Seriously Funny Matters

Lynn Shelton Carves herself a Niche with Humpday

by Scott Driscoll

Picture a young married couple in bed, laughing. It’s late. They lose interest in sex and agree it’s time for sleep. The doorbell rings. The husband gets up to see who’s disturbing them. It’s a bearded long lost friend, just back from Mexico. It’s the stranger at the door routine, but with a twist. The bohemian friend, who needs a place to stay, doesn’t mesh with the wife’s plans to get pregnant and start a family.

Cut to the interior of a low-budget hotel room. The friends convene to produce an unorthodox art video. Art, that is, with a porn theme. What’s unusual is that the porn is to involve two heterosexual friends. Is this a nod to the literary critic Leslie Fiedler’s assertion that asexual homoerotic passion between two males represents our purest manifestation of love? Or, will they follow through and actually have sex?

The story arc that leads from that doorbell ring to the hotel tryst is Humpday. And Humpday, which will probably be marketed as a romantic comedy, is proving to be Seattle director and writer Lynn Shelton’s breakout film.

Premiered in January 2009 at Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, the country’s leading showcase for independent films, showcased at the centerpiece gala in Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), and picked up for distribution by Magnolia Pictures, Humpday is slated to appear in theaters sometime in summer 2009. Shelton’s third narrative feature film, Humpday may actually pay dividends to the cast and crew, who worked for minimal pay, but who accepted percentage points of the take in lieu of industry salaries. Meanwhile, Shelton’s low-budget film has drawn interest from Los Angeles. Shelton won the 2009 Someone to Watch Award, presented by Hollywood’s Film Independent’s Spirit Awards, and in May won the Seattle Mayor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film, presented by the Mayor’s Office of Film and Music. She is currently reading scripts sent to her by her new agent in L.A.

Shelton’s success with her latest film reflects an industry in Washington and Seattle that is healthy and growing. “Since the state incentive came on line in February 2007,” says Amy Dee, executive director of Washington Filmworks, “we’ve seen exponential growth, especially in Seattle. This year [2009] the state legislature took the incentive from 20% to a 30% return, a big jump that really makes a difference.”

Filmmakers in Washington State who can show expenses surpassing the minimum of $500,000 are invited to apply for a post-filming 30% return, or rebate. In 2007 Washington offered $1.5 million in funding assistance to filmmakers. That figure more than doubled to $3.5 million in 2008, and Dee projects that in 2009 the state will “give back” as much as $8 million.

Last year, in 2008 according to Dee, Seattle was rated by MovieMaker Magazine to be among the top ten cities in the U.S. for independent filmmaking. Eight narrative features shown at SIFF were Washington based in terms of money spent on local production services and talent as well as location. They are: Humpday directed by Lynn Shelton; Finding Bliss directed by Julie Davis; World’s Greatest Dad directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait but filmed and crewed entirely in Seattle; The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle directed by David Russo; True Adolescents, directed by Craig Johnson; The Spy and the Sparrow directed by Garrett Bennett, and Zombies of Mass Destruction directed by Kevin Hamedani.

Why did Humpday hit for Shelton?

“I yearned for a high level of naturalism,” says Shelton. “I shot it with handheld cameras and a minimal crew on set, and the scenes were shot in sequence as much as possible to make it easier for the actors to have a natural feel.” By using two cameras and minimal lighting (one light and two reflectors for most shots), she was able to help the actors maintain their sense of continuity, eliminating the long wait in between shots that lots of lighting demands. Even with the minimal use of lights, Humpday is less experimental looking than her earlier films.

My Effortless Brilliance was shot using only two handheld cameras and natural lighting, but Brilliance has more of a bouncy, gritty, cinema verité documentary feel than Humpday. Brilliance premiered in 2008 at the country’s number two independent film showcase, the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, and will be distributed by IFC Entertainment. Also a “buddy” story, Brilliance follows two re-united male friends into the woods of Eastern Washington on a late night hunt for an elusive cougar.

Great filmmaking, Shelton demonstrates, can be done on a low budget. She won’t say what filming Humpday cost; she is hesitant to disclose the dollar amount she’s spent on projects partly because it’s difficult to assess given the amount she’s received in-kind donations. Major resources were donated, such as a place to stay for the lead actor, Mark Duplass, locations and food for the cast. Costs that couldn’t be donated were offset by grants from “4 Culture” from King County, “City Artists” from the mayor’s office of arts and cultural affairs, and not-for-profit status conferred by Northwest Film Forum.
She received a smattering of funds from private benefactors.

The low cost of production was a “happy side-effect” rather than something that was planned. The entire Humpday shoot was done in ten days in an effort to keep the cast and crew moving together seamlessly together through the arc of the narrative. A standard Hollywood film takes 28 days to shoot.
Brilliance was filmed in seven and a half days, again with most resources donated by friends and family. “If you’re uncle owns a cool pick-up truck, and you can borrow it, you try to work that into the script,” she says. She doesn’t want emerging filmmakers to be stymied by lack of funds or difficulty securing grants. Her first narrative feature, We Go Way Back, is the story of a young stage actor whose goal seems to be to please the men in her life. It premiered in 2006 at Park City’s alternative film festival, Slamdance, where it won the Grand Jury Award for the best narrative feature and the best cinematography.

A glance at the 43 year old’s filmography bio—experimental and documentary films dating back to 1994 followed by music videos—suggests a life devoted to making films. That wasn’t always the case. Her first love was acting; she was addicted to feeling the “electricity between the actor and audience.”

After studying theater in college and moving from Seattle to NY for auditions, Shelton landed a series of roles in one-act plays that were “misogynistic, women were either raped or murdered.” She was fast on her way to becoming a “theater slut.”

