Movies: The straight story of 'Humpday'

In the hilarious movie "Humpday," two men who love women get blitzed at a bohemian party and, slurring their words, proudly announce plans to make a porno flick with themselves as its only stars.

Hmmm. Haven't we seen this tipsy bromance somewhere before? Actually, no, bro.

Hardly the hair of the dog that bit "The Hangover," "Humpday" -- celebrated at the Sundance and Cannes film festivals, and opening Friday in the Twin Cities -- is a revisionist buddy movie that puts straight guys, with all their foibles and phobias, in the sexual hot seat and keeps them there for 90 minutes. The result is funny, to be sure, but also genuinely provocative and maybe even scary, depending on your bent.

"A lot of straight men might be fearful of the premise," said Lynn Shelton, who wrote and directed "Humpday" in her hometown of Seattle. "They see two shirtless guys on the poster and wonder, 'What does that mean?' Some might shy away, which would be unfortunate since this really is a movie about -- and for -- straight guys."

Bear-hugging buds from college, yuppie Ben (Mark Duplass) and hippie Andrew (Joshua Leonard) reunite at the start of "Humpday," having followed divergent paths since graduation. Ben, newly married, is beginning to plan a family with wife Anna ("We removed the goalie and now we're doing free kicks"). For him, the idea of two heterosexual men entering a "beyond gay" porno in an alt weekly's amateur film festival "pushes boundaries, and that's what art should do."

Shelton, speaking by phone from Seattle, concurred: "A film, if it's doing its job, will often hit a little too close to home for people, making them think things that they're not prepared to think about."

Yet the filmmaker said she didn't have an explicit agenda for "Humpday" beyond the pursuit of authenticity.

Leaving it up to the actors

In fact, Shelton, to her credit, didn't even have an ending in mind. As the day of the title approaches, Ben and Andrew waffle over whether to go through with their plan to hook up on camera -- as did the actors when it came time to shoot the big scene.

"We had the whole arc of the movie on paper -- up until the hotel room scene, which was totally open-ended," Shelton recalled. "We didn't know what was going to happen. When we got to the hotel and checked in, it was 7 at night, and I said to Mark and Josh, 'You guys are fully embodied as Ben and Andrew -- you know these guys forwards and backwards. I need you to just live out this scene the way these guys actually would, in the moment.'"

Shelton, whose dual background in stage acting and photography served her documentary-style approach to "Humpday," said she's often asked whether the movie could've ended any other way.

"I say, 'Well, we were open to anything, but ultimately it couldn't have ended any other way, because [Duplass and Leonard] were being so true to their characters.' I really believe that's how it would've happened."

"I realized as I was editing the film that the key moment between Ben and Andrew is when they're in the basement of Ben's house and they're talking about their vulnerabilities, things they've never told a living soul before. They're so intimate in that scene. And that intimacy helps me understand the movie in terms of these guys' desire to connect. I think intimacy is all they really wanted in the first place."

In this, as well as the rendering of Anna (Alycia Delmore) as a woman with desires of her own, "Humpday" bends the bromance genre as authored by Judd Apatow ("The 40-Year-Old Virgin"), Todd Phillips ("The Hangover") and their pals.

"Most of the quote-unquote bromance movies are broad comedies," said Shelton. "'The Hangover,' for instance, is all about outrageous, extreme situations and characters. I saw it with my husband, who leaned over to me in the very first scene, where we meet the Ed Helms character's wife, and said, sarcastically, 'Um, I think she's supposed to be the witch.' I mean, the women in that movie are nothing even remotely like human beings. And the men are stereotypes, too. I didn't want to make a movie like that."

Hooray for "Humpday."