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Why Emmy-award winning movie producers the Duplass brothers spend 50% of their time together in 'therapy talk'

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How the Duplass brothers got their first movie into Sundance on a $3 budget
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How the Duplass brothers got their first movie into Sundance on a $3 budget

Mark and Jay Duplass are brothers. And best friends. And they produce movies together.

That's a lot to expect from any relationship. And perhaps the relationship is even more remarkable for its longevity.

Mark, 41, and Jay, 45, started their movie-making career together when they were just kids playing with their dad's video camera in the '80s. Their long career has recently been crowned with an Emmy win for the Netflix documentary series "Wild Wild Country," which the brothers co-produced.

So.... we won. #Emmys

One secret to the longevity of their career together is their commitment to each other's emotional well being.

Living and working well together "is extremely complicated," Mark tells CNBC Make It in Los Angeles in May. "So we have to stay in constant communication with each other about how we're feeling, how the other one is feeling. We have to be very respectful of each other. Honestly, we don't argue. We just do a lot of therapy talk."

The relationship takes just as much time and care as creating movies and television shows do.

"We spend 50 percent of our time working and 50 percent of our time working on [the relationship] like it's a marriage," says Mark. "That's really what's made it work for us — just an inherent respect and a gentleness with each other that kind of keeps the whole thing afloat."

The brothers-turned-business partners have to be attentive to each other's concerns and fears.

"On an average three-hour work session for me and Jay, I would say a good hour to an hour-and-a-half of that is spent with us airing some small grievances we might be having," like jealousy, says Mark, such as "Jay going on a show like 'Transparent' and and deeply connecting with everyone outside of me and me at once being happy for him but also really jealous that I'm not involved in that," he says of the Amazon show in which his brother acted.

"Tackling those problems before they become too big and threaten the overall partnership" is extremely important, Mark tells CNBC Make It.

While working with a sibling or anyone with whom you have an emotional bond can be challenging, it can also be productive, says Mark.

"Collaborating closely with someone you love has its myriad of pluses and minuses as we figured out through the years," Mark says. "And certainly having the trust of either a sibling or a loved one — and that real sort of pillar of strength to lean on in the hard times — is really, really great, but it is not easy.

"My brother and I are best friends and we are brothers and we are business partners. I also work with my wife and our dad is our business manager. So we are quite embroiled."

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