Being on stage suddenly seemed “vain.” She enrolled in the New York School of Visual Arts in the MFA Photography Program. It was there that she discovered film.

“Video allowed me to really explode with creativity,” and gave her a marketable skill. “I used a digital program to edit and got work in New York editing corporate commercial stuff.” When it was time to start a family, she and her husband moved back to Seattle, where she got work editing her first film, Measure, a dance film showcasing a dance-team duo, “33 Fainting Spells.”

“I edited that film for free, but it showed at a lot of 35 mm film festivals, and then people sought me out to edit feature films. That’s the nice thing about working in Seattle– you have opportunities like that.”

Shelton admits that she was “harboring a secret desire to direct.” That chance came with We Go Way Back. The now defunct Seattle non-profit The Film Company raised enough money to produce five feature films a year, and impressed with Shelton’s editing on earlier films, The Film Company commissioned her to do a feature-length narrative film (minimum 75 minutes) that would employ a Hollywood-style set with a big crew, fixed cameras, staged lighting, and lines that had to be memorized.

“When they came to me with the idea I had no story. That was okay. They thought you’d write differently if you knew the film would get made.” Within five weeks she had a script, and within nine months, using The Film Company’s cast and crew, she shipped her film to Sundance and Slamdance. She was 39 at the time.

Shot mainly in Seattle, We Go Way Back is a story about a disillusioned adult looking back to her pre-adolescent self to see what went wrong. Protagonist Kate, played by Amber Hubert, listens to the voice-over of her younger self, 13-year-old Katie, played by Maggie Brown. Katie ‘talks’ to Kate in letters written from an earlier time. Kate spends time on the couch drinking, screwing, and pondering why the harder she works to please the men in her life, the less they seem to care for or understand her. Kate becomes the theater slut Shelton worried about becoming.

Kate lands the lead role in Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. Told by the director that she needs to speak the lines in Norwegian, she hires a coach and learns Norwegian. Despite the effort, the director decides it’s just not working. What if, he suggests, Hedda were taller? Maybe Kate could wear stilts?

Shelton claims she didn’t intend for men in the film to seem evil. “They certainly don’t see themselves as rapists” or users. But the film refers to autobiographical material. As a young woman Shelton was date raped by a friend. “I used to get really angry. But now I realize I had been complicit. So this movie is about exploring her [Kate’s] passivity. It’s a cautionary tale.”

Aside from a two-week run at Seattle’s Varsity Theater, We Go Way Back never got distributed. The reaction from women who’ve seen the film, she claims, made it worthwhile. “They say when they see it they’re seeing themselves.”

That big-budget film taught Shelton what she didn’t want. “Everything is shot out of sequence to keep the number of filming days as short as possible. The actors are considered last.” Filming Brilliance, she “slashed the number of people on set to the minimum– a director of photography, a sound guy, me the director, and occasionally a second camera operator.” Working this way made it possible to get multiple angles without laboriously resetting lights and cameras. “It allowed me to give the actors a lot more freedom to develop their roles.”

Shelton learned she could achieve the naturalism she sought by developing the script with the leading actors. The lead role in Brilliance, a writer in his late 20s whose pride took a hit when his second book bombed and who wants to rekindle an old friendship, was developed as a collaboration between Shelton and actor Sean Nelson, who sang in a band and was at the time also writing for Seattle’s free weekly alternative publication, The Stranger.

“I do like structure, though,” notes Shelton. “I dislike too much improvising on screen. I have a thorough outline of each scene, the meat of it, and how it feeds into the next scene. We talk a lot about character backstory. My actors know who they are when I let them talk.” She adds, “I let them go for 20 or 30 minutes, and in the editing room, cut it down to the 5 minutes I need. My goal is to make it seem like we’re a fly on the wall in these peoples’ lives.”

The story is set mainly at a cabin in the woods somewhere east of the Cascades. The friend, played by Basil Harris, has moved out to the cabin. It’s been two years since the friends have seen each other. That night in the cabin there’s a lot of drinking. Another friend, played by Calvin Reeder, shows up with a rifle, and Calvin wants to go cougar hunting. The action pushes to a dramatic climax that night, fading into early morning, when, fed up with Sean’s carping, Calvin raises the rifle, points it, and tells Sean to shut up.

How did this become Humpday?

“I pitched Mark [Duplass] the idea, and then let Mark develop his own character. I cast around him. I had a script in place, no dialogue. That was improvised by talking with the actors.”

There’s Ben, played by Duplass, who chooses to marry the conventional Anna, played by Alycia Delmore. Then there’s Andrew (Joshua Leonard), the would-be artist with wanderlust who has yet to complete a project but who’s having fun in an X-rated Huck Finn sort of way—basically by refusing to grow up and get serious.

Mix those extremes together and what do you get? Temptation. A Dionysian party at a friend’s apartment, Ben stripping to his tee-shirt to show he can get down, too. And, a challenge. Andrew throws down the gauntlet. “You’re all locked up and can’t do porn,” which, after more banter, incites Ben to retort, “Okay, I’m renting a hotel room, Sunday night. And I’m getting the equipment.”

From there the tension mounts. There’s Anna to consider, believably so, but at its heart, the story is about the halves that are at war in so many of us: the rational, disciplined Apollonian side that wants a conventional slice of the American Pie, versus the Dionysian side that wants to indulge and take pleasure to an ecstatic extreme. And it’s about the downside of one-upmanship.

So why does Humpday work? Maybe it comes down to this: Shelton’s talent for drawing fly-on-the-wall naturalistic behavior out of her actors; an emerging ability to edit scenes in a way that keeps narrative tension mounting; and a story that taps into themes in which we all have a stake. Bake that together and you serve a film that keeps viewers, this viewer at least, wanting more.

Scott Driscoll is a Seattle-based free-lance writer and teacher.