surreal. You might get like a really sweet little dromedy, or you might get a modern dance episode. Like, it's kind of that Russian roulette vibe or just like, hey, tune in and see what happens. You've given yourself, I think, very healthy framework. So, you know, to sort of not rein yourselves in creative. but give yourself some shape to the show. It's obviously all set in one.

There's a lot of shape to the show. Well, this is what I wanted to ask. So you have the room. There's only one set. Yeah. You have, it's a half hour show. When you sat down to sort of brainstorm this, even within that framework,

there's a lot of possibilities. Did you and your brother and your other collaborators, some of whom are really, all of them are terrific? What else did you lay down as the rules? Yeah, we kind of organically came up with a set of rules that we, you know, we admittedly allow ourselves to break, but the function of the show is what can you do with

limits? And so when you sit down with the room-o-40-kit, as it were, it comes with three days to shoot the episode. Okay. You're only allowed to have a few actors in the room. You cannot leave the inside of the motel room whatsoever, so your whole story has to take place there, and we provide everyone with a schematic of the room. We encourage everybody to find new ways to tell stories in there. And then from there, something really interesting happened, which is just like, I was honestly a little bit worried that we would write a season and be like, all right, there it is.

Those are the 12 you can do inside of 400 square feet, and we're toast. But somehow, and I don't know why, the challenges and the gentle constraints of the room make you like punch against it a little bit, like a little bit. kid and it inspires you to break out of it. I read this essay once by Stravinsky, who's like, you know, our big genius player. And he talked about how very early on in his life, he knew how to orchestrate really well. He knew how to write really well. He had the universe at his fingertips, and it paralyzed him creatively. Right. And so what he would do is he would have people over to his house and he would say, you write down an instrument, you write down an instrument. You write down an

instrument. You write down an instrument. He'd have a list. And he'd cover that side. And then he'd say, write down a random number next to those. And then he would be left with, all right, I have four trombones, two cellos, seven clarinets, and one tuba. And I have to write something. And that

was what allowed him to create. It's interesting because I think you and your brother, what you've built is a, can I use the word factory? Is a... I think you can go factory. I like it. I like to be the Roger Corman of feelings. It's beautiful. It's kind of the way I like to go. Like we've removed the octopuses and we've put in feelings.

Oh, okay. Well, that works across the board then. But maybe some octopuses next time. Sometimes the octopuses have feelings. And that's what Ruma 4 is all about. I've heard they do. And it makes me uncomfortable about eating them. But regardless, you are known for taking a lot of creative freedom and making things, you know, which is very exciting and inspiring, I think, to people who look at sort of the monolith of Hollywood and think it's difficult to get things done. But it's interesting that already in our conversation, And even before we hit record, when you noticed our space here, our humble space, you were talking about limits. I was excited. I came in. I got to be honest to you guys. I came in. I saw there was only like two small rooms. And I was like, you guys are doing it right. And then I saw there was like another room with too much space. And I was like, guys, you're fired. You're using way too much space here. Too much overhead. Too many extra guys. Podcasts through you a 103. It's not going to get me. I mean, we joke, but like, you know, I came up in the music business and I watched it drop out. I say came up. I was playing an indie rock band making $87 a night. but and I watched it die. And I have this thing inside of me that's like, unless you find a way to be sustainable

at the absolute bottom feeder level, you're susceptible to just crashing. And I think Romano 4 springs from that. It's a way to say, okay, I made a show called Togetherness. It was really exciting. They kind of overpaid us for it. It bought my house. That was wonderful. And it was a little too expensive to stay on the eighth.

for the amount of people that were seeing it. And, I mean, that's an arbitrary decision, but that's the basic reasoning of why it's not around anymore, right? And a room 104 is a show, I'm like, well, if I make something that costs about a quarter of that price and doesn't need to have that many people to justify its existence, and that means I can take all the creative risks I want, that's kind of where I feel like our niche is starting to develop. It's really interesting to hear you talk about this because I've had, I've read and had conversations

that sound like what you're saying in terms of like where you read about what Soderberg's trying to do with Logan Lucky, what Joe Swamberg was doing with Win It All at Netflix and creating new models. And even to some extent, Blumhouse, which I think you've worked with them before? I love Jason. Yeah.

