The true meaning of porn, especially bad porn, continues to be discussed in the little corner of the blogosphere I wander (did I use “blogosphere” correctly), and no discussion of porn would be complete without a detour into taxonomy and/or semantics – what is porn, when is porn art, where’s the line between porn and erotica – that sort of thing.

My films get labeled all sorts of things: couple’s porn, women’s porn, erotica, amateur (on film?), pro-am (wha?), docurotica, pornumentary, all sex, educational (ouch!) and most recently “artisan porn”. Mostly I don’t really care what people call my work, so long as they buy in sufficient quantities that I can pay my bills, continue my work (which I like very much) and put some money away for a rainy day. That said, I don’t really like the word porn, and wish there was some other word for the films I make.

I don’t like porn because I think for too many people the word (rightfully) connotes a film or video that is going to demand the viewer lower their expectations with regard to conception and craft below tolerable levels. Make no mistake, expectation management is the indie filmmaker’s first and most important skill. But porn has leaned too heavily on the idea that the audience will forgive almost anything to see a little pussy. I won’t do that, and a lot of other people won’t do it either.

Another reason I am uncomfortable with the word “porn” is because for many people, porn means something is going make them feel bad if they watch; they’ll feel bad about themselves, or bad about the people on the screen, or bad that they’re aroused by something they know is cheap and shabby, made without care or craft. That last thing in the world I want my films to do is make people feel bad, and it breaks my heart a little that my films are (deemed to be) part of genre that makes so many people feel bad about themselves or bad about sex.

This is why I don’t like the word porn. It’s too laden (justifiably) with all sort of negative baggage, and more than that I think it keeps my films from being seen by people who would enjoy them.

So then how about erotica?

Well yes, almost. I like the word erotic, so erotica should be fine. Except it’s not, not for me at least.

My awareness of the word “erotica” goes way back to when Dworkanites and social conservatives first banded together and began together began to float the idea that “pornography” did all kinds of bad things to people and society (rape, murder, that sort of thing), and that it should be banned, or at least more heavily regulated. Up until then, porn was chic (remember pornchic?); no need for a euphamism, porn was porn.

But by the early 80s, the video camera was already sucking the creative life out of porn (you’ll never see The Opening of Misty Beethovan ever again) and the moral tone of the country had changed. Now porn was bad, and something needed to be done about it. (I still have a picture of Ed Meese going into a Times Square porn shop burned into my memory – talk about erototoxins!)

Anyway, “erotica” became code for “porn that fits my moral code”. No one ever wants the sexually explicit stuff that they like banned, so it becomes erotica. Erotica is fine, but nasty stuff that other people wank to is porn. Ewww! This always made me think, “Oh, so if you diddle your clit while reading erotica, it’s okay. But if I want jack to pictures of a buxom brunette with her ass in the air, that’s not okay. That’s porn.” That sort of parsing of what turns people on didn’t fit my moral code. (It also probably had something to do with the fact I am a photographer and took exception to the idea that there are things you can write about, perhaps even paint, but can’t photograph.)

And then as the Meese Comission cloud descended on the erotic landscape, and Penthouse and Playboy started dispearing from 7/11s, “erotica” became a code for sexually themed photos or videos you hoped would be explicit, but never were (*cough*skinamax). “Erotica” was about knowing there’s no place in descent society for cunts, cocks and cum.

And so just as I don’t want to use a label that makes think our films are going to make them feel bad, I don’t want them to think they’re not going to get to see cunts and cocks and cum in a Comstock production, because absolutely you will. Our films are about cunts and cock and cum. So sorry “erotica” is out. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m still pissed the Dworkinate for making me feel like I should be ashamed of loving ass so much, or still pissed at Skinimax for not delivering the goods, or maybe I’m still pissed that of all the truly horrible things I’ve trained my camera on in 20 years of photojournalism and documentary filmmaking, the thing that gets people the most upset is a nice pink pussy. But whatever it is, I don’t like the word “erotica”, so it’s out.

