When the director Lynn Shelton, after two and a half months of editing, finally submitted her chatty comedy Humpday to the Sundance Film Festival this year, she had a single confident thought: “This is a f***ing good film. If I don’t get in, it means they’re idiots.”
Not only did the movie get in, but it also won the Special Jury Prize, became the darling of the festival and was subsequently fêted four months later at Cannes, where it was the subject of a seven-minute standing ovation. “I was wobbling there in a pink satin cocktail dress and huge stilettos, trying to be gracious, feeling like Marilyn Monroe,” the 43-year-old Shelton says today. “It was insane.”
And yet Humpday simply should not work. This neurotic comedy is burdened with a premise that would make seasoned studio heads wince. Ben, a newly married traffic planner and self-described “domesticated dude”, is paid a surprise visit by former best friend, the footloose, restless Andrew. The pair slowly reignite a complex and combative friendship, one that is eventually charged by an impulsive drunken decision at a party to enter an amateur porn festival with a video ... of them having sex. The film will be “art” and will prove to the wider world that, though they may be ageing, Ben and Andrew are still liberated wildcards at heart. “It’s beyond gay!” they announce proudly as they conceive their knuckleheaded scheme. When the hangovers clear, however, these two exceedingly straight men refuse to back away from the challenge. Much mirth, naturally, ensues.
That an inventive, original movie is born from this most unlikely of premises is impressive. That it manages to avoid the derivative “bromance” clich?s of Judd Apatow movies (see Superbad, Pineapple Express) is equally so. But that it unfolds with beautifully observed analyses of male friendship and some of the most hysterically funny set pieces of any movie this year is utterly unexpected, and testament to the talents of the lead actors, Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard, and the director, Shelton, who have somehow transformed a cringe-worthy concept into peerless screen comedy.
“Neither Mark nor Joshua thought it was possible to take this ridiculous premise and do it in a believable way,” says Shelton, a Seattle-based film-maker. The idea for the film came from a conversation with Duplass, when the pair were discussing Seattle’s annual festival of home-made porn, Humpfest! “The idea was to take two characters that you understand and put them into a situation that is outside their comfort zone. And it’s hard to think of a more uncomfortable situation in which to place two straight guys than this one.”
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Shelton recruited Duplass, a 32-year-old veteran of the indie scene, to play the as yet unformulated role of Ben. Duplass, in turn, invited Leonard, a 34-year-old fellow actor (The Blair Witch Project), to play Andrew.
“We bounced ideas off each other for months,” Leonard says. “It was all about taking this really stupid idea and seeing if we could make an audience believe that it could really happen.”
The movie was shot in Seattle for less than $500,000 over ten short but intensive days. The script was a 15-page outline of a story without a word of dialogue. Shot in sequence, everything spoken on screen was improvised. The latter is central to the movie’s authenticity, Shelton says, explaining how she let Duplass and Leonard roam freely with indulgent 45-minute takes on scenes that ended up being edited to only minutes long.
Shelton says she could tell early on that the results were intriguing. Duplass and Leonard blurred the lines between character and self (“Ben is like me two years ago,” Duplass confesses), and seemed to flop from scene to scene with an ease that served plot and credibility equally well. The story pitches them from the late-night party through a scene in which Ben attempts to ask his wife, Anna (Alycia Delmore), for her permission to make the film, to the climactic shoot in an anonymous motel room, the actors all the while filling the blank narrative spaces with ingenious character observations and a withering sense of unspoken tension. “My, what a life you’ve lived my friend,” says Ben, early on, ostensibly complimenting Andrew’s carefree ways.
Shelton refused to write a conclusion for the film, instead leaving the content of the final motel scene (the last scene on the schedule) entirely up to the actors. “It was the one scene that we didn’t discuss,” Duplass says. “We said we’re going to check in at 7pm and check out at 7am, and we’re going to obey our characters, but we had no idea what was going to happen in that room.” Leonard adds: “It was exciting, but also a little bit scary. What you see on screen with Mark is my first ever man-kiss. Certainly couching it all as art made it safe for me to explore, but I would stop short of saying it was enjoyable.” Shelton is keen for us not to discuss what actually happens, but will assure any prospective viewer that they “left all [their] preconceptions at the door”.
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Since its subsequent Cannes hoopla, Humpday has become a boon to the careers of Leonard and Duplass — Leonard is in a new TV show, Hung, and Duplass is in the new Ben Stiller movie, Greenberg. Shelton, meanwhile, has been fielding offers from Hollywood heavy-hitters, including, ironically, Apatow’s production team, which offered her a bromance of her own to direct. She warns, however, that she is “not interested in regurgitating what’s already been done”. Meanwhile, she is happy to grapple with the essence of Humpday’s success. “It’s because it has real characters based on real interactions,” she says, contemplating the absurdity of such a wild idea running headlong into reality. “It’s recognisable to everyone. And if it’s funny, it’s only funny because it’s true.”
Humpday is out nationwide on Dec 18