[Published at Film Inquiry] Natalie Morales, one of film and television’s brightest stars, both behind and in front of the camera, and Mark Duplass, one of the most prolific writers, producers, directors, and actors of his generation, developed a seed for an idea during the pandemic in 2020 to make a movie that would take place entirely on a computer screen. Not only would this concept protect the cast and crew from COVID, but it would also challenge both writers to develop an on screen interpersonal relationship reflective of the age of Zoom calls and lockdown isolation. This idea would bloom into Language Lessons, a film about a platonic relationship formed between an online Spanish teacher (Morales) and her student (Duplass).

Language Lessons, which Morales co-wrote with Duplass, also marks her sophomore directorial feature behind the critically acclaimed Plan B. Like the title suggests, Language Lessons explores an entirely new form of communication that the world has had to adjust to while intermittently staying indoors and working remotely during COVID.

Ahead of Language Lessons‘ September 10 theatrical release, I sat down with Morales and Duplass via Zoom, fittingly, to discuss their new film, how the initial concept developed into a feature, the differences and commonalities between their characters, filmmaking and real-life inspirations used for Language Lessons, how Room 104 pushed their creative relationship forward, Morales‘ helming expertise, and more.

Alex Arabian for Film Inquiry: What was the impetus behind Language Lessons?

Mark Duplass: Well, the core of this whole thing is that I love Natalie and I want to work with her and have wanted to work with her, and that was always in the back of my brain. And the specifics of this project were that it was a couple of months into the pandemic, and the boredom is starting to set in; the frustration is starting to set in. I’m doing a lot of writing on things, sort of like a squirrel, stocking up scripts for when we eventually emerge from the pandemic and go make things. But I also want to make something. And I was doing all these silly hobbies like people are doing to keep themselves busy, one of which was taking online Spanish courses. And I developed an interesting dynamic with my teacher, which was that in these conversational classes, we were not very good at small talk. So we just ended up going real deep quickly. And I thought, “Well, that’s interesting that over a 2D video connection, which should inhibit intimacy, is actually fostering intimacy in getting us there more quickly.” So I thought, “Well, that can be a movie and something we can shoot in our houses and not get COVID at the same time. That could be cool.” And so I called Natalie with just the germ of that idea of a teacher and her student and a relationship develops. And the pitch really just ended there. I was like, “I don’t have anything. So would you build it with me? Would you write it with me? Would you direct this?” And thank god, she was like, “Yeah, we’ll do it.”

You’ve worked together before on Room 104. Natalie, you directed a couple of episodes, and you acted in one as well. So how did those experiences help this particular mutual collaboration?

Natalie Morales: Well, hey actually probably made us want to work together more because the two episodes that I directed, Mark had written. Did you write the one that I acted in too? I can’t remember.

Mark Duplass: Yes, I did. Yes.

Natalie Morales: Yes. So he had written them, but he wasn’t on set for them because he was working on one of his hundred million other projects that he does. So we didn’t actually get to work together on a day-to-day basis. And that’s something we were both craving. So it did lay the groundwork for wanting to work together in a more direct way, especially both of us being actors as well. Not to sound cheesy – it’s fun to get to play. You know what I mean? It’s a fun thing to do. So when two actors admire each other, it’s like you want to work together. And it didn’t hurt that I didn’t ruin the episodes of Room 104 that I directed. And so then he trusted me a little bit more.

Mark Duplass: It was beyond that. I gave Natalie a really complex episode. And on Room 104, you either get two days or three days to direct your episode, depending on how complex it is. And hers was a borderline episode. And even though it was just her first job, she got a two-day slot to do it. And so I was like, “Oh, god.” And then she sent me this shot list she was planning on directing. And I was like, “You’re never going to be able to do all of this because I’m the experienced director and I know this.” And she was like, “I hear you. I got this.” And then she just went ahead and just fucking nailed it. So I was like, “Okay. You got it.”

