Humpday (2009)

Humpday is a film about straight dudes for straight dudes and its topic is the anxiety straight dudes feel about gay dudes. Two college buddies reunite – one has been a drifter, an artist, has hip hats that have cooler stories than anything he’s done; the other has built a life, has a home, a family. One envies the freedom. The other envies the security and stability. At a pretentious party (really, no other word for it), they get caught up in a discussion about an upcoming art-film low-budget porn festival coming up called Humpday. They come upon the idea of that two straight dudes doing full on gay sex in front of a camera will not only be an incredible Art Project, but will redefine their own respective selves in important ways. Drifter dude will finish something, instead of just giving up like he always does. Stable dude will prove he still has spontaneity in his life, and he also seems to be acting out on a hint of bisexuality in his past, where he rented a bunch of videos that a cute guy at the rental store suggested (a 12 part series on architecture, or some such – he hated the first, but kept returning!) – so is he gay, and he’s just gone down this road to stability and family because it was the easiest, instead of examining what he really feels he needs and wants? They get a seedy hotel room, and the funniest scene is when they kiss and then it all falls apart. They ask themselves: What is it we’re really doing here? And for what purpose? They don’t have any answers, other than that it wasn’t what it should have been to begin with. It gives the film a kind of deflated feeling in the end, and it’s partially due to the fact that there’s no gay perspective. Their take on masculinity seems to come down to: dudes don’t do dudes. And do they really decide they’re failures because they can’t go through with it? Drifter dude re-drifts, but we don’t know what happens to stable dude. Does he return home to his wife, who has confided to cheating on him when he insists on going through with the straight-gay porn? A lot of reviews have suggested that this film offers a good perspective of masculinity, but to me it offers a measured take on homophobia. Very little of what these two gents encounter in the lame scene that caps this film is about sexuality. They can talk about being raw and carnal all they want, but when you’re watching them clutch their pillows and talk about failure, they’re not talking about Art anymore.