Still, as one of the three actors/cum camera people/cum screenwriters who endured a deliberately scary and uncomfortable shoot in “The Blair Witch Project,” Leonard has leveraged his decade old flavor-of-the-month status into a solid career as a working actor with scores of credits ranging from the HBO movie “Live from Baghdad” to recent episodes of the new TV series, “Hung,” also on HBO. He’s also become a director. “Beautiful Losers,” a documentary he co-directed, is just hitting home video after a run on the festival circuit, and he recently completed shooting his dramatic feature debut as a writer-director, “The Lie.”

Still, he’s clearly very proud of his involvement in writer-director Lynn Shelton’s “Humpday” alongside costar and previously interviewed fellow film-maker Mark Duplass – now a very close real-life buddy — and happy to have contributed to a new tightly-plotted but improvised movie where there was absolutely no attempt made to convince the world he was dead. His portrayal of Andrew – puppyish Peter Pan, would-be artiste and compulsive traveler/bohemian – remains the extremely funny heart of the film. He’s also, I was happy to find, a really fun guy to talk to. He’s obviously a lot more smarter and 10,000 times more mature than his movie alter-ego, but he’s every bit as easy to hang out with – even on a twenty-minute phone call set up by a publicist.

PH: I don’t always say this, but I really did like “Humpday.” I thought you guys were great.

JL: Thanks, man. What have you hated recently?

PH: [Laughs] I’m a critic, we could blow out entire time talking about that.

JL: [Laughs] That’s what I want to know.

PH: Fortunately, nothing of yours. Okay, so I’m going to ask everyone I talk to on the movie this question….

Just before I saw the movie at the L.A. Film Festival, I had reviewed the DVD for “The Odd Couple.” It was kind of interesting because it was sort of two of the poles of the male bonding thing and of course the whole idea of “bromance” has been  out now. I was just wondering how you thought “Humpday” fit in with all these movies that have been out there on this general topic.

JL: You gotta realize that when we were making this we were making it in such a bubble that we didn’t realize that we were potentially going to be able to coat-tail off any zeitgeist moment; that was not in the master plan.

PH: Mark said the same thing.

JL: No. All of a sudden “bromance” was a term and male bonding was being talked about and that kind of fortuitously happened right around the time that our movie was done. We were nothing but grateful for it because we certainly did not have the studio marketing dollar. Every time somebody talked about “Zack and Miri” or “Brüno” and happened to mention us, we considered that free publicity.

And I think in terms of what you were talking about with “The Odd Couple,” it’s those two archetypal characters. We kind of put two guys on either end of the responsibility spectrum and put them together in a room and it’s usually pretty funny to watch. We certainly far from invented that formula. I think we took advantage of what we care about in our lives and kind of updated it a little bit. And, also, we were working so far outside of the system that we could really push the envelope a little bit in terms of taking that concept to its hyperbolic extreme, without anybody looking over our shoulders and telling us what was or wasn’t appropriate or what would or wouldn’t play with an audience.

PH: That’s one of the things that’s interesting about the movie. A lot of times, you’ll see films and people will ask if they are improvised and the response is “No, it was all written, but we really tried to make it look that way.” But this really was improvised and yet it really feels tight.

JL: [Laughs]. It certainly will play to our strong suit as a collective. Mark and I are both writer-directors as well. While neither of us will ever be cast in “Raging Bull 2,” it’s a vernacular that we’re comfortable with and kind of writing on the fly is something that’s really fun.

Lynn [Shelton] is very confident as a director because she picks people very carefully. She is an amazing curator of personalities and talents, and so she really gets the right group of people together to make her movies. I think everybody who was there was there in support of the process in which we were making it.

And then, the unsung hero of this whole thing being [editor] Nat Sanders. When you say the movie was “tight,” I promise you that had absolutely nothing to do with the acting that was actually put on. We focused on trying to make organic transitions and making this stupid/funny concept emotionally viable and really putting ourselves in the audience’s shoes and thinking: “Okay, where are we going to be skeptical and how can we answer those questions.”

But in terms of putting those together in five-minute propulsive scenes, that is absolutely, a thousand percent our editor. He could have made thousands and thousands of really bad, boring movies out of the footage, I’m sure.

PH: [Laughs] I’ve got to say I’ve seen a lot of these movies, going back to John Cassavettes, who had his own thing going on. Still, it’s unusual. I’m sure Nat deserves a lot of the credit, but I’m sure you gave him the beats to work with.

