An online friend, YogaDame, has just given a very nice five-star review to Revelations, a 1992 film by seminal “by women, for women” director Candida Royalle. Coincidentally, Revelations was the last porn video that Peggy and I watched (c.1996) before embarking on the adventure that has become Comstock Films.

Revelations is a solid, well-made porn feature, with lots to recommend it. And YD’s enthusiastic, but even-handed review is a great starting place to decide if this is one to add to your rental queue or library. Her only real reservation about the film comes in the Thumbs Down section of the review:

“My only concern is that Revelations is ambitious enough to perhaps invite comparisons to mainstream movies, which in turn can only lead to frustration and disappointment. For reasons too complicated to discuss here, the budgets of adult movies are miniscule (tiny even when compared to independent films), such that none will ever fully compete on the mainstream level. For those of us who love adult features in and of themselves, however, this one stands out for overall excellence.”

It’s been 10 years since I saw Revelations, but I still remember going into it with high hopes that it would be that magical combination of a “real movie with real sex”. And I still remember watching with a sense of frustration and disappointment. It almost seemed like two movies cut together; one a low-budget but credible dystopic-future scifi, and the other a softcore-ish erotic vignette video. And in the end I felt like the two worked at cross purposes.

As I ruminated on why I felt this way, I decided that a big part of it was simply a matter of money. The “film” part of the film was just too thin in art direction and production design, and the sex part was shot on video. Although the creative conceit accounted for the mixed media, the effect on me was that I was always aware that I was watching a production, instead of feeling like I was transported into a world where the characters lived and the action took place. I never quite got pulled into the story, and I never quite got turned on by the sex. Indeed, our own “pornumentary” approach was born in large measure as a way to try and take another tack on the problems inherent in five-figure (aka porn) budgets; which in my mind is largely a problem of managing the audience’s expectations, and avoiding unfavorable comparisons. (I’ll readily admit our approach has problems of its own.)

The most enjoyment that Peggy and I have ever gotten from a porn movie was a fairly recent viewing of The Opening of Misty Beethoven, which we enjoyed quite a bit. Perhaps some of the sex scenes dragged a little, but the movie part was so fun and sexy that it didn’t bother us. We certainly never felt the urge to hit the fast-forward button, either on the talking part or the fucking part. So I think it’s fair to count Peggy and me as people who would sorely love to see a modern adult feature that was as much fun. We knock around ideas for narrative style hardcore films, and I’d be thrilled to make a feature style, sexually explicit film that YogaDame thought worthy of a five-star review.

But as I thought about it last night with YG’s “invite comparisons” still ringing in my head, I had this thought: Who in their right mind, if they could produce something as witty and fun as Misty today, would limit their potential returns on a project by gumming it up with hardcore sex? If you only had a porn budget to work with, could you ever possibly make a feature style porn movie that didn’t invite unfavorable comparisons to better financed, better crafted films?

John Cameron Mitchell, director of the fantastic show and movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch has been saying he wants to for about five years. But as far as I know, he still can’t raise a budget ($2.5M was the figure I heard, twice that of the “big budget” porn epic Pirates) for Short Bus, his proposed explicit sex movie project; and I’ve little doubt it’s in large part because when investors look at the potential returns for a sexually explicit movie, they put their check books back in their pockets.

Now maybe some of you are saying “Money money money! Where’s the commitment to art?” Well if that thought crossed your mind, even for a moment, I’ve got a question for you:

Let us suppose that you’ve written a wonderful short story. It’s been published in some trendy erotic anthologies and even received some nice mentions in the literary mainstream.

Let us suppose that this story is all about sex, is filled with cunts and cocks and cum, and stinks to high heaven with joyful rutting.

Let us then suppose you’ve received two offers to turn your story into a movie.

One is from a well-established porn feature producer/director, who offers you $10,000 plus a percentage of the gross.

The other is from an up-and-coming independent feature producer/director, who also offers you $10,000 plus an equal percentage of the gross.

The porn version of your story would include explicit sex and would have a production budget of $75,000. (Close to the figure Royalle gave me for her more recent Stud Hunters, or that Jenna Jameson quoted for Jenna Loves Bella)

The indie version of your story would be R-rated and would have a production budget of $750,000. (About half the budget of the much lauded low-budget indie The Squid and the Whale.)

Which offer would you take?

One year ago today I wrote:

My name is Tony Comstock, I am a filmmaker, and this is my blog.

