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"FacebookPinterest\n\nIt&amp;amp;#x2019;s been nine years since Mark Duplass and his brother Jay brought The Puffy Chair to Sundance, and they&amp;amp;#x2019;ve been a good nine: he&amp;amp;#x2019;s since written, directed, or produced 10 movies, and acted in many others (Zero Dark Thirty, Humpday). He stars, along with his wife Katie Aselton, on the hit FX series The League, and he&amp;amp;#x2019;s about to start production on a new HBO comedy series.\n\nThis week, he&amp;amp;#x2019;s in Park City for director Charlie McDowell&amp;amp;#x2019;s debut, The One I Love\u2014a surreally funny movie in which Duplass and Elisabeth Moss try to rekindle their marriage on a weekend getaway. The night of the film&amp;amp;#x2019;s Sundance premiere, we followed Duplass around\u2014here&amp;amp;#x2019;s what happened, as told to us.\n\n\n\n6:59 p.m.\u2014Duplass is posted up at his rental condo with the film&amp;amp;#x2019;s producer, Mel Eslyn.\n\nWhen I get nervous, I just start telling people I love them. So Mel and I were telling each other how much we loved each other, and how great the experience was of making the movie. To be perfectly honest, I&amp;amp;#x2019;d tested the movie intricately on over 200 people, so I felt really good about how it was going to be received. Here was the nerve-wracking part: Is someone going to love this movie enough to buy it and take it out into the world?\n\nCharlie, the director, our writer Justin [Lader], our producer Mel, and our editor Jen Lilly all share in the back-end of this film\u2014and not all of them are on TV shows like me. If the film does well and sells big, it could be a life-changer.\n\n8:04 p.m.\u2014While people line up around the corner in front of the MARC Theater, Duplass, Moss, co-star Ted Danson, and director Charlie McDowell enter a heated tent out back and pose for red-carpet photos.\n\nI used to hate the red carpets. They used to make me really soul-sick. I had a hard time figuring out how to be, how to embrace it without feeling gross, but also not be a misanthrope and get overly serious about it. Yes, there&amp;amp;#x2019;s something ridiculous about parading yourself around while photographers click away, but I feel like you just have to treat them like you&amp;amp;#x2019;d treat a bunch of six- to eight-year-olds at a birthday party. I mean, they&amp;amp;#x2019;re there to have fun, so what&amp;amp;#x2019;s your problem?! So I like to give it up for the cameras and have fun.\n\n8:30 p.m.\u2014The MARC is packed: fans, friends, sales agents, film buyers, movie critics, and other actors and filmmakers, including Jason Schwartzman and Jonathan Pryce. Duplass takes a seat in the fifth row.\n\nI&amp;amp;#x2019;d emailed my core team \u2014 Lizzie [Moss], Charlie, Justin, and Mel \u2014 and said, &amp;amp;#x2018;&amp;amp;#x201D;Can we sit together?&amp;amp;#x201D; So they lined up five seats for us right in the middle. It was a nice little core of homies.\n\n8:57 p.m.\u2014As the film gets to its big twist, the audience gasps and murmurs. Duplass glances at his row-mates.\n\nI&amp;amp;#x2019;ve had a lot of movies at Sundance\u2014I know that you get more laughs in a festival environment than anywhere else. But I didn&amp;amp;#x2019;t tell that to the people who hadn&amp;amp;#x2019;t had any movies here before. I kept watching Charlie and Justin as they watched their movie play through the roof for the first time\u2014 bigger, louder laughs, and bigger, louder gasps. It was fun just watching them.\n\nOf course, anytime you&amp;amp;#x2019;re seeing a movie for the first time with a big crowd, it&amp;amp;#x2019;s natural to wish you could tweak shit. There were moments where I was thinking, Oh, we definitely should&amp;amp;#x2019;ve juiced up on that a little more. But really, I was just thrilled with the movie and the crowd&amp;amp;#x2019;s response.\n\n10:08 p.m.\u2014The movie ends to huge applause. Duplass, Moss, and Danson head up for an audience Q&amp;amp;A, joined by director Charlie McDowell, producer Mel Eslyn, and writer Justin Lader. They joke with the crowd.\n\nIt took me a while to learn how to do a Q&amp;amp;A in the right way, or at least what I think is the right way. But what I&amp;amp;#x2019;ve learned is that when you have a movie with laughs, people just want to stay and be entertained. They say they want information\u2014and they kinda do\u2014but mostly they just want to spend more time with you because they liked your movie. So mostly I go for a borderline standup routine.\n\nYou&amp;amp;#x2019;ll get some oddball questions, but you just gotta shuck and jive with the weirdness in the room.\n\n10:44 p.m.\u2014After the theater has emptied out, Duplass huddles on the sidewalk with producer Mel and the film&amp;amp;#x2019;s sales agent, Josh Braun.\n\nVery heavy on my mind: How would buyers respond to the movie? I checked in with my people immediately to get some feedback, and it was much better than I&amp;amp;#x2019;d anticipated. I love this part of the process.