So then what should you call Comstock Films? If you enjoyed Xana and Dax and you want to tell a friend about it, what kind of movie should you tell them it is? I say I make sex films, or films about sex. Hardcore love stories could work, but I think somebody is using it.

Maybe we don’t yet have a word for the kinds of films I make. (Ack doesn’t that sound pompous!) But I am absolutely delighted with the words that people use when they say why they like my films; words like “passionate” and “tender”, words like “real” and “raw”. That’s what I feel when I have sex with my wife. Isn’t that what we want to feel when we watch a film about sex?

-TC

You have days dreams that someday someone will write something like this about your work:

You’ve been looking for the right video for years… everything you’ve come across seems a little contrived, fake, and passionless. Well, look no further! Comstock Films provides the real goods. This isn’t some Hollywood soap opera, it’s a straight-up honest documentation of two people in love having some of the most passionate and tender sex ever caught on film. With a variety of positions, light anal play, and heavy kissing, this couple offers a sexy, candid and exploratory change of pace to the otherwise monotonous world of porn.

Thank you Good Vibrations!

-TC

There is a (as DTG puts it) a multi blog discussion of porn aestetics taking place at Freya’s House and Virgin Slut’s blog, trying to unravel the meaning of the deluge of truly bad (badly concieved, badly made) pornography that more and more has come to define moving imagines of sex. Missing from this discussion is the detective’s maxim: follow the money; or as is the case in pornography, the lack of money.

Lack of money you say? But isn’t a porn a multibillion dollar a year industry? Surely the the state of porn today is a conspiracy born of greed and misogyny!

If only this were so.

Each year the IFP sponsers the Independend Spirit Awards, a rough equivelent of the Oscars for films made outside the Hollywood studio system. These are small films, which is to say they have seven figure budgets – that’s right, even a small film still costs millions of dollars to make.

Because five million dollars is still a rediculous amount of money, the Independent Spirit Awards has a special award for truly low-budget filmmaking: The John Cassavetes Award. This the award for films made on a shoestring; films fueled by hope and devotion. You can’t qualify for the John Cassevetes Award if you’ve spent one penny more than $500,000 to produce your feature. That’s right, the low-budget award at the low-budget Oscars is for films that cost a half a million dollars to produce.

Now let’s compare that to porn.

Jenna Jameson told me the budget for Jenna Love Bella was $60K. The budget for the widely celebrate Fashionsistas is reputed to have been about $500,000. A couple of multi volume costume drama “epics” are said to have topped a million. These are the Titanics and Ishtars of the porn world. And for the most part, the investment made in them wouldn’t even get them into the big leagues at the Independent Spirit Awards. Hell, the last figure I read was that an hour of Canadian television drama cost a million dollars to produce. Even if those are Canadian dollars, that still beats even the biggest budget porn on a dollar/minute basis.

So yes, the male gaze and the rest of gender politics matters. Our sexophobic culture matters. 2257 matters too. But the biggest limitation on what porn can be, or can even try to be is money.

It would be nice to think that a simple act of will could result in better sexually explicit art. This can and does work for writing, and there’s a wealth of beautifully written and arrousing writing about sex. Perhaps it can even for photography, but the sex photographers I know take plenty of “straight” commissions to finance their sex work. But film (even if you shoot on video) is an exponentially larger medium, a medium that is first and foremost the art of spending money. It’s not a medium that yeilds to good intentions, so merely wanting to make better porn is not enough. It takes money, and lots of it.

-TC

*John Nicholas Cassavetes (December 9, 1929 - February 3, 1989) was a Greek-American actor, screenwriter, and director. Cassavetes created an American form of cinéma vérité with his innovative camera use, bleak outlook, and emphasis on improvisation. Film critic Ray Carney called him “the father of American independent film”.