I mean, he and I make totally different content, but we share a very similar aesthetic. You don't share the octopuses, though. He takes those. Well, he's got all the octopuses. I just want one. Can you just give me one? But it does seem like you're,

You mentioned the Roger Corman thing. It does seem like there is this exciting multiple new ways of working within all these different platforms and all these different ideas of going straight to VOD or like recouping money in different ways or setting limits for yourself to be working. You can do what you want as long as it stays under a certain number. It seems like it's a fascinating time to be doing this. It is. And that's like kind of like I guess the business side of it. But there's a much more personal creative side to this, which is, you know, my brother and I like, I'm. 40 now. He's 44. And we've been making stuff for a long time. It's been pretty insular in terms of

like our collaborative circle and the two brothers doing their thing. And we always just talk about kind of our favorite artists and how they just get real boring and repetitive at this stage in their life. They have kids and they settle in and they either franchise themselves like Elton John where they just like keep making the same thing and learn how to make money off of it by like. Do the Vegas residency thing. You're doing that whole situation. Or they get quiet and then they strike out on something that's like totally odd and indulgent because they're disconnected from other artists and they're just like rich swimming in their pool all day. And so we've been conscious of this for a long time. And so Room 104 is, it's also emblematic of our desire to, I guess,

expand our circle of collaboration. So like for this show, I wrote seven of the episodes, but we didn't direct any of them in this sort of conscious effort to be like, what happens if I bring in all these amazing young filmmakers who haven't directed TV yet. My idea, which I think it really did work out, was like, what I have maybe over them as directors is a lot of experience in TV and all this stuff, but they're coming in hungry, excited, first directing job, and then also they're going to direct it in a different way, and since we're just inside of a motel room, each episode needs to feel different.

And every one of them, I can honestly say, I'm like, oh, that came out better. than if I had directed it. And it's thrilling for the audience, too, because in the, I apologize for this again, the one episode that I saw, I was, I was rapt, I was having a great time, but I was also thrilled because there's Melanie Diaz, who's an actor that I love, and you don't get to see enough. And here's a chance to see her do something different. And I couldn't wait for the episode to be over, not to find out what was going to happen, but to find out who directed it.

Yeah. Because it felt so vibrant and alive and unsettling in the best way. And that was, that's Sarah Adina Smith, who directed Ralphie, our pilot, and she also directed another insane episode called The Knock and Do that's up third. And what I loved about her is, you know, it's providing some, I guess, some narrative backbone that I know how to do as a writer, but like part of the weird side of me that I don't know how to fully flesh out, but it has that seed. And she's just been making these like really strange, dreamy, crazy festival features for years. And I was like, this girl will have a huge career in television and no one has given her this shot, you know? And then because I gave that to her, not that I was like Mr. Generous, but she gave me so much.

I mean, she killed herself to make these episodes great. So that little collaboration element that's happening right now is part of a selfish desire I'm having to, like, stay young, learn from young filmmakers not make the same thing over and over again. Did you find that the writing of the ones that you've done? and obviously the first one feels like it's a different kind of piece of writing for you. I know that you play around with structure and a lot of other movies you've made and there's like

there's ways in which like the compression of scenes is like unorthodox. Like scenes will kind of have like a very like human kind of pacing to them. But this one seemed a very tight, almost like a Twilight Zone episode where it was just like you know, it's like a magic trick almost. And I was wondering how it was

different the writing process at all Yeah, writing process is extremely different for Room 104, and I'm still figuring out a little bit in terms of like intellectualizing it. But what I have discovered, because I'm starting to talk to other writers about it, is when I write a feature film, it's very much plotted out. I'm still tapping into the creative side of my brain, but I got my scenes on my no cards. I know the bedrock is there, and I don't embark on writing until I really know the journey. And then I can be creative inside of the scenes. Room 104 stuff, I'll start with a song or a character. Like, for instance, with Ralphie our first episode,

I was like, I'm just bringing Melanie Diaz into the room. There's a sad, weird dad, and the kid she supposed to babysit is hiding in the bathroom. And that's all I know. And so, like a one-act play, you can tap into that sort of free-flowing creative side because it's exponentially easier, in my opinion, to make 25 minutes work dramatically speaking than 90 minutes.

