We’re almost 48 hours into the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, and Humpday seems to be the biggest break-out hit thus far — and according to Mike Jones at Variety, it could very well soon become the first narrative film to sell during the duration of this year’s festival. Days before the film had its hugely successful Friday afternoon premiere, we published one of our preview interviews with director Lynn Shelton. Last night, post-unveiling, I caught up with Shelton to talk about working like Mike Leigh, her cinematic interest in dudes, and why she’s glad her first two films didn’t premiere at Sundance.
In the Q&A after the premiere, you said the idea for the film came to you after Joe Swanberg went to the real Humpfest [an amateur porn film festival in Seattle, which sets the events of the film into motion]. Can you talk a little bit about what it is exactly he saw there that he reacted to?
I didn’t go with him, I have no idea. I heard how the majority of the work there is not actually porn; it’s like funny, blue humor, and then, there’s like some weird sci-fi. I think, it’s people just being kind of silly, you know? And a lot of it is very amateurish. So, it’s not usually good production values, and then occasionally there’ll be something really hardcore. But I guess there was a piece or two that was like — I actually don’t know, because I didn’t see it — but there was something in it that struck him and that he was really interested in. Not sexually, but just as a filmmaker.
But, in general, it was just funny to me that this straight guy couldn’t stop talking about this gay porn that he saw. So, my idea was actually that maybe these two friends would go to Humpfest and have a similar experience.
I tried to think of a character who might sort of feel like, “I should do that.” So, my original concept for the Josh Leonard character was this wild, open to everything, thirst for life kind of like adventurer type, who was like, “I must do everything at least once in my life before I die. We only have one life to live.” And then he goes, “I haven’t been with a man, how embarrassing,” and then sort of convincing his little buddy who he has a sort of Svengali-like hold over, like, “Yeah, we should do this.” And then they would see Hump Fesy and then get inspired to try it and have sex together. I wasn’t sure if there would be a girlfriend or a wife or anything.
So, it was really a different starting place. As soon as I pitched it to Mark [Duplass] he said, “A) I want to play the domesticated dude, and B) I think it would be a more interesting trajectory if they were trying to make a film for Hump.” And then the idea just kept evolving, evolving, evolving.
But, the true starting place was wanting to work with Mark and wanting to continue to kind of explore male relationships and the limitations of them. Like these two guys who love each other so much and who were so on the same page before, and now are trying to reach for that again. And they’re also holding up a mirror to each other, 10 years after knowing each other so well. I had this experience at a fundraiser last weekend, when all my high school buddies - who I never see - came out of the woodwork. I was looking into their faces and you have these flashbacks of what they were like at 15. And here they are and we’ll all getting old together. It can give you a whole different spin on your own life, and who you are and who you’ve become.
You mentioned your continued interest in male relationships. Obviously, this is the second movie in a row you’ve made about two male friends who have come back together after a long time. What is it that interests you about that, do you think? Especially as a woman looking at male relationships.
I might be just deluding myself, but I feel I have a certain amount of emotional intelligence. It pains me and fascinates me and breaks my heart when I see people who have a hard time with emotional intelligence, with trying to connect and not being able to. And it just so happens that guys tend to be like that. But again, the truth of the matter is that My Effortless Brilliance really started with one thing, one true inspiration point, which was Sean Nelson. I really wanted to work with that guy, and I thought it would be an interesting center point for a film. It was exactly the same thing with Mark. I wanted to work with Mark. Because they’re guys, [the films] ended up being about guys. Now, I could have made it romantic - but I don’t know, for some reason it feels like romance is kind of mined more so than in other territories.
When I watch Humpday, I feel like as much as it’s about the two guys’ relationship, I think it’s also about the marriage and just the way that grown-up relationships are. The compromises we make, and the question, is honesty always the best policy?
Exactly. Totally. And that whole component, which isn’t usually the main theme of the movie and doesn’t get brought up as much. But, the scenes with Anna, from the ovulation sex scene where she mounts him like a horse - all of those scenes I’m so proud of. I love them and I feel like they’re really vital to the way the film works. So, yeah, on paper it looks like My Effortless Brilliance and Humpday are a lot more similar than they are in real life. I really feel like they’re very, very different. [laughs] The relationships are really different, and it’s a very different scenario. In this one, they really want to reconnect. I think they really want to badly. And they’re really different personality types and different combinations, too. And then you’ve got the extra added component of Anna.
I was really surprised when you said in the Q&A at the screening that there was no script. I wouldn’t have guessed that from watching the film because it seems like it’s so much tighter than a lot of movies that are completely improvised.
I really, really, really wanted to have a strong narrative drive in this film. And I believe that you can do that without writing a script. To make it more accessible to some people, the best way I can describe it is that it’s a lot like Mike Leigh. He goes through months of improvisation and he uses the words of the actors, he doesn’t write the words himself. He lets the actors do that and he just writes it down and then rehearses the shit out of that script and makes a movie.
