Humpday Movie Blurb by Shale July 24, 2009 In the time frame today after work I was going to see The Ugly Truth, a formulaic romantic comedy. Also in that same time-frame was Humpday. While I don't usually read reviews before seeing movies, our local reviewer, Rene Rodriguez with The Miami Herald, gave Humpday three stars out of four and totally panned the other in the headline "Truth is, it's pretty ugly" and gave it no stars. So, I decided to see Humpday, which may have more appeal to normal ppl than to us jaded products of the sexual revolution. It was mostly a character study of two best friends in college and the changes in their lives as they approach middle age. We open with married couple Ben (Mark Duplass) and Anna (Alycia Delmore) in bed agreeing, as long-married couples do, that they are both too tired to have sex that night. We see the open togetherness that comes with familiarity. In the middle of the night they are awakened by Ben's old college BFF, Andrew (Joshua Leonard) who just came back from some wanderings in quaint parts of Mexico. (San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas - been there). Andrew is the wandering artistic adventurer while Ben has become the more stable married homeowner trying to become a father. Best Friends Ben & Andrew Comparing Their Lives Anna doesn't take to well to Andrew at first but indulges her husband's involvement with his old friend who ends up crashing on their floor. Andrew quickly discovers the adventurous ppl in town, a group of Bohemian types who are having a dinner get-together. Ben goes to get Andrew and ends up getting drunk and stoned and standing up his wife who was waiting for him to come back to supper. Here it gets into those sticky marital moments when you have partners not entirely into the others' trip. While with the libertines at the party, Ben and Andrew, mostly on childish dares to each other commit themselves to make a sex flick for Seattle's Humpfest. They are both straight and are going to make an art film of two straight guys having sex. The rest of the movie revolves around neither guy wanting to be the one who bailed on this unpleasant task and of course explaining it to Ann who reacts .... well as you would expect a wife to react. They go so far as to get a camera and rent a hotel room and you will have to go to the movie to see how erotic or artsy or revealing it is. In Bed Together Gotta say, the premise of this movie was a good one but sort of alien to me as I suspect it will be to many of my acquaintances, both in Cyberspace and Real World. Personally, I would not have gone thru all the angst that these two did in anticipating making a porn flick. But, that is me with my history of doing such things. And, even tho I spent the first quarter century of my life as a straight man, I can't recall any time that I would not have been game to try a guy if the opportunity arose. But, that's just me. This movie obviously appeals to normal ppl. I may yet see The Ugly Truth.
More Social Commentary on Humpday: As said in my previous blurb, the concept was alien to me how those two guys could be so uptight about a moment of physical intimacy between old friends. Admittedly, I and some of my friends may be abnormally free with our sexuality; something many of us learned in the 1960s and '70s. You had to have been there I suppose but it was really not always clear who was straight and who was queer. Often when we would get together as a group, the men and women would get equally hot and sweaty with the opposite gender and same gender and daring guys (like me) would grab a penis while doing a vulva. Altho everyone by now knows that I am functionally gay, there was a time before 1969 when I was exclusively doing girls (altho I was curious about doing guys). In fact, the first guy who did me took advantage of my being very drunk (He got nothing 'cause I was too drunk to get it up) and I did feel guilty for a day or so. But then I realized that a lot of guys did other guys so I got adventurous and became quite popular with several bottoms around New Orleans. However I have seen how uptight some very conservative straight guys can be. While working with Hospice, we were doing an exercise in physical touch where we closed our eyes and literally traced the assigned partners body contour with your hands. Now we were all fully clothed and would just be touching the other persons' arms and shoulders and head. The young man who was opposite me jumped up with a yell and said he couldn't do it with a guy. I also mentioned in my blurb that making porn is no big deal. I regret that I never got into it when I was young and reckless in the '70s. However, being old and reckless I guess I am making up for it. Out on the Web are pix of me doing all sorts of sexual things either alone or with my buddy Raul. Which brings me back to my friends who are quite open about their sexuality. I met Raul thru his wife who was closer to my age than his. I was invited to fulfill a part of Ra that she could not, so we did it right there in the one-room apartment on Miami Beach. Ra's wife snapped a couple of pix of us as we lay together exhausted on the bed. Shale & Raul 2001 Exhausted Together (Cropped) And, since those first grainy pix taken by Ra's wife with a cell phone, he and I still occasionally get together and we've made some more explicit pix of our fun times together and these have been accessible on adult Websites to share with the world. We didn't do it for money, just for the love of sharing. So, forgive me if I was a bit skeptical of the premise of this movie. Making porn is no big thing these days. Ben's wife should have supported the guys by doing the camera work. Besides, I felt this was an unrealistic portrayal of male sexuality. Both guys, like a lot of straight ppl, were under the assumption that one of them had to peg the other. There are a lot of gay men who do not do anal. I prefer touching, stroking and oral. I could have been with our two protagonists and made their ordeal into a very comfortable three-way that they would not have even thought about being gay. Start with touching each other - I love giving partners massages that just get more relaxed and intimate as they progress. Before long, even straight identified guys will get into the mood. So, I don't give this movie the high mark that some would. Not saying that normal straight guys aren't that uptight about being intimate with a friend these days but I have had too much history of blurred lines to enjoy seeing an uptight male mentality that's a half-century out of vogue.