Not just three times easier. It's about 30 times easier, in my opinion. It seems like this was a pretty fulfilling exercise. It was so fun. I hope I get to make a thousand episodes of the show. Where did you guys shoot it? Did you shoot it right around here? Yeah, we ran at a really small kind of crappy stage that barely fit us

and built the motel room set on it and crammed everybody in there. And it was an interesting hybrid of going out in, doing, you know, what I used to do making $100,000 movies with my friends and taking that up a notch so that it could, you know, air as a legitimate episode of television. Right. But at the same time, embrace the principles that I think, you know, there's good small and bad small. And I tried to keep the good small and get rid of the bad small. And we're still figuring that out. Yeah, there's nothing, what's great about it. There's nothing like apologetic about it. You're not saying, well, we only have this little room. It's just celebrating what's there on the screen. I do, I do, I don't know what it is. I just do very, very well with limits, you know, and I think that people like my cinematographer, my production designer, my composer, they were all sort of scared of just like, what is this, how are we going to do this? You know, I talked to my production designer and he's like, so what is it?

Is it like a CD hotel room? I was like, no, it's not that. And he's like, so it's kind of fancy. And I was like, no. it's a really bad, boring, corporate banal hotel. He's like, conceptually, I like it. I don't know how to do this visually. And I was like, yeah, we got to figure that out.

There's a little flare with the tissue dispenser. Yeah, there's some stuff. There's a little fun stuff. You know, we did like, and so we worked a lot with, you know, our DP, Doug Emmett and our production designer, Jonah Markowitz. I'm like, how do we make simple and banal be interesting? And a lot of it was creating the palette where you can throw up. lights and do different things that, you know, which is, it's basically the metaphor of the show. When you walk in, it looks really, really boring. But if you take a closer look, there's a lot of

really interesting things. I wanted to pivot back to a show. You mentioned togetherness, which is a show. I think both of us really enjoyed a lot and ended unfortunately early. You were talking about in relation to what you've, I guess the perspective that you just gave us about maybe it cost a little bit too much for what it was. Is that hard-earned perspective? Because the ending of the show did seem abrupt, especially in an era when what gets canceled and what doesn't, is very opaque to those of us on the outside of the boardrooms?

I honestly, and maybe, you know, I'm probably too close to it to have perspective, I felt lucky that it ended where it did. I feel like most shows that get canceled and more abruptly than ours did. There was something about the way that it ended where I was like, okay, there's at least some resolution to the arc

that we laid out here. You can always make the movie in six years, right? Yeah, those movies are always terrible. I will never ever do that. Cut two, I'll be back here in six years

I'm talking about the goddamn movie. I'm in the fucking movie guys. All right. And I guess what I learned

was, yeah, it may have been a little too expensive to be sustainable. And it was our first TV show so I didn't want to go in and say, this is how it should be done.

I wanted to be someone who's willing to learn. And so I accepted that model. The first meeting with H.S. HBO was, we can really make this cheaply. And they were like, you should, let's up it a little bit. Let's make it a big show.

And we were like, okay. But my instincts were screaming, why are we doing this? This is a small relationship show. This is about the faces and the feelings. Why are we spending all this money? Bouncy Castles are expensive. They're expensive. By the way, I just wanted to let you know, I moved here almost a year ago,

and I thought that the Bounty castles were a flight of fancy on your part. I had no idea that it was. It was just him spending all that HBO. I had no idea that this is. Yeah, artistic license. I did. And I was like, oh, no, these are essential to the culture of this city. I had no idea. So there are monuments. Good job by you. So, yeah, it was, you know, it was a tricky thing for togetherness. And I can say I was

equally heartbroken when we found out we were canceled as I was relieved the next day because I think Jay and I, you know, we wrote and directed every episode of that. And I started and we produced it together. We really all. authored it. And that was the beginning of us starting to think, okay, we want to be able to live our lives and see our children and enjoy ourselves and not be on set 13 hours a day killing ourselves. But we also don't want to turn into those guys who just make bad art because of that. Yeah. And collaboration was the answer for us. And the room 104 is the answer to that. That actually leads to a question I had about, you know, there's this time in your career around

