From the soon to be released MATT AND KHYM

Those of you who are familiar with the Comstock style know that we always interview people in pairs. When we do this, we use two cameras. The first camera (a-cam for short) frames both of the interviewees, and the second (b-cam) is a close-up that stays with whomever is talking. What I like about this is that it lets me do more interesting things with the interview than if we just had one camera that panned back and forth and zoomed in and out.

For example, if we’re on the close-up of Ms. Interviewee, and she says something that makes Mr. Interviewee laugh and nod his head, we can cut to the wider camera angle (the two-shot) and the effect is sort of like cutting to the reaction shot in a film that’s shot narrative style. We see the action (close up of Ms. telling us a cute but embarrassing secret), then we see the reaction (two-shot with Mr. laughing and nodding in response to the revelation).

If it’s done right, the audience shouldn’t even be aware that we’ve switched from the close-up to the two-shot, and the fact that we don’t notice good editing is one of the things that’s utterly magically about film. The camera’s point-of-view moves fluidly through time and space in a way that our own POV never does, yet somehow, when it’s done right, if feels more natural and normal, and is easier to watch than a camera that just sits in one place and stares endlessly at the action.

I don’t make any claims to be a master at this particular part of film-craft (or any other for that matter). But when it’s working right I do enjoy it, and the last few days I’ve been enjoying deciding between the close-up and the two-shot on Matt and Khym’s interview very much. Their interview is chock-a-block with opportunities to move from one shot to the other and back again in a way that helps move the story along and helps to reveal more about Matt and Khym’s relationship.

I also noticed something about Matt and Khym’s interview. I love faces, and usually I’m always looking to find a way to the close-up. But Matt and Khym spend so much time relating to one another that this interview is mostly the two-shot, with the single person close-ups used mostly as color or grace notes. Here and their either Matt or Khym has a longer passage in close up, but time and time again I’ve found that if I stay on a close-up the way I usually would, I miss too much of the relationship. There’s just too much going on between them to stay with the longer close-ups in the way I usually favor. It’s exciting to see the way a couple relates to each other have such a strong effect on the way I cut their interview!

Figuring my way through things like this is one of the things I really like what about what I do. In it’s own way it’s as exciting as getting to see beautiful women take their close off and have sex. While there’s a certain sameness to these little movies, within that sameness there a huge opportunity to enjoy what makes each of these couples unique. They look different, they express themselves differently, they make love differently. That’s what makes this work so rewarding, and that’s what makes me feel so lucky I get to do it!

Well there it is, a first draft of the cover for MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER. They’ll be some more tweeks and tunes–probably a different image, maybe a different background color–but this is the basic idea. If you want to get the pre-order discount price you’d better do it soon, because MATT AND KHYM is not going to be on pre-order for very much longer!

A few months ago Jamye Waxman asked if I could send over some screeners for an article she was working on for WOMAN’S HEALTH MAGAZINE, the premise being that a couple was going going to explore using erotic videos to give their sex life a boost and report back.

Stacy and Bryce, 32 and 34, of Brooklyn NY were assigned the “homework” of checking out a few titles and reported back in the December 2006 issue. On Saturday Jamye brought me a copy of the just off the presses issue at the CineKink filmmakers panel, and Peggy and I read it the next morning over a proper Hells Kitchen diner breakfast. I’m pleased to say the report is good. In fact, the report is very good!

Following the recommendations of a female friend who enjoys porn, Stacey brought home three movies. At 10 P.M. she popped [DVD #1] into the DVD player, and before long she and Bryce were both laughing and rolling their eyes. “We weren’t into the beefcake/Barbie-doll sex,” Bryce says. “It was weird to see so many fake boobs and unnatural bodies.” The next night, a second title, [DVD #2], got an equally bad review. “We fast-forwarded right through it,” Stacey admits. “The sexual acrobatics were awkward.” The third flick, Xana and Dax by Comstock Films ($25, Comstock Films), was different. “This was our favorite,” Bryce says. “There was no plot; it’s a real couple having sex. They looked like people we would know and be attracted to.” Stacey agrees. “I loved Xana and Dax because they’re a real couple, with genuine orgasms and a sincere admiration for each other,” she says. “We watched it straight through, and even though we were as tired as usual, we had sex right after.” And they changed their usual routine by trying a new position from the video. “Now we’re starting to incorporate more porn in our sex life,” Stacey says. “We even brought some on vacation right after doing this assignment.”

The rest of the article is online at the Women’s Health Magazine Website

Thank you Jamye, for inviting us to lend a disc to this important work (helping couples have more hot sex!) and thank you Stacy and Bryce ever so much for liking what we do! We’re working hard to make more films that I hope you’ll enjoy too!

So last night was it, the big hometown premiere of DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER, and I will not deny that I was both excited and nervous at the prospect of our film playing in a theater in front of a New York audience.

First let me tell you what wasn’t so great. Something was goofy with the theater’s video projection equipment, and the color rendition for DAMON AND HUNTER was a dark, muddy green version of the film’s true colors. It fairly well changed Damon’s ethnicity, plugged up the shadows in the sex footage, and gave a slight purplish cast to the jism. DAMON AND HUNTER is without a doubt the best looking film I’ve ever produced, so seeing it looking less than its best was disappointing. But the fact is, compared to all the very nice things that happened during the Passion Plays CineKink session, it hardly mattered.