\n\nI&amp;amp;#x2019;m a weird hybrid\u2014I love the creative stuff, but I also love the business-y stuff, and it&amp;amp;#x2019;s just so interesting to me. We&amp;amp;#x2019;re in this new weird world where movies can be made so many different ways, and consumed in so many different ways. I&amp;amp;#x2019;ve been coming to Sundance for 12 years, and at this point I know all of the distributors really well, so it&amp;amp;#x2019;s fun to kind of go into CIA mode: the gamesmanship! The subterfuge! At this point, there&amp;amp;#x2019;s no awkwardness. It&amp;amp;#x2019;s like, &amp;amp;#x201C;Here&amp;amp;#x2019;s McEnroe and Connors, meeting again in their seventh Wimbledon.&amp;amp;#x201D;\n\nI know you, and you know me. Let&amp;amp;#x2019;s do our thing.\n\n11:21 p.m.\u2014The Grey Goose Blue Door club on Main Street is hosting the film&amp;amp;#x2019;s official after-party. It is packed.\n\nWalking in, there&amp;amp;#x2019;s a lot of nonverbal communication some tears and some hugs. Already, we had a sense that the movie was going to do what we wanted it to do.\n\n11:55 p.m.\u2014Duplass is swarmed by well-wishers and admirers, but when he steps away to get a vodka-soda, he sees one of his own heroes: filmmaker Chris Smith, who directed cult documentary [_American Movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMFZOu8rDUQ)**._**\n\nWhen he looked at me, I thought, I wonder if he knows who I am. It took my breath away for a minute, because I&amp;amp;#x2019;ve never really had a conversation with him. I saw American Movie before it even had distribution, at a special screening in Austin. I was 18 or 19, and it changed me as a filmmaker.\n\n1:15 a.m.\u2014Duplass cuts out of the party, goes down an alley, and sits on a giant bank of dirty snow. The temperature is in the single digits, but he wants to check in on whether there&amp;amp;#x2019;s a sale.\n\nThe party got really loud, and I can&amp;amp;#x2019;t do that anymore, because I&amp;amp;#x2019;m old now. Really, I was happy to be outside, sitting in brown snow, on the phone, doing my business, no matter how cold it got. Some people think I&amp;amp;#x2019;m crazy to keep coming back to Sundance with little movies. They&amp;amp;#x2019;re like, &amp;amp;#x201C;Dude, you&amp;amp;#x2019;re on a huge TV show, you&amp;amp;#x2019;re about to do a second TV show, you don&amp;amp;#x2019;t need to be doing this.&amp;amp;#x201D; Most people come to Sundance once or twice and use it as a launching pad, but there&amp;amp;#x2019;s a vitality to this festival. It&amp;amp;#x2019;s hard to explain, but staying up all night, pushing for the sale of these movies, freezing, catching the flu, getting nervous and throwing up, it keeps me in a special space. My greatest filmmaker idols had these great ten-year runs and then softened up and lost vitality. There&amp;amp;#x2019;s a reason I continue to make small movies that has absolutely nothing to do with money.\n\nAnd it&amp;amp;#x2019;s about being able to make Charlie&amp;amp;#x2019;s first feature with him, seeing him like I was when I made The Puffy Chair. Everyone&amp;amp;#x2019;s like, &amp;amp;#x201C;Oh, you&amp;amp;#x2019;re so cool to mentor him,&amp;amp;#x201D; and I&amp;amp;#x2019;m like, &amp;amp;#x201C;No, I&amp;amp;#x2019;m juicing up on him as much as he&amp;amp;#x2019;s juicing up on me.&amp;amp;#x201D;\n\nIt&amp;amp;#x2019;s a mutual juice-fest.\n\n2:06 a.m.\u2014The party has begun to empty out, but Duplass is still in the snow drift, making calls and sending emails. Finally, he pockets his phone, sits back, and looks up.\n\nAt some point, I realized I simply needed to wait for the next offer. I knew I should probably go back to the party, but I was like, No, I think I&amp;amp;#x2019;ll sit in the brown snow and just enjoy the moment.\n\nMy friend [and League co-star] Nick Kroll, we have a &amp;amp;#x201C;Dad&amp;amp;#x201D; relationship where we both father each other. He sent me this email before I left, this very dad-like email. He said: Hey man, while you&amp;amp;#x2019;re at Sundance, take a moment to reflect on who you were in 2003\u2014at the festival with your first short film\u2014and who you are now, and what you have the ability to do now, and what that means. Just think about it for a moment. It would be good for you.\n\nAnd of course, I was like, Yeah, whatever, I&amp;amp;#x2019;m not doing any of that. But then it popped in my mind, right at that moment at the end of the night. No matter how much success I have, I&amp;amp;#x2019;ll always be a dude who loves shitty jeans and Taco Bell and DIY filmmaking.\n\nThat had to be my favorite moment of the festival\u2014those seven minutes of reflection in the brown snow.\n\nWithin 48 hours, it was announced that The One I Love had sold to RADiUS-The Weinstein Company for about $2 million.\n\nSuccess.\n\n\n\nDavy Rothbart is the author of My Heart is an Idiot, a book of personal essays, co-director of the documentary Medora, and the creator of FOUND Magazine. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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