2012 and it's just like that this is pretty much reading a narrative onto a filmography but you know you're in zero dark 30 you're in Parkland and the Diane Keaton film and it seemed like you were doing more outside acting yeah

and did that have when you talk about like well we kind of want to have this hybrid where we have control over our careers but we collaborate does that take you away from doing stuff because I know you're doing you're doing the Unabomber film yeah I don't do it is much outside acting, but a lot of that is just about serendipity, honestly, and balancing

of schedule. I'd like to say there's a master plan in place, but some of it is just like, is there a good project and do I have the space for it? I will say in general, I'm moving a little bit more towards realizing I think what my strengths are is I'm like a builder of little companies, right? Every movie or a project is like a little company you build. And I think if I have like something really unique to offer. It's, I know how to get together the idea for Room 104, get some stories together, get the right people together, build it, get it up on its feet. Then I need really good collaborators to take that sort of B-minus version that I have built quickly and turn it into an A. And I'm not as good at that. And so depending on how many of those

things I'm doing, that really leaves me left over time for acting. That being said, you know, it is important for both me and Jay to keep our faces up on big screens because that means we can greenlight projects that we act. Yeah, right. We become our own commodity. So it's like, that's that Casavetta's thing I learned about where he's just like, oh, I'm going to go be in Rosemary's baby. Yeah.

That way when I make my film, someone will want to buy it because I'm in it. Yeah. And that's important. I think most people still probably know him from Dirty Dozen and Rosemary. Yeah. He's the most important filmmaker of a generation. Exactly. But you've got to keep that stuff up.

So I try, I'm definitely like aware of like, I won't take a bad movie just to be in it. Yeah. But I'm definitely like, hmm, I should probably get on a 3,000 screen movie soon to keep myself relevance. How hard is it to turn the part of your brain off that understands so many things about the dynamics of making something when you're on a set? Oh, I love it. You do like being just, I'm just, I'm here. I'm sitting in a chair. I call it drunk uncle time.

Nice. Come in, drop some Oreos on the kids party. Get out before you have to deal with it, putting them to bed. I mean, it is really fun. And usually it involves something that I, quite honestly, don't know what I'm doing. So, like, I'm in Zero Dark 30. What am I going to tell them how to make that movie? Like, I have no idea what I'm doing.

So I'm just servicing that. Sometimes I'm acting in something that I'm producing and co-authoring, like, a movie like Blue Jay that I did with, you know, Sarah Paulson. Then I'm a creative entity there, and that's a little bit different. Do you ever wind up stealing tricks from people that wouldn't necessarily be obvious influences like Catherine Bigelow? I mean, do you? Yeah, 100%. You know, what I realized from Catherine Bigelow is like, you can still be loose, improvisatory, organic, and shoot with three cameras, and have it look interesting if you're careful.

Yeah. I used to always think it was church and state. Yeah. Like, be loose and it looks like shit or be tight and it looks good. And I got on her set and I was like, oh, gosh, you can do both. Oh, I've been relying on this live for 10 years. It turns out point break. You should have just watched that.

That's the holy text. I'm curious about your perspective on scale and the manageability of scale because those have been themes in what we've been talking about. And I know that Anna Bowden and Ryan Fleck did an episode of Room 104 on their way to directing Captain Marvel for Marvel. You know, plus or minus the same thing. You worked on safety not guaranteed with Colin Trevereaux, who is now personally stewarding to multi-billion dollar franchises. Now, that is a path that 10 years ago didn't exist. but now does seem to be almost the way, you know, where the franchise machines exist. Yeah.

They upstream people. They really do. And it works now. And it often seems to work. I mean, like John Watts made Cop Car, which was a really good movie. Great example. And Spider-Man, which I thought was a terrific movie. And hard to connect the DNA dots between them.

But it's working. But he did it. Yeah. What is your perspective on that, you know, in terms of who's capable of it? I think it's awesome. I don't understand those movies. And not in a, I really want to say it, not in a snobby way. I don't understand what it means to me.

make a $180 million movie. I have assumptions. Right. And those assumptions have kept me away from them because, you know, honestly, they came to us, you know, they're like, oh, Mark and Jay, like, actors like them, they're, like, nice guys who know how to deal with, like, tough talent, and they know how to write scripts. This is the profile of someone you want to handle a big movie. Run a production.

Run your own company. So they want that kind of thing. That being said, it truly is. First and foremost, you can only do one thing for like two to three years straight. Right. And we like to do lots of different things. That keeps us fresh and vital and excited. So that puts us out of the running right there.

Secondarily, I think that you owe it to whoever's putting up that huge budget to service them and what they need. You know, part of the reason why HBO's Room 104, our Netflix original movies, are so successful, is that they're lottery tickets for these people. They are, hey, it'll be well reviewed. and it'll go out and maybe one out of five of the things they make will blow up. But also it won't be a headache for them. And it won't be a headache. And we take care of it. I think people discount how much that matters in decision making and dealmaking in this town, which is they'll take care of it.

