
A new coming-of-age tale follows a 16-year-old girl who ditches the modern world to live in the wilderness. The series is titled, "Penelope."
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here. On today's show, we'll spend a whole hour talking about the only borough great enough to have the in front of its name. Writer Ian Fraser joins us to discuss his new book, paradise the Life and Times of New York's Greatest Borough. And we'll speak with writer and director Alessandra La Carrazo about her new film and in the Summers. That's the plan. So let's get this started with Mark Duplass. You've heard of independent film? How about Independent tv? A new series takes a gamble on being self funded without a plot line that involves blowing things up. It's about a 16 year old girl who decides to live her life in the woods. That's it. Her name is Penelope, which is also the name of the show. Penelope feels out of place and is worried that whatever's missing from her life can never be fixed. So to discover herself, she purchases $500 worth of camping gear on her parents credit card, she catches a freight train and she runs into the wilderness where she can learn to live off the land without constant access to technology. She builds her own shelter. She forages for food. She meets a few interesting strangers along the way while embracing the UNKN and enjoying the gift of nature. Penelope premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and made a deal with Netflix. You can catch it starting next Tuesday, September 24th. Co creator co writer and producer Mark Duplass joins me now in the studio to discuss Last time he was here he was talking about Biosphere. You may also recognize him as Chip from the Apple TV hit news drama the Morning Show. Mark, it's nice to see you.
Mark Duplass
What's up Alison, you know what?
Alison Stewart
Things are good.
Mark Duplass
Yeah.
Alison Stewart
Yeah. How about you?
Mark Duplass
They're medium plus is what I would say.
Alison Stewart
All right.
Mark Duplass
Yeah.
Alison Stewart
Maybe it'll be better after this.
Mark Duplass
Maybe it'll be better. We're going to ratchet that up a notch. Yeah.
Alison Stewart
This was your pandemic project. A pandemic project for you. What was it about? The desire to escape the modern world during this period?
Mark Duplass
Well, it was a couple of things that started off this project. The first was I was watching this, I don't know if what you'd call it, a sort of a low rent version of Survivor called Alone. That's Canadian reality show. Have you seen it?
Alison Stewart
No.
Mark Duplass
Okay. It's great. I love it. And they send you out into the woods with a couple of tools and they see how long you can survive. Whoever survives the most the longest wins.
Alison Stewart
Okay.
Mark Duplass
And I'm a backpacker and a nature person. I thought I would just like it, but turns out my wife loved it. Turns out my kids loved it. Turns out my parents loved it. It's the most slow paced show that I've ever seen a family be able to gather around and make work. And for anyone who has a family or lives with multiple people, you know how difficult it is to find something you agree on to watch. You end up coming down to what I call lowest common denominator programming, which in my house, you know, is Gilmore Girls or. Yeah, right, or Gilmore Girls again, which happens. So I was fascinated by this, you know, and at the same time, I was spending a lot of time inside. I was spending a lot more time on my device and reliant on that to connect with people. And I could feel it affecting my mood. I could definitely feel the effects of that. And so what I know about myself is that I'm not very good at making art. If I approach it from a conceptual standpoint, if I say I want to make this because of this or it's important because of this. The more I take my head out of the process and just trust my instinct, the better it goes for me. That's not for everyone. I think the Coen brothers use their heads beautifully. I just don't know how to do that. And so I had this vision of this 16 year old girl out in the woods and I was spending a lot of time in my office. And before I knew it, I'd written eight episodes. And I thought to myself, wow, this is really interesting. As soon as the town opened back. Opens back up after the pandemic, I've got all these written. I'M going to take this. There's going to be a massive bidding war for this project. This is a Duplass Brothers show that's already written and I have my pitch already. I was like, you know, all we have is euphoria for the 16 year old girls, you know, like, let's offer them something else that the families can gather around together, you know. And every single person passed.
Alison Stewart
What was that meeting? What were the first meetings like? Were you in there show, you know, jazz hands, you're excited about it.
