The Inspiring Lynn Shelton: A Look Back at Humpday and Identity

R.I.P Lynn Shelton and thank you for inspiring this essay.

On the latest Everyone’s a Critic podcast we paid tribute to writer-director-auteur-iconoclast, Lynn Shelton by making her 2009 movie Humpday our classic for the week. When I first saw Humpday back in 2009 I rejected it immediately as a gimmicky bit of mumblecore nonsense. I was arrogant and brash and rejecting mumblecore was part of my critical posturing, a way of establishing myself against the rise of younger, hipper critics.

I was using Humpday to define my identity as a critic who was too mature to embrace the hot new gimmick in town, low budget, talky, up its own backside, navel gazing, also known as Mumblecore. It wasn’t fair and I was definitely out of line painting an entire art-form with a brush that I could have just used on Joe Swanberg. Watching Hump Day again, more than a decade later and with the haze of recent grief surrounding it, I found myself looking at identity in a new way, a different and more mature way.

Humpday stars Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard as college buddies, Ben and Andrew. Ben has grown up since college, gotten a real job, he's gotten married, and he is starting a family. As for Andrew, he is much the same as he was in college, a free spirit, couch surfing through life, making his way as an artist and generally taking the world as it comes. These two old friends reconnect one night when Andrew comes knocking on Ben’s door at 2 Am.

Ben’s wife, Anna (Alycia Delmore), has never met Andrew despite her husband’s notable history and his status as a former best friend. Andrew wasn’t at their wedding and had existed solely in minor anecdotes until he barged into their home in the middle of the night. She’s welcoming but wary and she has no idea how wary she will remain of her husband’s long time absent former friend.

Andrew stirs up trouble on his first day in town by sneaking away and meeting some local artists and stealing Ben away to join him for drugs and drinks. Ben gave Anna a limp invitation but she said no, on the promise that he wouldn’t stay out late. Ben and Andrew end up staying out most of the night, leaving Anna hurt and upset. She has no idea the upset still to come. During the party, Ben and Andrew hear about an art contest from Andrew’s new friend, Monica (Lynn Shelton) and they are intrigued.

The contest is put on by a local alternative newspaper and the idea is that regular people make short-form, art-focused, porno movies. It’s a contest for amateur pornography but with the kink of art. Wanting to show how cool they are, Ben and Andrew begin kicking around ideas about what they could do to make their entry stand out. The idea they finally hit upon is to have sex with each other.

The novelty of this is that they are both straight and have not notable homosexuality in their past. Their two straight dudes who are going to have sex with each other. That’s the entirety of the idea. At first, it appears to be drunken bravado, Ben wanting to seem young and open minded and Andrew living his gimmick as the worldly wise, up for anything, hippy. Throughout the rest of the story however, both men must confront how they see themselves and how they feel others see them and confront some uncomfortable truths about their identities.

You could, as I did over a decade ago, dismiss this as a ‘what would you do(?)’ gimmick premise. If you are unwilling to look closer and examine the elements in play, you could simply dismiss Humpday as a cultural flash in the pan, an attempt to garner mainstream attention with an eye-catching idea that is all pretension and no depth. That’s taking the easy way out and it’s not unlike what the characters in the movie are going through themselves. Do they actually want to examine this idea or are they being kinky for the sake posturing with kink.

In watching Humpday again I found myself in a different mindset. Instead of being closed minded and dismissive I began to examine myself and my attitudes. I began to look inward at how I saw myself and how I liked to be perceived by people. I rejected the genre of mumblecore as a statement on my critical good taste and not on the merits of the movie. That’s hard to admit but it happened.

Similarly, the characters of Humpday see themselves in a specific way that the rest of the world does not see. For Ben, his idea of himself is that of an open minded artsy type always open to new experiences. The world sees an office drone and husband, soon to be father with the traits inherent to those surface observations. The idea of having sex with Andrew for the contest is tied deeply to the identity he wishes he had.

The same goes for Andrew who, in a wonderful scene, finds himself shaken after running away from a complex sexual encounter with two women. It turns out, Andrew may not be as open minded as he thinks he is and this shakes his foundation. Having sex with Ben is a connection to who he has always believed himself to be, an iconoclast, a seeker, a thrillist. If he can’t get over sexual hang ups then who is he really?

A second viewing of Humpday, for me, revealed myself, my insecurities, my idea of myself. Even in this review, I try to disown this notion of myself by saying it was years ago and I am more open and mature now but is that real or is that another posture? Like Ben and Andrew, no one thing is right or wrong about how you see me and how I see myself. It’s all true and it’s all false and I am this gray area of a person encompassing many traits, deeply affected by the circumstance of the moment.

Ben and Andrew could be the people they think they are. If indeed they went ahead and had sex with each other it might just prove they are the person they think they want to be. Instead, they find out that ideas about your identity aren't so easy to define. Life is lived in the gray areas. It's lived in moments and the self is defined by a great deal more than your idea of yourself or how others see you.

So who do you think you are?