It won't be another problem on my play. I mean, my Ted Sarandos is the head of my TV deal at Netflix and Casey Blois, I mean, the film deal at Netflix. And Casey Blois is the head of my TV deal at HBO. And, you know, those are complex relationships, but if you want to be reductive about them, it is, both of them have huge, huge fish to go catch to take care of their platforms. And I'm just reeling in well-reviewed minnows for them that occasionally randomly blow up in the zeitgeist. And we don't know why.

There's so much content out there. We don't know why anymore. Right. And so, and I get to kind of, I'm almost like a sublabel where like I take care of myself a little bit. And that makes it work. So tying into the whole like, would we make a Marvel movie or could we, I legitimately think we would be bad at it. I think we would be fussy because we aren't able to do the things

we want to do and take some chances. I just think we'd be a bad fit. But if you did. Just because we're all the same age, I'm just curious, like, if there was the character that you loved, if you were a comic book guy. I wasn't a comic book guy, you know. You were more horror? No, I was like, you know, HBO was. Did you like Dune? I didn't like Like Dune. Oh, my God. No, but I loved people who love Dune, you know. Really?

Just ripping down assumptions. Exactly. No, I was like, you know, in the mid-80s on HBO, that was the time when they were just playing R-rated 70s and 80s dramas, like all day long. You know, so for me it was just like, okay, ordinary people. Cramer versus Cramer. This is what adults are like. I'm watching Sophie's Choice. Here we go.

And I just loved it. That being said, one of my favorite. performances by you and your brother is when I went and got a chance to see you guys at the True Romance Live right. I love that script. That was fun. You guys were so, they played the cops. They played, and they

were so good. Sysmore and who was the other guy? It was Sysmore In the movie? Who were the two cops? Oh, yeah. Who was the other cop in the movie? I can't even remember now. It's Tom Sysmore and somebody else and it was like, they were just, you guys were. That was really, really fun. You guys were having a blast. Yeah. I mean, that was being on stage doing that reading.

And it's also like Christian Slater and Patricia Rekette. Yeah. That was kind of cool. But I was just, I was wondering, I was like, did you have, like, is there like a Rockford Files in you? Michael Beach? Oh, Michael Beach. Chris Penn? Chris Penn.

Chris Penn and Seismore, yeah. I think there's anything in us. Now that we've made Room 104, I guess I should never say never, even though I just did that to the Marvel movie. But, you know, Room 104 is clearly a creative stretch for us and to a certain regard of, like, trying out new things. And, yeah, we've made movies like creep and the one I love that are kind of like, oh, this is, a little horror. This is a little sci-fi, you know. But this is kind of taking our skin off a little bit and saying, all right, I know like we have, for better or for worse, kind of have a brand of like sensitive, comedic, dramatic, naturalistic, interpersonal stories. But we kind of want to like... The acronym for that is... Stretch. We've got to workshop that a little bit. The acronym for that is Snowflake, I believe, is what it is.

It's funny you mentioned, you mentioned Casey, instead of HBO now. I think I saw you from across the room at the Thrones premiere the other week, which is this beautiful thing at Disney Hall, the biggest possible stage. HBO did the other, HBO can do two things. They can do Room 104 or they can rent a city block in downtown Los Angeles with like ice dancers on stilts for Game of Thrones. My one note for Casey, when I see him again, or a few can pass this on, I wanted him to be having more fun up on stage.

This is the biggest show in the world. He's only got two more premieres. I love Casey Bluys. I know him very, very well. He does not like public speaking. I could tell. He's enjoying his role and he's enjoying his time over there, you know. Good.

Because he thanked, he was actually quite nice. He thanked everyone, like down to marketing interns, which is a very nice use of this. I stole that idea from him for my Room 104 premiere, which was like. And a much smaller venue. The ice dancers? Yeah, yeah. Did you steal the canopase from the Thrones event to repurpose? It was fun.

We did the premiere. They couldn't afford the ice dancers. So Jay and I were the ice dancers. And that's how we do it. This is how the DuPus brothers keep costs low. So if you don't mind Pivot, to another show. We do a lot of Thrones content here. We're putting this up on Monday of an episode that we haven't seen because even if hackers have tried to let us see if we have not seen it.

