Not *that* kind of backend. Sheez, people! Web site stuff. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to the past few days — working on making some large and some small alterations to the Comstock Films site in anticipation of the holiday season, and the release of our new title, Bill and Desiree: Love is Timeless.

We’re also cooking up some new special promotions for the next few weeks, to go along with the site re-launch, the new title release, and all the usual holiday goodies. In particular, I’m working on a special feature for Valentine’s Day that I think will be a lot of fun!

Okay, this going to work pretty much exactly like the Hurricane Katrina Red Cross Fundraiser we did back on September 14, 2005.

This time it’s going to be from Tuesday, Oct. 28, 12AM Eastern to Oct. 29 3AM Eastern. 27 hours, 100% of the purchase price on our erotic documentary DVDs (excluding S&H) going to the No On Proposition 8 Campaign.

So get your blog on. Get your Twitter and your Facebook and your MySpace on. Text a friend, e-mail a loved one. Tell them that if they buy any Comstock Films DVD on October 28, 100% of the purchase price will go helping stop Ballot Measure 8 in California.

After Hurricane Katrina we raised over $4,000 for the Red Cross. How much we raise to stop Prop 8 is up to you. There’s not much time.

So what are you waiting for? Go! Now! Go!

We’ve decided to open up the Comstock Films Affiliate Program to a wider range of participants. If you have a blog and you’d like to pick up a little income while supporting the work we do here at Comstock Films, the Affiliate Program might be right for you!

We offer a flat 20% commission on sales referred from your Affiliate link. Choose from a variety of art, or design your own. Sign up now!

Bill and Desiree

I watched Tony’s complete rough-cut of Bill and Desiree: Love is Timeless yesterday, ostensibly to give him my edit notes—where it needs work, tightening, etc.—but mostly what I came away with was a deep feeling of excitement and anticipation. I cannot wait for this film to get out in the world where it can start speaking to people and touching their souls.

Especially as I grow older myself (now that I’m checking that dreaded “next” box in demographic surveys…) I’ve definitely noticed a building feeling of resentment toward the way women especially, seem to vanish off the cultural-sexual radar once those first few crow’s feet set in. Just look at Hollywood, where aging male stars wind up getting paired with women young enough to be their daughters, while female stars of-a-certain-age are shunted off into playing secondary supporting roles—if they’re lucky enough to get work at all. Things are a little better today, and you can find more representations of 40+ women as vital, viable sexual creatures in Hollywood, adverstising, etc. But what about sexual art and culture?

Hmm. Yeah. Not so much.

I can’t wait for people to see Desiree in action. She and Bill are just going to rock people’s preconceptions of what mature sex is/should/can be. And it’s not something corny like ‘young at heart,’ either. Watching Bill and Desiree make love, I found myself thinking: Oh, so this is the natural evolution of the self. Comfort, groundedness, authority—if you allow yourself to grow, and stay open. It’s inspiring, and I’m so damned proud of Tony for bringing this film into the world.

Okay! ::regrouping:: We’re looking at a December 1, 2008 release date and I’m working on setting up the full preview and special price pre-order page in the next couple of days. Watch this space for more information.

Congratulations to nunaliorte, our DVD Giveaway winner!

We’ve got lots more giveaways and other goodies coming up soon, so if you didn’t win this time, hang in there!

Win the Comstock Films DVD of your choice on Monday, 10/20!

As Tony announced earlier today, Comstock Films is putting a free DVD up for grabs to celebrate/promote my entry into the world of Twitter, and takeover of primary blogging duty for Comstock Films. The winner of the giveaway will be selected at random from the people who are “following” my new peggycomstock Twitter account as of 12:00pm EST on Monday, October 20, 2008.

You may choose any one of our award-winning real sex documentary films as your prize. In return, all we ask is that you post a woohoo!-type acknowledgment ‘tweet’ in your own Twitter account when you win. If you don’t already have a Twitter account, setting one up is easy, free, and private — all you need is a username and email account. Oh, and you must be 18+ to win, ’cause we don’t wanna go to the slammer.

If you don’t win this time around, look for lots more cool promotional goodies coming from Comstock Films soon!

Regular readers of Tony’s blog may have noticed that he hasn’t been posting too often these days. This is actually good news for fans of Tony’s work, because it means he’s putting his cute little nose to the editing grindstone and prepping our latest film — Bill and Desiree: Love is Timeless — for release. In the meanwhile, I’m going to be taking over chief blogging duty for Comstock Films.

