By: debbie lynn elias
This has been one busy year for “mumblecore” filmmaking darlings, brothers Mark and Jay Duplass, especially Mark who, in addition to his writing/directing/producing with Jay, has been taking the silver screen by storm with acclaimed performances in countless high profile films, among them, People Like Us, Safety Not Guaranteed, Your Sister’s Sister and Darling Companion. But thankfully, there is still time for writers/directors Mark and Jay who, after their recent outing with the sweetly funny Jeff Who Lives At Home, give us just in time for the 2012 Summer Olympics their own brotherly Olympic spin with THE DO-DECA PENTATHLON.
An event held decades ago between fictional brothers, Jeremy and Mark, the Do-Deca was a competition between the two consisting of 25 events with the winner laying claim to the title of Best Brother. Always a bone of contention, Mark has maintained that he should have won because of interference when his parents pulled him out of the pool during the “hold your breath the longest” portion of the contest. But because of this interference, Jeremy has long proclaimed himself “the Best” with Mark grumbling and bitter, pushing him into years of psychological therapy and estrangement.
Starring Mark Kelly and frequent Duplass actor, Steve Zissis, as brothers Jeremy and Mark, respectively, the two have been at odds their entire lives. (Brothers! Go figure!) Estranged thanks to their lifelong rivalry, the two are reluctantly reunited at their mom’s house where Mark is celebrating a quiet birthday with his wife and son. Jeremy’s intrusive appearance, however, insures it will be anything but quiet, especially when talk turns to THE DO-DECA PENTATHLON.
In an effort to settle the debate once and for all, the two agree to compete again. Only problem is no one can know because Mark’s wife is a pain in the butt. Calling on Mark’s son to help hide the hijinks, who is more than up to the task as he finally gets to see that his dad isn’t the wimp he always thought him to be, the stakes are high and the race is on. And with all the boys up to no good, the comedy just explodes when men start behaving like little boys fueled by deep-seeded resentments.
The last of the Duplass micro-budget films (this was shot before Cyrus), with a predictable outcome, THE DO-DECA PENTATHLON is anything but predictable. Doing what the Duplass brothers do best, the writing is witty, the emotion and sentiment real, the characters all Average Joes who resonate with each of us. Particularly effective here is the acting by Kelly and Zissis who are not only themselves funny, but make the Do-Deca uproariously so.
Steve Zissis and Mark Kelly are perfect as Mark and Jeremy. The sibling rivalry is more than palpable yet, there is an almost familial connective tissue between the two that is beyond believable. Celebrating the physical differences between the two (Zissis being slightly paunched, slightly balding and Kelly fit as a fiddle and looking like a chick magnet), the story feeds on those differences which help spark the competitive spirit of the audience as well.
For Kelly, assuming the sibling rivalry was a natural as he needed look no further than to his own brother. “I drew a tremendous amount of our relationship into the role. Spent a lot of time, after we shot, calling back home and talking to him just to get some inspiration. Specifically the fight scene at the end, my oldest brother used to throw me in the bark dust to rile me up. So it was pleasurable to actually have that make it into the movie. And justify why a grown man would get up and punch his brother for being repeated thrown into the bark dust.”
Zissis, described by Jay Duplass as the ” 240 lb Greek man as our muse” has known the Duplass brothers since high school. ” He comes from the same soup that we came from. He understands us. We understand him. There’s implicit trust. But beyond that. . . Steve is an enormous talent who is, as talented as he is, he is totally willing to fail and to fall on his face and to try anything. . . He’s super inspiring to us.” In addition to knowing the ins and outs of Duplass methodology which makes him a mandatory casting, Zissis also has an older brother and knows full well the torment of brotherly love involved. “The opening scene of the movie, where I’m in the bathtub and I’m speaking about my fictional brother defecating in the bathtub as we’re children. That really did happen to me. My older brother defecated in the bathtub when we were children just to terrorize me and torture me.”
As Mark’s wife, Stephanie, Jennifer LaFleur is the woman you love to hate. Excelling at being dominating and shrewish when it comes to her husband, LaFleur tosses in resonating elements of in-law contempt as well as marital frustration and suspicion with a believable casual ease. She is the wife you deliciously love to hate.
A concern for all was the actual athletic competition…and the 25 individual events. According to Zissis, “Some of the competitions we really were doing our damnedest to win and they were real. Others, like arm wrestling for example, there was a lot of face and arm acting. So what you were seeing was make believe. As we had the DO-DECA competitions, Mark and I personally have our own egos about what sports we really are good at in real life, so we wanted to win those sports. Mark is excellent at baseball so he wanted to for sure win the baseball event. I’m decent at basketball.” (A statement belied by co-star Jennifer LaFleur who calls Zissis MORE than decent.) For Kelly, “The sporting events were a thrill. I particularly enjoyed the long jump. That got us started. Having no time to YouTube what long jumpers do, I was sort of flashing back to Carl Lewis in the Olympics trying to re-create his pre-jump form. I wanted to win that one and channel him.”
