Mark Duplass Wants to Do for Indie TV What Creators Did for Indie Film in the ’90s
Mark Duplass has always been at the forefront of the independent film movement. Whether it’s acting, directing, writing, or producing, Duplass does his best to keep things simple and not be beholden to anyone. While speaking with IndieWire’s Vincent Perella on the Emmys red carpet, the “Morning Show” nominee shared how he’s trying to bring the ethos of indie film projects like “Creep” and “Creep 2” into television with his upcoming TV series “Penelope,” as well his upcoming collaboration with Shudder, “The Creep Tapes.” If anyone can make indie TV have a true renaissance, it’s Duplass.
“Making ‘Creep,’ the movies, was probably the most ridiculous creative experience of my life. I took my friend Patrick Brice and a cheap digital camera up to my cabin in the woods, shot something that we assume no one would ever see because it’s so fucking weird and apparently people wanted more,” Duplass said. “It’s part of a movement, like, we’re making a lot of independent TV right now just because the interesting middle of TV is just kind of going bye bye as everything changes. So, we did ‘The Creep Tapes.’ I made a series called ‘Penelope’ that I couldn’t get anybody to buy that’s, like, so important to me about a young girl who abandons her phone technology and goes off to live in the woods. I spent my fortune making it, thank God Netflix bought it, that’s coming out next week. So we’re focusing a lot on, like, trying to do what I guess people did for indie film in the ’90s now in the realm of TV, as that sort of vacates the interesting stuff.”
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Duplass has been known to work with Netflix and HBO, but this marks the first time he’s done something with Shudder. The horror streamer has been slowly been picking up steam since its founding back in 2015, but the fact that they’re not an outgrown behemoth corporation appealed to the creative.
“The reason why I liked having Shudder come on board — because, man, we’ve made it completely independently and the reason I did that is because I wanted to be able to do exactly what I wanted without any interference. And then we just go to the market and we’re like, who wants this? Who’s willing to promote it best? Who’s willing to make the most of it?” said Duplass. “About 10 years ago, I did an original deal with Netflix when they were just starting out and everyone’s like, you’re working with Netflix? Like, you know what are you doing? I was like, yeah, but they’re really passionate about it and they’re gonna try to make their name on us and Shudder is very much in that spot where they’re just starting to emerge. And I know if I give it to them, they’re gonna take care of us as opposed to go somewhere else and they might just be like, all right, this is a little show, we’ll just dump it here. So I really like going with the upstarts.”
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