A word of warning and a plea to anyone who might read this. I am a terrible speller and typist. My errors defy spell check, and leave those whom I prevail upon to proof-read for me utterly baffled. I humbly ask you, (dear reader,) to give me the benefit of the doubt. I am not the semi-literate idiot I might sometimes appear to be.

A year later my spelling/typing remains stubornly opaque. Today my wife told me that she has no idea what I’m ranting about on half of my posts. I don’t always think before I post, so I’ve probably shot myself in the foot a few times. Still, I rank the endevour as a success. On an average day about a 2000 or so people read this blog (it’s the most popular page on the site), and enough of those readers turn into buyers that we are able to continue to do what we do. Good enough that I think we’ll try doing it another year and see what happens!

About the MPAA ratings system Kirby Dick says:

“Independent film tends to focus more on sexuality. Studios tend to put out films that have more to do with violence. Violent films get through almost unscathed, but the ratings have this excessive focus against sexuality that puts independent film at a disadvantage.”

What Kirby is talking about is the vague and often inconsistant workings of the MPAA ratings board, the body that assigns G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 that movies are virtually required to have to run in theaters. Aside from the violence vs. sex (and it’s worth remembering that we’re often talking about fake violence vs. real sex), there are also differences in the consideration that the big boys get versuses the independent operators. (I’m shocked. Shocked!)

What it comes down to is that if you put any sort of explicit sexuality in work presented to the MPAA, you’re going to get an NC-17 rating, which will make your work virtually distribution proof. Of course independent producers (like me) love sexuality, because it’s the one thing the big boys can’t do that we can.

Without a mainstream theatrical run, you can’t make your money back on a $50 million picture. But toss in a little full frontal nudity (not so much they won’t take you carry you in Block Buster), do the arthouse and festival ciruit, and some DVD sales, and there’s a living to be made in ‘art films”. But that nasty NC-17 rating is going to keep you out of the big leagues and away from the big money.

I’m not entirely unsympathetic. If, like me, you want to do make films about full-on hardcore sex, then you’re doing porn. No arthouse or Blockbuster money for you, you grubby pornographer! This irrational and self-serving ecomonic marginalization can be frustrating. But it’s not like anyone ever put a gun to my head and demanded I put cocks and pussies in my movies.

Of course that won’t stop me or Kerby Dick from complaining (apparently his latest film This Film Not Yet Rated is a charming expose’ of the MPAA process). But it’s worth remembering that Midnight Cowboy got an X rating (the MPAA’s old version of NC-17) and then went on to win the Oscar for best picture. That’s the kind of victory where everybody wins!

Violet Blue says:

Oh, good porn — what a fantasy! Good porn is pretty much the opposite of most of what’s most widely available on the market. Good porn has real people who are attractive; it has performers that are so hot for each other they practically tear each other’s clothes off (or savor every minute and every inch); good porn looks good and is thoughfully lit and edited; in good porn, no one “goes through the motions.” Good porn makes you want to get off ASAP; good porn doesn’t treat its audience like they’re stupid, wrong or perverted for wanting to watch it. Good porn is believable and has context. Good porn knows the failures of bad porn; good porn never fakes it. Emphasis added.

More of what Violet has to say here.

It’s time for another instalment of Xana and Dax: When Opposites Attract.

In Episode 3, we hear Xana and Dax tell us about their “opposites”: his thick dark hair, her fine blonde hair; his lean, dark body, her pale, voluptuous body. And we see how “opposites attract” as Xana and Dax move easily from one delight to another – her mouth on him, his mouth on her, each searching for ways to give pleasure.

For your iPod or iTunes:
pcast://feeds.comstockfilms.com/ComstockFilmsVideoPodcast

All others:
http://feeds.comstockfilms.com/ComstockFilmsVideoPodcast

And don’t forget, if you like what you see, you can get the entire film on DVD from The Comstock Films DVD Shop.

Enjoy!

In the previous entry I posted a couple of quotes from a 2002 Guardian article interview with French pornographer John B. Root. I posted the same quotes on AdultDVDTalk.com, which gave rise to a 14 page, sometimes accrimonious, but also lively and interesting discusion of the state of pornography. Here are some highlights:

My wife wrote:

I think one of the problems I see when these discussions crop up (and I argue with Tony about this stuff all the time at home — he may well regret encouraging me to participate here!) is that porn has two audiences who may have quite different goals and needs. For simplicity’s sake, let’s go ahead make grossly broad generalizations and call them “viewers” and “users”. And yeah, quite often, whether one is a “viewer” or a “user” will depend on one’s mood.

