The Watch - The End of Cable as We Know It? Plus, Wrapping up ‘Dark’ Season 3 and an Interview With Mark Duplass.

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

Chris and Andy explore the phenomenon that is ‘Yellowstone’ (6:28) before having a broader conversation about the state of cable television (15:27). Then, they talk about the final episodes of ‘Dark’ Season 3 and reflect on the season as a whole (25:20). Finally, they are joined by Mark Duplass to talk about ‘Room 104’ and the current state of the TV industry (47:16). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Mark Duplass Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by HBO's American Pickle. An American Pickle stars Seth Rogen as Herschel Greenbaum, a 1920s American immigrant, who is accidentally brined in a vat of pickles for 100 years emerging in present-day New York City. Seth Rogen also plays Herschel's only surviving relative, his great-grandson, Ben, a mild-mannered computer coder living in Brooklyn. It's rated PG-13. You can stream the new Max original on American Pickle, August 6th, only on HBO Max. I need sports to have to clear the room.

Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line. Me too has a surprise album dropping with Boney Verrett at midnight. It's Andy Greenwald! Wouldn't you be surprised if I had a surprise album? Nothing surprises me anymore, man.

Isn't that the point of 2020? Is my capacity to be shocked is gone? Greenwald, it's Thursday. What a show we have. for our faithful listeners today. Today we also have, aside from our summation of our feelings on dark and time travel,

we'll chat a little bit about I May Destroy You. And then we have a really nice, long interview with Mark Duplas in the second half of the show where Mark talked about this fourth and final season of Room 104,

which debuts on Friday, which he appears in the first episode of. It's the first time he's appeared in Room 104. And it's a really cool episode. I definitely want people to check it out. It's a great conversation, though, that goes in a ton of different directions about the state of making stuff in America right now,

basically, and what it means to do the job that Mark does and also a lot of other stuff. So, you know, the Red House painters come up even. So there's tons of different things get populated into that interview. I really enjoyed our chat with him. Andy, how are you today? Oh, I'm great. Thanks. Thanks for asking. I just feel like things are generally, like, pretty good. You know what I mean?

Uh-huh. So it just kind of gets me through. It gets me through. I did, Chris, before we get into our regular scheduled programming, I did watch a new TV show that I wanted to tell you about. Yeah. Okay, so just again, I'm all into pulling back the curtain. When Chris says, I heard about it,

that's because I felt compelled to tell him. Chris doesn't like surprises on the podcast anymore, even though a surprise resulted in the greatest moment of the podcast and it's an eight-year history when I watched. Ozark. I get it. This isn't on that level. But, so I did give him the heads up. But I watched a show that I feel like this was inevitable that I was going to watch this. And it is a show that anyone who has HBO or HBO, well, look, guys, get rid of your goes. That's, that whole thing is about to go sideways.

Me and Kaih, we're still here on Go Corner for one or two more weeks. We're still Go Gang. I have now noticed, by the way, like, as you guys have too, if you watch something on HBO go now. You get treated to a promo where they're like, hey, this is not going to be here anymore. Come to Max. And it's so hungry and thirsty for us. And I'm like, I'm going to stick with what I know for these last seven days together. But anyway, whatever your HBO is, you can watch the show. It is a Spanish show from Spain. And it has the kind of title that will make you not want to watch it. But much like I agree with you. As is the case with the band Spoon. look past the bad title and appreciate it.

So the show is called, and I'm going to cringe when I say it, the show is called Foodie Love. Now, real quick, is Fudy Love like a lost in translation thing? Is there a better way of... That's the title in Spanish too. Okay. That is the global title for this show. Gotcha.

Because I guess, much like as I learned in the second episode of Fudy Love, the word hipster or eepster is just global. like the word taxi. I guess foodie is as well. And so it is a really unfortunate title for what is in fact a very charming rom-com that you haven't checked out yet. I think you should.

It's the first TV show made by the veteran Spanish filmmaker Isabelle Quaschet, I think. I don't quite do great with the Spanish exes. But this is my version of love life, I guess is what I wanted to say to you. It's a two-hander. It's about an unnamed man and unnamed woman

who meet. They connect online and they meet for coffee and then they continue to have dates generally over food. They traveled from Barcelona where the show is set to Rome and ultimately to Japan. They have very, very, very strong opinions about things like ramen and cocktails. So I'm in. But it's also just kind of charming in a way that I really appreciate. It is not a major show. It's 30 minutes per episode. It kind of has an Amelie meets Dreamon vibe to it, which I know those are in that there's a lot of lurid sex scenes intercut with 1950 sitcoms.

There is a lot of, so you're focused on the Dreamon half of it. I appreciate that. I actually have never seen, I've never seen Amelie. What? Yeah. That's rewatchable, my guy. Is it? I never, sure.

I never would have referred to the extremely 1990 pay cable nudity on Dreamon as lurid. But, yeah, in that, in that these characters. inner monologues are often intercut with quick cuts to things, whether from their own lives or like old cartoons or movies, thought bubbles appear on the screen sometimes, stuff like that. But the first episode is almost too cute and cloying, but the second episode has this really wonderful, loose, casual, wide open view of humanity that I found really enjoyable in that, like, the bartender gets to the camera confessional just to talk and you sort of follow someone else in the bar occasionally. And it's just kind of a nice, it's a nice, gentle hang. And, and conversational

on this podcast, whether you were talking about love life or high fidelity, but also conversations in my actual life when I've talked to people and the whole like, what are you watching inevitably comes up, people are saying like, point blank to my face, I just want to watch something pleasant right now and I don't blame them for that. And this would get a vote for me. I'm enjoying it. I'm going to finish the season. Well, that's just joyfully here. I'll have to check that out. I started watching Yellowstone. So that is my... Look at us retreating to our our corners now that time travel is over. No, you know, I think I mentioned to you that I had given this a shot. Look, I just really wanted to see, I don't know why I had not watched it yet. I think part of

it was like bothering to find the Paramount Network, but ultimately, I think when it popped up on Peacock and I was like, I bet this is going to be one of the real sort of time spent leaders on Peacock. And I just decided to check it out. Obviously, I'm a very, a very big fan of a lot of Taylor Sheridan's stuff. He wrote Sicario. He, uh, he, uh, wrote and directed Wynn River and now he's directed I think every episode of Yellowstone I only really watched the first episode

obviously it's the biggest drama on TV right now I cannot fathom how much this show could cost now I don't know that it does it very well may be shot in like Taylor Sheridan's ranch in Montana but every

single shot is a huge wide open vista with like I don't know how they were able to basically like get this kind of landscape and cram it into a show. It is breathtakingly cinematic. And it's also like super tough guy, family drama set in Montana on a ranch about the conflict surrounding this huge, huge, huge swath of land that is both being incurred. Like there's an incursion by sub-developers who want to build like condos.

And then there's also conflict with the Native American tribes who they took the land from in the first place. and it's actually, I thought, it was just like, in a weird way, like you were like, I want something comfortable. I found this to be like a throwback to the kind of like TV that you and I probably would have like immediately checkboxed like five, six, seven years ago.

Like expertly, expertly made drama. Kevin Costner stars in it. So we both kind of like went back to it and started watching something that like really speaks to us, I guess. I think to your point about the cost, I don't have any knowledge of it, but it is a huge success. story for the blueprint that I think was pretty accepted for new launching services or networks

or whatever you want to call them in that they wanted to make as big a splash as possible. And because of that, cut a lot of checks. And the first check they generally cut in things like this are for a star. And so Kevin Costner, to come do a TV show, to anchor a TV show and not like a miniseries has to be getting paid handsomely. And then no expense was spared. And then it worked. You know, as we said last week, it's getting like 4 million live viewers on basic cable for a channel that some people may still think of as spike.

I mean, it's doing crazy numbers. My question for you about it, because I, you know, I think people this many years into the podcast know your taste and my taste and to a degree, but I think we can parse a little bit finer. Like, is your interest in Yellowstone more Ozark fandom or more lonesome dove fandom? because I am less interested in the former, as you know, but when I hear about people with tough land and rivers, I'm kind of a cowboy these days. I think that setting-wise, I will say this for the show. It's underrated, or it's not remarked upon very often

when you watch a movie or a show set in, say, the natural world, for lack of a better term. how rare it is to see a director who actually spends time out there. And actually not only knows the landscapes and the vistas and has a good eye for a mountain range, but has a good eye for like a bird on a branch or like the way people interact with nature and the way... I'm serious. Like I think that there is like... I'm not laughing at you because we are in video Zoom.

Chris saw me chuckle. I was thinking about the time the first time we filmed in the desert in Albuquer. and I had to hide in my trailer until our production designer, Richard, who came on the podcast a few weeks ago, months ago, let me real socks because I was wearing like little hipster ankle showers and was just getting like sandburn from the giant winds. So I was thinking about, I am not who you're talking about. And I, too, am grateful for those who understand nature.