Anyhow, moving on just a little bit, I want ask a question about the way you decided who was going to be who. Originally, Mark was going to be Andrew, but when you came aboard, it was sort of never a question that it was you who would be Andrew. I was wondering…I was just looking at your Wikipedia entry. It said that as a teen that, like Andrew did a bit later in his life, you had actually traveled through Mexico. Was that always there?

JL: I think that, once again, it’s what you’re good at and what you’re not. I don’t think if you ever hired me to improvise a Ph.D. character, I would ever do something authentic.

Where improvising works best is where you’re pulling at least facets of your own personality into the story; you don’t have to reach very far….I pulled a lot from my past and a lot of stuff from my late teens and early twenties and kind of transposed that in my head as to what that would feel like if I was still doing those same exact things in my mid-thirties – I think we all have have friends like that…

PH: Some of us are that.

JL: [Chuckles] Some of us want to be that. But, with Andrew, his real cross to bear in the course of this film and in the course of his life is…I think that stuff starts out as exploration and the longer you do it at a certain point you cross over into just straight avoidance. I think he’s done that somewhere along the way and hasn’t really admitted that to himself. This situation kind of gives him a perfect opportunity to confront that.

PH: And now we’re at the eight minute point here and I’m just curious: Do you ever get to go through an interview where no one mentions “Blair Witch”?

JL: (Quiet for a moment): I think there was one. [Chuckles]. I had to think about it. There might have been one or two.

PH: I actually didn’t make the connection until I was watching the extras on the DVD. I saw “Blair Witch” at the time. I liked it; I’m rather easily scared and so it really scared the heck out of me. That was you in the corner at the end of the movie, right …or was it the other guy?

JL: I think it was Mike [Michael C. Williams] in the corner.

PH: Oh, I’m sorry.

JL: It’s okay.

PH: Anyhow, you guys really scared me. It is kind of interesting that this probably going to be something – I hope — that will be on your Wikipedia page now right alongside “Blair Witch.” It’s kind of an interesting case of two poles of your career because that was obviously also a case where you were effectively a co-writer. And, in that case, even a co-director/co-cinematographer because you were holding a camera.

JL: Andrew has his cross to bear and I have my cross to bear. On one side, it’s something that I am so fucking proud of….There’s a part of me that looks back on the 14 year-old version of myself who discovered punk rock and was like “people can just make things.” You can just go out and make stuff and you don’t have to wait for permission to do it. And I really, to this day, believe in that ethos.

You know, the first time Mark and I ever met, I virtually stalked him. We became friends later, but I saw “The Puffy Chair” and that film just blew my mind. It’s speaking to me, very specifically generationally. Also, it was a great piece of art that was made by any means necessary, which I think is fantastic.

That being said, being back at Sundance, ten years to the day of the premiere of “Blair Witch” with another low-budget improvised film, there was [chuckling] that feeling like “Is this my lot in life?” Will I just never make any money and keep doing cool, obscure movies and every once in a while one of them will pop up?

I’ve tried the other stuff and I’ve done bigger and far worse things. I never get a chance to give as much of my authentic self as I would like. I think one of the great things about growing up is just figuring out what you’re good at and what you don’t have to waste your time, or anybody else’s time, trying to pursue anymore

PH: And this is the other question you’re probably getting asked all the time, but I still have to ask it. Have you seen “Paranormal Activity”?

JL: I haven’t seen it yet. I hear it’s good.

PH: It is very good, but I was also thinking that they had it a lot easier than you guys did. They spent the whole movie in a townhouse in San Diego.

JL: [Laughs] Yes, the comfort level [on “Blair Witch”] was not often good. Fifty degree weather with rain….I have just finished directing a film, so I haven’t seen anything.

PH: I think for you, personally, you’ll find it an interesting film to watch. Anyhow, here’s a question that one of my editors, Will Harris, always asks. Of the movies between “Blair Witch” and “Humpday,” are they any you feel didn’t get enough love?

JL: Hmm. Uhm…

PH: Especially, I should say – not to put anybody down.

JL: There are other movies I did that I’m proud of. Not all of them for sure. At the end of the day, I think, kind of across the board, when a movie hits a vein with an audience…I am an audience member. I am part of a demographic and I kinda get it.

