Lynn Shelton: A Review
I’ve been interested in Lynn Shelton’s work since word of Humpday spread like wildfire through the cinephile podcasts back in 2009. I didn’t catch every movie of hers afterwards, but I caught most of them. I showed my wife a couple, too, and she fell hard for Lynn’s work and wanted to see everything she did. When Lynn died suddenly in 2020 we were baffled and heart-broken. It was then that I knew I wanted to do an article on her feature films. But I was already planning other projects like Disney Through the Years, so it had to wait.
Here I am almost 3 years after her death finally fulfilling that intention. I’ve realized since that very few people are aware of Lynn Shelton. Most of her films were shot in Western Washington, but pretty much everyone I know have never seen a single one of her films. So, I’m writing this not just as an excuse to see all of her films and to review them, but to hopefully give her work more exposure. It’s certainly deserving of more attention and praise.
We Go Way Back (varies)
A 23 year-old community theater actress (Amber Hubert) is given a leading role. Meanwhile, she becomes depressed as she’s haunted by letters from her 13 year-old self.
This directorial debut is very low budget and, thus, has a very independent film feel to it. I’m not able to obtain information on a budget for the film. In fact, it’s very difficult to get a lot of information about it. But it was shot on 35 mm. The story itself seems to be focused on the stage production and the men the character Kate engages with. But then it takes a left turn in its final 25 minutes to a more surrealist territory. There’s a kernel of something intriguing here: the idea of being confronted with your younger self when you dreamed about your life as an adult with optimism and to what degree your present self would disappoint or crush your younger self. That’s something that many people - especially above the age of 35 - can relate to. But it doesn’t all coalesce into a satisfying whole here. It’s not as absurd as the theater production's director (Robert Hamilton Wright) who is so enamored with metaphor that he replaces poisonous drinks with Russet potatoes. But, not unlike his strained metaphors, Shelton’s choices don’t always make sense. The concept is so internal that it requires us to be in tune with what Kate is feeling, especially in the third act. Unfortunately, the execution leaves the audience at too much of a distance to have any impact.
We Go Way Back was screened at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2006, but wasn’t officially released until 2009 after Shelton’s company Geisha Years LLC bought the film from the production company TFC Productions for the purpose of distribution. So, while the film is Shelton’s directorial debut, most weren’t able to see it until 2009.
My Effortless Brilliance (2008)
Eric (Sean Nelson) is an author who is suddenly dumped by his friend Dylan (Basil Harris). Two years later, while giving a lecture at Whitman College, Eric decides to make a surprise visit to Dylan’s Eastern Washington cabin in the woods. What follows is 48 hours of tension and awkward conversation.
Like We Go Way Back, this film also has a low budget quality to it. But it seems the entire cast got credit with the screenplay, which makes sense, because the dialogue is so naturalistic and spontaneous that much of it was probably made up while shooting each scene. It feels like Shelton had a road map and it was up to the cast to get the characters where they needed to go. All you need is a template for each character: Eric is a mildly successful author, but unable to deal with real conflict or situations, so he masks a lot with strained quips and jokes. Dylan thought he had rid his life of Eric, so he is congenial, but uncomfortable by Eric’s sudden appearance. And then there’s Dylan’s new friend Jim, who may be a bigger asshole than Eric. It all mostly works. At one point, Dylan asks Jim, “Do you ever wonder what it would be like to bury an axe in someone’s skull?”. That pretty much sums up Dylan’s repressed feelings.
The only problem with My Effortless Brilliance is the characters never actually address their issues (when an argument seems to be allowing the air to be cleared, Jim interrupts with a late-night idea). And there’s not room for any growth for Eric, so you’re never really sure they resolve their issues even if they don’t say it out loud. Sure, Eric seems a little self-centered, but what happened in the first place that ruined his friendship with Dylan? Did nothing actually get resolved in the end? Am I supposed to be left with that question and, if so, am I supposed to find that intriguing?
My Effortless Brilliance is a step up for Lynn Shelton. But it doesn’t quite hit the mark.
Humpday (2009)
A married couple (Mark Duplass and Alycia Delmore) who are trying to get pregnant are suddenly visited by an old college friend (Joshua Leonard) of the husband. Their lives are turned upside down for the following 48 hours as the two buddies decide to make a pornographic art project together.
