"Humpday," the third feature from local filmmaker Lynn Shelton, made its world premiere in the Dramatic Competition section of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. It was the first film sale of the festival and went on to win a Special Jury Prize "For the Spirit of Independence." It subsequently played in the exclusive Directors' Fortnight section of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and was the Centerpiece Gala for the Northwest Connections sidebar at the Seattle International Film Festival earlier this year. It makes its theatrical debut on Friday, June 10 in New York and Seattle.
“Humpday” is the story of best friends - one married and seemingly content in a conventional lifestyle, the other an aimless traveler whose artistic ambitions are unmatched by his accomplishments - who reunite after 10 years and make an unusual commitment to an extreme art project: two straight men having sex on camera for an amateur porno festival. Mark Duplass (of "The Puffy Chair" and "Hannah Takes the Stairs") and Joshua Leonard (co-star of the indie blockbuster "The Blair Witch Project") play the very straight buddies who essentially dare each other into the project and Seattle stage actress Alycia Delmore co-stars as Duplass's wife. The rest of Shelton's cast and crew was drawn from the pool of Seattle talent. I interviewed Shelton at her home in January 2009, mere days before she left for the Sundance premiere. It was relaxed and fun, probably the last interview she gave under such easy-going conditions, and he we hung out for over an hour talking movies, filmmaking and the Seattle independent scene, among other things.
How did you come to cast Mark Duplass?
I met Mark on the set of "True Adolescents," which was being shot in Seattle in August of '07. He was starring in it and I was shooting still photography. We knew of each other, we had mutual friends in the filmmaking community, so it was sort of like no introduction was necessary. We just gave each other a big old hug the first time we saw each other and immediately bonded as filmmakers. We would jabber away over the craft table and at lunch and we realized we had a lot in common in terms of our filmmaking philosophies. And it was really clear that we wanted to work together in some capacity by the time he went back to L.A..
So how did you settle on this project?
Mark sent me a script as soon as he got back to L.A. that he was hoping he would produce and I would direct, starring his wife, Katie. That ended up being nixed for other reasons but then a month or so after that, I think it was October, I called Mark with this idea. It took me a little while to get the nerve up because I was a little worried about how he would react, I wanted to pitch it just right, but basically I said: "The idea is two best friends from college, ten years later their lives have sort of diverged, but the basic premise is they decide they have to try and have sex together, two straight friends." He sort of paused for half a second and then said, "Okay! Sounds great!" The interesting thing was that I originally had seen him in the other role, this idea of the wild, adventuring nomadic artist, very charismatic. He immediately said, "I've got to play the domesticated dude. That's just where I am in my life right now and that would be more interesting for me." So I said, "Okay, I'm going to need help finding the other guy because I don't know anybody as charismatic as you and he needs to be at least as charismatic as you." So that was when we brought Josh [Leonard] in.
You had not met Josh before?
I had never met Josh before, I didn't know of Josh, I hadn't even seen "Blair Witch." I didn't know him at all, but they had met at the Woodstock Film Festival in '05 or '06 when Jay and Mark were there with "The Puffy Chair" and Josh was there was a short film, "The Youth in Us," because he's also a filmmaker. He didn't know my work either so I sent him my first two films and luckily he really dug them, a lot. And he really wanted to work with Mark as well, so he was on board right away. And then we developed… A lot of phone calls, they both live in L.A., so a lot of phone calls, three-way chatting conference calls along the way.
Your lead actors were both filmmakers in their own right?
Yes. Casting is always really important, but in the case of this kind of methodology, you're really casting writers as well as actors. It doesn't mean that the actors have to be actual writers, it's just that they have to comfortable enough to improvise. Some actors just can't improvise. They're great if they have lines and have got a script, but they really can't come up with their own thing. Because Mark and Josh are filmmakers, it somehow makes it easier for them. And I want the actors in early in the process so that they can be a party to their own character's development. You can't really figure out exactly what's going to happen until you figure out who the characters are. So that's why as the characters are developing, the plot becomes more and more specific and you can shift that around. So it's a very organic way of working and it seems to work really well, at least in this case.