Adam and Cariño come from different backgrounds, and what I took from this is that these two characters seem to be lonely under their relative circumstances, and being in isolation affects people from every socioeconomic status. What was your intention behind having these two different backgrounds?

Natalie Morales: Beyond just the idea that people from completely different places – physical places, countries, backgrounds, like you said, socioeconomic statuses, genders, all of that – we wanted to show that those things can all be surface at a certain point. You can still connect with somebody despite all of those differences that are, especially through a Zoom format, so evident and so clear and also make you assume things about the other person. That’s a big part of the movie, as well, is what we assume about other people as we’re getting to know them or as we first know them. And so those were interesting elements to add to the story about these two people. When we first started writing the movie, the very first step we did was Mark and I went off separately and wrote biographies for these two people independent of each other. I didn’t know necessarily what he was writing and he didn’t know what I was writing. And so then we showed each other what we were writing, and then we decided to just make these two characters collide from there. So it wasn’t as intentional as it was just sort of natural, I would say. It was organic.

Mark Duplass: And Natalie had a good eye on dealing with privilege and in particular white privilege and a little bit of that white savior syndrome that comes up in the movie, which was fascinating, just intellectually, to us. And I really like that idea because Adam certainly has an element of he really loves Cariño and wants to be there for her, and he wants to, in some ways, help her in certain places in her life as she helps him. But that can be quickly misconstrued, right or wrong, as white savior stuff. And are Adam’s intentions pure? It’s hard to tell. And when he’s got that large house looming in the background, she certainly makes her judgments about him just as he made judgments about her with her less-than-rich-looking background. And we wanted to just dig into that stuff.

This is an unconventional drama in many ways. It takes place entirely on a computer screen, but it keeps the viewer very engaged, nonetheless, because there are twists and turns along the narrative.

Natalie Morales: I’m glad.

You both mentioned before that Before Sunrise was an inspiration in making this. Did you also look to similar formats like Searching or Unfriended while you were making this?

Natalie Morales: No, I hadn’t really seen any movies that were in this format. I don’t even know if they had come out by the time that we had done this. Right, Mark?

Mark Duplass: I don’t know if they had, but I didn’t watch them either. Probably should have, but…

Natalie Morales: Yeah. It was like we had to figure out this new way to do it all because we did it all independently in our own homes. But definitely, the Before Sunrise stuff was like, “Well, two people can talk through a whole movie and it can still be interesting, right?” Yeah.

Mark Duplass: We weren’t sure, honestly. And I talked to Natalie early on. I was like, “Look, let’s do this completely independently. I’ll pay for it. And if it sucks, we don’t ever have to show anybody. So this will just free us up creatively to just give it a try.” And that was fun.

Mark, like you said before, you’ve been known to power through screenplays quite quickly, especially compared to your brother, Jay, who takes his time, comparatively. Natalie, where do you fall on this spectrum? Was it difficult or easy keeping up with Mark’s writing?

Natalie Morales: Well, as far as writing a script, yes, definitely much, much, much quicker than I’m used to. I certainly have never completed a movie from initial germ of an idea to last day of shooting within like four weeks. That’s never happened. But at the same time, I had never shot a whole movie until that point. I had started to prep Plan B, but we had not shot it. And that’s a more traditional way of doing a movie. But having done Room 104, I’ve learned so much from (Mark) in so many different ways. But he places a lot of important on capturing that lightning in a bottle that happens when you’re first excited about a project and when you’re first working on it that you lose if you work on it for months or years or just a long time.

You start to doubt what you did, and you start to hate it, maybe, and you start to be over it, and then by the time you’re making the movie, you’re like, “Do I even like this anymore?” In a lot of cases. And so I really embraced the entire experience as what it was. I knew that it would be this totally different thing that I had done. It was totally different for Mark too, in a lot of ways. So it was new for me. And I wouldn’t say it was hard keeping up with Mark because we’re very similar in a lot of ways. But I did have to relinquish a lot of my sense of control in my own head over the things that I couldn’t control, not only because I had a collaborator in this, but because of the speed and because of how we were trying to just get it done while we could.