While Humpday still retains Shelton’s low budget aesthetic, this is a film that is a huge leap forward for Shelton. She’s still operating on the same “roadmap and improvised dialogue” method. But everyone is firing on all cylinders here. Duplass, Delmore, and Leonard are excellent together. As the two buds talk about creating a film where two heterosexual men have sex with each other as an expression of their bromance so many layers are revealed. For Duplass’s Ben it becomes a challenge to prove his marriage has not domesticated or emasculated him to the point of being unable to participate in any activity he wants. For Leonard’s Andrew, it’s about setting out to accomplish something and finally seeing it through no matter how difficult or scary. The pair of actors play these very well through their improvised discussions that work their way through macho pride and past homoerotic fantasies. The film addresses open-minded mentalities and seems to ask “At what point does being open minded start to blur the lines of your sexuality?”. Delmore, as the patient, yet ovulating wife is excellent here. She’s potentially a victim in a situation that could involve dishonesty and infidelity, but she doesn’t allow her character to be put in that corner. She’s also the necessary piece that gets us to the final act in a refreshing and unexpected way.
Humpday is a great discussion piece. It has a lot of meat on its bone to chew on. It’s also really funny. This is a huge milestone in Shelton’s career creatively, critically, and in terms of awareness. At over $388,000 it would be the third-highest grossing movie of her career. Greater success was right around the corner.
Your Sister’s Sister (2011)
A woman (Emily Blunt) suggests to her best friend (Mark Duplass) who is grieving the death of his brother that he go on a retreat to a family cabin on an island in the Pacific Northwest. When there he is surprised by the presence of his best friend’s sister (Rosemarie DeWitt) who just broke up with her girlfriend. After a late night of drinks and conversation something happens that may have lifelong consequences.
At this point we’re in the middle of a more prolific period of Shelton’s career when she was releasing films nearly every year. While Your Sister’s Sister doesn’t have as many ideas on its mind as Humpday what it does well is relationships between characters. When Blunt’s Iris drops by the cabin suddenly not only does conflict potentially arise, but character dynamics emerge and that’s when the film is at its strongest. Blunt and DeWitt (who was a last-second replacement for Rachel Weisz) have an instant chemistry together as siblings, despite Blunt’s English accent, which invites questions. Duplass is effortless, balancing his usual improvised repertoire with a more scripted dialogue.
It’s honestly remarkable that this film was shot in 12 days, because it doesn’t feel rushed or shoddy. It’s Shelton’s most polished film at this point while still hanging onto a bit of her signature low-budget aesthetic (the budget here was a reported $120,000; astounding given the talent involved). The story isn’t quite as fascinating as Humpday, but one of the common characteristics of Lynn’s work is that friends are at the core of the story and the friendship between Iris and Duplass’s Jack is one of her best-written, made even more interesting by the dynamics between Iris and her sister Hannah and Hannah and Jack. And what is revealed Hannah did, in a moment of poor judgement, that affects both Jack and Iris.
It’s also worth noting that Shelton loves shooting the western Washington region without being showy about it. That is very evident in Your Sister’s Sister. She shoots the landscape, a small town, the peacefulness of the Puget Sound, without focusing on recognizable landmarks. This is one of Shelton’s hallmarks and evidence of someone who knows the area intimately.
Your Sister’s Sister was Shelton’s big commercial and critical hit. It earned over $3 million and put her on many people’s watch list.
Touchy Feely (2013)
Two adult siblings (Rosemarie DeWitt and Josh Pais) go through parallel experiences that affect their careers and lives and take them on journeys that will free them.
Since Shelton’s shoot schedules are usually less than 3 weeks she was able to turn around films fairly quickly. This film followed on the heels of Your Sister’s Sister’s success. After the previous film and Humpday, Shelton began attracting more and more talent anxious to work with her. This film has a cast that includes the return of DeWitt, and newcomer Pais, but also Elliot Page (then credited as Ellen), Scoot McNairy, Allison Janney, and Ron Livingston. If you look closely you’ll see cameos by My Effortless Brilliance’s Basil Harris and Humpday’s Alycia Delmore.
DeWitt plays a massage therapist, Abby, who is suddenly disgusted by touching others. Pais plays her brother, Paul, an emotionally stunted, closed-off, and uptight dentist whose flailing practice suddenly gets a boost from a perceived healing touch. Page plays his daughter and dental assistant, Jenny, who feels obligated to pass up college in order to help her dad. Janney plays Abby’s Reiki master, who plays a pivotal role.
