Humpday is one of those movies that’s admittedly high-concept but could’ve easily just been plain stupid.
In fact, a tale about two heterosexual pals who make a drunken pact to shoot an “artistic” porn film starring themselves having sex, you could be forgiven for thinking the quirky premise might be a rejected Adam Sandler treatment. Luckily, it’s definitely not that.
“It was important not to make it a farce,” insisted Josh Leonard who stars as a bohemian who stumbles back into his married buddy’s life with the provocative art project.
“There’s certainly an audience for (farce comedies) but then there’s another kind of humour that comes out of putting a pretty close microscope on the moronic ways in which we, as fumbling humans walking around the planet, try to circumvent our own fallibility and that’s what we wanted to do with this movie.”
“We joked a lot about how if girls were going to do something like this, they’d just talk it out and be done with it,” added co-star Alycia Delmore. “(Some men) just paint themselves into corners and refuse to get out.”
Directed by Lynn Shelton, Humpday (in theatres next Friday) picked up the Special Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and quickly gained a devoted following. It’s not surprising; driven by the character’s own stubborn one-upmanship, the film cleverly pushes the envelope by exploring the frailties of the male ego only touched on in the recent rise of such hit “guy-comedy” hits as Role Models and The Hangover.
“Guys in 2009 are trying to get over all of the bad information that we’ve grown up with over generations about what a man’s supposed to be, what a man’s supposed to do and how much you’re allowed to express your feelings,” said Leonard explaining why guy-comedies are becoming so popular in Hollywood. “It’s got us all a little bit confused.”
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