Can you imagine if when the WGA was like, making their packaging deal. Like you'd been like, guys, I just have like one thing I'd like to throw into this deal as like kind of an amendment is just ankle protection

just generally. Strong ankle protection. Can we get ankle covering socks issued? I chaf easily. My body is soft and tender. Go on. I don't even know where I was going with that. Other than to say that it's clear

that Taylor Sheridan has an affinity for the place that he's shooting in. If you ask or asking me, is this more Ozark or Lonesome Dove? I would say it is leaning Ozark. There is a lot of unintentionally hysterical tough guy dialogue in it, which is obviously I think I have a little bit more of time for

than you do at times. Although you love it in books. I don't think you love it as much to watch on TV. And there's a lot of, you know, guy gets killed and right before he gets killed, the guy's like, just so you know there is no heaven. And then boom, you know, I mean, like stuff like that. Whoa, spoiler. That is a tough moment to learn that.

I know. But, you know, you were talking a little bit about cable shows. And I wanted to shout out an article that you and I both read in Variety recently by Kate Arthur and Michael Schneider that I thought was really interesting because it was about the sort of flagging, the flagging fortunes of a lot of cable channels, basic cable channels. And it uses as like an entryway talking a little bit about how like this Rob Drydeck show, ridiculousness was on for some, I'm going to get this wrong, but it was on for like something like 113 of. of 136 hours of MTV one week. And just like the kind of crap that you're finding, not that what that is is crap, but like the kind of stuff that you're finding on cable channels these days. And how they used to be these sort of incubators

and these huge content, content platforms. And now they are kind of going back. The article sort of talks about how they're almost going back to their roots, a lot of unscripted, low budget fare. Can't believe they didn't call me about this. Go on.

but I brought it up because this kind of connects to what we were talking about on Monday a little bit. It's very easy to imagine something like Yellowstone becoming a peacock show even. I'm sure it's never going to leave Paramount. And they would probably use that as like the flagship for if they ever bring together all Viacom Paramount content under one umbrella, whether at CBS All Access or what. Which they will. I mean, it really was eye-catching and odd that Yellowstone went to Peacock and not CBS All-Axcess. inevitably it will go home again. But the reason why it did that, I think, is one of the things that the article articulates

really well, which is that launching a successful show on basic cable wasn't just smart because it was the dominant way TV was communicated to people for so long. It's that it created ancillary opportunities down the road. That a show like Breaking Bad was from an outside studio, Sony, to AMC, huge deal for AMC. and then subsequently a huge deal for Sony when it's resold to Netflix became a huger deal for AMC because that's the example everyone uses

because that's when it all worked the way everyone thought it would forever, right? Sony has a show, sells it to AMC, put to AMC on the map. Sony sells the secondary window of the show to Netflix, which draws a lot of eyes to Netflix, does great on Netflix, but also increases the popularity of a show

that is still running originals on AMC. AMC gets more eyeballs and it's this nice little dark season three like... The knot. It's the not. It's a good. And it works. So, sorry, the Yellowstone of that is that Paramount can make nice coin selling it to a launching service that needs something to put on the air, especially during a pandemic when they don't have a lot of their own original programming. So that that works.

I guess the thing about the article that was interesting to me was that it did feel more like an elegy for a lost time and it didn't probe too much on the issue of, well, why are they giving up on this? have these companies pivoted to the future before the future has arrived to a degree that should be concerning. That didn't really, I guess there's no answer to that. I would have been curious to hear some more people say that maybe yes, they have. On the flip side of that is, you know, there is a, to look at the MTV, I mean, MTV is an extreme example, but to look at the MTV programming block for a week is for people of our generation just, really dispiriting. Because it's not just that it's 130 hours of ridiculousness. It's like movie night, the Pelican Brief. It's just like stuff they have in their content library to throw up there. And sitting here thinking, well, if they just ran reruns of TRL in 120 minutes, they would get more, they would catch more flies with that kind of honey. Well, do you think that they would get more viewers?

Or do you think they would get more people being like, this is so cool that they're doing this. But actually, it's annoying to have to sit through five minutes of commercials in between SoundGarden. I don't know. And I think the answer to that is this is me saying that the thing that I've enjoyed on Peacock since we lasted a podcast is what I expected to, which is the TV channels. Like just seeing, oh, there's a Saturday Night Live channel and just watching Dana Carvey do Carcinio, something that was a hugely funny and important sketch that my friends and I talked about a lot. What an incredibly deep get for you.

That was amazing. That was on. Yeah. It's weird, wild stuff. Like, that was there. We used to say that all that. That was a thing that we obsessed over. You still say that.

In middle school. I mean, now I just feel it. And it's more accurate now. But that was fun. And then like, oh, there's a Bob Ross joy of painting channel. Like, I will stop and watch that because there is still something like the thrill of, like, I haven't even thought of that in years that is something that we also pine for when it comes to like internet radio stations or something. Just please surprise us again.

We're tired of constantly curating our own content. But there's a big different. between that being value added, like how fun for me to have that, and that being the financial driver of an existing network. And I agree with that. And I guess the only thing to say is there is going to be clearly a sea change in basic cable, as a lot of networks just kind of give up the ghost. They don't compete anymore in the same arenas as the streamers. But there probably is an argument to be made. And I think that Yellowstone kind of makes the argument to just, that's all, that these channels should just take a step back, that they themselves,

didn't need to compete with Netflix. They were doing perfectly well when they were USA and AMC and whatever. And so maybe stick with that before giving up completely. Is there a middle ground? Now, I don't know, because with all of our conversations these days,

so much of this is about shareholder bottom line and future budgeting and planning that we don't understand. Sure, and subscriber fees and all the things that go along with that carrier fees and stuff. But were you shocked, the most shocking thing of that variety story

was it talks about how, you know, cord cutting. And the article says, cord cutting is real. It's the thing people have been afraid of for for a couple years now over a decade. But it is true. There's been attrition. Yeah, it's like at 100 and then it was at 82 and it's at 79. But it hadn't gone down, I guess percentage-wise it's gone down a lot, but they're like now the only 80 million households have this. Like, that sounds pretty good. They describe it quite accurately. I can't remember if it's a quote or if it's Kate and Michael's

description of a lot of people who still look at cable as a utility. You know, basically, like it is and I have to admit even for somebody who I'd like to think is pretty savvy about watching lots of different kinds of television and lots of different ways. I still almost think of having a cable subscription as like having a gas line. Yeah. And having electric power. You have a line item for it in your body. Yeah. And I'm just like I need to have internet. My wife for some reason likes having a landline. So I guess we're just going to do this. You know? So yeah, I thought that that was fascinating too. The other thing that I thought was really interesting... Are you doing the Zoom on a dial-up? Is that hidden in that? The other thing that I really thought was interesting in the article

briefly, and this is probably a conversation for another day, was that the cable television business model also took a huge hit from the disappearance of the DVD market, which I had not really thought about until I gazed over to a shelf that's hidden in the corner of my living room that still has like my so-called life, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Homicide Life on the street box sets sitting there. And that that was such a huge part about it.

And I think you and I have talked about our early binge experiences being like running around and renting episode one through three of season one of 24 and then running back to the video store to rent episodes four through seven. Or using the old version of Netflix to get a couple seasons,

then trade it in for the next few seasons. That's really true. Of all the things that people wrote about the Briar Patch cancellation, uniformly, so kind and nice. A couple people were like, when can we get a DVD or Blu-ray of the season? And those are the only ones that made me laugh.

Like, we will get a six-season renewal onto HBO Max onto fucking Quibi before there is hard media made of this show. I mean, that, and you're right, that was another revenue driver. And I think a lot of the industry unrest that you've seen and may see yet again, although we, you know, thankfully we avoided a writer's strike this year, comes from the shrinking

windows of opportunity to profit off of something. That there was a, not only very well established, but very profitable path for almost anything that got on the air with any margin in any margin of success because there were all of a sudden, not just your, your primary window, but secondary, tertiary windows. Shows would keep selling, keep selling, and sometimes shows still went to syndication and then international. And then, yes, on top of that, get those DVDs out there, flood the streets, get that Virgin Megastore cheddar. Yeah. Should we talk a little bit about I may destroy you before we finish dark? Or I didn't know if you wanted to like really dive into this one. Oh, I just wanted to say, I still think this show is a knockout. I loved this episode.

I think one of the most, I guess the thing about this episode that I really enjoyed and obviously I was predisposed to like this one because I just love the lead performances so much, and I love their friendships and the different layers of them. And the way Michaela Cole doesn't let anyone off the hook for anything. And yet despite that, or because of that, the generosity and kindness and caring that is also present in them feels more real and lived in, that they are all imperfect people, even in the eyes of their friends, and that that makes the whole thing feel just so much more alive. But I just wanted to say, we are raving about Michaela Cole as a writer, as a truth teller, as a showrunner, as a moment creator.

But she's a really good actor. And I love her performance. I love when she finds these moments of joy, even in, you know, in Arabelle, a dark time in her life. Like when she realizes she's going to get money to just put on a stupid t-shirt and talk about global warming or whatever. Yeah, it's talking about ice caps. And she can't believe she's going to get one over. around these people. And she has this look on her face. And it's such, it's so engaging. I mean, she's such a great comic performer and performer full stop. And thinking that, I wanted to recommend

to people to check out her interview on Fresh Air this week, you can get the podcast. Really interesting to hear her talk about her life and experiences. But also what made that click for me is she just says, like, it wasn't Terry Gross asked if it was traumatic to like perform or relive or remember some of her own memories of assault in through the fictional scrim of Arabella. And she was like, honestly no, not because A, we had a therapist on set, but also because I love performing. Yeah. And of all the autores that we champion, is she low-key the best actor out of them? Like, you know, I'm not trying to compare her directly to people like Lena Dunham, but, like, I think, or like Lin-Manuel Miranda or Miranda or all these other people who are just like, they write, they direct, they do all these things. But she might be low-key, the best actor out of this, out of this current generation of people who wear lots of hats.