For Jennifer LaFleur, sitting on the sidelines was more challenging than one would think. “[T]he trickiest part of this movie was acting like I didn’t want the competition to be happening because I am a competitive maniac who gets hard-core pumping when there’s anything to compete about. So they would go and do the sports activities all day, and I would just be at home itching out of my skin to get out there.”
Written and directed by Mark and Jay Duplass, THE DO-DECA PENTATHLON is true Duplass, rooted in reality and celebrating inprovisational performance. As told by Mark, “[T]he story is based on two actual brothers who did this, that we grew up with. We followed them closely and observed the hilarity and intensity of the event. We always just loved the story and it wasn’t until Jay kinda started saying, ‘What if they revisited the games, like 20 years later. A little more out of shape.’ And we’re like, ‘Yeah! And destroooy a family weekend by reigniting the games.’ And that took it from being an oral story into the realm of being an actual film.” Without missing a beat, Jay picks up the saga, elaborating, “It’s highly based on the original events. We talked to the brothers a lot about what they did. They literally have a spread sheet of events that they had kept which they didn’t complete them all. The original competition was actually shrouded in controversy – the results were. It was a mix of that and honestly, just because it was an independent film, it was a mix of events we could get access to cheaply and quickly over literally, the course of two days we had to shoot all 25 events. So, we were sprinting as a film crew as much as the brothers were sprinting on film in those 4 hours to complete what they felt like they needed to do.”
With family at the core of THE DO-DECA PENTATHLON, as well as other Duplass films, Mark notes, “We rarely try to make any statements about family. We were trying to observe and we’re trying to explore as opposed to exact anything. Things that we’re endlessly fascinated with, with family dynamics, and since we are brothers that’s the thing we do like to explore. And in particular, it’s a relationship that in our experience is inescapable. If you have a bad boyfriend you can break up with him and never see him again. If you have a friend that you don’t like, you can ditch that person. But your brother or your sister or your mom tends to keep showing up at Thanksgiving and you have to keep dealing with them. We just love that. It’s the unbreak-up-able relationship.” And that’s exactly what makes THE DO-DECA PENTATHLON so ridiculously, and at time, eye-rollingly, fun – its humor that none of us can escape.
Shooting essentially in their own backyard, the arcade scenes with the laser tag event were shot in the actual arcade that the Duplass brothers grew up playing air hockey in. They also used the playground in which they grew up playing Little League.
No strangers to the Duplass methodology, Zissis has been in every Duplass film to date (something which I hope will garner him the official “Steve Zissis Contractual Clause” – long used by Garry Marshall with Hector Elizando, the casting of Steve Zissis would now be a mandate in every Duplass film contract), be it with a $3 budget or a $3 million budget, which begs the question, do monetary constraints or lack thereof, affect the production and styling of a Duplass film. Zissis provides the perfect answer. “The set on Jeff, even though there were superstars like Susan Sarandon, Jason Segel, and Ed Helms, was the same. The brothers, they keep the atmosphere the same, whether there’s stars or not. We all felt very safe, very comfortable, very relaxed. And it needs to be that way because those stars are improvising, too. The need to be able to be safe in that environment.” Expounding, Zissis gives a perfect DO-DECA example of the importance of creative freedom, collaboration and improvisation. “The final scene of the movie where we’re fist fighting on the lawn; what we shot first was me breaking down and crying. That’s what they wanted and that’s what we did. But it wasn’t working. So they wanted to see if something else would work. On another take there was a basketball hoop off to the side with a little ball and I just went instinctively, picked it up, dribbled it, and dunked it twice. Everyone was like, ‘That’s weird but good.’ And that made it into the movie. Similarly on Baghead, another one of their movies, there’s a final hospital scene and I¡¯m in a hospital bed. I’m supposed to get really mad at Ross Partridge, Jen’s [LaFleur] boyfriend, smash a DV camera and yell at him. Ross came into the room and was like so sad and beating himself up so much, that I decided in that moment to take it in a different direction, and laugh and sort of forgive him. And then they were like, ”Okay. We didn’t plan on that but that works better.’ So certainly those are two examples of out of improvisation and instinct things working and staying in the movies.”
Kelly, a newcomer to the world of Duplass, has nothing but praise for the experience. “It exceeded my expectations. It was the most incredible experience as an actor I could hope for. It became a joy. It wasn’t a fearful thing. . . Once we got into the 24 day shoot, it became second nature.”
A movie by Mark and Jay Duplass is itself like second nature to moviegoers and with THE DO-DECA PENTATHLON, they will have you sprinting to the nearest theater. Oh, and still wondering about the film’s title? The boys explain it for you. “It’s a misnomer. Two-Ten-Five. 2 times 10 is 20 plus 5 is 25. And the ridiculousness of that was important to us.”
Jeremy – Mark Kelly
Mark – Steve Zissis
Stephanie – Jennifer LaFleur
Written and Directed by Mark and Jay Duplass.