The loss, the shock, the depression, the stages of grief, and the virtual friendship your characters experience in this film really parallel what many of us went through and are still going through in this pandemic. Did you want Language Lessons to resonate with audiences in that way?

Natalie Morales: We were going through it too, and we’re still going to it too. So it wasn’t as intentional in that sense as we wanted that specifically to resonate with audiences. It just felt true, and it felt real.

Mark Duplass: That’s right. Yeah.

I also see this as an allegory for adjusting to a new normal of conversation in relationships, in general, because we all had to switch to Zoom in our personal and professional lives, talking to people through a computer screen. And particularly in professional and personal relationships, that line really got blurred for so many of us during the pandemic. We’re really all just doing our best.

Natalie Morales: Right. It’s either an allegory or it is just presented factually because it is all throughout the movie. There’s something that happens in Zoom, and specifically that maybe doesn’t happen in the same way in real life, which is that we exaggerate our hand motions, we exaggerate our expressions, we enunciate more in order to be understood more clearly, and that’s something we do without even really noticing it, which is why we have that fatigue at the end of the day. We’re communicating in such a more intense way in order to be understood.

Mark Duplass: Performative. Yeah.

Natalie Morales: Yeah. And it’s something that we do without even noticing because we are humans and because we adapt. That’s part of our DNA is that we need to be understood, so we figure out a way to be understood. And on the other side of that coin, there’s a lot that we can assume about people because of that and because of the backgrounds that we see. That happens in real life too. You can assume a lot by just meeting a person, but seeing someone’s home and where they live, it tricks your brain into thinking you know a little bit more about them. I can tell you like Edward Scissorhands and that you like movies. But I don’t know if that’s even your poster or if you’re even at your house. You know what I mean? There’s a lot of things that we can construe from what we see and that we intend to do. And that’s all part of the story too, is these assumptions that we make about people and what we know about people and how different that is in the age of Zoom and how we think we know more or less. And those are all interesting things to explore in this day and age. For example, Alex, if this was our fifth time meeting, some of those extra expressions would fall off, right? And I would just be a little bit more natural because I understand that you understand me. And that change in a relationship is interesting to document.

That’s a great point. Do you hope that this movie opens up more doors for Latina directors? Because there’s still a lot of gatekeeping going on.

Natalie Morales: I do. I hope it opens doors for a lot of different kinds of directors. I hope a lot of people follow in Mark’s footsteps in giving people chances. I would not be in the DGA had it not been for Mark asking me to direct Room 104. I wouldn’t have gotten Plan B had it not been for me being in the DGA because Mark asked me to do Room 104. So I hope that a lot of people in the position that Mark is in, myself included, going forward, can give opportunities to people who may not have them otherwise. You have to recognize that you are in that position as soon as you’re in it. And I do hope that Mark taking a bet and a risk on me is inspirational to other people to take a risk on other people.

Mark Duplass: One of the best bets I ever made.

Natalie Morales: Thanks, buddy.

This could have easily been called Spanish Lessons. Why Language Lessons instead?

Natalie Morales: Mark, you can take this, but it was actually Mark‘s idea because we’ve tossed around Spanish Lessons. We tossed around a couple of other ideas for the title. But language encompasses so much more than just a specific country’s tongue. Right? There’s physical. There’s body language. There’s love languages. It is a broader subject. What do you think, Mark?

Mark Duplass: Yeah, that’s exactly right. It opened it up to a lot more for us. And also, one of the last lines in Better Off Dead is, “Language lessons, inspiring words from a man who knows how to ski.” So that’s a slight call back for those who really love early John Cusack.

Film Inquiry would like to thank Mark Duplass and Natalie Morales for their time and insight.

Shout! Studios will release Language Lessons theatrically on September 10, 2021