Okay, okay, maybe you’re getting tired of seeing nothing but good reviews for Xana and Dax on my blog. But I’m not! Here are bits and pieces of another very warm review; this time from Abby Ehmann, who some of you may know as Editrix Abby. Says Abby:

“They look and sound and have sex not just like “real people,” but people I’m actually friends with. They talk about how they met, how much they enjoy each other’s bodies and their general love and appreciation for each other in a way that you won’t see in any other ‘porn movie.’ “

I really like that Abby put porn movie in quotes. Ten years ago I called myself a pornographer with a certain roguish pride, “No, it’s not erotica, it’s porn. Cunt and cocks and cum. It’s porn.” (I wanted to distinguish what I did from films that promised the goods, but never delivered.) Not anymore. Porn has become embarrassing (if not down right upsetting) on so many levels it’s sometimes hard to find words. That more than one person has said X&D doesn’t feel “porny” is very gratifying.

Returning to Abby’s review:

“When she sucks his cock, he looks positively beatific; their 69 is almost too intimate. And when they do it doggie style, Xana experiences an eyes-rolling-into-the-back-of-her-head orgasm. Whew! What you see on screen is two people very much in love and truly enjoying themselves both spiritually and sexually. It is hot!“

Again Abby is picking up on something I very much wanted to get across. In crafting X&D, I wanted to create a film that felt intensely voyeuristic, intensely private, but I wanted the audience to feel at ease with the intimacy. I wanted to find a way to tell the viewer it’s okay to want to look, it’s okay to want to see, it’s okay to feel turned on.

This is very similar to what Audacia Ray said in e-mail: “[Y]ou’ve managed to do a very delicate thing, which is that you’ve created a film that feels naughty, like the viewer is seeing something he or she isn’t supposed to see, without making the act of watching feel shameful.”

There is a tendency to discount the nice things that people say, but when you hear it twice, you start to let yourself think it might be true!

Near the end of her review, Abby turns her attention to the production design/art direction.

“It was nice not to see the usual tacky LA ranch house or odd personal effects surrounding the sex scenes and be able to focus on the couple themselves. (Sorry, but I am often thrown by particularly egregious lamps, carpets and tchotchkes in the background. Bad taste is so not sexy!)”

That strange brand of aspirational art direction that is practiced in Porn Valley has to be one of the most bizarre aspects of “the industry”. There always seems to be an awkward mismatch between the way the talent looks and talks, the cars they drive and the houses they live in. And the tchotchkes always seem like they’re a 15 year old boy’s idea of classy.

I think the approach is some sort of bastard child of Hugh Hefner’s waspy contrivances and Bob Guccione’s italianine* fantasies, but back in the Seventies, when Hef and Bob were establishing their signature looks, they were working with real money. You can’t do a the club/palazzo/chateau fantasia on the cheap (well you can, but it looks like crap), so we try to do “no art direction” art direction (in the hopes of not giving the audience a reason to start giggling). It’s nice that Abby noticed. (And even nicer she didn’t giggle!)

You can read the rest of Abby’s very nice review at Eros-Zine.com.

Thanks Abby!

-TC

* Mrs. C is Brooklyn born and bred. Italianine is what happens when italianate goes too far.

Says Eddy:

“Comstock Films has come out with another winner with their newest film, ‘Xana and Dax When Opposites Attract’. Xana and Dax are one the most beautiful couples I’ve ever seen. In fact, the first time I viewed it with Freddy, I had sort of a breakthrough, sexually, as I became so turned on that Freddy practically inserted his entire hand into me and I (normally size-averse) practically clawed our couch into tatters. But that’s another story for another time.”

Says Freddy:

“We recommend this title highly. Not just because it’ll make for a very sexy evening with you and your partner, but because it’s important to support projects like these and the people who make them. Until we show with our dollars that these are the kinds of films we want to watch, the industry as a whole will not change and the production of lousy fare will continue.”

You can read the rest of their review here.

Thank you Freddy and Eddy!

-TC

Commenting on yesterday’s blog entry, Housewyfe echos my own mix of excitement and disappointment when she writes:

Frustrating that Ms. Woods seems more intent on writing something smart (couldn’t think of a better word) than actually providing the information so many of us are seeking. Regardless of her navel gazing, I hope the mention brings you lots of attention/business.

