Philadelphia Weekly

Arguably the biggest hit at this year’s Sundance, Humpday inarguably has the catchiest premise: two old friends (Mumblecore-ist Mark Duplass and Blair Witch Project co-star Joshua Leonard) reunite and, while inebriated, decide to make an amateur gay porn film, despite both being straight (and in Duplass’ case, married). It’s the third feature from Lynn Shelton, whose previous film, My Effortless Brilliance, also comically dealt with male friendship. PW sat down with Shelton to discuss the film’s unusual making and how the sexual aspect is actually the film’s least interesting (though still very interesting) theme.

Humpday feels partly improvised. What method did you use to make it?

The first film I created in a traditional way: writing the script and looking for people in the community. But I noticed how difficult the traditional filmmaking method was on the actors. We had this full crew contingent, a nice, big grip truck and a 35mm camera. But we didn’t have a lot of money, so we had to do it in a very short time period. That meant 75 percent of my time was dedicated to the lighting. There would be 40 people standing around, staring at the actors. We had five minutes to nail the scene, and it was very difficult to get a safe emotional bubble around them. So, I started fantasizing about creating a completely actor-centered form of production, where everything would be in service to them - getting rid of as much of the artificial and lighting stuff as possible and using a handheld, unobtrusive camera. I did that on my second feature and it evolved from there. The other key thing was I decided who I wanted to work with and I custom-designed the character for them, in tandem with them.

And one of them was Mark Duplass.

I really wanted to work with Mark. I put myself on the set of a film called True Adolescents shot in Seattle, where I live, with this special mission to meet and bond with Mark. And it totally, totally happened. I pitched this idea to him, originally with the notion that he would be the Andrew character, this Bohemian adventurer. And he said he wanted to play Ben. I had to switch my original concept, because I saw Andrew as having this Svengali-like pull over his domesticated buddy. So, I decided these guys would be going head-to-head from the get-go, because Mark’s too dominant a personality to let anyone have a Svengali-like hold over him. I needed to find someone as charismatic and dominating as him. Mark had met Joshua [Leonard] six months before at a film festival, and they had this immediate chemistry.

I understand there was no script. But it’s not pure improv.

What we did was, instead of rehearsing, when I got to the set I had a really structured outline. I love the naturalism of improv but I detest the looseness it can bring to a whole movie, if you’re too loose. So, I also really love structure. I had the arc of every scene, what milestones we had to hit. We would talk as long as we needed to, so that everyone was on the same page. And then I would say, "Are you ready?" And we’d turn the cameras on and they would just go, for 20, 30, sometimes 40 minutes. And then as an editor, I would carve the takes out later, sharpen and hone the footage into a five to seven-minute scene.

And the ending was not planned before you shot it?

Everything was completely structured, completely out, until the hotel room scene. We decided we wanted to keep that open-ended, so the rest of the movie we weren’t just aiming for this predetermined ending. We just checked into that hotel room - we had shot the rest of the film up to that point - and attacked it chunk by chunk. I said to them, "You know Ben and Andrew now. I need you live in the moment, as the characters really would."

How did you come up with the premise?

A friend of mine came to visit me in Seattle when “Hump” was happening. “Humpfest” is actually called “Hump,” and it actually exists. He went to see it and was particularly compelled by the gay porn he had seen. He’s a straight guy, he’d he wasn’t turned off by it. He was just fascinated, and he couldn’t stop talking about it. It was really adorable. It got me thinking. While it’s not cool to be homophobic anymore, there’s this residual tension between straight guys revolving around being gay. Even if they have close gay friends and they’re fine with gayness, it seems there’s this anxiety and need to reassure everyone around them, "It’s cool if you’re gay but I’m straight." But it turned out the whole sexual issue, the idea of sexual identity, is really at the bottom of the list of issues. It’s there, but it becomes a conduit for all these other issues.

So the movie became less farcical?

I didn’t want to make this if it was going to be a broad farce. I needed it to feel believable every step of the way. We worked on it, we came up with this rich backstory for their relationship and their individual characters and poked for the motivations. Like: why would Anna [Ben’s wife] give Ben permission to do it? Alycia [Delmore, playing Anna] and I spent an incredible amount of time on her secret life, to see how she could truly come to grant permission in a really wholehearted way and not just in this doormatty way. And so the film became about marriage and male friendship and what happens when we get to a point in our life when we realize the image we have of ourselves is really different than the one we turned out to be. And all these very human, authentic layers started emerging from this high-concept premise.