R.I.P. to the queen of mumblecore

It kills me to start out a remembrance of Lynn Shelton with a term like "queen of mumblecore." Rightly or wrongly, the progenitors of this distinct subgenre or style of filmmaking had all long ago rejected the term, possibly as long ago as not long after it was introduced.

But really, Shelton was one of the two people I first identified with this style after I first learned about it. The other, or pair of others, were Mark and Jay Duplass. Their film The Puffy Chair was the first mumblecore film I ever saw, back in March of 2007.

Lynn Shelton's Humpday was probably not the second such film I saw, since it took me nearly three more years to see it. But it was the next that made such an impression on me, and is still, ten years later, among my very favorites that I would tag with that term they were so eager to avoid.

If this were a competition between the Duplass brothers and her, she may have taken the lead with 2012's Your Sister's Sister, which was my #2 of that year. Though, since that movie also featured Mark Duplass, there likely was no competition at all. The people associated with the term "mumblecore" were like a collective of collaborators, all seeking to communicate their new vision to a waiting independent film audience.

And what was that vision?

You might call it "radical truth."

Mumblecore stripped away all the layers of artifice that tend to make a typical narrative film not feel truthful. By leaving the actors to mostly improvise their lines, and always come from an emotional place based entirely in reality, directors like Shelton explored deeper themes with a minimum of other noise to distract from them. Greta Gerwig also got her start here, and it seems one of the reasons she's been able to convey her own directorial efforts with a similar form of radical truth.

How radical? How about two heterosexual men and intimate friends who explore the idea of filming themselves having sex with each other for the purpose of political art?

That is the premise of Humpday, which also stars the younger Duplass brother as well as Joshua Leonard of Blair Witch Project fame. Just because a film was told with a handheld camera and the actors producing lines based only on an understanding of their characters' motivations in a particular scene, doesn't mean it couldn't be high concept. Mumblecore did not mean watching people eat cereal and do their laundry. It meant watching real people discuss dangerous things that could tear them apart.

Shelton hit the only bad patch of her career with her next two features, Touchy Feely and Laggies, both of which were short of the mark. They are not terrible films, but they do not accomplish what Shelton set out to accomplish.

Just when I was wondering if the earlier films might have been the exception rather than the norm, Shelton bounced back with a pair of movies that returned her game to its previous level. Outside In was in my top 20 two years ago (this time starring the older Duplass, Jay, and a superlative Edie Falco), and last year's Sword of Trust, starring her beau at the time of her death (Marc Maron), was more than a pleasant little diversion, though it was also that.

My wife commented today that she had a lot of good work still ahead of her. There's zero doubt about that. She'd been showing us by directing episodes of some of our favorite TV shows, like Master of None, Love, Glow, and The Good Place.

I didn't know Shelton well as a personality; she did act, and certainly had the looks for that, but it was not her forte. I did hear her interviewed a couple times, though, and I was struck by how down-to-earth she seemed, capable of charming self-deprecation and also terrific insight. She had a ready laugh too.

If I'm looking at Shelton's career in pairs of movies, I am fortunate that I still have one pair to look forward to. Her first two features, We Go Way Back and My Effortless Brilliance, are still unseen by me. I have not tried to track them down particularly, but they may be hard to find. Which could allow me to stretch out indefinitely this state of not yet being done with Lynn Shelton.

Shelton died this weekend of a rare blood disorder that had only recently been discovered. She was 54.

Marc Marcon is heartbroken. So am I.

Rest in peace.