Yeah, I mean, she might be, she also might be the best writer of parts right now. I was thinking about Terry, the character Terry. Yes. You know, I think that I had sort of not struggled, but sort of, I'd been thinking about like the consistency of the characters across episodes. And, you know, Arabella is obviously a character who's gone through a lot of changes over the last three or four episodes. But I think what I realized that is such a brilliant, brilliant piece of writing is we think

about characters and they're supposed to start in one place. and have something happen to them and then come to some sort of resolution at the end of whether it's a season or an episode or a series or whatever. And I think that we see them on this arc. And I love how real the people on, I May Destroy You Feel.

Like, Terry being kind of like almost self-serving in her selflessness for Arabella, her, you know, wanting to have like a little bit of control over who is and isn't there and whether they're enjoying themselves at her own birthday party.

Like her kind of going up, you can feel her going up and down throughout the episode. And that's just like expert writing and performing where you can kind of see like, yeah, it's not a clean line where somebody starts here and ends here because of this.

You know, it's not, it's not going to be like this Luke Skywalker arc. It's going to be messy, just like the way life really is. And I think that's a real writer for you. And I don't presume to know if there was any intention for the show to continue past its 12 episodes.

my senses that there wasn't. She's probably moving on to other things. But I think one of the things that's kept people on their toes, myself included, is that finite series, especially when you go past the midpoint, which we've done now, this was episode seven, characters' arcs begin to lock in and you see the glide path towards destination. And exactly what you're saying with Terry, she is just fully 100% alive as a person full of contradictions and conflict. There is no evident final resting place for this character.

It makes me feel like this could just go on and on and on, and yet it might be even more powerful to end without that sense of absolute resolution that shows like this often give us. Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about the resolution that we got from Dark Season 3. All right, this is it. I mean, the end is the beginning,

so we might just start talking about season one. happened in my home. We are now watching season one. I love like a like so you guys have just had like an absolute fever pitch of dark. Do you do you engage with your your wife about like season one dark? Are you do you remember it well enough? Weirdly we don't engage at all anymore. It's just a loop of dark on the television. You also have no idea which version of your wife you're talking to, Adam or Eve. I'm very suspicious at times. Well, I guess we'll start at that's so funny we will start our conversation about the end at the beginning. So I think people who have heard us talk about this, no, like she started watching season

two with me grudgingly when I was catching up the other week, became more obsessed than I am. It had never seen season one. So she's watched it two, three, one, which is a really wild way to watch it. I am now watching one again with her. I never, ever, ever do this. I never rewatch anything. When I was a critic, I didn't have time. Now I just don't generally feel like I have the interest.

It's really fascinating, especially for a show as, knotty and dense is this one, to see, you know, some of the things that they were so clearly planning or setting up. And then also to, you know, in a way that I find make shows feel mortal and human, the things that they just kind of whiffed on. Now that we finish the series, and I assume our listeners have as well, can anybody talk me through why Noah was driving around town in a stretch limo with an unknown driver? And was dealing drugs, right? Was he Bartaz's, like, connect? He was Bartaz's Connect. Also, I mean, look, maybe they did answer this, because my main question coming into the end, and by the way, I won't hide this, I really like the finale. I was very satisfied and I enjoyed it made me think very fondly of the whole show and the whole project. Blah, blah, blah. My main question leading up to the penultimate episode was, are they ever going to talk about when these people actually aged? Because the show is so proud of showing people as children, as teenagers, as adults, and then as super old people. But when they become adults, generally, or even children, they've gained the ability to travel through time.

So what were they doing during the spans of 30 years where they went from one actor to another? And the penultimate episode did some of that work to suggest that, like, Jonas was trapped in the future for quite a long time. And then Jonas was trapped in the 19th century for quite a long time. Still not quite sure when he became old ass Adam.

But I asked this to say, like, when did Noah have the time in a post-apocalyptic future to be like, I found you, the last surviving ink artist, please give me the full back tat. Please, I beg you, I am here for another decade before I go back in time to search for my wife

slash daughter slash mother. Help me. I have a lot of questions about that in the way it relates to, like, what has actually happened in the world? So like there's a whole plot line where Magnus, it's definitely in a punk rock. I thought actually might be like straight edge.

because he has exes on his hands in one of those plot lines. And I was like, so, like, does minor threat happen in this world? Like, what happens outside of Winden and what shapes the world? Or are they, like, because they have, like,

these somewhat pop cultural touchdowns, like touchstones. In the 80s, they do dress like 80s kids. But, like, is everything that happens in the 80s also happening? Or is it just certain things?

Well, they reference the Matrix. Yeah, they reference the Matrix. The thing is, And I give them credit for this. The thing that we loved about the first season was just that intense focus on the like, you know, almost the grossly corroding incestuous.

We thought it was a figure of speech. It was in fact literal feeling of being trapped in a small nowhere place where everything is always the same and nothing ever changes. Then the show became about, you know, the nature of space time

and about itself for a while. The very, very end, I thought was so, so well done, the very last scene made it once again about, well, we're still trapped in this stupid place. And then the commitment to no one ever leaving it, even when you have the ability to travel throughout space time or to alternate dimensions, made it seem kind of like a cruel arch joke, which I think to some, to some

degree, it was meant to be. I think it seemed to be less about, because there was a moment in the middle episodes where I was like, they're not showing anything else in the world because they just don't have the real estate or the brain space, because they're so focused on showing their theorem and proving their work, right, that that would just complicate it. Then I was like, oh, no, I think maybe they were a little more clever about that than I'd given them credit for. Yeah, I thought that considering what it had to visualize and articulate at the end, it was incredibly satisfied. I mean, they essentially have to like show you two souls reaching out across the chasm of time and space to then sacrifice themselves for the survival of everyone

else that they love, if my reading of the end of the show is correct. Also, all the credit to the show. This makes such a difference in my book. Every time we've talked about it across all three seasons, I've made a point to say how it's humorless. Not true. There was one joke, and it was made in the last scene when Voler is about to say what happened to his eye, and then he gets interrupted by the power going out. And that was a good joke. That was worth it. I give them credit for that. I had a couple questions. I was hitting you with a lot of texts, but those aren't useful for podcast consumption, so I did want to bring them up here. One of them is, I don't know if you agree with me, but if I did find out through clearly supernatural or otherworldly means that my entire existence was a cosmic error, right? That everything that I have ever known, done, or loved was an obscenity in the eyes of space and time. I don't think that I have the moral character or gumption to be like, I will devote however many years I have left to undoing this despicable. not. I would be like, okay, well, yolo or y'ol twice or eight times or infinity times, I'm going to go to the beach or I'm going to go sit by the lake or I'm just going to go do something else for a while. I am not going to be like Adam and spend 90 years either getting hanged, murdering things that

I loved, or staring at a bad painting. Or throwing my girlfriend into a black hole. Yeah. That just doesn't seem fulfilling, especially if your endgame is to end your own existence. There is a remarkably little amount of groundhog day going on. If you knew that this loop was going around like that, you could become Mozart if you wanted to. Or go to the beach, is your point. Although I will say it appears that a unrelenting nuclear rain would make beach days a little bit of a hard thing to do. Do you have that very pleasant day at the lake in season two? which, you know, where they enjoy sitting and relaxing in the place where their mother slash

grandmother was clubbed to death with a rock by their grandmother slash great-grandmother. So, you know, it's not like everything is a haunted burial ground, I guess, in this town, which kind of harshes the mellow. The other thing I wanted to point out is as we encountered like infinite versions of our characters, I think it's probably time to do a power rankings of like the lives of which people were worth having, like which versions of which people? Well, this is a very crucial distinction to make, because I was going to ask you, my version of this question was, who benefited most by the not being untied, like that final dinner

scene where everybody is friends again? I think Peter Doppler, it comes out. A million percent. Love in life, like, at a huge, huge way. He's got his girlfriend, he's just, he's killing it. So he's on one end of it. but your question is more what? Well, I think Peter is a great answer

because Peter, every version of Peter's existence, including the version where he was just a convenient red herring in season one, was pretty shit. Like, pretty, pretty bad. Charlotte doesn't love him in any reality. Yeah. No. So why not go to the one where Charlotte doesn't exist?

I think that Charlotte as a human being and as a performer kind of got short shrift because she was maybe my favorite character in season one and a very cool character. And then by midway through season two, her eyes were just any person off the street being shown an episode of season two. And then by the end, it's just like you don't even exist anymore. You just get to step through a wormhole, spend a couple days with your mother slash daughter in her nightmare apocalypse future. And then you just vanish. That sucks.

