OKLAHOMA CITY – It’s safe to say that there’s no character-based puppeteering husband-and-wife comedy duo in OKC quite like The Martin Duprass. Trust me, they’ve got that particular niche locked down.
But what Lauren Thomas-Martin and Jeremy Martin also have is a deep bench of ride-or-die comedy friends and a truly enviable DIY work ethic.
And that’s how, just a year and a half since their last big head-scratchingly hilarious cinematic experiment “DawgMuh,” the Duprass is back again with their newest gloriously strange “short” film, “Akward Gawker,” which is set to get the red carpet treatment this Saturday, October 18th at the OK Film Exchange.
As ever with the Martins, “Awkward Gawker” – directed by Lauren and written by both Martins together with help from loads of friends – is an openly weird and wacky ride following a wholly unlikely (and at least partially unlikeable) hero that becomes accidentally internet-famous and suffers the ridiculous consequences.
“It’s based on a character that I made up during quarantine that we called the Awkward Gawker,” Lauren explained in a chat with Free Press ahead of the film’s premiere. “This voice just came out that I didn’t realize was going to come out, which is how some characters start for me.”
That voice became a character, which became a sketch in the Martins’ recurring live local sketch showcase, and then eventually became a whole movie idea for dropping the most awkward and tense person imaginable into a nightmare of notoriety and embarrassment-based overnight fame.
“She just she has to make this short introductory video to keep her at this social media conglomerate, and it gets picked up by this wannabe influencer, and then that’s picked up by a mega influencer, and she ends up accidentally going viral,” Lauren said. “And she never wanted this. She just wants to watch, but now she’s the biggest thing on the internet and she hates every second of it.”
But expanding a character (especially one as awkward and off-putting as this) beyond a simple sketch and into a world of their own takes a whole cast of equally ridiculous and high-concept characters. And for that, the Martins once again enlisted the help of practically their entire segment of the oddball outsider comedy scene of OKC.
That includes local performers like Will Davis, BradChad Porter, Heath Huffman, Dan Wade, Dalton Stuart, and Jessi Kyle as a beaver-themed influencer with a particularly familiar-looking golden “BeaverDome,” not to mention loveable puppet mainstays Marcus and Prairie Dog Pete.
“We actually gave a writing credit to everybody that was in it,” Lauren said. “Anybody that had a speaking role had the opportunity to improv off of the lines, and we feel we had a lot of collaboration and changes and edits and stuff from everybody. So we felt it was very much a group effort.”
All of that collaboration and weirdo character development, alongside a genuine arc and multi-beat plot exploring internet celebrity, rampant AI, and social media brain rot, led to a “short” that’s admittedly a bit longer than the average short film at a full 37 minutes.
“We just didn’t know any better,” Lauren said about why they committed to making a short film over a half-hour long. “But also that’s just the story we wanted to tell. If you take any part out, it just doesn’t make much sense. So we might cut it up and put it out online episodically, but the whole thing is an entire story.”
But that also means that if they pair it with something of equal length, it makes for a perfect double-feature for a red carpet premiere at OKC’s newest hyper-indie micro-theater.
And luckily, they’ve got something that’s (at least) of equal length: the making-of documentary for “Awkward Gawker” that was shot by local photographer/podcaster/filmmaker David Steele that’s set to premiere right after the first screening of the movie at the Film Exchange.
“His cut for the premiere night is only half as long as the cut he’s going to put online,” Lauren said. “So the behind-the-scenes video online is going to end up being twice as long as our actual movie.”
So while festivals are nice and distribution would be welcome and some studio backing or big-money production would be a dream, The Martin Duprass, as always, is just going to keep making their own trademark brand of sustained silliness and focusing on their primary goal: making themselves and their friends laugh.
“Right now,” Lauren said, “we’re just interested in making things that we enjoy to be able to show to people so that they have something that they can enjoy as well.”
“Awkward Gawker,” the new film by The Martin Duprass, premieres Saturday, October 18th at the Oklahoma Film Exchange, followed by David Steele’s behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie.
For more, visit themartinduprass.com and oklahomafilmexchange.com.
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Brett Fieldcamp is our Arts and Entertainment Editor. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for 15+ years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