Mark Duplass
It was, this was all happening during the pandemic, so I wasn't in person. But, you know, I know a lot of these executives. I've known these executives for almost 20 years from having been in this business, you know, and they all kind of. I wouldn't say that they directly passed. There was a lot of like, this is really cool and the writing's really interesting. Maybe the animals talk, maybe that's what makes it interesting, you know. But then I had some people that know me very well were more truth with me and they said, like, this is really, really beautiful. But like, I'm a developer executive and my job is to find the next Game of Thrones. I have to do that right now. That's what this business needs. And so that really stuck with me. You know, I try to be a very pragmatic person in this business and not get too stuck on things because I find if you bang your head against that wall, you can really, I think, spill out a lot of your good spiritual and creative energy in the wrong place. But this one felt important to me for some reason. So I started thinking like, I've been self financing movies for years. You know, we take them out, make these small movies for $100,000, $200,000 movies like the one I love, or your sister's sister, or the creep films I make for Netflix, you know, and, and, and they're both creatively wonderful because there are no bosses. It's me and my friends running around doing things. And weirdly, they're financially very profitable and everybody wins. And so this is a long winded way of me saying this is how I got on my high horse enough to decide to self finance Penelope. Because I really do believe what's happening in the streaming businesses right now. There's just a fear based mentality. That's it. Okay? And unless they do what was successful last week, then they're going to lose their jobs. And that is not conducive to interesting art for the culture. And in my Opinion in the long run, it's not good for business, really. So my thinking was, if I can just make this, if I can just show it to them, once it's all done, maybe they'll be able to buy it just like they bought independent films for me for so many years.
Alison Stewart
How big a gamble was it for you to self fund?
Mark Duplass
Big.
Alison Stewart
It was big.
Mark Duplass
It was big. Yes. It was scary. And it wasn't as big as I. It was bigger than I thought it was going to be. You know, we convinced ourselves we can make it more cheaply and then you're like, oh no, this is going to be more expensive, you know, but why.
Alison Stewart
Was it worth that risk?
Mark Duplass
I don't have a really good answer for that, except that I felt deeply compelled. I do feel that as a person who started out making $3 movies in my kitchen with my brother, it's insane to me, like, what I get paid to be on, like the morning show and things like that. So that money that I make feels like a fantasy on some level. And it felt like a good target to take some of that and do something really dangerous and risky with it. I'm 47 now. I feel like now might be the time in my life, in my career to start trying some slightly riskier things so I don't get the yips and just keep repeating myself. You know, a lot of the artists I've loved, they do the thing for 20, 25 years. They start to either repeat themselves or, or get stale, you know, So I thought that might be part of it, but. But at the core of it really is. I just believe deeply in this show. I believe that so many of us are feeling unsettled. And I'm not saying if you run away to nature, it's going to fix you. It's not that simple. But I do feel like taking a pause. And if I can model that some way for a family show for people to sit around and watch. There are entire episodes where no one speaks.
Alison Stewart
I was just saying that to the crew inside that there are just long.
WNYC Announcer
Stretches where no one talks.
Mark Duplass
And I think it will be challenging for some viewers. But I didn't want to make this a total eat your vegetables experience. And I wanted to offer plotting and story and all the things I learned how to do in film school. And I just felt like this could be a really exciting new thing and I would. This is my full on, like, dream, the Norma Ray dream. It's like, you know, the way that the independent film ecosystem sprung up in the 90s because they were starting to make homogenized movies back then. And everybody said, where are the cool movies coming from? You know? And here comes Spike Lee and here comes Jim Jarmusch. If we could get to that point, and I think we are at the point where there's a dearth of interesting content in tv, but if we could get to the point where we build a sustainable ecosystem where people go outside of the system, if they're in a place where they can self finance because it's either super cheap or they're fortunate, like I am to have some funds to do it, great. Or you can get some independent financiers to do it. And then there's a festival. There are tons of TV festivals out there. The ATX Fest in Austin, the Series Fest in Denver. And those can become the markets like Sundance became. And then what kind of conditions do.
Alison Stewart
You need to have that happen, though?