That's what I thought about HANA in season three. I thought she was like in her minds, whatever the German phrase for Call My Agent is, because that was Hanna. Vasis dis? I think that there are certain people, like, weirdly, Mikael, Michael Michael Conwald, not the worst life. He has one pretty disruptive event in which he loses everything he knows

and goes through a wormhole into the past. But then grows to a certain age, basically fine, making his little charcoal paintings in the attic. and then it's super bad in the last day. No question. Super bad for the last day. But he gets a pretty decent chunk of okay. Yeah, he seems pretty haunted, but I would agree, yeah, it really is back-end.

It's back-loaded with bad stuff happening with him. I also think that there is a case to be made for finale Marta, who lived her whole life with her loving parents in a fine universe with a nice boyfriend, and then, like, the last two days of it get super weird. And then she ceases to exist. But she doesn't have to turn into old-ass painting, staring, sad face, Marta. Yeah, with the robe. She doesn't have to live, like, she doesn't have to be like Chris and Scott Thomas, English patient in the desert, Marta. She doesn't have to get her eye cut for whatever reason. She's fine. But my vote, there's a lot of preamble. My vote by far, and you mentioned him a moment ago,

is any universe Magnus. Magnus got a bad rap for me. Because, I didn't understand why he was on the show. Yeah. So that's on me. But ultimately, think about his two versions. One version got to avoid the apocalypse with his high school girlfriend and then grow into what appears to be a relatively stable middle age with his high school girlfriend. And that's about it.

That seems fine. The second version of him, which is more the Neil Young Burnout Don't Fade Away version of Magnus, sitting by a lake, high school girlfriend, maybe he's. maybe, you know, just indulging in some light to heavy petting as the black clouds of the apocalypse sweep them away. Yeah. That's a wrap. That's a memorable last kiss, though.

As far as things go on dark or in Vindon, that's solid. Yeah. That's solid. I think the absolute loser of this entire show is still O'Rick. Oh, my God. Absolutely power ranking number one. Is just a serial adulterer who then spends, like, seemingly eternity in a mental hospital.

So I think he definitely comes out on the losing end of the show. Not just that he spends the last 40 years of his soon-to-be zeroed out existence playing chess with himself in the past. Yes. He is being watched over

by his, as it turns out, murdering mother-in-law. Yeah. Which is not always the greatest. And he has these two or three moments when the actual version of the women of his life come to see him. and leave him in increasing states of ruin.

Yes. Hana the most. Because Hana was like, I prefer mid-20th century Germany to you. Hana is savage. She was like, I could be with you and your old ass. But instead, get me a horse and a buggy and an illegitimate child with a facial scar who's secretly my son's great-great-grandmother. Did you understand the ending?

Before we do, I just have one last comment, observation. If I had to pick an energy for the rest of 2020, but if I had to pick an energy, it would be the energy of the NHL opening up expansion franchises in the midst of a global pandemic. What is the personal equivalent of that? I don't know.

I'm just like, that is, are we, did we already, are we sure we needed more hockey teams? And then not only that, like, do we need one now? Respect. Don't make your energy, season three, Bartosh energy. Season three, Bartosh,

is just like, well, at least I get these little waistcoats to wear in the past. Oh, oh, I've fallen in love. And yet, with every step my relationship takes over the next unseen 15 years, I begin to get a creeping feeling that I am my own great, great-grandfather. That was big Jamie and Dev's Kuck energy. I got to be honest with you. Bartaz is the guy when I used to watch baseball. This would be a phenomenon. But like, where you would just be like, a middle reliever would come in and you're like, that's not a real person. Those are just two words put together. It would always be like Glenn or Brad or Tom or Jack, you know,

and then he would pitch two innings and get shelled. And then you'd be like, can't believe I watched this for four hours. Are you comparing Bartaj to a lugie? But it would be that guy complaining about his opportunities. Like, Bartaz was like way too bad in the locker room to have his low of an, to have as high of an ERA as he had. It's pretty wild in the end game. And now we'll talk about the very end that, um,

that it was all to save Regina, the bug-eyed lady at the hotel. But at the same time, let me give the show enormous credit. Was it okay? Because I think Claudia is still always going to be the rock in my shoe. Where I was like, so this is like,

I kind of thought the whole Claudia assumes the identity of the other Claudia bit was actually really cool. And in a different execution of the show, I would probably lose a few characters and focus solely on a thing like that. That would have been a season of the show, but it also of any other show,

but maybe it shouldn't have because honestly, whatever the fuck old-ass Marta was doing, I don't know. I don't think it was that compelling. I don't understand it at all. I do want to give the show credit, though. Can I just say one other thing, which is that old-ass Marta only had to ask Claudia

like one question to undo that whole thing? She could have just been like, man, you remember that other day when we had these paintings hung? Do you want to look at them for a while? with me? Because that's all I do. Yeah, totally. And she could have just been like, yeah, we never had these painting song. We were always here.

Time to X. So, yeah. Enough of your time fuckery. I wanted to say that I remain really impressed by just the sheer audacity of the show's entire project. Because obviously the headline grabbing thing is just the multiple castings of each part. And the fact that they found so many people who looked so remarkably alike and And that's really shocking and impressive. Even more impressive, and I think a little bit under the radar, is that because the show was able to assume that we were on board with this new actor being a character we are already familiar with or even fond of, the heavy emotional lift in the final season for some scenes fell on performers we hadn't spent very much time with at all. Yes.

Yes. That's a really good point. One of the final Jonas Marta interactions is with old scenes. Captain Adam and Sadface Marta, who we don't really know. They've never shared the screen, and yet they are invested with our full whatever. Same thing with like old Bartaj who looked just like him. It was unreal. Playing these parts and giving us that emotion.

The bigger gambit that the show did at the end was making it all about not only a third world that we had never seen before, but making the entire fulcrum of the show characters we had never even met that we'd only ever seen in a photo. and I'm talking about Old Townhouse's children and granddaughter. Right. And they were kind of hippies, right? Yeah, that was so reckless. That should never have been allowed to happen.

And yet, I think they pulled it off. And I was really struck by it. Well, you know what I liked about that? Yeah. It got back to the show's roots. Yeah. It was a family story. You kind of like, without getting too into, like, detail,

you got the impression that, Tanhouse and his son. We're obviously having this falling out. And I don't know, them driving along the road and like passing by what winds up being, I guess, two angels in some ways, you know, to save their lives and then to undo everything that comes after was kind of like this brilliant curveball that I didn't really expect to come. I mean, the two things I think really surprised me about season three were obviously the development or the way Claudia kind of becomes this player in the whole game. And then that last, those last moments with Tanhouse his kids or his kids. Yeah, and it shouldn't have worked, but it did. And it brought it back to this idea

that we do violence to each other generationally, whether it is figurative or literal, like the show became about people clubbing their parents or children to death with stones. But the violence that was done to Old Tann House when his family was taken from him or when they died caused him to ruin the world, basically. And so that was a nice little bit of twinning of that sort of idea of emotional trauma and the way generations affect each other. And it also just put the show. Yeah, as you said, it not only set the world right, it kind of set the show right to the version of it that we enjoyed the most. One thing I wanted to say before we stopped talking about the show, because I never did. I loved, loved the janky-ass apocalypse special effects.

The black bubble? It is so Twin Peak season three. I think it almost was stolen from it. Like there's something about, it's not, they're not even practical effects. They're just so weirdly hand-drawn and personalized that they're not even trying to make it too real. I don't know if that was the case. Maybe it was a budget screw-up, but it reminded me so much of that that it made it feel a little bit more, made it more of a personal apocalypse, if you will. My own admission is that I kind of fell for the fireflies effect at the end that was basically like pulled from a snow, like a snow patrol video, but I really liked, it felt a little grace anatomy, but I liked the end a lot with like them vanishing. They should have been playing

chasing cars or something. Well, well, middle-aged Jonas vanished into nothingness. Well, he carries Izzy out of the hospital. At the end, yeah. At the end, yeah, I mean, it's funny that at the end, Hannah is just back. Now she's with Bowler. She is an unkillable force in the universe. Yeah.

It was a really well, I mean, obviously we've enjoyed talking about it. We keep finding ways to extend this conversation. It's a really impressive feat that I think will be and ought to be remembered and will be influential in terms of this type of storytelling on TV going forward. But also, it did start to go off the rails a bit, but you know what? It'd write it itself and ended. And there's a lot to be said for that. Yeah, I wonder what a six-season version of this show would have been.

I specifically wonder whether or not the third season would have made a little bit more sense with more breathing room. But I don't know necessarily that we would have had like the attention span to stick with it for that. Well, the first season had more episodes. The first season was, what, 10 or 12 episodes. And then there were two subsequent seasons of eight each. I bet they would have been happier with 10 each for the last two. And I would have happily watched them. but I'm not sure what, I don't know where I wanted to put that attention exactly.

Do you? I mean, can you imagine a second season with more investigation into the history of Alexander Tiedeman? No, I'm good. I was good with that. All right, Andy, let's get into our interview with Mark Duplas. We'll be back on Monday to talk TV and everything else. Until then, great seeing you. Danka Beranskies.

