Product Description
-------------------
While the Duplass Brothers were shooting their last
feature film The Puffy Chair, a crew member raised the question
"what's the iest thing you can think of?" Someone immediately
said "a guy with a bag on his head staring into your window."
Some agreed, but some thought it was downright ridiculous and, if
anything, funny (but definitely not y). Thus, BAGHEAD was
born, an attempt to take the absurdly low-concept idea of a "guy
with a bag on his head" and make a funny, truthful, endearing
film that, maybe, just maybe, was a little bit y, too.
.com
----
In their indie sensation The Puffy Chair, writer/directors Mark
and Jay Duplass used the retrieval of a piece of furniture to
explore the relationship between a close-knit trio. Their studio
follow-up represents something both fresh and familiar. Not to be
confused with the children's book of the same name, Baghead
retains their emphasis on character over plot mechanics, but this
time they infuse their humorous approach with horror overtones.
Matt (Ross Partridge), Chad (Steve Zissis), Catherine (Elise
Muller), and Michelle (Greta Gerwig, who appears with Mark
Duplass in Hannah Takes the Stairs) work as extras in Los
Angeles. Matt convinces them to accompany him to his family cabin
to write a script in which they all get to star. As they
collaborate, it becomes apparent that Chad has eyes for Michelle
and that Matt and Catherine have been an on-and-off thing for
years. The screenplay becomes an excuse to organize their
personal and professional lives, until Michelle spots a man with
a brown paper bag on his head skulking in the woods. Is he a
manifestation of the emotions roiling between the quartet, a
psychotic killer, or a friend playing a cruel trick? Baghead
turns into a frisky take on The Blair Witch Project, except the
Duplass Brothers have more than thrills in mind, since it takes a
spooky dude to remind these self-absorbed actors about the
importance of friendship. The concept may be slight and the
execution rudimentary, but the makers of Baghead have devised an
unexpectedly poignant romp. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
.com
What does one make of a movie whose plot revolves around
second-rate actors who e each other by wearing bags on their
heads? This conundrum and more are exploited to strong effect by
young directing team Mark and Jay Duplass, in their low-budget,
grade Z cult comedy, Baghead. This follow up to their debut
effort, The Puffy Chair, stars two couples who head to their
parents’ cabin in an attempt to make their own horror film free
from the constraints of the film industry. Brothers, Matt (Ross
Partridge) and Chad (Steve Zissis), host bimbos Michelle (Greta
Gerwig) and Catherine (Elise Muller) on a weekend adventure that
is less than intellectually stimulating. As sexual tensions
increase, brown paper bags are busted out and the characters seek
revenge upon each other by pretending to be ed peeping toms.
This meta-narrative of a movie about the making of the movie is
further confused when the bunch suspects that there is an extra
baghead on the scene, a really psychotic one. A few actually
y moments add gusto to this film that mostly feels like a po’
man’s rendition of Blair Witch Project, with its hand-held camera
stylings. Highlights throughout involve Chad, the nerdier, uglier
brother who manages many funny lines and boosts the humor
bigtime. That Baghead is a fairly terrible film, with slow,
moronic dialogue and long scenes in which little or nothing
happens, may well be intentional. It’s impossible to judge.
Baghead is so ripe with irony that it bags the idea that it’s
cool to strive towards making a fine film, and the story gives up
on trying to be good before it even tries. The characters start
washed-up and stay washed-up, as does the movie. But this strange
resignation that makes Baghead awful is also what makes it
conceptually unique; the Duplass brothers did, after all,
complete the film and release it. One wonders why directors
bother making a movie that presumes itself worthy of wearing a
baghead? This is Baghead’s virtue—it left me feeling as if I had
a bag over my head, dumb for missing some bit of subversive
genius. --Trinie Dalton
Filmmakers Mark and Jay Duplass have written a celebrity blog for
us to promote their new film, Baghead.
Why the hell are we trying to make a horror film about a guy with
a paper bag on his head? This, even more than “to be or not to
be” was the question for myself and my brother Jay going into
shooting Baghead. We had just come off of our first micro-budget
feature The Puffy Chair ( http://www..com/dp/B000IMVE1Y ), a
sensitive, funny, quirky relationship movie that wowed Sundance,
sold big, played incredibly well in theaters, DVD, and TV, and
gained us favor in the indie world the world over. So, again, why
would we be so stupid as to make a horror movie based around a
guy with a bag on his head?
I’m still not quite sure. When I look back, what we should have
done is clear… we should have made another relationship movie to
cash in on Puffy’s success. But, we were compelled to make
Baghead, so we did it. And then something really interesting
happened. We discovered that we are hopelessly and helplessly
ourselves on set. For example, even if something terrifying was
happening in the horror plot, we couldn’t help training the
camera on all of the little personal dynamics happening among the
4 lead characters, just like we did on The Puffy Chair. No matter
how eerie or cool-looking our lighting got, we were infinitely
more obsessed with the chubby guy whose advances were being
rejected by the hottie girl.
About a week into filming, we realized we had something VERY
different on our hands. We had a horror movie shell… “guy with
bag on head comes to get 4 people in a cabin in the woods.” We
all know this set-up, right? Not too original. But, we were
making a highly sensitive relationship dramedy inside of this
horror film because, in the end, that’s what Jay and I know how
to do best and that’s what we love showing.
So, basically, we started panicking. How do you make a movie work
that’s y, funny, and (ultimately) endearing and touching as
we understand the nature of our desperate, sweet, tragically
flawed lead characters? The answer was… I hope we don’t @&*# it
up.
On week 2, we happened to catch a glimpse of the film Saw on TV,
and it became clearer to us how Baghead could be a really
interesting film for this time frame in cinema. Saw is great in
its own right, but it’s mean, it’s gory, and it’s not really
y. Somehow, the crazy sound design, gore, and effects, took
the film further and further away from being actually y.
Whereas, with Baghead, we somehow stumbled into something
genuinely frightening, with our $50,000 budget, no sound f/x, no
score, no make-up… just a ridiculous paper bag and the question
of “who the hell is under that bag?” So, we started to feel
smart. Confident. Inspired in new ways. We even waxed
philosophical about how brilliant we were to “come up with his
concept” (that we totally lucked into, btw)…
On week 3, we finished the shoot and all looked at each other a
little shell shocked. What did we just do? Is this movie even
gonna work? Cut to a year later. We’re opening the film at the
Sundance Film Festival and every buyer is calling us, making
insanely inflated offers, asking us how we came up with such a
brilliant, genre-smashing concept.
I guess it kinda comes down to the old adage our dad used to tell
us… “I’d rather be lucky than good.”
--Mark & Jay Duplass