She’s not alone. This morning brings several notes that are similar in tone. Tony Comstock and his army of horny middle-aged women are enraged that Stacey Grenrock Wood has failed to use her platform at Esquire magazine to spread the good news – that sex is beautiful and films of sex can be beautiful too! Well okay – not enraged, but disappointed. I am pleased, and touched by this show of support; perhaps even a little startled to have “devoted fans”. But having (mostly) recovered from my own wounded pride, I do think it’s worth thinking about this from her point of view.

Ms. Wood’s wit not withstanding, she is in a bit of a bind. As I said to El last night, “If a friend asked you to recommend a sexually explicit film she could enjoy (with or without her husband) and you couldn’t offer them something from Comstock Films, what would you tell them?” The stock answers and the “established porn aesthetic” leave a lot of people cold. Even if Ms. Wood’s writing style usually brimmed with sincerity, I wouldn’t blame her for being flippant about porn.

The other thing to keep in mind is Esquire is “the big leagues”. Columnist are hired for their voice, their writing style; not to spend time talking to people like me. I was contacted by an intern researcher, who sent along his notes to Ms. Wood. She never spoke to me and (I’m guessing) she didn’t have time to follow up on the research info herself. (How else does a company that makes films of lesbians, by lesbians, and (mostly) for lesbians ends up in the pages of Esquire magazine?)

The researcher heard my whole rant about taking a cinematic (rather than pornographic) approach to explicit sex, saw Xana and Dax, and even sent me a note saying “I just got done watching Xana and Dax and it is good stuff.” By the time I was done with him, if he wasn’t actually a convert, he was receptive to the idea that seeing people have sex doesn’t have to mean lowering your standards and expectations (well) below the Sunday bassfishing show level. But he was in the New York office, and I’d be very surprised if the DVD ever made its way to the columnist, who lives out in Los Angeles. (I sent her e-mail offering to send her a copy of her own. We’ll see if she take us up on it.)

In any event, George is right: the important thing is that they spell your name correctly. In the overnight, we’ve see a 20-fold increase in the number of people finding their way to ComstockFilms.com using the search string “comstock films”. That’s probably a better response than if we had paid to run a full page ad!

-TC

“I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right.”

– George M. Cohan

Some of you may remember my post from last month where I excitedly announced I had been contacted by an Esquire fact checker to make sure they had my name and title correct, thus seeming to confirm that Comstock Films would be mentioned in an upcoming issue of the magazine. And in fact, Comstock Films is mentioned (and I am quoted) in Stacey Grenrock Wood’s Sex column in the July 2005 edition in which a reader asks her:

“My girlfriend wants to start watching porn together, but only of the “for women, by women” variety. Can you give me some suggestions for both titles and directors?”

After mentioning the usual suspects (plus some unusual suspects provided to her researcher by yours truly) for “porn by women, for women”, Ms. Woods goes on to say:

“If this all seems too flashy for you, you may want to try a title from Comstock Films, a company that specializes in films of real couples having real sex, documentary style. Founder and director Tony Comstock offers an alternative for those people who find themselves turned off by the established porn aesthetic: “The average person is like, ‘Well, wait a minute. This doesn’t even look as good as a Sunday-morning fishing show. I mean, I like fishing a lot, but I like sex more. How come they can’t make a sex film that is as good as a bass-fishing show?’ ” Of course, we’ve all asked ourselves that a million times, but the real-life approach has drawbacks as well. The chance of Chinese-character tattoos and yellowed futons increases by about 70 percent with this kind of thing. Basically, it all comes down to this: There’s porn, and then there are movies Diane Keaton would like. The choice is yours.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m excited that we’re mentioned in a publication with a circulation of 700,000+. And I’m absolutely and unequivocally proud that we make films that men and women can enjoy watching together. I even understand that Ms. Wood’s snarky tone is a part of her schtick (she used to write for the Daily Show). But as pleased as I am at getting a little mainstream ink, her write-up is a reminder that the mainstream is still a ways away from giving any serious consideration to the idea of watching (or making) films about sex.