Who am I and what am I doing here? Well, it’s been a while (over a year and a half, actually) since I’ve written in this blog, so maybe a little reintroduction is in order. I’m Peggy Comstock, and we jokingly call me “the other half” of Comstock Films. I’m Tony’s wife and partner. I operate the second camera on our shoots, design our DVD packaging and marketing materials, run this Web site, and hang over Tony’s shoulder in the later stages of editing to ask him annoying questions like, “are you sure that anecdote adds to the overall narrative picture?”

I’m also a mom. Our older girl is in elementary school, but our youngest is not yet three — which, in case you’ve been wondering, is a large part of why I haven’t kept up with this blog in the past. :g: Yes, Comstock Films is genuinely a ‘mom and pop’ operation, which is one of the reasons Tony and I decided that it was important for me to step in and continue blogging while he pours his mental resources into finishing our next films. We rely so much on word of mouth and “guerilla marketing” to keep awareness of our little shop going, and blogging allows us not only to periodically shout, ‘Hey world, we’re here making these quietly revolutionary films about sex and relationships!’ — but also to engage in a direct dialogue with our viewers, friends, and fellow travelers in a way that means a lot more to us than it possibly can for a larger, more diffuse company.

Which…leads me to shamelessly plea for some of that direct dialogue right now. Tony is a firebrand. Me? Not so much (it’s a ying-yang kinda thing.) Oh, I have opinions, but I have to confess that when it comes to taking over the reins of blogging for Comstock Films, I’m feeling a little trepidation — Tony’s a tough act to follow. (Though don’t worry, when he gets a bee in his bonnet about something, you’ll be sure he’ll come banging out of the editing room to make an appearance!) But right now, I’m inviting any of you out there reading this to help me find my feet here — I feel like there are so many directions I could go. Are you interested in my perspective on the filmmaking process? How I balance motherhood with this work? How I make visual design decisions for Comstock Films’ packaging? Who I want to see win Project Runway? Seriously, after such a long break, it’s hard to know where to start.

Drop a comment, email (peggy at comstockfilms.com) or catch up with me on Twitter (my username is peggycomstock) and let me know!

Thanks, and hi, again!

-Peggy C.

It’s been brought to my attention that I haven’t updated this thing in a while. “A while” being the euphemistic term for…oh, 8 months? ::looks around sheepishly::

In my defense, I can only plead that I really am more of a geek than a mouthpiece. While Tony is perfectly (some might say too, but that wouldn’t be me, no way!) comfortable out there blasting away, I’d really rather be squinting at my screen, pulling apart code and figuring out how to get the new store up and running and things like that.

Speaking of the new store, I’m pretty psyched about it. But, um, not the color scheme. Let’s call that “transitional,” shall we? See, I’m actually working on redesigning the whole enchilada here at casa Comstock, the main Web site and our blogs too, but until it’s all ready to go, we figured we should keep using the old color scheme at the new store as a temporary unifying element so that people wouldn’t be disoriented and wonder where the hell they’d clicked off to.

But anyway, aside from the temporary color scheme, the new store is so much nicer and easier to use than the old one, and best of all, we’ve finally got everything in-house with our own super-spiffy secure server and digital certificate and everything. We can, like, sit at the grown-ups table now!

Yes, it’s sad. I really do get excited about this stuff. But on the plus side, I look much nicer in a dress than Tony does, and I can spell!

Okay, evidently I kind of suck at this whole blog-keeping thing. Mostly because I don’t have the kind of philosophical fire in the belly about what we’re doing here at Comstock Films that Tony does. I tend to be on the more practical end of things here, and I think I get caught up in the details of that (as one tends to with work) and it feels mundane and not really anything worth writing about.

But I have to say I’m pretty excited about the upcoming screening of Damon & Hunter at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, not only because of the screening itself (because, like, duh, of course I’m excited about that!) but because I got to design the poster promoting the screening, and…it came out pretty freaking cool if I do say so myself.

I know you’ve probably already seen this on Tony’s blog… but I don’t care! There appears to be some genuine buzz brewing down in Melbourne over this thing and it’s been fun to be a part of it.

As promised last week, I’ve uploaded a gallery of 15 yummy stills from the Matt & Khym shoot to their film page.

I hope you enjoy them!