There are some movies that I personally really like but should they have blown up into huge successes? No. I’m a film geek. I like stuff that is a little more rarefied sometimes and not everybody’s going to like that. I don’t know if I would say “yes” to that.

PH: Okay. The one that I’m sorry I missed, which I haven’t seen, is “Live from Baghdad,” where you were actually third billed [after Michael Keaton and Helena Bonham Carter].

JL: I really liked “Live from Baghdad” but plenty of people saw that movie.

PH: [Laughs] It was on TV.

JL: Yeah, it’s an HBO movie. I’m thinking more the tiny little, experimental/independent films. That hit the people it was supposed to hit.

PH: Well, let’s talk about the movie that you just finished directing. What’s that going to be?

JL: It’s another tightly outlined but improv-dialogue film also kind of high-concept/reverse-engineered into something a little more human. It’s actually based on a T.C. Boyle story that I optioned out The New Yorker called “The Lie.” It’s about a guy who has, kind of slowly in the domestication process, given up his artistic dreams. He has a bit of a breakdown one day and decides he doesn’t want to go to work, gets backed into a corner and lies to his boss and says his newborn baby has just died. The movie takes place in the ensuing five days in which he throws the bomb into his life and when it blows up in his face.

Ben [Kasulke], who shot “Humpday” shot it. It was all friends and favors. I got the most amazing cast. I just called up all my favorite actor friends and got them to come out and play. Mark Weber from “Shrink” and “Broken Flowers”; Jess Weixler from “Teeth”; Jane Adams who I had done “Hung” with; PJ [James] Ransone from “The Wire”; Alicia Shawkat from “Arrested Development”; Kelli Garner from “Lars and the Real Girl”; Holly Woodlawn from the old Andy Warhol films….

PH: Wow.

JL: It was just the coolest group of people. [We also had] Kirk Baltz who was the cop who got his ear cut off in “Reservoir Dogs.” God, I hope he gets work because he’s absolutely brilliant.

It was another [movie] done very much in the spirit in which we did “Humpday” and, production wise, a little more difficult because it was a 15 day shoot with 22 locations with a 5 and a half-month old baby as our third lead…Not easy.

PH: [Laughs] I can imagine. This is an interesting one because I can’t tell from the concept whether it’s going to be black comedy or drama. Do you know what genre it’s going to be with a movie like this?

JL: Oh, we’re defying genres these days. I don’t know. “Dramedy” is such a terrible word to say. Who wants to say they made a “dramedy”?

PH: [Laughs]

JL: I think the same way that you hear the pitch on “Humpday” and you say, “Oh, that sounds…pretty stupid…”

PH: [Laughs some more.]

JL:...I think it’s one of those movies that absolutely is humorous, but where “Humpday” was kind of a movie about friendship and self-identity and taking responsibility for your adulthood, this is very much a movie about the struggle to grow-up and retain your ideals – the myths of growing up versus the reality of it. I think what’s great and fun to me about couching it all in this high concept is that you can address all those issues pretty head on, without running the risk of becoming too didactic and having your audience turn on you and feel like you’re trying to teach them a lesson.

PH: It sounds very interesting. It’s also interesting that you’re adapting something that’s been written in an improvisational way.

JL: I’m just curious what T.C.’s going to think.

PH: Yes, because it’s going to go in different directions, obviously.

JL: Well, yeah. Also, it’s a 15-page story and we shot 55 hours worth of footage for a 90 minute movie. The character that Mark Weber plays is mentioned twice in the whole story, peripherally, and he plays one of the most instrumental roles in the film. A lot of things you have to invent from whole cloth in order to make it work structurally.

PH: We’re probably getting to where you need to move on….’

PUBLICIST (breaking in): About one more question, Bob, okay?

PH: That’s exactly what I was going to ask. Getting back to something I probably should have asked you before…that final scene in “Humpday.” We know that there was no plan. I asked Mark this, but did you have like a million contingencies in your head since you didn’t know what he was going to do. Was it “If he does X, I’ll do Y”? Did you think about it in that way beforehand?

JL: It’s funny, and I’m not a touchy-feely actor guy. It’s a little bit more storytelling and pragmatism, the way I look at it. But I will say that because we shot the film in sequence and we basically have been living in the character’s skin for ten days, there was so little thought that went into that scene. There was so little premeditation…

It was really one of those rare experiences that I seldom have as an actor where I just walked into the situation and owned the character and was able to respond as things came up. What’s funny about it is that every take of that scene was probably, at it its shortest, forty minutes…I think we did about 12 takes; we shot until dawn. I would say probably 70% of what made it into the final film was from the first few takes. It was all the stuff where it was freshest.

It’s what’s fun about working with your friends. What’s fun about improvising is that you get to know what people’s buttons are. Sometimes you find a grenade and you stick it in your back pocket and you know you’re going to throw it at somebody at any given point. It gives you a little power coming into the scene. If you’re working with somebody as smart as Mark, you throw it out, and he tosses an atom bomb right back at you and then you’ve got to deal with that.

PH: So, in a way it would be kind of pointless to plan ahead?

JL: Exactly.

PH: Okay, we’ll thank you very much Andrew…I mean Joshua – this is how good you are! (laughing)

JL: I take that as a compliment.

Duplass may be best known as one half of the film-making Duplass Brothers, who had a big indie/festival hit with “The Puffy Chair,” one of the most acclaimed films in the so-called “mumblecore” movement — improvised, usually comic, films in which no one actually mumbles much but in which the dialogue is largely improvised. While the “mumblecore” tag has become more than a little dated, the Brothers D are currently completing their first movie with big-name stars (specifically, Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei, and John C. Reilly), which was without a title when this interview was conducted but we’ve just learned via Anne Thompson is going to be named “Cyrus.”

“Humpday” technically could be considered mumblecore because, while it was for the most part tightly plotted, the dialogue was improvised. It’s a technique Duplass was clearly comfortable with as he has acted in the films he has been making with his brother, Jay Duplass, for over a decade, as well as in such other ‘core hits as “Hannah Takes the Stairs.” We caught up with Mark via phone a bit early in the day (my time), one recent Friday morning…

PH: Just before I saw “Humpday,” I reviewed the DVD of “The Odd Couple.” I was just thinking, now that you’ve had time to think about the movie and everything, and we have this recently coined word “bromance,” which this movie obviously deals with – how do you think “Humpday” fits in with all these other movies that have been out there?

MD: That’s weird. When we made “Humpday” there really wasn’t the bromance movement in the zeitgeist. We were just operating in Seattle doing our own little thing. We were not conscious that we were part of a movement at all. When I look back now I can see that there’s something about the lovable loser/shlubby guy over the last five or ten years that’s become our new hero or protagonist. And there’s something funny and interesting, and ultimately kind of sweet, about the burgeoning friendships that happen between these type of guys and in particular a little bit of buffoonery that comes with it.

I can’t say why it’s happening now. I definitely know that, in my own life, as I get older I look for more intimacy out of my guy friends. I don’t know why. I’m more comfortable in my own skin, I’m more comfortable crying on dudes’ shoulders and talking about my insecurities with guys than when I was at a keg party when I was sixteen.

I don’t know why it’s become such a part of the zeitgeist. I’m happy about it. I like exploring it. There’s a sweetness to it and there’s a comedy to it that I think is really rife for exploration and art.

PH: You said you and Joshua were basically kind of acquaintances before the movie, but now you’re actually pretty good friends. That happened on the film?

MD: We’re very close friends – he’s one of my closest friends. [Before making “Humpday”] I only knew him tangentially and then Lynn said “Look, I need help casting this role.” I recommended Josh, just based on knowing him a little bit. I knew him enough to know he was a very special human being. Very emotionally evolved – he’s been through a lot for a guy in his early thirties, but more importantly he and I have this great dynamic.

We love each other so much and we have no real physical boundaries. We’re very intimate emotionally, physically but at the same time if one of us did something wrong to the other one, we would have absolutely have no problem shooting the other one in the face. It’s a good love/hate combo that makes for interesting acting chemistry.

PH: Do you think you guys will ever do another movie together?

MD: We talk about it all the time. I think we would love to. It would be a question of the right time and the right characters. “Humpday” is so special to us, if we did something we’d want it to be something really different.

PH: I was looking at some of your earlier short films and I was curious about your acting background because you seem so comfortable in front of a camera. Is there any aside from these movies?

MD: There really isn’t. Jay’s my older brother and, since we were little, he would hold the camera and I would be in front of the camera and that’s what we’ve always done. It just began as a function of the fact that I was the best free actor that he could find. Then, as my brother and I got more serious making movies, and now we’re making studio movies, [and that’s] an artistically rewarding but also very stressful environment.

Acting has now become this sort of little safe haven for me to be truly creative and truly free and not bear the onus of the movie. When I’m done, I go home and I go to sleep. When I’m directing a movie I’m thinking about it all the time. It’s a great counterbalance to my directing life.

PH: (laughing) You just killed one of my other questions!

MD: Alright!

PH: About the final scene. You purposefully didn’t talk about it beforehand about what was going to happen and what you were going to do for the film’s resolution. Did you have a bunch of contingencies running through your head, since you didn’t know what Joshua was going to do?

MD: Yeah. I wouldn’t say “contingencies,” but I did have thoughts about where it could go and I did have markers of places that I thought would be interesting. I thought for sure these guys would try out a kiss. I felt like that was coming at some point.

PH: By the way, I’m going to try not to give [the ending] away to the readers.

MD: Of course. I didn’t really know, obviously, what was going to happen. I had some ideas, but in general it really was a true process of exploration. It was “he’s gonna walk into that hotel room and I don’t know what the hell is gonna happen.”

The first day we shot for an hour and about 75 to 80 percent of what you see is from that very day.

PH: Here’s another thing. I think it’ s from one of the DVD commentaries, but I believe Lynn Shelton has said that you all actually didn’t know that it was going to work. You never really know that on any movie, of course, but in this case you really came in with the idea that “maybe this will work, maybe this won’t” and the entire movie might be discarded and never see the light of day. What got you to make that commitment anyway, even though you felt it was risky.

MD: It was the right time in my life. I was just about to shoot my first studio movie with my brother. It was a movie that I had developed for a few years and I knew we could execute perfectly. It was right in my wheelhouse, it was everything I knew how to do well and that was very exciting to me. The other side of that coin is wanting to do something that was really at risk of failing and the feelings that brought out in me…. “Humpday” was a little bit of me regressing back to how I felt when I was 19 or 20 making art movies. “It could be really cool; we’re probably going to fuck it up, but let’s give it a shot anyway.” There’s a vitality to that; it was the right time in my life.

PH: So you wanted to get back on the high-wire again?

MD: Yeah, I wanted to get on the hire-wire again.

PH: You’ve brought me very nicely to the next question. Now, the movie with your brother you were referring to, this is the one with Jonah Hill? Do you have a title for that yet?

MD: We do not have a title yet, but we’ll probably have one in about two days. We’re all getting through all the best options right now and trying to decide what that’s going to be. But, yeah, we’re still working on that.

It’s really become a special kind of a thing. Everyone has been so supportive and they love it so much, and so do we and we’re being very careful about when we release it and what title we use and we really want to do it right.

PH: As I understand it, Marisa Tomei plays his mother and John C. Reilly is her new boyfriend. What’s it like working with that kind of actor, as opposed to the the sort of stock company you’ve built-up with the so-called “mumblecore” films.

MD: Creatively speaking, very, very similar. They had seen all of our movies and we only brought them on board because they wanted to make a movie like this. They wanted to improvise; they wanted to go explore. And so, creatively speaking, we really were on that level. But, I gotta say, and I did not expect this, there is something to working with quote-unquote “professional actors.” These people are fucking good. They are good at their job.

I was cocky and thought “me and my friends, we know what we’re doing, we’re fine.” There is something to working with professionals. There is a reason these people make the money they do and get the praise that they do. Particularly, Jonah is…there’s a whole new side to Jonah. It’s a completely different character than he’s ever played. And it’s really, really special.

We’ve always known he’s a special kid; we’ve known him for quite a bit socially. We’ve been looking for something that can break him out of just the teenage roles that he’s played before, and we feel like this is it for him.

PH: I’ve seen some more potential in him more recently. His part in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” was something that seemed a little bit beyond what we’ve been seeing.

MD: He’s got it.

PH: Getting back to “Humpday,” It kind of fits into this broad category that’s been called “mumblecore” and I’m kind of curious because I was kind of pleasantly surprised since I’ve started seeing the movies…you guy’s don’t actually mumble!

MD: I don’t think we mumble either. I think it was very nice to have that movement in, say, 2005 when my brother and myself, Jo Swanberg, Andrew Bujalski, and a handful of other filmmakers – Ti West, who made “House of the Devil”…We were making $10,000 movies on our little cameras and it was great that The New York Times gave a name to our movement, to whatever. They gave us reviews and it brought awareness to us.

PH: Was it The New York Times who coined the word?

MD: I don’t know who actually termed it, but they sort of broke it out. And that was great and we needed that attention, but fortunately we’ve all evolved as filmmakers and the styles have evolved and the technology has evolved. So, we’re a little bit out of that movement and the press still wants to use that word. I think it’s outlived it’s usefulness, unfortunately. But I’m glad that it was out there for awhile because it did help to launch our careers a bit.

PH: It’s interesting because the first one I saw was “Hannah Takes the Stairs” and I thought, “this is pretty written,” which brings me to a question I want to ask you about “Humpday” and this may be more of a question for Lynn, but this move feels written. It feels like one of those movies were afterward people ask if the dialogue was improvised and they say “no it wasn’t, but that was because we did our jobs so well it felt like people were making it up as they went.” Why do you think it feels so tight even though you really were improvising the dialogue?

MD: The editor, Nat Sanders, is unbelievable at trimming fat and Lynn as well is very good about knowing that we want to stick to the narrative and not go off blabbing about things. But I also gotta give credit to Alycia [Delmore, who plays Anna, Ben’s highly tolerant wife and does so extremely well], Josh, and myself for knowing that just because you’re improvising doesn’t mean you can talk about bullshit for an hour. We were improvising the narrative and you have to keep the actor-brain on but also a writer-brain. So, while you’re inside the scene you’re driving the story and throwing out little surprises to keep things on track. If you feel things going off track, you have to spin it back and make sure you’re headed towards that narrative. It’s a very specific kind of improv – it’s narrative driven improv and I think that makes the difference.

PH: Obviously, this is not a story where you have heroes or villains, but your character does kind of do the most questionable things of any of the characters.

MD: Yeah, I agree.

PH: He seems very comfortable taking some big chances with his relationships. How do you think about him, for example, in the scene where he stays several hours at the party, though he has told Anna he’d shortly be leaving for home and her special pork chops. What’s kind of going through your head about what he’s thinking about?

MD: His behavior is understandable to me because he’s at a bit of a crisis point when he sees Andrew. He’s in his early thirties and his life is fine and it’s great. But when he sees he remembers the person he was when he was 19, in college with Andrew, and their whole life was ahead of them and their dreams were at their fingertips. It makes him realize that he has not achieved that he would have hoped he’d achieve; he didn’t become exactly who he hoped he’d become, and that makes him want to take all the little elements of his life, throw them in a box, shake it upside down, dump it on the floor and see what happens. He wants to shake things up and see what kind of foundation they really have. I think this whole idea of doing this porn with Andrew is right in line with that.

PH: That’s funny. It’s pretty much in line with exactly what I was thinking. He almost had to be not really sure whether he wanted to keep going on the path he thought he wanted to go on.

MD: Absolutely.

PH: Now, I’ve got a very superficial question for you, and I guess we’ll wrap up with this one. I was watching “This Is John” [a very funny 2003 short subject by the Duplass Brothers] last night. You look younger now – and very different at times. In some of the shots I thought maybe your brother was subbing for you or something. You really look different now and I can’t figure out why. You have any ideas?

MD: I don’t know, except when we made “This is John,” we combed my hair in a very special way and put on the computer guy’s outfit that was our roommate at the time. That might have had a specific part in it, but, who knows, maybe I found the fountain of youth.

PH: I was thinking maybe you had a nose job but then I looked again and I said, “no, the nose looks the same.”

MD: I haven’t had any work done, if that’s what you mean. I don’t plan on doing that anytime soon.

PH: [Laughing] I was just comparing pictures and I couldn’t support that theory. Since we’ve got another second here, I’ll ask you another question about that film. You were playing your roommate?

MD: That was a pretty quick movie – from conception to when it was done shooting was a half hour. We shot one 20 minute take and then it was done. I dressed up like my friend, Will. Put his clothes on, combed my hair like him and just imagined what it would like to be a frustrated computer programmer trying to the outgoing greeting on his answering machine. And that’s what came out.

It happened very quickly. Cut it down to eight minutes and that was our first movie that got into Sundance. That’s how life is…a $3 movie.

Read the Premium Hollywood interview with Mark Duplass’s “Humpday” co-star, Joshua Leonard.