I will admit, I am one episode behind because Katie is on the East Coast and we only watch together. That's very nice. We were discussing the other day that there seems to be a split in a lot of couples that we know, including our own, where I won't say which member of the household, our wives don't watch the show. Yeah, I mean, this is a nice couple show for us. And, you know, something we can snuggle up to. We really enjoy it. We have certain shows that we allow each other to watch alone. Okay.

And then we have certain shows that we keep together. And at this stage, Game of Thrones is the only one that we are committed to watching together. And I think the nature of it is the sort of, sort of, you know, not in a bad way, the pulpy storylines and the fun of, like, watching the soap operatic plot points play out is really only fun when shared. to me. It's a very, we find the same thing. Like, for us, it has become a completely

social experience because we're talking about it, we're doing this after show. Like, it's impossible to imagine the show existing as just content you throw on. Yeah, so, I mean, I love the show,

and I'm not like, man, I wish I could watch this without Katie. I'm actually like, I don't want to watch it without her. So you, you can go a whole week and you don't know

that the Dragon 8 Tyrion last week. I don't know. I don't know. You didn't know that. He's making little Tyrion poops. Did you, that's this week. What's a solo Mark show right now?

Oh, great question. So I really like the defiant ones on HBO. You know, it's like kind of like, a little like insider artistic process thing. But like I really appreciated the Jimmy Iovine profile of he's this very creative person, but kind of kept getting dragged into business because he had that side of his brain. And I can kind of identify with that. I thought I was just going to be more of a loosey-goosey artist.

And then when it happened to me in the music business, I saw it started to fall out. I couldn't pivot. I got crushed. And then I'm watching the film business change. And I've been here for a while and I kind of understand it. And I'm kind of embracing modeling in the business side of things and saying like, oh, this is how I'm going to stay alive.

This is, you know, we, room 104 was, we backed into a model, really. You know, it was almost that, that came first. And then you find ways to be creative inside of it. And I watched Jimmy I even do that. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. He was torn between being a creative and a business person. I think Defiant Ones is fascinating for two reasons. One is to see people, it's always nice, I find, to see people who are on a certain level of mega-celebrity and are famous at this point just for being famous, talking about themselves and their lives as artists.

And you see them just making jokes about being in the studio or a studio rat or the actual work, because the more famous they get, the more disassociated they can be from the work. The second reason is because everybody looks fantastic. They look one. They're complexions. I don't know. what filter they used or is this just rich people's skin because people look delicious. That happened in color correct guys. I'm just going to be honest.

To break it down for me. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I know, like, I've been in the color correct room. You've seen what's possible? I've seen what's possible. I also wonder, though, if there is a little bit of like I haven't left Malibu in 21 years. Right. This is just what it looks like.

There's a couple scenes in the show, which I don't think you've seen yet. But like, to humanize Jimmy and Dre and their friendship, they show like some B-roll footage of Jimmy showing Dre his new New York apartment. on Central Park West overlooking the entire city. He's like, yeah, I think I'm going to put these sconces in. Dre's like real nice. They're just normal guys, just like us. The opening anecdote of the thing to humanize them

is the time that Dre got drunk and almost blew the $3 billion beats deal. I'm like, my sympathy is with Tyrese here, I think. No? I'm not leaning in here. So, yeah, I like watching Dre talk about, you know, people come to his studio and they'd say, all right, let's do this.

Where's your engineer? And he'd say, what are you talking about? I'm the engineer. Yeah. Where you're, I'm, I'm going to play the parts, you know? Yeah. I mean, Jay and I are a lot like that still, and people are always like, how do you make things

so cheaply? How do you do this? And it's like, well, we work with a small group of people who do everything and like to do everything. And I do it partially, yes, because it's smart to stay cheap, but partially I just love it. And it makes me feel 23. And it makes me connected to who I was when I was like a spastic artist kid.

But I also feel like there's never enough time to just say that, which is the thing, the making is what you love. You make the thing. And then as, you know, we contribute to this too having a podcast, but doing the press rounds and talking about the thing becomes the public, almost the public facing part of the thing, or at least separate in some way from the work itself. When for you, I mean, obviously you're having a great time right now. Yeah, I mean, but this is the only thing that I like doing. Like every other press thing sucked, but this is the best one. Thank you for that. But, but right, and some level, and we saw that in Define Ones too. There's the scene of Trey just messing with the master stems

of a Marvin Gay track. It's like oh, so it doesn't really matter that he hasn't put out a record proper in so many years. That's not the point for him. He doesn't need to. He can just play. Sure, he tortures himself at night for not putting out those records though. For sure. For sure. It was nice to watch him to do that. At night is in a, you know, $20,000 night cabana in the Bahamas

where they've always a really nice tumbler of something to drink, which I appreciate it. I can't believe I've been putting those sconces in. Yeah, he's like, fuck those sconces. So what kind of, just to wrap up, what kind of workload do you like to maintain? This show is wrapped and posted and everything, I imagine. So are you already knee deep in 20 different things? In my limited experience out here, I know that one always has to have multiple things because the timing is out of your control, but the making the things.