In Richard Corliss’s article Porn Again (in which yours truly was quoted twice) Corliss managed to disavow any interest in actually seeing a film of people have sex no less than three times, and frankly I don’t blame him. Corliss (to some degree) lives in the public eye, and a desire to see graphic depictions of sex is still regarded as a slightly humiliating; one step above wiping one’s ass in terms embarrassment, one step below in terms of necessity. (I’m also frustrated that my Comstock joke has once again flown under the radar of a presumably educated and well-read person!)

Time will tell if I am, in fact, a “maverick”, or just another pornographer with a slight twist on an old idea. In the meantime, I’m going call a colleague who probably has Diane Keaton’s home address in his rolodex. Maybe we can find out if she likes our films. I’m also going to keep George’s words close to my heart!

-T.C.

I was immediately attracted to the name “Real Adult Sex”; after all, that’s what we’re trying to do here at Comstock Films, depict adult enjoying sex the way it happens in our real adult world, rather than the bizarre adolescent fantasies of aspiration and acquisition that are the stock and trade of pornography.

Having long labored in pursuit of this vision of a new way that sex and the moving image might merge, the sex-blog culture is very encouraging. More and more everyday people have the opportunity, through sex blogs, to see and share sex as they experience it in their own lives, to see and share how sex really is, and to learn that pornography’s rather juvenile concept of sexuality (that they already know doesn’t represent their own sex lives) doesn’t represent the sex lives of the rest of the world either.

Ten years ago this level of honest exchange was risky at best; unless you live in San Francisco talking about how much you like eating out your husband’s asshole is generally not cocktail party conversation. Swingers and other “alternative” types might have chance to find out what “regular” folks were up to, but your average suburban soccermom or lawn-mowing, Weber Kettle BBQ’ing dad had to make do with what they read in Redbook or Esquire - a rather homogenized and sanitized version of what’s going on in America’s bedrooms to say the least!

Not surprisingly it was “alternative folks” who first seized upon the power of the internet to communicate with each other. Some of you might even remember places like Lifestyle.com or the EnglishPlace.com BBS. Okay fine, sex freaks and afficianados chatting up and hooking up. Then there was the sudden rise (and almost instant commercialization) of the real amateur exhibitionist Web site (from which comes 53% of the inspiration for Comstock Films). But it is the sex blog that finally brings sex back where and how most of us experience it: in private, with the same person we slept with last night, with the same person we expect (hope?) to sleep with for the rest of our lives.

Bloggers like El or HousewyfeWithBenefits aren’t writing about the kind of sex they wish they could have – they’re writing about the sex they do have, they’re writing about sex the way it happens in real life between real people. They’re not looking to promote themselves or their work (like yours truly), they’re not looking to justify or explain their unusual sex practices, they write simply to celebrate that they like to fuck, that they are adults lustily enjoying one of the great pleasures of being an adult.

When you think about it, these women’s blogs are remarkably subversive, destablizing even. We have a sense of how to respond to a sex-radical’s blog, “Yes, you’re a sex-radical. And even if I don’t quite get it, I acknowledge that you have a right to be yourself and to enjoy whatever sort of consentual relations you want, with as many other adults as you want. It’s (for the time being) a free country.”

Fine. Good. Our openminded and affirming world stays intact. But what do you say when a woman simply tells you ” No, I’m not a porn star or a sexworker; I’m not a radical or an activist. But I do have secret that I want to share with you, and that secret is I can’t get enough of my husband’s cock, I can’t get enough of him fucking me. And I want you to know this about me.” That sort of fucks up the world, doesn’t it? That’s not porn spinning half-baked fantasies about silicone-enhanced blondes and red sports cars, and it’s not Cosmo giving you “5 Killer Moves You Can Try Tonight!”. It’s just real people, real life, and really good sex. And I don’t think it gets any hotter (or more wholesome) that that!

-T.C.