“Viewers” primarily categorize porn within the broader world of “filmed entertainment”. Before you start laughing, no, I’m not so naive as to think that people are actually buying and watching porn expecting it to be of the same quality as prime-time television. But I do think that there is a class of porn consumer for whom porn performs more as mood setting than actual masturbatory aid. Production values and competency of craft are more likely to be matters of concern to “viewers” — they’re certainly more noticeable when watching the screen from this more stepped-back POV. If you’re coming at porn from a “viewer” perspective, shoddy production alone can be so distracting as to render the entire experience unsexy — or even insulting.

To the “user”, for whom porn is performing the role of a sex toy or masturbation aid — there’s pretty much only one vital consideration: are the desired parts on screen, performing the way they’re supposed to, for a long enough period of time to take care of business at home. I think people who primarily fall under the “user” category find all this railing about “quality” from people like TonyC to be head-scratching at best. For them, “good” porn is effective porn, and while better production might be appreciated, I sense more of a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude.

I guess for me the question is one of whether true synthesis is even really possible. The kind of editing and pace needed to create a technically good and emotionally satisfying cinematic experience, may just work against the requirements of screen time and repetitiveness needed to make a genuinely good and effective masturbatory aid. I don’t know.

Then I wrote:

Mrs.C: (my wife’s nickname on ADT) I don’t know that I entirely buy your viewer/user paradigm. To me I thin the issue is more one of transportation . I want to be transported, and if I’m watching people fuck, I want to be transported to a place where the only possible response I have to drop my pants and stroke my cock. But much like being manipulated by cheaply rendered sentiment, I don’t want to fall back to earth and be embarrassed to find I’ve been manipulated by cheaply rendered sexuality. The sort of things (technical gaffs, mechanical sex, apparent ill-will on the part of the producers) that your “viewer” finds off putting are what will prevent me from being transported, and enjoying porn as a user. I just can’t feel good about jerking off to something that I wouldn’t have felt good about making. I want a consensual, joyous experience, which has nothing to do with whether what’s being rendered is tender fluffy bunny sex, or hardcore BDSM.

Lazerus wrote:

Tony, your requirement of a “consensual, joyous experience” sounds like some of the early, hippy split-beaver guys and gals, who thought they could change the sexual ideology of our society by simply making wet pussies seen and commercially accessible for the first time. That pornography could end sexual repression, that women who embraced their sexual desires would no longer be classified as sluts, that men could cease to objectify the female body as sexual property owed to them by divine right, etc. And of course many people still dig a lot of these early loops and films because they (and the people performing in them) bask in this Austin Powers philosophy. Nowadays, to suggest that pornography has perversely embraced all the attributes that the hippies hoped it would obliterate seems kind of sad, doesn’t it?

Secondly, consumerist culture has a knack for turning all viewers into users–no matter what the medium or subject. Therefore, it stands to reason that removing everything that classifies the customer as anything but a “user” is viewed as positive. And this, in turn, has as much to do with the endless copies, imitations, samples, and pastiches as does artistic conservatism. Imagination is a battery no longer required to consume contemporary product. But then, I’m probably manipulating your wife’s meaning with these terms now . .

I replied:

The problem I have with post-pill, pre-HIV sexual mores embraced by the hippies and others is that they posit that in an ideal world, other than the rush of orgasm, sex would be utterly consiquence free. This strikes me as fantastically childish and self-absorbed. It ignores both the gravest and greatest possible consequences of sex, rendering it little more than dancing, but with less space between the partners.

For people suckled on the idea that the period between the advent of the pill and the rise of HIV/AIDS was some sort of sexual utopia, this might sound like heresy. Porn is about fantasy, right? Well it would be nice if it was. The problem is that like sex, porn takes place in the real world, not in some sexual utopia. In porn, the boundaries between reel life and real life are blurry, if they even exist at all. In light of that fact, I’m much more interested in depicting sex as being a very adult activity, which is to say every act of sexual union comes with the possibility of profound, possibly life changing consequences. This need not be as dark as it might sound.

Larerus responded:

I agree with your assessment of the post-1960’s era, but I don’t think it is coincidental that pornography arose as a commercial medium during this time. The fantasy of sexual utopias is the meat and potatoes of porn, in particular male sexual utopias. The absence of consequence or conscience is often a big part of this equation, and was to some extent mirrored by the naive notions of the era. There was a positive, joyous celebration of sexuality somewhere in all of this, but there was also the potential of a casual, mean-spirited dehumanization. What bugs me about porn is its steady progression towards the latter. But I’m not sure that your interest in sexual verity is the way out of this conundrum, or if ultimately, you will be shooting something which we can still agree is porn at all. Do you know what I mean?