The entire concept behind Touchy Feely is about being stuck - be it emotionally due to a past experience or in general - and learning to let go of the things that are preventing you from moving forward and being who you’re meant to be. With Abby it’s a fear of commitment that manifests in such a way that it affects her business. With Paul it’s a general need for everything to be controlled and routine; he’s afraid to do something different with his business to attract new clients, he’s afraid of his daughter growing up and leaving him, he’s afraid of being intimate with anyone again. It’s all pretty interesting and Josh Pais especially is very good. In fact, some of the comedy comes from watching an uptight man attempt one of the most relaxed and spiritually zen practices, Reiki.
What’s key about this film is it’s a thematic extension of We Go Way Back’s reflective nature and Your Sister’s Sister’s sibling relationship. None of the characters in Touchy Feely are particularly depressed, but they find themselves needing to heal or make a change about themselves in order to move forward and the siblings at the center of the story have plots that contrast with each other. It doesn’t quite sing like Your Sister’s Sister and it isn’t quite as rich as Humpday, but it has a more polished aesthetic than any of Shelton’s previous films, which makes it more accessible to some.
Laggies (2014)
A 28 year-old woman-child (Keira Knightley) is faced with adulthood when her high school friends prepare for a member’s wedding (Ellie Kemper) and her high school sweetheart’s (Mark Webber) proposal. She retreats and hides for a week at the house of a teen (Chloe Grace Moretz) she met outside a liquor store, keeping her life a secret from her concealers.
Laggies is probably Shelton’s most mainstream movie. It has a budget of roughly $5 million, which means a bigger crew and a conventional look. It’s even the first of Shelton’s films to advertise more conventionally the story’s Seattle location with the Seattle Center and Space Needle prominent in one shot. This is also the first film in Shelton’s career as a director not written by Shelton at all. The script is by Andrea Seigel, a novelist and screenwriter. When Shelton read the script she related to the protagonist, Megan’s late-to-the-party dilemma. Shelton didn’t direct a film until her late-thirties. She remembered what it felt like to not have her career sorted when everyone else did.
Laggies is a Lynn Shelton film if it were to appeal to the most amount of people. But it does accomplish something novel: to gender swap the man-child character audiences were well-familiar with thanks to Judd Apatow’s productions. It wasn’t unusual to see a man near his thirties who hadn’t matured. It was very odd to see a woman be just as flawed and complicated. This wasn’t a matter of taking a male character and “just making him a woman” like in some action films. Knightley’s Megan is very much a woman with gal pals, and doting boyfriend and father (Jeff Garlin). In fact, the men in her life find Megan’s stunted qualities adorable while the women (her friends and mom) find her to be upsetting and bizarre. The exceptions are Moretz’s Annika, who thinks Megan is cool, and her father (Sam Rockwell), who is the one grounded man that finds Megan inappropriate. Both Moretz and Rockwell elevate the film with their professionalism and charm, respectively.
Ultimately, though, while everyone is performing at the level you’d expect from them, the film feels slight compared to Shelton’s more successful projects. It’s likeable enough for anyone to enjoy. But that polish is actually what hurts the film. It’s possible that a great Shelton film needs to be a little rough around the edges.
Outside In (2018)
A 38 year-old man (Jay Duplass) is released from prison for murder thanks to the tireless efforts of one of his high school teachers (Edie Falco). While building a new life he becomes entangled with and upends hers.
The film is set in Granite Falls, a city with less than 5,000 people nearly an hour north of Seattle. I mention this, because, its small town environment reflects the scale of the production. After her multi-million dollar movie bombed and spending the following couple of years directing several TV episodes, Lynn scaled back to basics. We have here a quiet drama in a quiet town shot in less than 3 weeks. And it’s probably Shelton’s most disappointing film.
After the trajectory of Your Sister’s Sister, Touchy Feely, and Laggies, I expected more from Shelton. Aside from that, this is a creative letdown. Gone are the creative insights and awkward relationships of films’ past. Here we are presented with an understated, quiet drama. There’s definitely some choices others would have made with a story about someone who took the fall for his brother’s violent crime: a dramatic flashback sequence could have been included, tensions between the brothers could have been more explosive. The same could be said about the relationship between the fifty-something former teacher and the late-30s former student - and the former’s daughter (Kaitlyn Dever). But credit goes to Shelton for never making those decisions, which would have been mistakes. However, she doesn’t do enough to make these relationships sizzle or our protagonist’s situation fascinate.
