Two close friends (Ben, played by Mark Duplass, and Andrew, played by Joshua Leonard) grapple with the following dilemma. Can two straight men engage in gay sex, film it, and hope to win a prize at The HUMP! annual film festival in Seattle, Washington? HUMPDAY is a sly and witty examination of sexual attitudes which, at times, is as disconcerting as it is nearly hilarious. Ben is married, and he and his wife are about to start a family, while Andrew is a Free Spirit who sees himself as kind of a marginal player on the international art scene. One night at a party in a Free Love commune, the two men drunkenly come up with a possible brand-new approach to the Genre of Pornography. Why not have two straight men do a gay porn flic. This becomes the odd and unsettling conundrum for the movie. Is it possible for two straight men to engage in gay sex, or would the act itself preclude that they were gay at the outset? The viewer watches as Ben and Andrew squirm with the unstated (and frightening) query, am I gay, or closer truth, just exactly how straight am I? Maybe the real message of the film is that as much as we feel that we have completely settled on our sexual identity, the true nature of sex might be much more fluid. Personal sexual attitudes are not really laws which are set in stone, but maybe they are just guidelines which are subject to change and reinvention as circumstances change. The film doesn't resolve the issue, but it certainly presents a dizzying collection of cringe inducing questions which highlight this quandary. HUMPDAY could be seen as a possible companion piece to the wonderfully disquieting film, CHUCK AND BUCK.