My reply:

For what it’s worth, here’s my take on the rise of commercial porn:

In my view, the advent of The Pill, too many young people, various court cases (Jacobellis v. Ohio, Roe v. Wade, Miller v. California), and probably some other things I don’t know about was a confluence of events, a perfect storm if you will, that made open discusion of sexuality in general and pornography in particular significantly less marginal than it had been only a few years earlier.

Whatever the moral misapprehensions of the era, the new freedom to show porn in movie theaters and a certain freedom from opprobrium (both legal and social) for both makers and viewers gave rise to climate in which we actually had the phenomenon of people standing in line, in public, to see a dirty movie. While there was plenty of trash produced in this era I’m sure, there was at least some economic broad incentive to take financial and creative risks, and in inflation adjusted dollars, porn budgets have never exceeds the monies spent in this era. If you haven’t read them already, the essays from Richard Corliss (”What Ever Happened to Movie Sex?”) and Colt Spencer (”Porn-Again Fundamentalism: Is Adult Entertainment Dying a Slow Death?”) I linked to earlier in this thread are worth a look.

But the door slammed shut on all this pretty quick. Contributing factors no particular order: national humiliation in Viet Nam, oil shock, herpes, HIV/AIDS, VCR, The Meese Commission, all these conspired to change the economic and social climate in which porn was produced and viewed.

What we’ve seen in the intervening quarter century we’ve seen constant downward financial pressure. To my eyes, the only creative response to this came from John Stagliano, who understood better than anyone else that video is not film, and requires a different creative conceit. But before too long, his insight was devoured by the rapid rise of computer technology. Lowered barriers to entry create opportunities for some, but they also create an environment of diminishing returns. Film, even shot-on-video pornographic film, is a quintessentially commercial art form, and without economic incentive to take financial and creative risks, it stagnates and dies.

I’m not saying those incentives don’t exist now. Pirates seems like it just might be something (at least a little) different, and I’m expecting a screener any day now. If nothing else, it shows that someone thinks there’s still money to be made by spending more money, instead of less. And of course I’d offer my own work as an example of a nominally successful financial and creative risk. But despite ever growing claims of annual revenues, today’s “adult industry” doesn’t appear to have the same broad inscentives to take risks that pornographers had during the “porn chic” era, at least not when viewed through the rose-colored glasses of nostaligia.

As to whether or not what I do is porn, I’m charmed to see people wrestle with this question. Well maybe “wrestle” too strong a word, but it’s nice to have created something that makes people think about it. And I’ll readily cop to trying to have it both ways. The label is only important in as much as it serves the commercial success of the work; letting me keep my labs bills paid and my house warm through these long, cold, damp East Coast Winters. A warm house with a well-stocked pantry is as much a source of artist freedom as anything else.

I dont know what, if anything, might create the sort of social and economic conditions that gave us The Opening of Misty Beethoven. Flawed as it might they might have been, the mores of the early 70s offered an openness about sex that allowed people to take risks. “Failed” actors and filmmakers could at least enterain the idea that by baring it all, they were taking part in some great liberating movement – and giving themselves one last shot at grabbing the brass ring in the process. These days you’d have to be a fool or a romantic to harbor such notions. I get called one or the other on a weekly basis.

Says John B Root, a French pornographer:

“I want to be able to watch a sex film, get my physical pleasure out of it, and not have my brain tell me afterwards that it’s revolted and ashamed because the thing was so cheap and nasty and demeaning. There’s no earthly reason why a porn film shouldn’t also be a good film. I want the product to respect me.”

Mr. Root also says:

“Porn’s been legal for 27 years,” he says. “It’s rendered sex banal. There’s a generation of young film-makers who’ve grown up with it and want the right to experiment with sex as cinematographers. There’ll always be a market for sheer bad taste, of course. But having prepared the way for a genuine sexual cinema, pornography is dying - and the way it is now, I won’t be sorry to see it go.”

I don’t know much more about Mr. Root, except the other things he says in this Guardian article. I think I will have to do some googling today.

