One of the most anticipated films at Sundance this past January was Cyrus, the first studio film by Mark and Jay Duplass. Known for their mumblecore hits such as The Puffy Chair and Baghead, many people have been curious how this creative duo would translate their style to this larger budget film, produced by Ridley and Tony Scott and starring John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill, and Catherine Keener. For those who had any trepidation, fear not, for even with studio influences have the Duplass’s maintained their wit and hand-held cameras.
Cyrus is a funny, warm story that explores nuances of love and relationships in a hilarious, yet realistic, way. The story centers on John (Reilly), who we meet on the day he discovers his ex-wife Jamie (Keener) is engaged to be remarried. Wanting to help her ex-husband/friend get out of his current tailspin, Jamie convinces John to accompany her and her fiancé to a party. After a lot of drinking and painfully bad conversations, John meets Molly (Tomei), who to his surprise is quite smitten with him.
As the relationship begins to develop, John notices a side of her that is secretive and mysterious, mainly through her sneaking out of his bed in the middle of the night. He quickly discovers that the reason for this is that Molly has a 21-year-old son, Cyrus (Hill), who lives with her and maintains an oddly close relationship. As the relationship between John and Molly develops, Cyrus begins to feel his world invaded, and starts to take matters into his own hands.
At Sundance, when asked where the story came from, Mark Duplass replied, “Jay and I love playing with genres. We made The Puffy Chair, which is kind of our little road movie, and Baghead was kind of like us doing a horror movie, and we wanted to make it kind of a different love triangle movie, where all the moving parts are not quite what they seem. And, more importantly, when we first started meeting with John, we met him before this movie, we realized he’s just a very intelligent, emotionally-involved person, and we loved the idea that a person like that could be brought to their knees by this weird, little world musician. It’s fun to watch that stuff.”
Mark and Jay Duplass at the Sundance premiere of Cyrus.
In discussing the selection of actors for the film, Jay Duplass described, “We wanted to only work with people who loved what we did and wanted to explore the kind of experimental way in which we work. John C. Reilly was one of the first people that had gotten in touch with us, he really appreciated The Puffy Chair, and we’ve been a fan of his forever.” In describing how the experience was for him, Reilly responded, “This was a real opportunity to this movie because, it sounds fun when Mark says, ‘You know, we just point the camera at the actors and we throw out the script, and we say ‘Yeah man, just go.’’ That’s a terrifying prospect.” Perhaps it was a terrifying prospect then, but what a smartly executed final result.
The release date for this Fox Searchlight film isn’t until July 9th. In the meantime, throw any film involving the Duplass brothers into your Netflix queue, and you won’t be disappointed.
What do you think of the Duplass brothers doing more studio films?