Baghead, which was acquired by Sony Classics towards the end of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, is getting a lot of praise for taking the elements of mumblecore–stripped down cinematography, unpolished performances, an extreme interest in the minutia of behavior at the expense of action–and ambitiously pairing them with the tropes of mainstream shlock horror. But Baghead is never convincing as a horror film, and I don’t think it needs to be, and I’m not sure it even wants to be. What it really is, is a comedy (of horrors?) about ego, which the Duplasses and their actors convince is scarier than any kind of contrived fright.
Four friends, all wannabe actors and all frustrated to different degrees by the film festival success of a pretentious cheeseball aquaintance, head to a house in the woods to hammer out a script for the project that will give them their big breaks. The gang includes Matt, a charismatic idea man; Chad, Matt’s schlubby”funny guy” friend; Catherine, Matt’s orange-tan cliche of a sometime girlfriend; and Michelle, the adorable younger woman who brings out the worst in the rest of the three.
The only one of the four who seems really committed to the careerist angle of the endeavor is Matt, with the other three seemingly going along solely as the means to advance their respective romantic agendas. Chad loves Michelle, who loves (or, at least, lusts for) Matt, who tells Chad everything is over between he and Catherine but is still clearly susceptible to her late-night advances. As each “friend”s real, purely selfish intentions become apparent, trust breaks down and each member of the quarter becomes (not unreasonably) paranoid that another is out to get them.
Mark and Jay Duplass made their Sundance debut in 2005 with their critically acclaimed feature The Puffy Chair. This year they return with Baghead, a tale about desperate young filmmakers trying to make a movie. In this interview Jay talks about drawing inspiration from months spent on the festival circuit, and the art of making movies without waiting for the Hollywood machine to catch up.
Also on SpoutBlog:
Sundance 2008: Greta Gerwig -An interview with Baghead star Greta Gerwig.
Greta Gerwig is a well-connected actor in a growing network DIY independent filmmakers (here’s a flowchart). She starred as Hannah in Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs alongside Mark Duplass. Now Mark and his brother Jay are following up their 2005 Sundance hit The Puffy Chair with Baghead, starring Gerwig. In this interview we talk about living in the woods in Texas, improvised dialog, and the dream of a low-budget indie Victorian period piece.
Also on SpoutBlog:
Sundance Video: Promotion -Joe and Ronnie follow Greta into a Sundance “gifting” session where accepting a free blow drier has unexpected consequences.
FilmCouch #35 -Karina puts the smack-down on Gawker’s “review” of Hannah Takes the Stairs at the New Talkies: Generation DIY festival last summer at IFC Center.
Add to My Profile | More VideosIncidentally, I just overheard Hollywood Extra refer to the following people as “Sundance virgins:”
Bruce Willis
Sarah Jessica Parker
Matthew Broderick
Tom Hanks
Jodie Foster
Jessica Alba
Robert De Niro
Bono
Joe and Ronnie are our own Sundance virgins who felt a little defiled after falling into this “gifting” session.
Previous Sundance video coverage from Joe and Ronnie:
The Sucker and the Crank
Opening Night
Who Killed Davey Moore?
Melee on Main Street
George Romero
Blackout
Promotion
You can watch all of Joe and Ronnie’s Sundance coverage, as well as the trailer and promos for Butterknife, at our MySpace page.
Add to My Profile | More Videos
In Joe and Ronnie’s latest video dispatch, Joe follows sometime collaborators Greta Gerwig and Mark Duplass around as they do press for their Sundance Spectrum entry, Baghead. Ronnie recuses himself.
Previous Sundance video coverage from Joe and Ronnie:
The Sucker and the Crank
Opening Night
Who Killed Davey Moore?
Melee on Main Street
George Romero
Blackout
You can watch all of Joe and Ronnie’s Sundance coverage, as well as the trailer and promos for Butterknife, at our MySpace page.
If you read a lot of film blogs, you might have noticed a virus going around called Dentler Takes the Stairs. It’s all the brainchild of Matt Dentler, who is like the P.T. Barnum of the SXSW Film Festival, and who, by being the first person to program movies like Kissing on the Mouth and Dance Party, USA, has played a huge role in legitimizing this wave of no-budget American indie filmmaking over the past few years. Dentler conducted interviews with the major players in Hannah Takes the Stairs (the Joe Swanberg drama starring Greta Gerwig and filmmakers Mark Duplass, Andrew Bujalski, Kent Osbourne, Ry Russo-Young and Todd Rohal), and asked a number of us film bloggers to each broadcast one of these interviews on our blogs.
Matt asked me to carry the interview with Mark Duplass, and of course, I complied. I reviewed The Duplass Brothers’ The Puffy Chair, which Mark starred in and co-wrote, in 2005 after seeing the film both at SXSW and the Chicago International Film Festival. At the time I said this:
It’s amazing how [The Puffy Chair] nails the mealy-mouthed way people my age have of saying what we mean by dressing the same words, over and over again, in different kinds of inflection. Between Rhett and Josh, the word “dude” has a thousand meanings; Emily isn’t satisfied being referred to by any of them. Fleshing out that tension, between what is being said and what it obviously means, is where The Puffy Chair really succeeds.
After the jump, I turn it over to Matt and Mark, who talk about Hannah’s Atari-fueled set, Andrew Bujalski’s boxers, and what Duplass did to get the film’s mythic stairs cut out of the picture.
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