In episode 2 of “Xana and Dax: When Opposites Attract” we hear how Xana decided to take it slow. Their first night together featured a shared shower and some heavy petting, but no sex. That didn’t happen until later, when Xana gave herself to Dax for his birthday…

For your iPod or iTunes:
pcast://feeds.comstockfilms.com/ComstockFilmsVideoPodcast

All others:
http://feeds.comstockfilms.com/ComstockFilmsVideoPodcast

And don’t forget, if you like what you see, you can get the entire film on DVD from The Comstock Films DVD Shop.

Enjoy!

A little more than a year ago I was contacted by freelance journalist Caitlin Corrigan, who was interested in doing an interview with me about Comstock Films. A few days before Christmas of 2004 we spent a short two hours on the phone where she endure full-throttle comstockery, probably not dissimilar to Freddy and company’s experience in Vegas last week. (No one’s ever accused me of being reticent about talking about myself.)

Ms. Corrigan distilled the interview into an article proposal, and then proceeded to have it rejected by several potential publishers, “Sorry, we just did something on porn,” which Caitlin heard as “Sorry, there’s nothing interesting about a man with a video camera making smut.” Over the years I’ve noticed that editors have an almost pavlovian reaction to woman making. It’s just more titillating, isn’t it?

Anyway, Caitlin didn’t give up; and a year later her article has found a home in Clamor Magazine, a quarterly out of Ohio. Caitlin’s article is really nice, and makes me sound lucid and passionate, with quotes like:

“There’s this presumption that porn is only about fantasy,” says Comstock from his home in New York. “Well if that’s so, then I’m not doing porn.” He’s not being flip; it’s just that the word is so loaded, so fraught with tackiness and compromise. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against fantasy, but my work is not about something remote and unobtainable, it’s about something that is right here, in each and every one of us, something that can make us connect to another person in a profoundly pleasurable way.”

Or:

For a progressive pornographer, a man who unabashedly claims sex as “a really important part of my vision,” the nom de smut he’s chosen seems a bit jarring.

“Helen’s face may have launched a thousand ships,” Comstock insists, “but the reason Menelaus was so upset was because of Helen’s twat. It’s pussy that enflames our desire, arouses our passion, drives us to acts of madness. And it’s pussy that drove Anthony Comstock to try and drive all evidence of sexuality from the American social landscape. Art, literature, medical textbooks, birth control information, all burned on Comstock’s pyre. It was his life’s work. It was his calling.”

Of course I would like to share the entire article with you so you can read all the other nice things Caitlin wrote about me, so it my very good fortune that Clamor launched a website this month, and although it’s password protect and in the future will be for Clamor subscribers only, for the time being everyone is welcome, using the following username and password.

Sex & Sensibility
Tony Comstock’s Labor of Love
http://www.clamormagazine.org/issues/35-5/content/sex_1.shtml

username: isubscribe
password: clamor2006

Enjoy!

Some things I think I said, in no particular order:

Watching porn by yourself is very different from watching with someone else in the hope/expectation that the video is going to heighten arrousal and lead to great sex.

Porn leans too heavily on the expectation that the audience will be so shocked and titalated by seeing cunts and cocks that they’ll ignore sloppy filmcraft.

Porn viewing advice is too forgiving of porn, and puts too much of the burden on the audience. “If you don’t like something, or it bores you – fast forward.” Can you imagine Martin Scorsese tell the audience, “If you get bored, just fast forward to the good parts.”?

Freddy said that when a couple creates a comfortable environment to watch a porn video (kids safely tucked away, lights low, wine, candles, etc.) they’ve created a comfortable environment to have sex, and that if the porn video isn’t working, turn it off and move on to the good stuff. That’s good advice in principle, but in our own experience and in the experience of our friends, the process of finding out that you’ve got yet another crappy porn tape in the VCR (we haven’t rented or bought any porn in years) can and is a mood killer. You keep hoping it get better, but it doesn’t, and between the boring and/or offputting depiction of sex and the disappointment and/or anger over thinking this time will be different, the mood is gone. (Indeed, my personal creedo since starting down this path has been “Try to make the best film you can, but make sure you don’t ruin anyone’s evening.”)

Porn viewers are forced to spend too much time scanning for some indication that the people fucking on screen are actually enjoying themselves. If you go over to the ADT message boards you don’t have to look hard to find posts either complaining about performers going through the motions, or nervously asking for reassurance that they really love doing what they’re doing? My friend Ell will scan through a half-dozen porn videos in the hopes of finding one or two moments that seem to depect people who are happy to be fucking each other on camera.

That’s all for now. More soon.