Mark Duplass
I don't know yet. I think that the first thing is you need more than just me making independent television. I think you need a good slew of stuff so that the buyers come out there and they fear that if they don't fly into that festival, they're gonna lose out on that project, which is what Sundance has created for independent film, you know, So I think that's one of the. One of the elements. But I also think if I'm betting something is gonna happen in the next year, which is, you know, all of these streamers have pulled back on the amount of stuff they're making and on the originality of the stuff they're making, and I think the audiences are going to start to rebel at a certain point. And I think we saw it at the Emmys last weekend, baby. Reindeer sweeps things. No star, no stars, small budget. Nope. Not even a lot of promotion. Like, they plopped that thing on Netflix and the algorithm found it and shot it to the top, the cream rose. So I'm trying to, I guess, be somewhat pragmatic about this. When I sold the show to Netflix, I didn't say, you have to make me the premium show and put me on every billboard or you don't get the show. You know, I said, I'm not gonna charge you an arm and a leg for this thing so you don't regret it and put me on the service and let the cream rise to the top, and I'll go run around and promote it, you know, And. And here we are together.
Alison Stewart
My guest is Mark Duplass. We are talking about Penelope, which starts streaming next Tuesday, the 24th. So Penelop. Penelope opens up with a character, Penelope. She's in a crowd and she's wearing silent headphones for Silent Dance Party. They're really fun. Why did you want to introduce us to her that way again?
Mark Duplass
That was an instinctual thing. My daughters go to a school where every year there's a class camping trip. And the final camping trip has a fun event that's the silent disco. And this was maybe four or five years ago when I first saw it. And I remember thinking how strange it was.
Alison Stewart
It can be fun, though. They do it up at Lincoln center in the city. Oh, it's beautiful.
Mark Duplass
It's beautiful. It really is, you know, but watching these people be somewhat connected through the same activity, but have the ability to be on their own and listen to their own music while also being next to someone. One of my favorite things to do is just to sit with my friends and watch a movie together. And we don't have to talk to each other and we just share this experience, you know, and it somehow felt, without getting too intellectual about it, because I can't even really explain it, it somehow felt like the perfect springboard for the things we were going to be examining, you know, how can you have intimacy? How can you feel that sense of quiet, that sense of being alone, but not get too lonely? You know, how can we. You know, it's been. It's only been like 70,000 years since we haven't been hunter gatherers. I don't want to, like, get all sapiens on us here, but, like, I think. I think our brains are confused, you know, that we're not out there. I feel that way, you know, I try to go out backpacking a few times a year for, you know, maybe three or four nights tops. And something big happens to me every time I do it.
Alison Stewart
She sees a wolf or she thinks she sees a wolf. We're not sure. I don't have to know for sure. What did you want the wolf to represent for her.
Mark Duplass
Again? You know, I'm probably the worst person to analyze my own work. Hopefully someone will write a review and they'll tell you all about what the wolf means, and they'll go way more in depth that I can do it. But it certainly has something to do with the Call of the Wild. It certainly has something to do that with something that looks quite sweet and beautiful but could be really dangerous. One of the elements I was really interested in exploring in this show is the concept of stranger danger. Because there's a moment in the pilot of Penelope where She meets this touring singer, songwriter, musician, and he asks her to come back to his van.
Alison Stewart
It made me do this a little bit.
Mark Duplass
Right, right. And you go to bite your fingernails. But, you know, I was that touring singer songwriter in my late teens and early twenties. That's what I did. I pressed CDs and I drove around the country and played shows. And all of my experiences were nothing but absolute kindness and warmth. You know, some strange person would meet me at a show and say, hey, you can come back to my house and crash. And it could be the beginning of a horror movie, but it usually ended up in them sending me off with five packets of granola and a toothbrush and saying, good luck, you know, And I did want to sort of explore the thing that looks terrifying, the wolf that we've heard about. You know, maybe it's not that.
Alison Stewart
Let's listen to a scene from Penelope. She's already hitched a ride in a train. She decides to record a voice, a voice memo to her mom explaining why she's leaving. Let's listen.
Penelope (Character Voice)
I'm sorry for leaving like that. I just. It's not you. I'm not running away. I feel like I'm running towards something. It's like I'm being called. Please just don't come looking for me. Please don't be mad at me. I'll be okay. I just need this. I'll talk to you soon. I love you.
Alison Stewart
Do you think she ran away?
