{"id":3671,"date":"2009-07-19T19:13:20","date_gmt":"2009-07-20T00:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=3671"},"modified":"2011-11-09T20:32:45","modified_gmt":"2011-11-10T00:32:45","slug":"an-interview-with-lynn-shelton-the-director-of-humpday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=3671","title":{"rendered":"An interview with Lynn Shelton, the director of Humpday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lynnshelton\"Lynn Shelton, the director of Humpday (<\/em>review and podcast here<\/span><\/a>), was supporting her movie and I got a chance to pester her in person.<\/p>\n

Humpday<\/em> is about two friends from college, now older. Ben (played by one of the credited pioneers of the Mumblecore movement, writer\/director of The Puffy Chair <\/em>and Baghead<\/em>, Mark Duplass), is domesticated, and Andrew (played by The Blair Witch Project<\/em>‘<\/span><\/a>s Joshua Leonard) is bohemian (in his mind). Both, while drunk at a party, challenge each other to star in an “arty” gay porn together. Ben has to convince his sensible and smart wife Anna that he needs to go forward with the movie before they start a family, even though Ben doesn’t really believe that. He refuses to back out of the porn movie out of a sense of macho honor, while trying to goad Andrew (who had shown up unnanounced on Ben and Anna’s door just a few days before) into quitting instead.\u00a0 The review of the movie itself will be posted on July 31st, the local release date. As for the filmmaker herself, Shelton works out of Seattle and has had two features produced before Humpday<\/em> — My Effortless Brilliance<\/em><\/span><\/a> and We Go Way Back<\/em>. They have struggled to find distribution. But starting August 13th<\/sup>, IFC will begin airing My Effortless Brilliance<\/em> and Shelton has just bought back the rights to We Go Way Back<\/em> and hopes to have it out soon.<\/p>\n

\"Humpdayposter\"AL<\/strong>: Right after seeing Humpday<\/em>, I noticed the poster in the lobby, and it could not have been more off-putting and misleading. It wasn\u2019t because they were both bare-chested; it just suggests that it\u2019s a movie about bears [the gay subculture of hairy, heavy men].<\/p>\n

LS:<\/strong> The whole thing about the distributors and the whole experience of speaking to the distributors at Sundance [where the distributor, Magnolia, purchased Humpday<\/em>], because, I was really happy that we went with Magnolia, because Magnolia had this vision that the film was a little film that — with the right marketing — could expand into cineplexes, and into the mall\u2026 If it was done right. The ironic thing is that the one line pitch of the movie is so Farrelly-brothers-raunchy sounding. And people who had<\/em> to see the film came up to me and said \u201cI never would have seen the film because the description was so off-putting and I loved it so much.\u201d And my worry is, “How do we get those people to come?” And, I think, word-of-mouth and critical review will have a huge impact, and those people will find themselves there. Hopefully, their instinct — the way the poster is — will actually\u2026. Because we have had a lot of positive feedback that people think [the poster is] funny and intriguing. But it\u2019s always a guessing game. But it\u2019s hard to figure out how to market it.<\/p>\n

AL<\/strong>: But the poster is so <\/em>misleading… But I don\u2019t decide the marketing.<\/p>\n

\"humpday4\"LS<\/strong>: Well I didn\u2019t either, quite frankly\u2026 I was never interested in making a broad farce, I was interested in taking this ridiculous premise and treat it in a believable way. So we all took the challenge of it; we were sort of on high alert for false notes, especially on set. We were constantly asking, \u201cDo we buy this? Will people buy this?\u201d Truthfully, the whole thing was scripted, not traditionally. But there was a very strict outline. But the words were all improvised. I told them what the emotional map of each scene has to be and we all were on the same page about that, because I wanted the naturalism of the improv. But the structure of a, kind of, classic movie-going experience, where you\u2019re like \u201cwhat\u2019s gonna happen next\u201d at the end of every scene\u2026 But when we got to that last scene, we\u2019d shot the whole film in sequence. So everything had been shot, and I said, \u201cyou guys really know who Andrew and Ben are at this point, and I need for you to live this scene out as honestly as you can as these two guys.\u201d When people say, \u201ccould it have ended a different way?\u201d Well we were open to anything that was going to unfold. But that was what had<\/em> to happen , because they were being true to the characters.<\/p>\n

