
Advertisement
Advertisement
Mark Duplass: Talking about ourselves, pontificating.Specifically about yourselves? Not your characters or anything?
Duplass: Our characters, too.Well, I guess that’s all we have to talk about, since we can’t talk about the twist.
Charlie McDowell: You’re really upset about this.I am upset. I like the twist. So, in your own words…
Elisabeth Moss: You’re going to torture us.

Duplass: You’re going to make us dance like fucking monkeys!In your own words, describe the film. Sell it without ruining it.
Moss: You sound so aggressive!
Duplass: I would say I don’t need to sell the movie, because the movie is fucking awesome. My take on talking about the movie is that basically, you know…
McDowell: [robotic voice] Let me give you the generic answer that we've given everyone else.
Duplass: Come see a romantic comedy, but be prepared to have it blown up pretty early on and keep an open mind about what it can be. At the end of the day, it’s this magical, strange film about relationships. We’re examining what it’s like to be a couple when the shine comes off and you’re trying to fight to keep it together.OK, you sold it better than I expected. How about you, Charlie. What does the director have to say?
Moss: So mean! "How about you? Now you try…" You know what? Don’t see the fucking movie! Don’t worry about it, OK?
McDowell: Was that not good enough? Don’t you have enough with that?
Advertisement
Moss: Go see something else. I hear Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is fantastic.Elisabeth, how would you describe your character and what makes you different in terms of expressing yourself in the relationship?
Moss: For me, it is about a couple that’s going through a hard time.I always play characters that are very different from myself, and this was the closest I got. But then there’s this whole thing that we can’t talk about that was extremely challenging as well. I was completely terrified before I started. I remember driving up to Ojai, California, after wrapping Mad Men and thinking, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, and these people are totally going to catch me and think I’m an idiot, and I’m not going to be able to do this, and…
Duplass: They might kill me.There are only three people in the entire movie, and you’re alone in a house.
Moss: And I arrived in the dark.
McDowell: You only came because we promised we had pressed juice. That was the selling point.You’d just send her pictures of all of the juices as ransom.
Moss: They had to send pictures every ten minutes to keep me driving.
Duplass: "If you don’t get here in one day, we drink all this fucking juice!"

Moss: That’s what we talked a lot about in the beginning, before we started shooting, because we had to hit the ground running with only 15 days to film. I think everyone is different in a way, which is what makes it so hard, because everyone’s looking for different things. However, there were these essential things like: communication, honesty, trust, sense of humor. These were things we could all kind of agree on—universal things.
Advertisement
Duplass: Well I’m married. We’ve been together for almost 13 years. One thing that has been so important in maintaining our relationship is self-awareness. Arguments are just going to come up. The thing I value the most is the ability to be in a fight, and then one of us catches ourselves and is like, I’m just being totally defensive. I’m wrong. I’m sorry. That quality is what sustains relationships for me, and I love it.You’re the one who initially had the concept for the movie. Was it something you came up with in order to talk about your own issues?
Duplass: To be fair, it wasn’t that far developed. It was the kernel of an idea, a feeling, a sketch. I didn’t really understand what was in there, and it was Charlie and [screenwriter] Justin Ladder who drew all of that stuff out.How did you and Justin flesh all of that out?
McDowell: We took that idea that when you start a relationship, you present the best version of you. You sort of become a character. We really responded to that, because it felt like something that everyone can relate to. From there, it was just about figuring out who the characters were, and the plotting came second. We knew we had a location we could shoot at, and part of it was just budgetary reasons. It kind of unfolded naturally once we had all of the pieces there, and we could see what stuck.The amazing thing about this film is how everyone comes at it from a different context. This film is a great microcosm of itself…
McDowell: See you can talk about the movie without revealing the twist…
Moss: Stop patronizing him!
All: [laughs]You’re killing me. Don’t direct me, director.Even if Charlie won’t tell you to see it, The One I Love is in theaters and is available on VOD platforms. It’s being released by Radius TWC and is a pretty awesome fucking movie. Follow Jeffrey Bowers on Twitter.
