In his upcoming book with his Podcrushed cohosts, Nava Kavelin, and Sophie Ansari, Crushmore: Essays on Love, Loss, and Coming-of-Age, Penn detailed his experience getting up close and personal with the camera.
“We’re shooting a fantasy sequence and as a stylistic choice, one that makes a lot of sense, the director has chosen to place the camera directly in front of my face,” Penn said, according to an excerpt obtained by Vulture on Sept. 25.
But instead, he’s “become not only bored but also contemptuous” with her, so instead he fantasizes about “having sex with a librarian he’s been flirting with” named Marienne Bellamy, played by Tati Gabrielle.
When Silver Tree, the show’s director, told Penn there wasn’t enough room for him and Victoria to both be included in the shot, he said he had to “simulate sex by myself, effectively humpin’ on the air, on a fake bed in a fake room, surrounded by a film crew.”
“Not only will I be humping the air with the camera in my face, but I’m going to be looking straight down the barrel of the lens, something I reflexively never do,” he recalled, clarifying that typically “looking in the camera ruins a take.”
Wearing nothing but a “flimsy” nude thong, Penn described, “this is one of those rare circumstances, made rarer by the fact that I will be simulating sex with the camera and, by proxy, the audience.”
Readying himself for the scene, Penn kneeled “onto the thin, false mattress where the camera rig — a large and unwieldy apparatus — hovers on a jib arm that extends from a Transformer-esque machine,” which is essentially his “pretend lover” for the scene.
Penn noted how close he was to the camera, which caused him and the crew to “giggle.” But when the laughter was over, he locked in, and it was time for him “to hump.”
“A moment ago there was only resistance in my body to do what was needed, but upon the utterance of one word — action — I am supremely present in the face of sheer absurdity,” he said. “I look in camera. And I hump my ass off.”
Whoa. If that excerpt doesn’t make you want to read the book Crushmore, I don’t know what will.