Low budget and brotherly

“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” isn’t the only movie opening Friday. There’s also “The Puffy Chair,” a romantic comedy from brothers Jay and Mark Duplass, which premieres at the Nuart in West L.A.

“The budget of our entire film is, like, catering for them for one meal,” says Jay Duplass, the director and co-writer.

Actually, the budget was so low on “Puffy Chair” -- $15,000 -- it probably wouldn’t even cover a breakfast on “Pirates.” The money was put up by Jay and Mark’s parents, Cindy and Larry Duplass, who are credited as executive producers and also appear as the mother and father of the protagonist played by Mark.

“The whole crew was myself, one of my best friends and my wife, Mark and [his girlfriend] Katie [Kathryn Aselton],” Jay says. “When we were on the set, I shot and my friend John [Bryant] held the boom. We shot with a mini-DV camera. Sixty minutes of shooting cost $5.”

“The Puffy Chair” is about three romantically challenged twentysomethings and their tumultuous road trip to pick up a chair purchased on Ebay.

The quirky film won the Berlin Silver Bear Award last year and has screened at the Sundance Film Festival; South by Southwest, where it took the Emerging Visions Audience Award; and the Edinburgh International Film Festival, where it won the Best of Fest. “Puffy” also was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards.

The brothers operated a small editing company in Austin, Texas, in the 1990s while making their own films. “We made so many bad movies in our early 20s,” says Jay. “We never thought they were any good. There were script problems, acting problems, directing problems.”

But they persevered. Mark believes they turned around their storytelling skills when they started to “tap into our ethnic of dorky, middle-class white people and their personal problems. It came a lot more effortless.”

The brothers now live in Los Angeles and have a movie project at Universal.

“We have a movie we are going to write and direct with one of the producers of ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ and we are in the middle of this massive pitch week,” Mark says. “We are pitching a TV show this week to seven networks in three days!”

-- Susan King