A Game of Gay Chicken: Why Humpday is Avoiding L.A.

The indie comedy Humpday broke out last January at Sundance, charming the Holy Park City Trinity of viewers, critics and distributors with its tale of two old pals planning to make an amateur gay sex tape. The problem: They're straight. It was great premise well-executed by filmmaker Lynn Shelton and her cast (two of whom you we introduced you to this week), and Magnolia Pictures plotted a clever, months-long campaign (including an aborted video-on-demand preview) to sustain the hype ahead of this weekend's limited opening opposite Brüno. A glimpse at the release schedule, however, reveals what might look like a fairly significant oversight: Humpday is skipping Los Angeles.

For a couple weeks, anyway. Audiences in New York and Seattle will share the first look Friday on two screens; San Francisco and Berkeley join the mix on July 17. L.A. was also set for the 17th before, according to Magnolia president Eamonn Bowles, an unavailable screen at the Landmark compelled a one-week delay. Now, viewers there are in the unusual position of waiting alongside Evanston, Cambridge and Fort Lauderdale (as well as Chicago and Dallas) for their turns to see one of year's most lauded comedies.

"Really, those are the two theaters in the country where I think it has its best chance of performing well," Bowles told Movieline of the venues in New York and Seattle, the latter of which Shelton and the production call home. He attributed some of the strategy on the natural home-turf advantage, but also cited the mixed blessing of sharing opening day with Sacha Baron Cohen's gay-themed blockbuster Brüno.

"We went to the two places we thought would be the most dead-on, can't-miss openings for the film," Bowles said. "We potentially would have gone to a lot of markets, but frankly, a lot of the people who go to see Humpday are going to see Brüno. And we really did think Brüno would be a juggernaut, especially with this audience. We didn't want to go head-to-head. We're going head-to-head in an editorial way; we're getting lots of favorable comparisons, which is what we hoped."

That worked for Magnolia as recently as last fall, when its Swedish vampire/coming-of-age import Let the Right One In launched its acclaimed -- and, more importantly, profitable -- Stateside run in the build-up to Twilight. Once critics were done rolling their eyes at the latter, they beseeched audiences to visit the art house for the season's far superior vampire movie. On the other hand, the regional experiment can backfire with films not targeted to a specific ethnic or religious constituency; look no further than Sony Classics' Baghead, another Mumblecore-tinged Mark Duplass-starrer that sought buzz with an Austin, Texas, opening ahead of New York and L.A. It earned $8,640 on two screens, limping into the coasts a month later before dying off in late summer.

Magnolia had a vaguely similar plan for Humpday coming out of Sundance: Make the film available on VOD in mid-July and open theatrically in August. The Brüno link ultimately helped dissuade Bowles and Co., as did their lackluster experience with unknown quantities in previous on-demand advances.

"What really works is a recognizable element: either genre or an actor, something that the general public will recognize in a short synopsis," Bowles said, citing Jennifer Lynch's Surveillance as an example. Starring Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond, the film is headed toward $1 million in VOD revenue compared to barely breaking $11,000 theatrically. "[Humpday] needed to develop its profile -- in spite of the Sundance success. In our world it's ubiquitous, but out in the general mainstream world, it's a small blip."

Got it, Seattle? No pressure.