Humpday

During the '80s - back in my youthful, halcyon days of experimentation and rosy cheeked capering - my friends and I used to play a game called "Gun to Your Head". It was nothing as dangerous or fatal as Russian roulette but simply a hypothetical question we used to exorcise the demons of our latent homosexuality.

It essentially went like this - if you had a gun to your head and were forced to perform homosexual acts, who would you choose to do them with?

My pat answers were:

1.) David Bowie - due to his obvious androgyny (seemed to take the sting out of it a little).

2.) Fabio - because he was the best looking guy in the entire world and looked a bit like a chick. I also heard he was hung like a light switch so the rectal damage I would suffer would be minimized. I was, above all things, a pragmatic youngster.

And

3.) Buddy Hackett - just to tear that delicious ass up.

My female friends had it harder of course. What with possibly picking a woman who might contradict their constant gripes about unattainable and unfair standards of beauty and then having to deal with nipple clamps, giant dual-penetrating three foot dildos and being fisted in every conceivable orifice on their bodies. That is what lesbians get up to, right?

It was a fascinating experiment and revealed much about our flowering sexuality. Curious as it was that we always chose celebrities and not anyone in our immediate social circles. No one was that brave.

I mention this only to segue into a review of Lynn Shelton's Humpday. A film where the two main characters take a similar experiment with homosexuality to a more daring and severe end.

The premise of Humpday is horseshit. A "buy in" that you have to suck like a sailor's cock to remotely make the film work. But, if teheeing at bromance or gargling paste is your thing...

It's a pretty fun movie.

Most admirable is the easy and natural performances of the three leads (Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard and Alycia Delmore). You will recognize all of the bullshit foibles here that you go through with spouses, old friends and your own asshole desires to stay young and vital when your prime is way past.

There is also that false notion that at 30+ years of age you still have anything left to say in a rebellious, socially reforming sense.

Our two fellas (college pals) are struggling with their increasing irrelevance and faded glory. One (Leonard) is a pseudo-hip Kerouac "traveler not a tourist" type who finds his own posing a sham and the other (Duplass) is a seemingly happy, recently married joe with designs on starting a family.

Leonard drops in on Duplass and his wife unexpectedly after one of his foreign adventures. The boys end up re-bonding at a party in some hipsters' home (in Seattle) where they learn of an amateur porn film festival that takes submissions from the general public. In a stoned, drunken bout of one-upmanship, the two chums dare each other into making (and starring in) a homosexual video for "art's sake".

They have second thoughts upon sobriety the next morning.

But they let the dare continue through their bizarre competitive natures and begin to believe in the "artistic statement" nonsense they are both peddling. All to mask the grim truth that they are not such good friends any longer, are not happy with their lives and simply cannot admit to it.       

Regardless, they press ahead with the film. Going so far as to reveal the experiment (mistakenly) to the missus (Delmore), buying a video cam and renting a hotel room.

The rest is a study in macho bravado, bargaining, denial, remorse, daring, realization and total gayness.

It is difficult to watch in a very good way. And for the honest among us, who can concede to having thought about sexual alternatives (or perhaps acted upon them), the scenario is quite real and well played.

Just don't recommend it to a heterosexual, same-sex friend and invite them over to watch it. It's a recipe for disaster. Best go this one alone.   

Now, where's Buddy Hackett? I've got an issue to bury.