Seattle Office of Film + Music

Variety
In 2002, when “The Sweetest Thing,” an R-rated comedy starring Cameron Diaz as a girl as raunchy as any guy in a Judd Apatow film, fizzled at the box office, Hollywood took note. “It became a hard and fast rule that movies like that” — i.e., racy comedies written from a female perspective — “would fail,” says screenwriter Karen McCullah Lutz, co-writer with Kirsten Smith of “Legally Blonde.” But now the ladies are shaking their own booty around — and nobody’s flinching. A number of edgy, raw comedies, all written by women, have been hitting theaters — and doing well — making the case that, as Smith puts it, “As women, we can bring it the way guys bring it.” There’s Lynn Shelton, who’s out-duding the dudes with her indie darling “Humpday,” which takes “bromance” to a new level. Even though she’s been called the “female Judd Apatow,” Shelton insists there’s a difference. “I really admire Judd Apatow. I love the way he brought this humanity into a genre that really held little interest to me,” Shelton says. “But I think there is a difference in that he is still trying to make a comedy, and I really was not. ‘Humpday’ has comedic elements, but it has as much poignancy and darkness as comedy. I was not interested in making a broad, Farrelly brothers farce.”