Humpday

Humpday is a 2009 American mumblecore comedy-drama film directed, produced, and written by Lynn Shelton and starring Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard, and Alycia Delmore. It premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. International distribution rights were purchased by Magnolia Pictures for a mid-six figure sum. The film opened in New York City in a limited release on July 10, 2009. The story line follows two male heterosexual best friends, Ben and Andrew. The plot line centers around a "mutual dare" that is introduced at a party, which involves the two main characters engaging in a pornographic film together. The film was shot on-location in Washington state around Seattle from September 2008 to January 2009, and much of the dialogue for the film was improvised. Humpday received positive critical reception and won the Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Independence at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, among other awards. In 2012, a remake in French entitled Do Not Disturb was released. Plot In Seattle during the late-2000s, two heterosexual male friends Ben and Andrew meet after having not seen each other for 10 years. During a party, they find themselves locked in a "mutual dare" situation engaging to make a gay pornographic film, including anal sex, as an "art project" between two straight guys and submit it to the HUMP! film festival, an annual amateur pornography contest put on by the underground newspaper The Stranger. They do not decide yet who will penetrate whom. Ben tells Andrew that he will discuss the project with his wife Anna, an otherwise introverted record store clerk at Easy Street Records. As Ben begins to describe the project to Anna, she reacts skeptically at the mere mention of amateur pornography. Ben finds himself lying to Anna; he talks about the project with only vague detail, telling her that he will likely act as a behind-the-scenes assistant to the hypothetical film crew.