Humpday Director Lynn Shelton on Her MTV Music Project and Directing Mad Men

Seattle native Lynn Shelton sprang to the forefront of the indie scene when her 2009 comedy Humpday -- about two straight male college friends who, ten years down the line, decide to make a gay pornography film as an art project -- won a slew of festival awards, including a Special Jury Prize for Spirit at Sundance and the John Cassavetes Award. Since then, Shelton helped MTV re-introduce music into its brand by directing the $5 Cover: Seattle web series (premiering today), which documents 13 local bands in loosely-scripted eight-minute episodes. As if that weren't enough, Matt Weiner summoned the Shelton to Los Angeles to helm this season's Mad Men episode episode "Hands and Knees." You'll recall that one, because it featured Playboy Bunnies.

On Tuesday, Shelton phoned Movieline to discuss disproving the Seattle rockstar image, her Mad Men experience, and why low budget productions really aren't that different from high budget ones.

I just watched the entire $5 Cover: Seattle series and I am thrilled that MTV is returning to its music roots finally.

Yes! But in a new and unique way, right?

Definitely. It's a grittier, more intimate look at bands and the Seattle music community than I think the MTV audience is used to. How did you get involved in the project?

I got involved two years ago when I was at Sundance for my third feature film, Humpday. A couple days after the premiere, this guy David Gale came up to me and said that he thought I would be a good fit for a project they were producing at MTV. Really, the whole project was the brainchild of [Hustle & Flow director] Craig Brewer who is from Memphis and had all of these musician friends with interesting lives. It was his idea to create a narrative piece where they were playing themselves and it was a smart way to organically get music back into the landscape of MTV that had drifted away. So Craig made $5 Cover: Memphis for MTV and the network was looking for filmmakers from other cities.

Were you hesitant to do a web series?

I was at first and I wasn't sure that my aesthetic was something that MTV would embrace but David thought I'd be a good fit because I had done some music videos for local bands, and also because Craig had used a lot of improvisation for the Memphis series and that is what I had done for Humpday.

What finally convinced you?

The more I talked to David, the more comfortable I felt because he gave me complete creative control and I was allowed to use an all local crew. I basically hired all of my friends. He let me pick the bands and develop the series like a documentary with a really intensive development and interview process.

What were you looking for when you started interviewing bands?

I wanted to get a diverse population of bands since I could not get every flavor of the scene. I wanted to have, at least within my sampling, some diversity in genre, music, personality, gender and skin color.

Even though there was a lot of diversity, it was amazing how interconnected the bands were. You even created a flow chart to signify how certain bands were related to other bands, whether it be through family, friendship or romance.

Right, I wanted the bands to be genuinely, organically connected to each other in real life through friendship or side project or fans of each other. So one band kind of led me to the next.

Seattle has such a legendary reputation when it comes to music. Was there anything that you were trying to disprove about the city or its musicians with this project?

[Laughs] I would say I was trying to update, more than anything, people's perceptions of the Seattle music scene. I did a lot of traveling for Humpday to European cities and people there would ask me where I was from. When I'd say "Seattle," they'd always know two things about the city: Starbucks and Nirvana. Coffee and grunge. So it's kind of like the city is stuck in amber and I was excited to hit the reset button because there is so much fresh, dynamic stuff that is happening here that is well beyond grunge. It's funny you use the word "disprove" though because I wasn't drawn to the stories during casting as much as I was the people that seemed to be the antithesis of a rock star.

How so?

Well, I really, really relished retelling one story in particular from Jason Dodson of the Maldives and Kevin Murphy, the lead singer of the Moondoggies, who are really good buddies. They told me this story of this crazy, epic night when they rescued a drunk girl who was too drunk to remember where she lived. They tried to send her home in a cab but she was beyond knowing what was going on so they took her home and they had this funny little weekend adventure basically adopting and taking care of her. It was such a sweet story and I thought it beautifully illustrated the character of these guys and how they are just not what you think of when you think of rock stars.

Pages: 1 2