Interview

Experimental-turned-narrative filmmaker Lynn Shelton makes the films she wants to make with the people she wants to make them with. A Seattle native who studied acting, painting, and photography, Lynn has spent the last decade with experimental and documentary filmmaking. In her most recent two films—My Effortless Brilliance, a drama about a novelist trying to mend a friendship with his oldest friend; and her latest, Humpday, a bromantic comedy set in Seattle about two best friends who resolve to film themselves having sex for a local porn festival—Shelton holds on to her experimental roots and instead of a script, uses a sketched out story where the actors improvise the dialogue.


ADAM SHULMAN: So tell me about the inception of Humpday. You approach your films in a very particular way.

LYNN SHELTON: Well, I started to fantasize about having a completely actor-centered set and thinking about how I would achieve that. I decided to start with a person I wanted to work with and I custom built a character just for them and invite them into that process so it would be a really easy, natural thing. With Humpday, that was Mark Duplass, who plays Ben. He was the starting point.

AS: He's incredible in the film.

LS: Isn't he? He's so great. After Mark I quickly put the list of other things into place: cutting it down to the bare number of people that you need to have on set; taking away most of the equipment; really trying to supplement natural light instead of having a lot of artificial light; having two cameras; and then instead of a traditional script, having a structured outline so that the actors are given the freedom to come up with the actual words.

AS: At one point, Ben and Andrew (Mark Duplass and Josh Leonard) are in a closet—or a basement, although it feels like a closet—and Andrew says he feels like a fraud because he has never finished anything. I think will speak to a lot of people who watch this film. I know so many people feel like Andrew does. Sometimes you start something, a project, a relationship, whatever it might be, but you just don't know how to carry it through to the end.

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