How do you script for such an improvisational model?
You always hear people talk about how a script is just a blueprint and then things really shift on set. This is even more of that. The training that I have as an actor is what comes into play: Incredibly specific backstory, incredibly clear objectives, everybody knows exactly what they want out of that scene specifically and they know exactly what's come before, so they have all of those basic good acting craft things in place. The tension is there, everything is all set in place. I have everything laid out ahead of time except for the actual words that they are going to be saying.
How did you end up casting yourself in a supporting role?
I really do like to think of a part at the same time as I think of the person I want to play the part. Even better is the other way around, I can think of a person and then form the part for them. I'm actually in the movie because I was stumped on who to cast. I had this idea of who she was but I couldn't think of anybody to play her and it was Mark who actually suggested that I should be the one to play that part. I balked for a second just because I was nervous about whether I could direct and act at the same time, I couldn't see how that could work. What really did it for me - because we started talking about this movie a little over a year ago – was I was asked to be in a Fly Film by my friend Megan Griffiths in the Spring, and I did it – I was the lead in that – and I had such a good time and I gained a lot of confidence, I felt that I learned a lot about acting for camera, so then I thought, okay, I can do this.
Your first film, "We Go Way Back," was more traditionally scripted. How did you move into this style?
When I was on the circuit with “We Go Way Back,” I was looking ahead to my second film and I didn't know what it was going to be a the time, it was still unformed. I had all these ideas that I wanted to experiment with and I didn't know anybody else who was experimenting with these things. The key thing that I found really frustrating on a traditional film set was that I felt that the acting was constantly being impeded with all the equipment and the brouhaha. I found it really inorganic and that was really difficult for me. I wanted to see what it would be like if you got rid of all the lights and shot everything in order and let them improvise. What I was really intimidated by was I didn't know how to put together a budget. Joe Swanberg was on the circuit with “LOL,” and the thing that was really inspiring to me was that he made “LOL” for $3000. It took him eight months. He just got his friends together for a few hours each weekend and it was so empowering to know that you could make it happen, just gather your resources, let's shoot in this apartment that we have access to and make a film that you can shoot in an apartment. That was the thing that I found endlessly inspiring. So I had access to a cabin in the woods so how about shooting in a cabin in the woods [for the film “My Effortless Brilliance”]. And it's a really nice thing to be able to pass on to students, because I teach filmmaking at the Art Institute. Don't write a script that's going to require you to be in Paris with an elephant and a hot air balloon. Think about what you have.
You mention Joe Swanberg, who is major name in the so-called mumblecore movement. And Mark Duplass has sort of become the movements poster boy. I see a kinship in the way you approach filmmaking. There's a looseness, an approach to the types of stories you tell, small crews and a specific type of creative collaboration with the actors.
I hate that word. I was on a mumbelcore panel with Mark in September of '07 at Northwest Film Forum and someone asked about the movement, implying that all these films were the same. And what I said was, "It's like saying that every film that was made for $8 million and has a script and was shot on 35mm film are somehow all the same." These films are all going to be totally different depending on who the director it. The Duplass Bros. films are really different than Joe Swanberg's films, which are really different than Aaron Katz's films, because they're all being made by completely different people. And we all have our different take. But yes, there is definitely a kinship.
What does this approach give you that traditional filmmaking models don't?
Obviously there's challenges to every filmmaking style but the truthfulness is the thing that I think is going to sell it. I was really concerned with it in this film because the set-up, the premise, is so absurd that the only way I felt that I could sell the comedy, or sell the story at all, was if you really believe every step of the way that these were real characters: you believe them as people, you believe their relationships, you recognize yourself or other people you know in the characters and the relationships to some extent and that they could actually get themselves into that kind of a bind. That they could actually live out a weekend that is as ridiculous as they do in the movie. I think we pulled it off.
