Speaking from the heart

When watching John C. Reilly's latest film, Cyrus, you may notice a unique blend of intimacy and emotional depth that doesn't come along very often. The reason for this, and the reason Reilly took the job in the first place, is brothers Jay and Mark Duplass.

In a sit-down interview, Reilly shed some light on the process the brothers go through to produce their distinct style and some revelations he had while on set with the dynamic duo.
"They don't want to make corny formulaic processed kind of stories," Reilly said. "They want the movies to seem emotionally truthful, and that's definitely true of this one."

To achieve this "they wrote a good script and then they encouraged us not to use it," Reilly said with a smirk.

Recalling the off-kilter and sometimes frustrating experience, he mentioned that the brothers would constantly encourage the actors to wing it and use their instincts.

Reilly threw his hands up as if the Duplass brothers were sitting in the room and said, "My instinct is to do what you want!" They refused to give any strict direction, trusting that Reilly and his fellow co-stars would find the characters on their own.

Cyrus is about a relationship triangle. John (Reilly, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant), a divorcee in a slump, meets and falls in love with Molly (Marissa Tomei, The Wrestler). The only catch is that her 21-year-old son Cyrus (Jonah Hill, Get Him to the Greek) still lives with her and has some serious mommy-attachment issues. Needless to say, a battle over Molly's affections ensues.

Reilly brought John to life by keeping the simple idea of being truthful in mind.
"I never try to worry about whether characters are likable or not, I just try to make them real," he said.

Seeing as the movie was written for Reilly, his approach seems appropriate.
His co-stars played different roles in bringing the movie together. Hill's character is a bit creepy, and he certainly has his moments.

"A lot of [Hill]'s comedy comes from calling stuff the way it is," Reilly said. "You know like, ‘Dude, your beard looks like a vagina.' That's kind of his trademark."

However, it was Tomei that kept Hill and Reilly's humor from getting out of hand.

"Marisa's character — and Marisa as an actor was a real kind of grounding point, you know — she brought the reality to it."

And reality, at least for the directing team, is the name of the game. The Duplass brothers — part of what some call the mumblecore movement in film — not only let their actors reign free on the set but also differ from many other directors in how they put the film together.

Reilly found that an important part of the brothers' input came after shooting.

"The editing process is probably their biggest screenwriting contribution — the way you take the raw materials of what you've gotten with the actors and the way you shape that into a story," he said.

Raw would be an understatement. In addition to their improvisational style, the brothers implement a strict no-tripod policy on their cameras. The producers would send notes down, Reilly recalled, begging for them to use a tripod. But in the name of their style, they refused.

"They made this movie the way that they made The Puffy Chair," Reilly said. "This movie cost millions of dollars, but they made it with that same vision."

Always going against the norm, the brothers also shot the entire movie in digital, as opposed to the traditional film used for most movies. The advantages of using digital are clear — it's cost effective, film length is virtually unlimited and some argue that the overall quality is better. However, Reilly has an interesting take on the subject.

"The takes go on so long, that once you get past like 10 minutes, 15 minutes, the crew just starts to get restless, and there's less focus on the set," he said.
With real film though, he revels in the sense of occasion.

"Everything stops because you only have at the most 12 minutes, and that film's burning. It's a commodity; it's a thing that we've paid for," he said.

He also just likes the way film looks.

Reilly revealed the most, or maybe the least, insight about working with the Duplass brothers when he said, "You're in the perfect spot if you don't know what you're doing."
This either means the Duplass brothers thrive on the random, or Reilly just has no idea what he's doing.

It's probably the first one.

truben@umdbk.com