\"Humpday3\"AL<\/strong>: Considering that Joshua Leonard looks like Owen Wilson, was there ever any impulse to call the movie You, Me, and Duplass<\/em> ?<\/p>\n

LS<\/strong>: [laughs] Ummm. No\u2026[big laugh] We were a month away from shooting, and I found about [You, Me, and Dupree<\/em>] and I had to make sure I wasn\u2019t remaking this movie. And the very beginning, I was like, \u201cOh, shit.\u201d And then very quickly, I was like, \u201cNo sweat.\u201d It\u2019s a very different movie. Luckily.<\/p>\n

AL<\/strong>: You shot on video and without a script, did you ever have the instinct to get Lars Von Trier\u2019s approval and shoot it Dogme 95?<\/p>\n

LS<\/strong>: I love Dogme and I think it\u2019s pretty cool, but I have no interest in making a strictly Dogme film. I\u2019d rather steal elements that I like about Dogme. I think the whole scaled down idea really works, it really helps put people at ease and create the level of naturalism that I really love.<\/p>\n

AL<\/strong>: Do you think that the fact that Hollywood is now shooting big budget movies like Public Enemies<\/span><\/a> <\/em>on intentionally lower grade video will help or hurt you? Like your movies won\u2019t seem so unique?<\/p>\n

\"humpday2\"LS<\/strong>: For me, I\u2019m a big proponent of the marriage of form and function. If you look at a film like 28 Days Later<\/em>, that the fact that was shot on video didn\u2019t have anything to do with budget. Just like with Public Enemies<\/em> — clearly there was an aesthetic choice. And when you shoot on video, you\u2019re trying to inform the dramatic action by choosing that medium. I think it\u2019s really a case-by-case basis. Video was right for [Humpday]<\/em> but it was also practical, because I wanted to be able to keep the camera on for 20 or 30 minutes at a time\u2026 I love film. I hope be able to shoot with film. But at some point, not far from now, no one<\/em> is going to be shooting on film. It\u2019s going to be a difference between, “Are you shooting on the Red or some high end digital camera that looks like film, or are you shooting on some lower resolution version?”<\/p>\n

AL<\/strong>: You\u2019ve said in the past that you don\u2019t like the term Mumblecore, and DIY is not necessarily flattering either.<\/p>\n

LS<\/strong>: It bothers me less though. There\u2019s something inherent about Mumblecore that\u2019s just reductive\u2026 What would I call it instead?<\/p>\n

AL<\/strong>: Like mid-20\u2019s white guys suffering from post-collegiate ennui who, even though they don\u2019t surf, all call each other dude — and aren’t Noah Baumbach?<\/p>\n

\"humpday5\"LS<\/strong>: Except I can\u2019t be grouped in that anymore, if you call it that. That\u2019s the thing, if you look at the original articles about Mumblecore, I don\u2019t match any of those items. If you define the movement by people putting their own films together, using improvisation in some form or another and a lot of hand-held cameras or cinema-verite style, then I would fit. But I certainly don\u2019t fit the standard definition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lynn Shelton, the director of Humpday (review and podcast here), was supporting her movie and I got a chance to pester her in person. Humpday is about two friends from college, now older. Ben (played by one of the credited pioneers of the Mumblecore movement, writer\/director of The Puffy Chair and Baghead, Mark Duplass), is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4883,5188,4880,4876,4877,1708,784,4884,384,4885,585,4176,55,277,667,4871,4887,3615,1625,2013,53,1030,882,283,1013,4870,3412,4878,4474,2419,4600,4872,1031,3349,625,4874,4889,4882,5189,2133,4813,4888,4886,4879,4875,4873,4881],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3671"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}