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I don't think we need even more of an... official introduction just to say that we are pleased, thrilled, delighted to have on our show once again, a veteran of multiple podcasts. I was trying to think if you, Mark, were one of the first members of potentially our five-timers club, which means you get to do a sketch with Tom Hanks and Alec Baldwin or something. I wouldn't do it. I don't know how we would celebrate it, but it's possibly true. Anyway, Mark Duplas is here. We're so happy to have you. Welcome back. Guys, it's good to see both of you, genuinely. I always love coming here and hanging out. Andy, I love seeing you here.

I love seeing you sometimes in the world. In Los Angeles. Mark, we're really excited to talk to you for a number of reasons, but obviously this episode's going up on Thursday. Room 104 returns on Friday. You directed and appear in the first episode of this final season. And so we just really wanted to get you on and talk about 104 and also talk about a bunch of other stuff.

Sounds great. I think you know, Mark, that when you come out of, with an episode that you have written, directed, and are starring in, that references an obscure early 90s cult artist who is name-checked by Bono on the Grammy stage. You're on the right podcast for that. I have arrived. That is in our wheelhouse. Yes, it is.

So we're referring to the first episode of Season 4, of Room 104, which is, as Chris said, Friday night. A tour to force, fantastic episode. Thank you. But also one that has a lot of interesting and subtle things to say, again, about something that Chris and I have been talking about for over 25 years, which is a very specific, almost insidious kind of male music fandom. And I'm curious why this story was your vehicle for getting in front of the camera on a show you've been so involved with for four years.

It's a good question. I don't feel like I have a really cogent or intelligent answer, but I'll just start talking and see what happens. That's what we do on this podcast twice a week. Perfect. Perfect. That's great. So, you know, I have never acted in. an episode of Room 104. And part of the reason for that was just a logistical one was we always felt that we

should keep my actorly presence as sort of like a designated hitter in the event that someone dropped out the night before and we'd be like, just throw Mark in and do it. And then when we got the sense that this was probably going to be our last season, we thought, well, we can lose me as pinch hitter and just put me in something. Can I stop you there, Mark? When Brian Tyree Henry was on the show, were you just pacing in the dugout being like, I got this. I wasn't pacing.

I actually had a bat and I was headed for his knees. I was like, I want this episode. I got this baby. So essentially, it started with this idea of how much fanboys seem to love their artists. And these sort of like vampiric joy they take in the pain of these things. that they love. And the way that they celebrate it is with such, I don't know how to say it, but it's such a lack of awareness that there is so much pain that is bringing them so much joy on the other side of it, you know? And it's just a blind spot that I've always noticed that I have

been guilty of in the past, you know? And I love the idea that they would come face to face with it and that their love of this thing would continue to keep them inside of the room. despite many signals that things are not what they appear to be because they just they can't give up this man as they thought they knew him versus what he actually is when he's in the room. So that was going on like the core of it. And then look, let's face it beyond that, I was like, ooh, every time there's a cool, like, you know, mysterious rock star on screen, he always comes in or she always comes in with the right tattoos and the right earrings and the right clothes.

and I was like, what if he just comes in, like, your sad uncle with the golf shirt and the khaki cargo pants and like the bad white tennies? Like, what would that mean if it was the rock star? And that was kind of how it all swirled together. That's also something that we've all experienced, too, because when you're younger and obsessed with music and you're thinking of it purely as a gateway to get outside of yourself, a different version of the world, a cooler version of the world, a more artistic version of the world. And then we all are fortunate enough to continue to age and age into the demographic of the musicians and then past it and see them age too. And then all of a sudden you're on the other side of it

and you're like, oh, they had no idea either. They had no idea either. And that can be quite a different kind of fan experience, you know. It is. You know, I actually, I kind of loosely based this character on the energy and feel of Mark Kozillick from Sun Kiel Moon and the Red House painters. I was going to ask this.

I know that. I've become sort of friendly with him. Like, he's a fan of my stuff. I'm a fan of his stuff. And there was a moment where I was like, would you want to play this part? Oh, my God. And he was kind of like,

I don't know if I want to do it. Because, you know, he acts in movies and things like that. Ultimately, it wasn't his thing. So I ended up taking on the role. But I remember, I usually try to go see him when he comes to town to play. And I saw him play a show downtown L.A. and it was definitely a bunch of like shoegazing hipsters, Gen Y people,

and they, I think, were expecting Markazlik to be like 28 and look and feel like them. And he was on stage and he's like, you know, a little bit out of shape and he kind of had like a flat top. And he wasn't playing guitar. He had just like a microphone in his hand. It was kind of just walking around stage stomping around, almost in this like Ozzy Osbourne like vibe and energy to him. and it was traditionally not what you think of as an awesome indie cool rock star and I was looking at the crowd

and they were struggling with it. They were like, this is not what it's supposed to be. And I was just, all I could think, I was just like, this is so pure and so wonderful. And so I think more, I don't know how to say it, but I guess it's just more representative of the actual pain that he has

than like sitting down with his little nylon guitar, you know? Yeah. I interviewed Mark once at Southwriters. Southwest in like 2001 or something. And I was absolutely nobody in an awe of him. And it's like the first Sun Killed Moon record, I think. And it was in a motel on the edge of the freeway. And there was a flickering light in the bathroom that I could see over his shoulder.

And my main thought was, I'm asking him about like how fun it is to play a festival show. And I wasn't sure. I thought one of us wasn't going to come out of that room alive. Thank goodness we both did. And he was fine. He was an adult in the world making the best. of the situation. But again, I took that and put it as part of my romanticism, you know, as opposed to being like,

this is just a guy trying to get a paycheck and then go do something else. But he was like somebody who, I remember those Red House Painters Records when my friends and I would listen to them and they had like those beautiful photographs on the cover that looked kind of shoegazery. And this is also like around the time when like people didn't know who Will Oldham was. It was just like Palace, you know. And like it was like, hey, I heard this guy works in a coal mine and can. Tuckie and like this is actually a work progress administration recording that's been found.

And then it's just like, Will Oldham. He's in John Sales movies. He's been in movies since then. And you're just like, oh, but like this. And he's funny. We weren't allowed to think things were funny then. But this episode of 104 kind of touches on this time when it was like there was a lot more mythology around artists because we didn't like so fully document their extracurricular

lives in a lot of ways. A hundred percent. And, you know, that was part of the reason why I like put in that reference to Bono being the one on stage to sort of elucidate who this person is. And the ultimate compliment I ever got from this episode was a couple of people who saw it being like, I actually didn't remember when Bono did that. So I went and looked it up. And I was like, oh, that means I chose the right person for that.

Like I felt like I could see Bono in the yellow tinted sunglasses doing that in 1990s, or actually doing that today even. He really would still do it. So none of this episode, you're going to go on the record and say none of this episode was like getting in front of the volcano I'm still excited reissue that came out this year. It was not. It was not. That was a totally random thing. And the volcano, I'm still excited stuff. I mean, look, I love Polivano records. For those of you who don't know them, they're like the sweetest dudes in the whole world. And they've been saying, listen, why don't we put out this old record? You should do this.

And I've just been kind of like, who wants to hear the EP that came out before the record that nobody listened to anyway? Like, why are we doing this, you know? And they were just, I don't know. I mean, they were just so cool and sweet about it that I was ultimately just like, yeah, we should do it if you want to do it. But there was no, like, confluence or me thinking, oh, yes, this will be the precursor to get it there

or anything like that. When you... I have to say, sorry, Chris, just that I did look at my email to find emails from Josh Bloom at Fanatic PR telling me that I should go to see... That is... That is incredible.

whatever venue, North Six or something. I don't even know where you would have played, but... North Six, baby. I lived down the street from North Six in Brooklyn, and the one venue we could ever sell out once. That's why I didn't go. It was sold out, and I'm so sorry. Yeah, yeah, totally.

I was curious because, you know, going back through the archives and doing these kinds of almost, you know, restoration projects and some stuff that you've done in the past, have you found yourself at the point of your life where you're like, you notice that a lot of the music you like is from the past more or less. You know, like when you look at like all the stuff that you may put on when you get in the car or when you have like a few minutes to yourself that generally you're going back to revisit

stuff rather than exploring newer stuff. It's funny you mentioned that. I've actually been thinking about that a little bit. And I have identified something that I don't know if it speaks to you or if you do this. But for me, it is in this time where I'm just. slightly unsettled by everything that is happening around us, I'm going for some soothing things. And it's like the way that people are watching friends right now

because they want to live in a world that used to be like it was when they were younger and there were no cell phones and the simpler times of it all. And for me, I definitely find myself pulling up those Mojave three records. Yeah. And being like, I want to be here. I want to be 26. I want to be puerile and stupid and just sit and let this wash over. me. That is definitely happening. I want to live on a version of a California beach as imagined by

English people who have never been to California, which is the best version of California. It is. It is the best version. That is a very good point. California dream in the best way. So I do some of that. I mean, and I do actively seek out new music. Sure. Through friends of mine who are like, you know, just closer to it. And so I don't have to waste time and energy trying to figure things out. But when it comes time for comfort, I do go to the old stuff. It's just one of those things. So this is, you know, people, I thought it was purely for alliteration purposes and press releases that everything, the hip trend is the fourth and final season. This is, this is announced and promoted as the final season of Room 104. What I want to do is,

because we ask you the tough questions here. Yes. Is, are we sure? Because this seems like a very COVID-friendly show to make. It's also an exciting, thrilling, surprising quality show. But at this moment, when you have a program that has one set and limited cast, and I would imagine you could limit the crew, especially once you get rid of the designated actor who's just been, you know. Yeah, we already trashed him. Just super spreading in the background.