I do the exact same thing, except that instead of writing down those words, I write the final draft in the edit room. It really is the same. After months of developing their characters in tandem with them and already having a loose plot, as the characters are developed I’m getting the plot tighter and tighter and tighter. And I’m letting them contribute but I’m ultimately the one who says, “No, I really want this to happen.” And then by the time we get on set, we really have all the components of a script, except for the actual script. So I can’t emphasis that enough. It’s really the opposite of showing up without a script and saying, “Let’s make a movie.” You know what I mean?
It’s very different than that. And I want it to feel very different than that. I want an experience where the audience is being drawn through what’s going to happen. And I think you have to have a certain amount of shit in place before that can take place. But I want the level of naturalism to be much higher than I’m capable of writing down. I feel if I worked with a writer who had a knack for naturalistic dialogue, and worked with actors who were super-technical and could translate that and make it sound like it comes out of their own mouths, I could do that kind of work, and I’m open to it. But, right now, this process is working really well for me. I enjoy it.
I read in the L.A. Times today that you didn’t exactly know what was going to happen in the [climactic hotel room scene].
Yeah, true.
You had no idea how the film would end, basically.
No. And that was really important for us, we wanted that open-ended feeling. Like we didn’t want to know, “Oh, we’re landing here.” We wanted to be open enough that we could play every scene like anything was possible. And then when we got there, the same thing. We didn’t want the crew to know, we didn’t want the cast to know, we didn’t want anyone to know what was going to happen. So there would be this sense of immediacy and naturalism in the dynamic. This real sense of a tension in the air.
When you say that you basically scripted in the editing room, how do you work with your editor? Are you finding the story together out of what you shot?
Nat [Sanders] stared cutting when we were about halfway through the shooting, and he’d just rough out every scene. And after we finished shooting, I gave him another week and a half or so to finish doing that. And then we’d work together 10 hours a day, just like working our asses off. And it was great. For me, the most ideal editor/director relationship is that it’s a two-headed monster and you’ve got two different brains. For me, I’ve always edited my own shit and it’s so nice to have another brain there, a really sharp, awesome brain, somebody who’s even more OCD than I am, which I didn’t think was possible. I’m a really good editor too, so the two of us together were, yeah, we’re really hammering it out together. And after a while it gets very ego-less. Like who knows where the idea came from.
After the film, a woman commented that it seems like the film is anti-homophobia, but then also kind of reinforces it.
For me, it’s not a gay-themed movie at all. It’s the opposite of a gay-themed movie, it’s about being straight. But, specifically it’s about the limitations of straightness and it’s about how absurd the extremities of straightness can be, basically. I’ve always been interested in the boundaries of sexual identity. And straight guys are the ones in general, if you’re going to use a broad stroke, who are most invested in everybody knowing that they’re straight. They don’t care if the rest of the world is gay as long as everybody knows, and they know themselves, they are straight.
I just find that fascinating, because I don’t feel like that at all. And I think most women I know, both gay and bisexual, don’t feel that way. And I didn’t get into this in the film really, but I think it must have to do with the way that there’s a lot of pressure on straight guys. This whole idea of being a man and what it is to be man, and what if you’re not a man. I don’t know, all this crap is a lot of pressure that they put on themselves. But, it clearly freaks a lot of guys out, the idea that they’re secretly gay or whatever. It’s so absurd, and I wanted to show the absurdity of that.
So, for me, portraying that honestly and then poking fun at it is not homophobic. You’re showing homophobic characters, maybe — who don’t want to be homophobic, but they kind of are. But, that’s the truth of it. And you’re also pointing out simultaneously that it’s ridiculous, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
I don’t think that makes the movie homophobic. The opposite is true, in fact.
Before the movie, after Geoff Gillmore introduced you, you said that you’d been thirsting to be [at Sundance] for a long time. And I wonder if, having your first few films premiere in other festivals, and then coming to Sundance with your third film, do you feel more prepared for this experience?
****, yeah. Oh, my god, yes. First of all, if my first film had gotten into Sundance, I would have known that it was a big deal, but I really feel like in the back of my heart I would have been like, “Oh, this is what happens. You make a feature film, you get into Sundance.” And that’s this sort of level of — what’s that word? Entitlement. And taking it for granted to a certain degree.
Having been on the festival circuit for three years, having gone to an array of different sizes and different sorts of regional festivals, having a wonderful time - they’re all so different - and getting to know programmers and other filmmakers and stuff, I definitely felt prepared.
Going to SXSW, for instance, as I understand the second largest festival in the country, there was so much press and industry there and I felt like was constantly failing my film. I didn’t have anybody; it was just me. And so I tried to figure out how to house everybody, and then all my friends were doing press interviews all the time. I had no idea how to get press, I felt like I was constantly failing my film. And I just really understood why I needed a publicist, why I need a sales agent, why I needed all that in place if I was going to go to another big festival. And so it was great. It was like a training ground.
I’m couldn’t be happier that it’s my third film and it’s this film. And I also feel like I paid my dues. I feel like I deserve to be here. I don’t know, it’s just great. I definitely don’t take any of this for granted. I’m really, really just soaking it up.
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SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth