AV Club
Joshua Leonard, star of Lynn Shelton’s wonderful new comedy-drama Humpday, may look familiar. A decade ago, he and some other neophyte actors/filmmakers took cameras into the woods and came away with The Blair Witch Project, one of the biggest, most influential independent films of the past 20 years. Thanks in part to a brilliant viral marketing campaign, Project grossed a fortune and inspired a poorly received quickie sequel and a vast ocean of spoofs. The low profile Leonard has maintained over the past decade while toiling steadily in film as an actor and director actually works in Humpday’s favor. He’s able to disappear completely into the role of an artsy, straight bohemian drifter who ambles into the life of domesticated former college buddy/fellow heterosexual Mark Duplass and ends up agreeing to appear in a gay sex tape with him as a strange post-modern art project. That premise sounds gimmicky, but its execution is thrillingly naturalistic. The A.V. Club recently spoke with Leonard about Blair Witch madness, growing up, and working without a script or a net on Humpday.