It feels like the kind of project, the more hands-on DIY type of project that could flourish at a time like this with so much unsublished. certainty. I agree with you. I wish that everyone agreed with you and not to get too much into the weeds, but I really believed that when everything started happening with quarantine and lockdown, that shows like this would become immensely valuable, the shows that could be made quickly in quarantine. But I think that the larger thing that's happening with TV shows and movies is this type of content, which I would call added value, cool, late night, well-reviewed stuff

that brings in a good amount of viewers, but is it changing the game for HBO? No. And they are looking for game changers in any way, shape, or form. And so, God, I hope so much that millions of viewers show up more than showed up in the first three seasons,

and HBO says, you want to take another crack at it? I'll probably try to find some way to ask them and see if they do it. But the truth of the matter is, as much as I would like to make more of these, I don't disagree with HBO for saying it's time to end this show. And the hard truth of the matter is they should have done that after the first season. Because they made the first season, we got a good amount of viewers. It was poppy and fun.

And then they gave me three more seasons where it didn't really grow that much, just me doing my thing. And I think part of the reason they did that is they realized that we were doing something cool for the whole ecosystem and for HBO, which is we were giving all of these underrepresented voices their first shots in TV. So you had all these like character actors who had never played a lead before, like Car and Sony getting his first lead role. And then we were giving a lot of people their first directing job. So they saw this as like a AAA farm team from which to draw a talent from for themselves and also to let me give HBO honestly at the time a network that had some

representation issues as well. And so I think that, like, we were really good for them. But if I'm the head of HBO right now, I'm saying, Mark, you could make another season of Room 104. But we already know there's a ceiling as to how popular this is going to be. So if I'm going to give you X amount of dollars, do something new because more press will come to it and talk about it. And it has that potential to break out, which we kind of already know this won't do it.

And then that's when you say, Casey, Room 105. Yes! There you go! You know, I was thought... Game of Thrones. I think it's room 106 because technically that would be the next door room.

Sure. Usually it's that. And then it's... This is why you're getting those meetings. That's right. And it's the narrative audio podcast because you only get to hear what goes on through the room.

You don't get to see it. Every so often it cuts to you with a glass. Yes. Yes. It's interesting to hear you say this because this is a conversation we've been having over the last few pods and weeks, just generally trying to read the room for the industry.

And obviously it's a lot of intense pause and hopefully some reflection. But it does feel like some things have significantly shifted, whereas when TV was trying to make the play for we're as good as movies or as interesting as movies and where the place where the cool, fun stories are happening, that's when you find room for the projects

that might not have the highest ceiling, but have a very worthwhile floor and bring in a lot of different types of ideas or attention or awards. it does start to feel like we are now almost fully committed to Blockbuster Town, where we're down to like, you know, the things we would say about movies 10 years ago, if you can't sell it on the poster, you can't sell it. And I guess the question is, do you feel that way?

And is it solely because, you know, everything that gets made by these larger companies has to be out in front of the homepage of a new streaming service that has to attract eyes for $15 a month, et cetera? Yes, I think that that is a large part of the ecosystem. I may be a little bit Pollyanna in my belief that there is still room for the cheaply made sliver juggernaut of a show like Flea bag that can break out at a price and not only bring in a significant amount of people, but bring in people who are significantly dedicated enough to that thing to pay $15 to get it. And so if I have a job description for my overall deal at HBO for what I do at Netflix,

honestly, it is, you don't have to get people to subscribe to HBO to love everything that's on there, right? What you need to do is offer them something that gets just a thin sliver of the audience, but gets them so passionate that they can't live without it. You can be really, really valuable to them in doing that. So the way I'm approaching things is not to change my approach and say, well, now it's a Game of Thrones or bust. what I'm thinking is, like, what are the risk-reward scenarios for HBO that make them think? You know what? This is cool.

Like, four years ago with Room 104, anthology show, he's going to break out new talent. He's going to make sure that, like, we have a ton of underrepresented voices in front of and behind the camera taking care of. And you know what? There's a chance that even though this looks like he's hitting a single, there could be an error in the outfield, and it turns into an inside the park home run. So you don't always have to swing for the fences to be valuable. But I think it's getting harder. And I realize my own privilege of having been in this industry for 15 years,

having been a nice person that people generally like to work with because I'm a minimal and pragmatic and I don't yell at HBO all day long. Where are my billboards? That has allowed me to stay alive. I think, you know, I would be not speaking this. comfortably about what my place is, if it were 15 years ago and I was just getting out of Sundance. Without getting too detailed, I was curious whether or not there are any lines that you sort of draw for yourself creatively when it comes to something like room one or four or the projects that

you're talking about where you're like, I have a vision for what I want this to be or the people I'm working with has a vision for what I want this to be. And if somebody is like, Mark, if you just like push it like a little bit closer to like a Twilight Zone kind of thing or maybe here's like six titles that we own, would you want to have this? exist within this universe or any of the kind of things that Andy and I are like always kind of sort of marveling at which is the sort of we're going to go through we're going to like see what we have in the in the vault here in terms of intellectual property maybe you can do something a new take on this like yeah you seem to be pretty stidently independent creatively and I wonder

whether or not that that winds up coming into your thinking at all it's a great question because I do get tempted when like you know the DC universe says hey we give all these extra characters And we have an existing fan base for this. And if you take your level of, you know, artistic precision and what you do and make something kind of cheaply with one of these things, that's an existing brand, you could get 10 times more viewers than you normally get for your little movies on Netflix. And they're not wrong about that, you know. And I'm not stridently against it for any moral or creative reasons. I've got to be honest with you, like, the main reason we don't do those kinds of collaborations is because there is a level of protection of the brand. and what it needs to be that supersedes my ability to be loosely creative as well it should.

So I don't blame them for that. I just know that myself, I'm going to be a much happier person if I can be freewheeling and do what I need to do. And if that means at the end of the day that I'm only going to be able to make things at 0.2x of the budget that I would get if I had gone D.C. Or I'm only going to get 0.1x of the viewership. I would just so much rather at the end of the day, like, have made. a ton of things the way I wanted to make them and have a library or cool titles by the time I'm done.

And, you know, I weirdly didn't engineer this from the front of my career because I didn't understand business then. But by making things on my own and having the ownership of all these things like $10,000 movies, $20,000 movies, we've built up this massive library of titles that is greater than the sum of its parts. And so while I'm not like, you know, the richest person in the world at some point in the next 30 years, I'm going to be able to turn around and say, here's 100 indie films and 12 TV shows and eight podcasts, and I own them all.

And that will be where my value comes in. So that's how we're my- Then you throw your head back and laugh. Yes. Then we realized it was all a Joker, Joker origin story. That was Fat Albert. It was Fat Albert.

But I also thought the world is different in 100. How many years are you doing this? I don't know how I'm doing this. I think I'm doing this when I'm like 70. That's when I'm doing it. Oh, okay. So I appreciate what you were saying. And I was going to ask about this as well about Room 104, you know, being a way to kind of backdoor in a lot of underrepresented voices behind the camera, certainly as well.

That's been part of a conversation that we've been having, that I've been having, that I'm sure you're having with your own company and people that you work with as well as larger studio. So I don't want to make this question specifically about HBO, but rather an industry-wide question, which is to say that in my extremely limited experience, having. something that is representational and extremely diverse, it was viewed by companies as added, like how nice, that's a bonus, that's good, we like that. But there is the step from saying we like that to they're actually being structural acknowledgement of that, and then what we can do to continue that and the value of that,

those seem to be two different conversations. It's very easy in a Twitter universe to be like, look what we did. We got rid of Golden Girls. Yeah. And then, but then what are we actually doing now? So somewhere in that long statement, I think, is a question, which is just, I guess, your perspective on making the industry better and making these larger companies and corporations

and studios, et cetera, et cetera, realize the value long term to them because they're so keenly focused on the extreme short term. That's such a good question. And it's way over my pay grade and experience to have definitive ideas of what the solutions are, but I can kind of go. Wait until you sell that 100 movie package. Exactly. Boom! Then with my $1,700. But I mean, we're definitely talking about it a lot in the little, you know, kingdom of Duplas Brothers and what is going to be our role and how are we going to do this. And we're noticing a couple of things before I get into the weeds with what we're doing. I'm noticing that obviously everyone is awake now and realizing that there is systemic change that needs to happen. Some people seem. to understand that this is going to be a thing that is not only better for the ecosystem at

large, it will improve the quality and the diversity of the actual stories they tell. And some people are saying, if we don't check these boxes off and we don't have this many of that, we're going to look bad and get canceled on Twitter. So we got to do it. Now, those are different motivations. At the end of the day, I try not to come down too hard on those people with the latter motivation because the end result is still a good thing. It is still a hiring of diverse voices and employment of those things.