Mark Duplass
Yeah, I do. I think all of us, when we were little, had the fantasy of running away. Starting with the. The cartoon with the dog who's got the stick over his shoulder and the little handkerchief. You know, we all saw that. And I can't speak to everyone's experience, but for me, someone who's dealt with a lot of mental health issues at times in my life when I couldn't identify with them and thought, oh, this is weird. I just have a strange stomachache and I feel empty. Or at times, as I've gotten older and realized kind of what it was, there have been these feelings that I. That I somehow need to eject. And it's not always great to listen to those feelings, but they. They're consistent with me throughout my life. And if you look through my body of work, I think one of the more common lines of dialogue you're going to hear in some shape or form is something doesn't feel right.
Alison Stewart
Yeah.
Mark Duplass
You know, and it's not that I'm not a person who has joy and success and a wonderful family and all of these things. And some of my friends are even surprised, some of my closer friends surprised to hear me say that you just, you have ebullience to you, you know, But I can't put my finger on that. I don't know if it's the mental health stuff, I don't know what exactly it is, but when I talk about it and when I make art about, I see something in people's eyes that really connects with it and I just want to keep exploring it.
Alison Stewart
It's so fun when she just like hugs a tree. She just like she has an emotional reaction to a tree.
Mark Duplass
Yeah, I've had that before.
Alison Stewart
Yeah.
Mark Duplass
I mean, look, the truth is like Penelope is a lot of me is the truth. I used a 16 year old girl as my avatar. Although I think if you look at my Spotify algorithm, I think Spotify would think I'm a 16 year old girl because there's a lot of sensitive. There's a lot of chapel. Chapel in there. There's a lot of sensitive alt indie songwriters, you know, like. So maybe, I don't know, maybe Spotify knows more about me than I do. They certainly do. But yes, I think that I do have that desire, you know, and this is not news to most people listening to this, but I think that I've realized that some of the freedom with which I used to live and it's just not possible at this age. You know, I have a mortgage and I have a wife and I have children and I have friends and I run a business and I. And they're wonderful and they're just. They buoy my life. But I wouldn't be honest if I didn't have moments where I wanted to just jump on a train.
Alison Stewart
Sometimes in the woods you see Penelope where she's just dancing like she just made a fire, she's so excited. Other times there are potentially dangerous situations with animals. First of all, is she naive about how she's spending her time?
Mark Duplass
Yes, she is. Yes. So something really interesting happened as you know as well we were making this show. I had a vision of who Penelope was early on and she was someone who you could credibly see surviving out in the woods, whatever that means. Whether she had a strength to her, whether she was somewhat of an outlier, someone that you believed would do this. And I was looking for that in all the audition tapes and I got a ton of it in the audition tapes and I was like, this girl is a great actress. She's what I thought it would be. Why am I not Falling in love with this character. And then Megan Stott came on the screen, who. She actually does have tons of wilderness experience. But when you see her little face, my first thought was, I'm so scared for her to go out into the woods. She doesn't look like she knows what she is doing. And it taught me right there, like, ah, there has to be. And there should be some form of naivete for this to help sustain itself dramatically. Particularly if I'm gonna give you an episode with no dialogue, I gotta give you something to chew on, you know?
Alison Stewart
Yeah, tell me about that. Writing that episod, it was so fun.
Mark Duplass
It was like a 22 page episode, you know. And I remember being in my office and thinking to myself, this is really rebellious and I don't know what people are gonna think, but I felt like really bad in the good way. And those little dances that Penelope does out in the woods when she gets her fire lit for the first time, those kinds of things, that's what I have done my whole life in my office. When I finally write the song that I really wanted to write. You dance? Oh, I go crazy, you know, and there's music. I just, you know, I. I don't know what it's like for, for you, if you have like, what are the moments in your life where like the pure, unadulterated, childlike, electrical joy, you know, but for me, it's usually at the moment of creation, you know, when I. When the song, when a song channels through me or when that silent episode. And I wrote it pretty quickly and I read it and I was like, oh, I think this is gonna work. You know, it's just, that's just. Do you have anything like that in your life?
Alison Stewart
When I get really excited, I go, yes, yes.
Mark Duplass
Yeah.
Alison Stewart
You mentioned that you spend a lot of time discussing mental health. You do it on your social media. It's really great that you do it. What questions do you think people will have after watching this show about mental health?
