Ben and Andrew Make a Porno
Issue #40
Lynn Shelton reinvents the buddy movie
By Rebecca Shore
Published: June 1st, 2009 | 3:11pm
When filmmaker Lynn Shelton, 43, conceptualized her third feature film, she was thinking about that pesky “need to try everything once.” In the case of Humpday, which earned her a spot in the dramatic competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, that need was the burden of a typical straight guy, strangely compelled by a gay porn film.
In Humpday, two friends reunite when one shows up unexpectedly on the other’s doorstep. Despite the wildly differing paths they’ve taken since graduating — Ben (Mark Duplass) is a family guy with an expectant wife and Andrew (Joshua Leonard) is a vagabond artist — they find themselves making a drunken agreement to do the scariest possible thing they can imagine: the two straight guys will make a porn movie — together — to enter in a film festival.
VZ: Where did you come up with the porn idea?
LS: My friend went to the actual amateur film festival in Seattle called “Hump” and he couldn’t stop talking about the gay porn he’d seen. He’s a straight guy and it was the first time he’d ever watched it, and he was completely compelled. He kept saying, ‘You know, I wasn’t turned on by it but it was so fascinating to me, it was almost sculptural — I think I might have to make a gay porn!’ I found it really funny how mesmerized and also how self-conscious he was about the fact that he was so mesmerized by it. I was thinking about a straight guy who feels the need to try everything once.”
VZ: Even though it’s a crazy concept, the way both characters struggle to figure themselves out is poignant. Is this a theme you’re interested in?
LS: I’m interested in how we see ourselves and how that can shift over time. In my first feature film, We Go Way Back, the two main characters are the same person at two different ages and they’re totally different. I was getting to my late 30s at the time and seeing all these different selves that I’ve been. It’s two people and these two lifetimes and it was just so fascinating to me. In Humpday, Ben is straddling two selves. He is confronted by his past when Andrew unexpectedly shows up on his doorstep and it’s as if he’s got this mirror being held up to him.
VZ: Between Humpday and 2008’s My Effortless Brilliance you seem to trend toward making films about male relationships. Why is that?
LS: I think issues of sense of self and identity crises are universal. But also, I heard an interview with someone who was part of an interracial comedy duo and he suggested that the subculture always knows more about the dominant culture than the dominant culture knows about the subculture. So blacks know more about whites than whites know about blacks. Gays know more about straights. And women know more about men. It’s a broad stroke, but I think there’s truth in that.
VZ: The dialogue in your films is very realistic. How do you achieve that?
LS: I don’t use a traditional script. Making art has become all about relationships for me. I start with people I want to work with and I custom design characters for them. Early on, I invite the actors to collaborate so they can help develop their own characters. As we get to know the characters, we can start to figure out more fully what’s going to happen to them and how they’re going to interact. We actually didn’t even know what would happen at the end of the movie until we shot it. The final draft of the script never comes together on paper, but in the edit room.
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