So what are you going to do? That's a better move and a better place than we were yesterday. As to what we're doing, it's been such an interesting, like, self-introspective journey for me and Jay to talk about what has Duplas Brothers place been and what could it be to do better. Because I think we have felt very good historically about how we foster up-and-coming voices, right? And if you go back and look at interviews with us in like early 2000s or like early 2010s when we were really like in a place to like, you know, give someone $100,000 to make a movie, mentor them, you know, it was all about us saying young and up and coming filmmakers. And we did a

great job of that. Here's the blind spot. We live in an ecosystem where the people who are poised to be plucked for that step have been supported with an inherent privilege of three steps below that. And that means that 98% of those people in the film industry are white males. And so when we were grabbing those people to mentor, they were people who had been through the Sundance Labs, gotten out of USC film school. They were in a place of inherent visibility because of that privilege that left them there. And we didn't realize that we needed to wade deeper and look further out and actively find those other voices. So, like, frankly, our resume is full of people who needed help who were up-and-coming filmmakers who were predominantly white males. And it was a total blind spot that we just missed.

And then I would love to say that I identified it and helped to, like, fix that on my own. But I think it was the movement that helped educate me, that this was an issue. And then something really interesting happened with the beginning of Room 104. It was, it was when Jay and I had just gotten canceled with togetherness, and we were starting to consciously uncouple as a sort of like codependent creative duo. And honestly, we were starting to get tired of ourselves a little bit of like, we have been making stories about male intimacy and working out our brother issues for the last 10 years over and over again. And those are great. Jeff lives at home and togetherness. It's all great, but it's time to make a shift, and it was also coming at a time where we needed some breathing space

from each other. So Room 104 was happening at the same time. And I'm like, well, if I'm not going to deeply collaborate with Jay, who's it going to be? So I started telling stories side by side with other people who I felt were either A, more authorized to tell that story because they were just better at that genre, because I was telling all kinds of genres, or B, an awareness that it might be a little bit of cultural appropriation for me to truly author this kind of story. So let me find a filmmaker who can do that. And something amazing happened, which was, Room 104 is not my Autour vision.

I'm like the uncle there who is a supporter and uses whatever platform or power or like filmmaking skills I have so that somebody can do their thing. And that became so fulfilling to me because I didn't feel the pressure to have to tell unique stories. And I was honestly starting to get that feeling of like, Am I going to be one of these artists who made interesting stuff in his 20s and 30s? And then just makes repetitive garbage for the rest of my career. So it was a selfish thing for me to be able to do that.

And I realized it made my show so much better. So Room 104, I think, is oddly the microcosm of where we want to head as a company, using our skills, whatever we got, but not just for one episode of television to create whole series with these people, to create films with these people. you know, we're starting to get into narrative audio podcasts and things like that. So that's my long-winded answer of saying, you know, we are going to do what we luckily fell into with Room 104 as now a design for things moving forward as a company. Yeah, you know, it's funny. It's interesting you mentioned a little while ago. You were talking about Fleabag and Andy and I have been talking about this show I may destroy you over the last couple of weeks, both of which are examples of shows that I think not only feel different because of who was in front of the camera,

but in the stories that they're telling and how they're telling their stories. And I think it's been fascinating to think about like merely making what the same old stuff we always make with, you know, a more diverse cast both in front of behind the camera. Because I think that's only half of it. I think part of it is that there's a real desire out there for different kinds of stories and maybe told in entirely different ways

without some of the same expectations. And, you know, I think that there's a certain predictability to a lot of TV and a lot of movies where you're just like, oh, yeah, I know exactly what's going to happen in episode six or episode nine, or it's the penultimate episode that this has to happen. I was curious whether or not with 104, the anthology part about it got, you were able to shake that off a lot easier, where you just do not worrying about, like, here's the part of the season where this needs to happen. A hundred percent.

The freedom of the anthology form allowed for so many of those. things, not only from what you're talking about, a creative perspective of just like, well, it's just 22 minutes. I'll swing wildly. If we fuck up really bad, it was just one episode and I don't have to pick up the pieces in the next episode. It opens and it closes. So that was great. It also allowed me to, if I'm speaking candidly, more freely take chances on unproven talent because, again, their window started and closed within 25 minutes. So I didn't realize that at the time, but that's what I was doing, is thinking like, well, this is great I can take the swing, as opposed to I'm a little more scared to take the swing on a showrunner that I might have to work with for six years if they are

unproven. So that's one of the things we're talking about at the company right now is like, Room 104 was also this sort of weird mentoring factory and we need something like that so that we can not just give someone a shot and throw them into the lion's den of running a show, but to give them the skills that they need to come up through it. I mean, Carr and Sony, And Natalie Morales are two wonderful examples of two people who got director shots with us in Romano 4. They started as actors there. They watched the show develop. They were basically shadowing while the show was happening.

They lent their star power to the show, which was a gift to us for them to work for scale in that show. And then we gifted them in return the ability to get their first directing credit on a major streamer. And then they go off and then they have huge careers. That is like the ideal flow. So I'm going to need another container or something like Room 104, and I don't know what that looks like yet. Yeah, because that what you spoke to, and this is something that I think people inside the industry are aware of, but people outside of it might not pay as much attention to. But that idea of mentorship and second chances is so, so crucial because it's increasingly, if you pay attention to deals being made and opportunities being given, it's not about the first chance. It's about who gets a second chance.

Oh, my God. You are hitting something so important right now. and I feel like nobody talks about it. And it's like, honestly, it's like a little bit of shame that I have about the amount of privilege that I had to become the artist that I have become. And I look at some of these speeches that I gave in like 2007, just like wildly spouting off about, all you got to do is just pick up the camera and do it yourself with like kind of zero awareness, honestly, of like parents who loved me and told me they loved me every day and they believed in me. and I could do anything. Put me through college, no college debt, gave me, like, I don't know how much they gave us. Well, they didn't give us the money to make our first movie, but they gave us money to buy an edit machine so we could start a business to make money. That first movie was a failure. We never showed it to anybody. Then they gave me and Jay each $5,000 loan to make the puppy chair,

the second one, as you're talking about. And that is why I am who I am. everything that I'm about right now and the mentorship part of the process is trying to approximate that experience for people as much as possible who didn't have that thing. And we are doing a lot of things like that. Actually, my wife, Katie and I just filed for a nonprofit where we're putting like a million dollars into a fund to take shots at people, not only on film and TV, but like painters and novelists or people who even have like a new sunscreen line that they want a shard out where we give them like a ton of belief, love and like five to ten thousand dollars of a zero interest, zero equity loan that's like, hey, if you hit it, pay it back into the

fund someday, but otherwise like go. It means, it's me uncle. That's just what I'm doing. You want to be on shark tank, man. I want to be on shark tank. I'm more interested in if your parents are still available to tell me they love me. Because I feel like that. Okay. But you know, and you know what? We're going to call them right after this. They're hanging out. I mean, not to be corny, but it's like the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It was like, that is why everybody's like, Mark, how can you walk into a room so confident with these executives? To pitch a show like Room 104 and make them believe that it's going to work for them. And it literally comes down to that thing of, I love you, you're amazing.

Every day I heard it. You also have this really cool grant going on. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about this because Andy and I were such huge fans of Lynn Shelton. I know she said so much to you. And I just saw recently that you were working on this, it's Seattle's Northwest Film Forum and you guys are doing of a certain age grant, which is for directors, women are non-binary filmmakers over 39, right?

Yeah. So the idea behind that grant is really just to continue Lynn's legacy, who is a filmmaker who didn't break out until she was in her 40s. And, you know, to point out another blind spot of mine that I'm just figuring out is whenever I've talked about up-and-coming filmmakers in the past, I've always used the word young. And there's a lot of ageism in our industry of like, no one wants to work with older people because they want the young scrappy energy. They don't feel like they're going to want to stay up

for 14 hours and do it. And it really sucks. And I've been giving these seminars with a company called Seed and Spark where we travel around the country and tell people how they can make their movie locally wherever they are with available materials. And most of these people, are like retirees discovering this new phase of their life. And I started thinking about it like, Jesus, who do you want telling stories? Like the 22 year old who doesn't have the life experience or like this 64 year old woman who like has raised two kids has a grandchild, been through three divorces. Like the level of life experience, it's just valuable.

So anyway, that's our attempt to try to support that in it. And it's a $25,000 a year grant. unrestricted for a woman or non-binary person over the age of 39 to make their first movie ideally. And it's weird that you bring this up because, like, I think I'm discovering something in this whole conversation that's coalescing for me, which is my belief in just giving people enough to take a shot. And rather than give one person a million dollars to make their movie, I really like giving people $5,000 and $10,000 and a little bit of love and mentorship to go. And I think that ideally will create more shows like, I May Destroy You and Fleabag. To your point, you know, Chris, of like, where's the weird new energy going to come from? If they're all mentored through the writer's rooms and all the same stuff, it's going to kind of start to feel the same.

