Known for his roles in the Creep franchise, The Morning Show, The League, Big Mouth, The Mindy Project, and more, Mark Duplass also has a prolific career behind the camera. Through the Duplass Brothers Productions banner, he seems to have found a passion for producing documentaries focusing on true crime stories with paranormal twists. In collaboration with producer Joshua Rofé, Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal is their newest docuseries, now on Hulu.
The show delves into eight cases involving missing people, murders, and dangerous actions that have been linked to reports and beliefs of the supernatural. Themes covered in the episodes include UFOs, lizard people, ghosts, witches, shape-shifters, and cryptids. This is familiar territory for Duplass and Rofé, who previously produced the three-part Hulu docuseries Sasquatch (2021).
When asked if they approach fantastical cases with skepticism or an open mind, Duplass explained:
“Really great question. I mean, for me, the word is “fascination.” Inherently, there is a skeptic in me. I try to pull away as much of that as possible and try to be open. If you look at our documentary series, ‘Sasquatch,’ this is kind of the same team trying to build upon that and trying to tease out these other amazing threads of stories that we found in that research.
The key happening in ‘Sasquatch’ is there are these bodies that are torn limb from limb outside of this weed farm. There is a ton of weed. There is a ton of money. And it is all left behind. Does that mean that it was Sasquatch who committed that crime? Does that mean somebody committed that crime and wanted to make it look like Sasquatch committed that crime so that they could put fear in the hearts of those who live there and control them?
That answer is for you to watch these episodes and decide, but that is sort of the quandary that we’re trying to approach this with. Where do these myths come from? They’re steeped in the culture. They’re steeped in the trauma. And also, some of this shit might be real. So I think it’s good to be open to all of them.”
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Rofé, who has produced and directed documentaries including Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed (2021), Kids Behind Bars: Life or Parole (2019-21), and Lorena (2019), added:
“I like your question because you’re actually asking something that we ask ourselves no matter what the documentary is that we’re working on. You need to remain a skeptic. You’re in search of the truth. But you also have to be willing to honor the fact that the truth means different things to different people.
At the end of the day, our job is not always to editorialize but just to let it be. I feel like this series really, really does that.”
Of course, no matter how well-intentioned, documentary filmmakers can find themselves straddling the line between exploration and exploitation. Regarding Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal, Rofé discussed how the crew ensured that boundary was not crossed, saying:
“The director is really critical. That’s the most important part, I think. The directors of each episode and our showrunner, Allie Orton . . . our earliest conversations as a group, and even as they went off to shoot and then in the edit, every conversation was geared towards treating this like it is just a straightforward, dead serious documentary.
Only once we feel like we’re grounded in the humanity of the story are we then going to start to explore, leaning into the genre elements. And once you feel like the story is grounded in humanity, you start to introduce the genre elements.
Mark and I and our team on ‘Sasquatch’ found that it sort of creates this other thing. But you’ve got to start with this is real. We’re people; bad things happen to real people. Then we can build from there.”
We want to thank Mark Duplass and Joshua Rofé for their time. Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal is now streaming on Hulu.