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Well, let's get to someone who's definitely a triple threat. We're talking about Mark Duplas, who is award winning actor, filmmaker producers company Duplas Brothers Productions, joins us here live at screen time.
How are you? I'm great? How are you guys?
Doing okay?
Doing okay?
I'm a big fan of the Morning Show, But.
Thank you, you do it all.
Is there one that I'm sure you get this in a million times, that you like more than most in terms of doing, producing, directing, or do you love how everything kind of helps the other thing.
I do like the blending of all the things.
And I come from the independent sector, you know. I came into this business making three dollar movies in my kitchen with my brother on our parents video camera.
So I'm no stranger to doing at all.
But that said, I think that as I've been fortunate enough to do both indie projects and also be on a show like The Morning Show, which you know, one day's catering on that show is more expensive than most of the work I make.
I like the balance, you know.
I like hanging lights with my friends and sweating on my indie projects. But then I like when my burrito has brought to me in the trailer of the morning show and I'm taking care of So these.
Are the things. Well, someone who likes burrito is.
It doesn't like a burrito delivery, also a trailer pretty nice. Yeah, I'm wondering about if you were getting into the business right now and how that would be different. It's like you're making movies in your kitchen with your brother, but maybe you'd be using an iPhone, you'd be editing it using AI.
I think the headline is the democratization of the technology has made it so wonderful that you can make anything you want now so much more cheaply than I had it. So you have it a lot better than me on that front, but you have it way worse than I had it in two thousand and five when I came in.
Because we talk about that.
But the distribution channels are not there, right, and so we're now experiencing sort of the death of the hyperbolic television movement.
Right.
And we staffed up and we got all ready for it, and here we are and then it just dried up on us. So now we're going to have to start a new road of direct consumer distribution. You know, we're working in so many different models now. We're making television series completely independently and taking them out and selling them afterwards, because it is the wild West.
Well, you know, it's funny that you say that, because I think about something like YouTube and how much I want YouTube and specific channels and like anybody can put anything up there. When you think about distribution, channels or what seems to provide the most opportunities for you, especially since you say you play a bit more in the indie world.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, I'm very very fortunate and that I've been doing this for twenty years, so you know, I at least have somewhat of a name that people are interested in working with us. But I think YouTube is certainly exciting because you can put it up, it can catch fire. But the monetization of that and sustainability is really questionable in my opinion.
But then you have these.
Smaller substreamer services like you look at Dropout TV and what they're doing in comedy, and you look at Shutter. You know, they've become the home of horror fans as a subsidiary under ams, you know, and they're doing things in a low cost model. So I think the future here is going to be figuring out how to make things relatively cheaply, cutting your big producer fees, cutting a lot of everybody's fee across the board, and then when you're in a position to be on top and power,
really share that back end with people. And that's how I came up an independent film. We would make movies for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Everybody would make one hundred bucks a day. It was creative communism, and then you get points. We could take them to Sundance and sell them for a couple of million bucks, and the sound guy would make fifty thousand dollars and buy a home.
It was a beautiful time.
It's not quite that easy anymore, but there's something in that model that will still work.
I talked to somebody who lives out here's in the industry, has been doing this for thirty years, and he was like, I've got award winning casting directors walking dogs on rover to make ends meet.
No, it's real, I did that bad.
I mean I live in the valley, which is you know, the place where basically below the line union heads were able to buy their homes, you know, and that was under the sort of unspoken promise that this industry would continue to boom. Strikes fires, but not just that, the death of the streaming wars, which were unsustainable from them. That was just an arms race to see. So Netflix one who could chuck somebody out?
Right?
Netflix and Apple are the winners.
I mean TVD because we could see a merger happen in five minutes after this that changes everything, and there are won't I won't go that far, but yes, there are certain people that have interests.
In those mergers and don't have interests.
So does do you see the industry getting better?
I think the industry is going to change. Look, I've been in this for twenty years. I know people who are been in this for much longer than me, and we there are times when, oh my god.
It was the nineteen eighties.
If you had a movie that had, you know, a gun and blood and some fighting in it, you could take it to VHS and you'd make your money and it was a killer. In the nineties, it was that for DVDs and the two thousands. The streamers came in and I got to make all these cool movies for Netflix and TV. But it's going to change. We don't know which way it's going, but we got to be vigilant.
You know.
It's We've seen it in the media industry and we still like being in it. It's incredible to be thirty seconds still having fun.
You like it, I love it. I don't say I'm having fun all the time.
Bill A deep responsibility for like my brothers and sisters in LA and in New York and everywhere who are just getting choked out by this business. So I'm trying to find what is that thin lane that I still want to make outlier interesting content but at the right price that.
Makes sense and sustains us. And I don't have all the answers for that, So appreciate.
You joining us. I know you're growing up on a panel. Looking forward to hearing that as well. Mark, Thank you so much.
Sureus guys, Yeah, take care.
Mark Duplas joining us right here of course on Who Burgers this weekend.