That external strange energy of coming from non-industry spaces is where those, I think, hopefully where the sparks of originality can come from. I think since we've talked so much about being outside the industry, want to give Chris space to talk about what he most wants to talk about with you, which is the morning show. Let's do it, baby. He wants to go deep into the industry. I got to say one of my, for as much as you've just, we've gone through all of the things that you've accomplished as a director and as a producer, but one of my favorite things is

Mark Duplas, like, like fourth guy in the movie. I love, by the way, I'm fifth on the call. She is my favorite, it's my favorite place to be. It's so funny you have identified that because I have to. It's where I'm most comfortable. What are you getting? Well, I just, I just, I remember as far back as zero dark 30. Yeah.

Mark Duplas in the scene is going to get Bin Laden, man. This is wild. But I was always, I think that there was like, in the beginning, I always thought like, oh, I wonder if he's doing it. Like, this is like the, this is the day job to go then do. Because that's like when, if you come up through Indy Rock, it's like you work at a florist or you work at a record store. And for you, you appear in Zero Dark 30.

And then you go off and do your thing. you go on tour or you make your movie. But I think over the years it's like there's almost two or three versions of you. There's the indie filmmaker version. There's the person who's appearing in things or working on things like Room 104. But then there's like, you'll just go

and you do this like really the yeoman shift on these shows and kind of like are in the background of these things. But I've always really enjoyed the performances. Thank you for that. That's really sweet. And it strokes my ego in all the right ways that I need.

So thank you. I think what I love about something like the morning show or shown up a bombshell for 12 minutes or zero dark 30 for 10, you know, obviously there's zero pressure because it's not resting on me from a creative standpoint and also from a financial standpoint. So if the movies or the TV shows don't work as well, it's not like my starring vehicle, so I get in trouble. I love that. And then, you know, I've always loved the way that people talk about, um, about, John Cazale, who's like one of the great character actors. And anybody who talks about him, they're always just like, God, when you're in a scene with John, he just makes me better.

I don't know what it is, but I'm better in those scenes. And I love that so much. And I always wanted people to feel that way with me. And so I kind of, when I'm in scenes with Reese and Jen or Steve Correll or even Billy Crudip, who are, I think, the more central characters in those shows. I feel like my job is to put in a good performance, but to make them great in whatever way I can. And if that means, like, when it comes time for my coverage

to, like, surprise them with something that they hadn't heard before in the scene, so we get a genuine laugh out of it, or improvise something and shake it up because it's getting stale. And I can kind of almost become, like, an ally of the filmmakers as, like, a tool to shake things up in the scenes here and there. It's just one of my favorite things to do. And I'm sure you guys have talked about this kind of stuff. But like, you know, you guys are in such a unique spot here with what you do.

You are so uniquely qualified to do this well. Nobody runs this kind of content thing like you do. And I'm always looking for the places where like this is what I'm uniquely qualified to do well. And if somebody can do it as good or better than me, I should not be doing it. Which is kind of why I stopped directing movies for a while because like I think I'm a good director, but I don't think I'm like, when I watch these directors in Room 104, the way they prepare, the way they visually understand cinema, I don't, I'm okay, but I'm not that, you know?

But like, I really do believe, and I really appreciate you saying that, Chris. Like, you put me in the fourth or fifth spot in a big show where you need an actor who can truly be a supporting actor and, like, elevate everybody. Like, nobody's better than me at knowing how to, like, hit the marks. If you don't get to the mark in time, improvise the line that's going to shake it up, and like make people just kind of help to elevate them. So that's one thing I'm trying to do more of.

When I was thinking about asking you about this similar sort of thing, moving between these high gloss, high test productions and the work that you're doing more to scale, I was originally thinking about framing it kind of as a Prometheus myth. Like, is there some fire that you're bringing from, or at least a scented candle from Reese's dressing room that you bring back to tell people who are on the up and up about what's waiting for them on the other side? But I think the more fair question, probably the more interesting question, is what are you ferrying back and forth?

Yeah. What is similar, you know, between a however many days you have to shoot that Premier Room 104 versus however many days you get per episode of the morning show. In what ways are the actors the same ultimately? Oh, it's such a good question. I mean, I'm always like learning different things. Like I've, for instance, I've been operating under a little bit of a myth for myself that, you know, when you're making content, you can either focus on the,

story and the acting, or you can focus on the visuals. And when you do one or the other, you inherently are on a seesaw of a finite amount of value. And it just lessens and increases on either side. But then when I was on the morning show and I saw Mimi Leader directing and she was just like doing all these like crazy one-er dolly shots with the expectation that we would bring an organic performance that was not stilted in the way that I often feel happens when you have an intense cinematic shot. I was like, oh, we can do both. Like, I can fumble around and stumble on my lines and have the naturalism and the

subtlety and that. So I see that and I ferry that right back into my productions. And I'm like, guys, I was wrong. We can do dollies and feelings. It's going to be okay. Likewise, I remember being on the league and I was like, it was just an all improvised show. And I was improvising a lot of my things.

And then Jeff Schaefer, our director was like, every now and then we'd be like, like coming up to opening a scene by knocking on someone's door saying hello and they bring us in. You'd be like, don't improvise this. This is an exposition scene and let's just get it done and move on. And I was like, oh, right. Let's not, and then I'm going to ferry it back to my own thing. I've seen blooper reels for the league seasons where you guys are like begging for forgiveness from the crew because you can't get through like a, hey, pass me the chips.

And that's it. And you guys are just crying and making jokes. Yeah, and Manzukas is destroying people and then they're like, I'm so sorry you guys are like on time and a half at this point. Manzucas, I will never forget that. There was like a moment with the I can't remember exactly how it went down,

but talking about how someone's died and then it came up that Whitney Houston had passed away and it was right after Michael Jackson had passed and he threw in. Does Michael Jackson no? And like, I mean, six hours. before we were able to get that down. Like the whole day, we couldn't get it.

So, yeah. But as the original question, the things that I find myself more farrying from the big things and the different things into my own than maybe bringing things from my own productions into things where I'm acting, because I kind of don't feel like it's my place, you know, and part of the reason I love acting is that I don't have the responsibility of it. And I love just kind of being free to do my thing. And I do get concerned about being like, you know, white male coming into a female-led environment of the morning show

and being like, shouldn't you do it a little more like this, you guys? They're amazing and they're doing it so well. And I'd rather just, you know, shut up and listen. You've given us so much for your time. Thank you, Mark. But I do have to ask one last thing before we let you go, which is basically like we enjoy talking to you for this reason. We enjoy watching the work that you and your brother do

for the same reason, which is that you approach art and life, at least publicly, from a position of what appears to be optimism. I think that there's a lot of positivity and hope just built into the creativity that you and your brother bring to the projects that I find inspiring. I think a lot of people do too. I guess the question is, how are you managing this moment and what hope do you feel? Because there is a school of thought that like when things are at their lowest is that there is opportunity there. And feel free to take this question in whatever direction you like, because I guess I kind of meant in terms of making stuff again when we'll be able to do that. But if you want to fix the whole world too, we'd be open to that.

We could talk about that. Yeah. I mean, I'm really not looking at this moment from a production standpoint as much as you, you know, very kindly illuminated Room 104 as a COVID-friendly production. To me, it's still a little spiritually, emotionally, and financially risky to be going on set and making things right now. I'm looking at what I'm calling contactless production. We have already made one movie, I haven't announced it yet,

in quarantine, and we made it in a way that literally no one saw anyone or had to touch anyone in order to make this movie. Did you pay your children's scale? Or do they tap hardly? Exactly.

They do not make any money. And then... They are, though, part of the DC universe, unbeknownst to know. Exactly. Yes, yes. And so the Duplas Child universe. Oh, nailed it. So, and then we're also focusing a lot on narrative audio podcasting right now, which is a really cool, an open world. It's a form that everyone's trying. Respectfully, none of the shows are very good. No one knows how to do it just yet. And that's really exciting to me to be at the forefront of something like that. And that's a democratized tool.

So that keeps me optimistic as well. It's just like, yeah, anyone with an iPhone and garage band could make the next great audio podcast. I believe that. It requires $0. So that's cool. And, you know, I guess the way I feel about in terms of the larger moment and staying optimistic about where we're headed and the kinds of stories we should be telling, it comes back to what we touched on lightly earlier, which is everybody is being more inclusive. right now and they're hiring and in the storytelling and not everybody has the right motivations for it.

Some people are just trying to check boxes so that they look good. But I still think that that is moving us in the right direction. And I don't know, man. Maybe I'm Pollyanna and I'm naive, but like I think that there is a huge wave coming our way, a huge wave that is going to be exhausted. Due to the polar ice caps melting. It's an actual... I'm a little concerned.

Yeah, no, this is an emotional wave towards tolerance and an emotional wave towards wanting to feel better. Regardless of how much people are spewing hate and whatnot, when you talk to people on... Almost every person you talk to, they will say, and they will express regret, that everybody hates each other right now. And I just...

I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's the way I'm raised or what it is, but like, you know, that whole like person digging through a pile of shit and they say, I know there's a pony in here somewhere. Like, that's kind of who I am. We so appreciate you bringing a dollop of optimism to the show, Mark. And you're welcome anytime. Ramona Force starts on Friday.

It's final season and we can't recommend it highly enough. Mark, thanks so much for joining us, man. It's great to see you. Always great to talk to you guys. Cheers. Take care, man. Take care.