What is worthy of praise are the performances by Ben Schwartz and Kaitlyn Dever. Schwartz, who is usually comedic or ridiculous gives a great performance as Ted, our protagonist’s brother. He rarely gets the chance to stretch as an actor as he does here. Dever, who was impressive in a small role in Laggies and would break out in Booksmart in 2019 continues a streak of solid dramatic parts that includes The Spectacular Now and Short Term 12.
Ultimately, I felt left out in the cold with Outside In. Audiences apparently received Outside In with a shrug; it earned just over $68,000.
Sword of Trust (2019)
In-between the production of Outside In and the May, 2018 production of Sword of Trust, Lynn directed episodes of GLOW and met and fell in love with Marc Maron. She divorced her husband Kevin Seal in 2019. This is relevant with regards to Shelton’s work, because Sword of Trust, which stars Maron, feels like a shift towards a new direction for Shelton for reasons I’ll explain.
The story is about a couple who is bequeathed a Civil War era saber that may or may not provide evidence that the South won the Civil War. They bring this artifact to a local pawn shop owner who dismisses the historical claim, but realizes there’s an underground market for such objects and partners with the couple to sell the saber. The Western Washington geography and Shelton’s previous collaborators are left behind as this film is set in Alabama and is about a pawn shop owner from New Mexico. The film has a completely different feel to it, as the cinematography rids the grainy and shaky cam of most of her previous work, with a more topical story that focuses less on character relationships, and a humor that is different from her other comedies. The script is co-written by Shelton and O’Brien, a former SNL writer. Shelton collaborated with Jay Duplass on the script for Outside In, but here she’s collaborating with a comedian on a script for one of her films. It definitely benefits from that. But it benefits greatly also from Marc Maron’s performance style and the way he delivers dialogue.
As for the story, it’s Shelton’s most thought-provoking film since Humpday. Only, instead of asking challenging questions about friendship and sexuality it’s asking questions about the political climate of our time and how malleable facts - whether historical or scientific - are becoming because of it. It’s very intriguing, especially coming from Shelton, as it shifts her focus from the micro to the macro perspective. It’s also one of Shelton’s funniest movies by a long shot. There are several scenes in this film that are laugh out loud hilarious.
It’s also lovely to see Lynn herself appear in what would become her final film. She plays a former lover of Maron’s character, someone who may have completely derailed his life and prevented him from achieving his dreams. It’s an interesting supporting part that the film manages to find room to have compassion for despite her past and the hole she may never be able to dig herself out of.
Sword of Trust was a barely-seen film, earning over $320,000 on a limited theatrical release. Its generic poster probably didn’t help. But that’s still more revenue than half of her films earned. However, it feels like the start of a new chapter for Lynn, as it’s very different from any her previous films. It’s worth hunting down.
The Ranking:
Humpday
Your Sister’s Sister
Sword of Trust
Touchy Feely
Laggies
My Effortless Brilliance
Outside In
We Go Way Back
Lynn Shelton died of an undiagnosed acute myeloid lukemia on May 16, 2020, almost a year after Sword of Trust was released. AML, as it’s called, is a quick and fatal disease with a 35% five-year survival rate for those under 60, as Shelton was. When untreated, as was Shelton’s case, it is fatal within weeks or months. This is quite tragic, because it really feels like Shelton was entering a new phase of her life and career. Who knows what her next couple of films would have been like? On the whole, she’s a filmmaker that left a mark. She was one that actors were eager to work with and she started growing a sizable list of players on her resume - and, she claimed, she had a long list of others she hoped to add to it. Watching her body of work it isn’t surprising to see how attractive she was as a director. Her films were typically free of frills and all about complicated characters - especially women - and exploring different nuances within their relationships to others and themselves. There really aren’t many characters like the women in her films and that is undoubtedly one of the things that made working with her exciting.
I hope, if you haven’t familiarized yourself with Shelton’s work as is the case with many people, this motivates you to do so. She was one of indie film’s greatest voices.
What are your thoughts? Do you agree with my reviews and rankings? Comment below.