Yeah, I mean, that is smart to have multiple things going. the crazy thing that's happening for us is we've put ourselves in a position where, you know, we really kind of have control about what we do and how we do it, you know, and not to get too, like, inside baseball about it, but when we make our movies and TV shows now, we own them, and we license them to people, but we hang. Like Jay-Z? We hang on to them, and so no one can tell me you can't do this anymore. So even if, you know, God forbid, HBO comes back and we're like, well, we didn't like,

Room 104, they owned togetherness. They did that and it died there. But if they do that with Roman 104, I'll say, well, all right, well, I'll just go do it somewhere else. So I'm in a really lucky position after kind of climbing this mountain for the last 15 years because I'm willing to make things modestly in a certain point, we can kind of do our own thing. And I'm also crazy and continually reinvest my own money into projects. And people are like, what are you doing? Go get financiers. And I'm like, no, I don't want to cut them in because this is our sweat equity. I want to own the whole thing. Do you have, but is it like there, if you could have one like completely irresponsible

Coppola Vineyard, sink American zoetrope investment? Like, what would you do? Like, buy a minor league baseball team or something? I don't think like that, you know? I mean, this sounds totally obnoxious, but like ever since the election, any time I have anything that feels or thinks frivolous, I run a, I run these bipartisan charity campaigns where I'm like, okay, I'm putting down money and I'm going to try. and get a bunch of people who don't believe like me to see if they'll back and match my stuff.

You're supposed to say I would pay Jack Nicholson a million dollars for 11 seconds of screen time. For a foot rub. That would be incredible. Are you giving him the rub or is he giving you the rub? No, no, I'm giving him the rub. The money works either way as far as I'm concerned. To me, dollar for dollar, being able to give him the rub because you walk away with Jack on your hands. Yeah, that's right.

I feel like historically in Hollywood, it's not hard to walk away with Jack on your hands. Is that fair to say? I'm glad we're ending in a classy place. There it is, guys. Mark, thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Room 104, 1130 p.m. on HBO and next season, Room 105, right? We'll see, guys.

The expanded universe? I don't know. Fingers crossed. Thanks. Thanks, guys. Okay, thanks so much to Mark Duplas for being so generous with this time, and that was a great chat with him.

Greenwald and I will be back on Thursday. I like a guest that wears shorts. Can I say that? We have a bunch of, like, right now, a ton of, like, guests coming through. a lot of music guests. I just want to mention that Thursday, by hook or by crook,

I will be talking about Ozark. You've been talking about it. You've been shots across our boughs here. We might have to call up Justin Charity. The people who care about Ozark, it's like a core group that are very important to me. You have been crashing.

You're not a big Twitter guy, usually, except for the live show that you do on Twitter every week, but you've been crashing my T.L. Like, you're on Greyjoy. Bateman memes. Just Bateman memes. Yeah. Bate memes.

Ozark is my favorite show on television. You're amazing. And I may start a rebel wrestling federation just to award it a belt. Wow. Yeah. Like the West Virginia garage belt or something. This is a challenge. Bella hasn't been back in a while because I think we all just sort of got out of the way for Thrones.

We assume Thrones has it, yeah. Yeah. Well, don't assume. Wow. Not when Bateman's on the block. This is exciting. So maybe some Ozark talk. I'm sure we'll get into some other stuff on Thursday.

And then obviously talk the Thrones on. Thursday. Talk the Thrones 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern, and then after Thrones on Sunday. What else can I say, man? We did a great job, Bransky. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by Hotel Tonight. Things change. The weather changes. Your mood definitely changes. So why lock yourself into plans that might change? With Hotel Tonight, you don't have to because you'll get incredible deals on awesome hotels even at the last minute. Booking on Hotel Tonight gives you the freedom and flexibility to play things by ear. While knowing, you'll score a great price and a great place to stay. So

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