Indie film fans will fondly remember 2011’s “Jeff, Who Lives at Home,” about a 30-year-old slacker played by Jason Segel who lives in his mother’s basement. With millions of people feeling the pinch of a shrunken economy and cutbacks around every corner, the movie resonated on many levels with a core yet small audience.
Now its creators, Mark and Jay Duplass have brought that same sort of schlumpy/normcore sensibility to their first television comedy, “Togetherness,” with eight half-hour episodes set to run on HBO.
Whether they are single or married with children, the Eastside Los Angeles-set “Togetherness” is about what happens to everyday people in their late 30s and early 40s who actually don’t have it together, like the couple at the center of the domestic comedy.
The Jeff-like character is played by Steve Zissis, a boyhood friend of the Duplass brothers with elements based upon his life as a struggling actor in LA. It’s a commonplace story that will likely have a different real-life ending, in this case making the actor a well-known commodity.
As “Togetherness” opens, Zissis’ doughy—and we mean that literally–character is being evicted from his apartment and has decided to go back to his hometown of Detroit before his best friend, played by Mark Duplass, comes to the rescue with an offer to bunk at his family’s home.
At the same time, his wife’s sister, who has the unlikely occupation of leasing kids’ bouncy houses, goes through a painful breakup and needs a place to stay.
With these four characters–Melanie Lynskey playing the wife and Amanda Peet her sister–thrown together under one not very large roof with a couple of kids underfoot, “Togetherness” is about getting to the truths of contemporary relationships without the commercial slickness seen in other family comedies.
The Duplass brothers spoke recently about their process of bringing “Togetherness” together. Here is an edited version of the conversation:
Q: Together you have written, directed and produced more than 20 movies. How is working on a series different from working on a film?
Mark Duplass: The main difference is being able to track the very intricate, subtle interactions between the characters. When you’re dealing with the 90-minute format of a movie, you’ve set the whole thing up, then you’ve got a good chunk in the middle where you can dig into things, and then you’ve got to wrap it up. With TV, you put the ball in the air and you have tons of time to mine all of those awkward, funny, sad interpersonal relationship dynamics that really get us excited about storytelling.
Q: Why did you bring “Togetherness” to HBO?
MD: The thing that makes HBO really exciting is that they bet on their filmmakers. They help you when you need it, but they don’t necessarily try to develop you too much or push you too much in one direction. It was really exciting to be able to make a show and be fully supported, but also to do exactly we wanted to do.
Q: With Mark in one of the lead roles, it begs the question: Does any of the show come from personal experience? What other influences went into creating the show?
Jay Duplass: Mark and I spent a ton of time in our 20s trying to be very referential, trying to be the Coen brothers and failing miserably at that. Then we lucked into this experience where we started making fun of ourselves on screen. The first movie we ever made that was really any good was a seven-minute short film about a guy trying to perfect the personal greeting of his answering machine and failing to do so, and having a nervous breakdown, which actually happened to one of us in real life.
This show is an extension of our caveman style of filmmaking. Mark and I did not grow up in Hollywood. We didn’t know anyone in the industry, and we didn’t have any awareness of people who made movies until we went to college in Austin and saw what Richard Linklater was doing. We’ve always made things by hand and represented our own world, and I think “Togetherness” is probably the truest and most accurate thing that we’ve ever done.
The show is about being in your late 30s, living on the East Side of LA, having kids and trying to be a family person, and trying to also make your own dreams come true. That’s really just the stuff of our lives and the conflict of our lives. In terms of drawing inspiration, we just talk about our own lives and the lives of our best friends and our family, and all the material comes from there.
Q: How do you work together?
MD: Every project is a little different in terms of how we approach it, but this is the most intensely collaborative project we’ve done, because it’s bigger in scope. We’re functioning in a lot of roles and we’re preparing a bit more on this show than we normally do. There are just natural lines that get divided, where Jay and I talk about who is going to take the lead at this one given moment. We’ve never had an issue with crazy ego stuff about letting one person take the lead, which is important because you can’t have two people sitting in the driver’s seat at all times trying to push the pedal and fight with each other. It’s a great comfort to know that if I’m feeling grumpy and uninspired, Jay will push a little bit harder and get things done.
JD: One thing that’s nice is when stuff goes down, Mark and I can discuss it between the two of us, and be super honest.
Q: How did you find your collaborative voice for “Togetherness”?
MD: Jay and I discovered our voice through the conversations we’ve had our whole lives, where we’re up an hour or two late and a little bit tired, and either crying or laughing about something that’s going on in our lives. If we feel like we have one major strength, it is to look at the pain and the struggles of intimacy and friendships and your dreams, and take one step back and realize how stupid and funny you look in the middle of all of it.
Q: What is it about minor victories in life that inspire people to keep going?
JD: We’ve realized that the big victories never tend to be exactly what you think they will be, whereas sometimes the minor victories are the ones that really count. For example, everyone tells you how wonderful it is to have children, but in our experience 90% is struggle and 10% is totally, absolutely beautiful and validates the whole experience. Take this morning: Before I took my two-year-old son to school, we were rushing and rushing, and he said, “I want stay with you, Dad.” That made up for the whole last month when he’s had a sinus infection and has been whining nonstop. That kind of little victory, that’s what life is like and that’s what we’re trying to represent.
Q: In the show, Brett’s best friend and Michelle’s sister both move in with the married couple. What is the dynamic of this foursome?
MD: Alex and Brett are soul mates in a way, but the arrival of Tina makes things much more complex. What’s really interesting to us is how group dynamics change, depending on who’s in the group and how many are in the group.
Q: What does music bring to the show?
JD: We spent a lot of time on the music, more than on any other project, because we have four equally strong lead characters. Brett is into Rush, really intense prog-rock. Michelle is into ‘80s New Wave. Tina’s probably into hair bands, so in the pilot, you hear Sebastian Bach. We imagine that Alex grew up in Detroit, so he listens to old-school rap.
Q: What does ““Togetherness”” mean to you?
JD: “Togetherness” is a double-edged sword. At first you think it can be a saccharine feeling, where you want to be with your family and snuggle up together. The other side is that you feel trapped, and the only thing that you want to do is escape.
(“Togetherness” premieres Sunday, January 11 at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT on HBO.)
–Hillary Atkin