Mark Duplass
I don't know. I don't really see it as a show explicitly about mental health. I think that something that is happening right now is there's a larger conversation developing in our world that Mel and I might look like we were really smart and predicted it. And having Penelope dovetail with it is Jonathan Haidt's book the Anxious Generation and what's happening to our children and us vis a vis our relationships with technology. So while Penelope is a show that is a soft bucket that allows you to relate to it on a lot of different fronts, whether you're a nature junkie or whether you're someone who's just thinking about identity or whether you're fantasizing, if you had done something like this when you were 16, what that might have done for you. One of those soft areas that has really lit up is our relationship to social media, our relationship to technology, and in particular, how that has been affecting our mental health. So I assume we're gonna have some of those conversations. But I'm not one of these people, or I should say, I'm not one of these artists who creates something with a specific conversation in mind that I hope it sparks. Everybody comes to it with something a little different. And I'm always fascinated to see what people come back with. My industry friends are like, they just want to hear about the business of it. How did you do this? How much did you spend on it? How much did you make? Is it gonna be worth it? And my mother watched it and she was. I'm so worried for her. Why'd you send her out there into the woods? And I love that. I love the disparate responses.
Alison Stewart
Penelope will start screaming, start screening, screening. Streaming.
Mark Duplass
Maybe both. Streaming, yeah.
Alison Stewart
Okay. Next Tuesday, September 24th, my guest has been Mark Duplass. Thanks, Mark.
Mark Duplass
Thank you so much.
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Podcast: All Of It (WNYC)
Host: Alison Stewart
Guest: Mark Duplass (Co-creator, co-writer, and producer of Penelope)
Date: September 18, 2024
Episode Theme:
An in-depth conversation with Mark Duplass about his new self-financed, family-friendly indie TV series Penelope—the coming-of-age story of a 16-year-old girl who escapes the digital world to live in the wilderness.
In this episode, Alison Stewart sits down with Mark Duplass to discuss Penelope, a new Netflix series that chronicles the journey of a teenage girl who leaves behind modern technology and her unfulfilling life in search of self-discovery in nature. The conversation explores the inspiration behind the show, themes of mental health, risk-taking in the streaming era, and the power of creating art outside the traditional studio system.
After rejection, Duplass decided to self-finance the show, leveraging his experience producing profitable indie films ([08:06]).
Financial Risk: The gamble was significant, both financially and personally—but rooted in his belief in the show's necessity.
"There are entire episodes where no one speaks." – Mark Duplass ([09:53])
Duplass advocates for an indie TV ecosystem similar to '90s indie film, with festivals and markets for independently produced series ([09:58]-[11:15]).
Family-Friendly Storytelling:
Technology & Nature:
Loneliness vs. Solitude:
Symbolism and Stranger Danger:
Mental Health & Identity:
On Self-Financing:
"I'm 47 now... I feel like now might be the time in my life, in my career, to start trying some slightly riskier things so I don't get the yips and just keep repeating myself."
— Mark Duplass ([08:25])
On Industry Trends:
"There's just a fear-based mentality. That's it. And unless they do what was successful last week, then they're going to lose their jobs. And that is not conducive to interesting art for the culture."
— Mark Duplass ([07:38])
On 'Penelope' and Modern Connection:
"I think our brains are confused, you know, that we're not out there… I try to go out backpacking a few times a year...something big happens to me every time I do it."
— Mark Duplass ([13:23])
On the Wolf as a Metaphor:
"It certainly has something to do with the Call of the Wild...something that looks quite sweet and beautiful but could be really dangerous."
— Mark Duplass ([14:46])
On Joy in Creation:
"I don't know what it's like for you...but for me, (joy) is usually at the moment of creation...when a song channels through me or when that silent episode [is written]..."
— Mark Duplass ([22:10])
On What He Hopes for Viewers:
"If I can model that...for a family show for people to sit around and watch…take a pause..."
— Mark Duplass ([08:25])
The episode offered an honest, lively, and often funny look at what it means to create independent art in a risk-averse era, the emotional drive behind seeking escape, and the practical challenges—and joys—of realizing a singular vision outside the bounds of mainstream TV. Penelope stands as both a personal and cultural statement: rooted in the need for self-discovery and the collective yearning for meaningful, family-centric stories.
Watch Penelope on Netflix starting Tuesday, September 24th, 2024.