League Of His Own

Mark Duplass is everywhere in 2012, achieving some kind of indie-movie omnipresence. There are two films he's made, as writer/director, alongside his brother Jay, Jeff Who Lives At Home and The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, both of which, thanks to the quirks of their making, are being released this year. As actor, Duplass is also starring in indie sleepers Your Sister's Sister and Safety Not Guaranteed, has small roles in prestige-pic blandeur Darling Companion and People Like Us, and even has a role in Kathryn Bigelow's hunt-for-Obama thriller, Zero Dark Thirty.

“I'm not allowed to say much about Zero Dark Thirty,” warns Duplass, staying behind the film's veil of secrecy. “Except that it's awesome. And I think it will be the movie of the year. And even then, maybe I've said too much.”

A former member of the indie band Volcano, I'm Still Excited!, Duplass began making short films in 2002, and proved a huge catalyst in the mumblecore movement (“I hate that word,” Duplass sighs) with the micro-budget 2005 feature, The Puffy Chair, in which he co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred. He was soon acting in a host of, well, mumblecore movies, despite never having designs on stardom, as he admits.

“I never thought I would become an actor. It just sort of grew naturally out of the indie filmmaking process, where everyone wears a bunch of different hats. After that, I just got lucky that other people wanted to put me in their movies.”

Those people included Noah Baumbach, who granted Duplass his first big-budget role, in Greenberg. From there, Duplass scored a career break when cast as a lead in the fantasy-football-themed sitcom, The League. Now he can wax nerdy like no one's business (“I nabbed Peyton Hillis season before last off waivers; goddamn it was beautiful!”), but when cast, Duplass was unfamiliar with fake sports. “I was a big NFL fan growing up,” he explains, “but I'm a workaholic and never allowed myself to get caught up in fantasy sports. Until I started acting in The League. Now, we have our own league just for the people in the show. And I'm fucked. Totally addicted.”

This month finds The League launching its fourth season, and both Your Sister's Sister and Safety Not Guaranteed releasing on local screens. The latter is a cult film that takes a time-travel-centric Internet meme and grants it a dignity beyond schadenfreude, the quirky, nerdy story and presence of Aubrey Plaza pushing it towards cult film status. “It certainly seems that way. It just keeps playing and playing in the States. I'm totally humbled and flattered by the way people have taken to it, the word of mouth it's gotten.”

Your Sister's Sister reunites Duplass with Lynn Shelton, with whom he made 2009's Humpday, and finds he, Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt in an indie comedy where one dude lands between two sisters during a weekend at an isolated cabin. “I gave the story idea to Lynn and we built it together to be a small film that could be shot in under two weeks in a few locations,” Duplass says. “There was no script at all. We worked from a treatment and improvised every piece of dialogue in the film. We kept it small and collaborative so we could make the exact film that we wanted to make.”