The coolest thing that happened (for me) when DAMON AND HUNTER was up was sitting in the very last row of the theater, and seeing my movie through a forest of heads. It looked just like a shot out of movie where we’re in a theater, only in this movie it was my movie that was up on the screen, and it felt super cool! But as nice as that was, it wasn’t the best part of the session.

The very best part of the session is that every single one of these very sexy films got the right kind of laughs (and none of the wrong kind!). Shared laughter is the ultimate audience experience, and is what makes seeing a film in a theater so different from watching it at home. Every single one of the films made us all laugh together. Sometimes it was titilated laughter, sometimes it was nervous laughter, sometimes it was knowing laughter, but it was always the right kind of laughter, never born of the unintentional self-parady that is so much a part of the usual experience of seeing sex films. But there was one collective “uh huh!” laugh that I especially want to tell you about.

The film was Jennifer Lyon Bell’s HEADSHOT, a short erotic art film with a simple premise: we see a fellow get a blowjob, from start to finish, but all we ever really see is his face. We hear the voice of the (obviously talented) felatrix a few times, and see the back of her head briefly when she first introduces herself, but other than that, all we see is the lucky young man’s face as she sucks him off.

The “uh huh!” laugh came about two thirds of the way in. She’s found her rhythm and he’s settle back to enjoy the ride. His eyes are closed when suddenly they pop open wide and he looks down, as if to say “Whoa, woah! Now that feels really good!”

Of course we all know that moment, from one side of it or the other. “Yeah, baby yeah. That feels so good. Don’t stop… Woah! Wow! That feels really good…” and you have to look down to see what sort of delicious trick is being played! And in that instant of collective recognition of 150 or so people thinking “yeah, I’ve been there” the audience let out a knowing “uh huh” sort of chortle in one collective voice.

Whether we suck dick, or get our dicks sucked, or both, in that one subtle cinematic moment, all of us saw ourselves up on the screen, all of us saw our own story being told, all of us were moved to give a collective, affirmative and apprecitive response–and it was magic! For me it was the highlight of the festival!

Were there moments like that in DAMON AND HUNTER? I think so. I hope so. But the truth is I was too self-conscious to really be in those moments myself. Afterwards so people said some very nice things, but it was all a bit of a blur, and frankly, after week away from my wife, I was eager to get packed up and get home to make some “uh huh” moment of our own.

Many thanks to Lisa for putting DAMON AND HUNTER in such wonderful cinematic company! The Passion Plays session at CineKink was a fun, sexy, and provocative evening out!

I had a little trouble sussing out the linking scheme on the Ynot website, but I finally got it sorted. So without further ado, here’s my phone chat with DarkLady and Lisa Vandever:

My Hot Threesome with Darklady and Lisa Vandever!

Oy, where do I start? (cue Julie Andrews…)

Thanks to our wonderful sponsor, PjurUSA we printed up 250 posters and 2500 postcards in advance of this weekend premiere of DAMON AND HUNTER at the New York CineKink Film Festival.

And because Ell told me she had such fun and received so much love and support when she put out posters and flyers in Melbourne I thought it would be a good idea if I went out and postered for CineKink. After all, it’s a home town premiere, and there’s nothing like the personal touch, right?

So Saturday I came into town, posters and postcards in a big box, first stop Chelsea, which has (in many people’s eyes) replaced Greenwich Village as the gay ground zero in Manhattan.

Chelsea is fabulous. The streets are filled with fabulous looking men, there are fabulous boutiques and restaurants. Chelsea looks and feels like what you think gay New York would look and feel like. Chelsea does not care that you have a movie. Not even if it’s your home town premiere. Not even if it has beautiful young men kissing it. My sister and I schlepped around, hearing “no” more often than “yes”.

I also managed to dump the cart four times. It’s a toss up between the time that I hit the older gay man in the ankle with the cart and then dumped the contents all over the Southwest corner of Ninth Ave and 23rd (fourth dumpage), and the time I spilled all 250 poster and 2500 postcards over the narrow foyer of the porn shop on 21st just off Eighth (first dumpage) for low point of the evening. I know that a few people said nice things, but the specifics are lost in the haze of people who were disdainfully disinterested, or even down right surly.

We caught a cab back to my neighborhood (Hells Kitchen) and tried few places between where the cab let us off and my apartment. They were nice, they were interested. We had dinner, and as a last stop I put a poster and cards in the gay bar on Ninth between 45th and 46th. Everyone there down right friendly.

Sunday morning we had a diner breakfast and then when schlepping up Ninth Ave. I had resolved to ask at every place we past, no matter the toll it might take on my (already low) spirits. But instead of another ass-kicking, everyone smiled and said “sure!” and “congratulations” and “do you have tape”. Every Arab-run bodega said yes; every Korean run beauty salon said yes; every pizza place said yes, nearly every resturaunt. The cobbler said yes, the frame shop said yes, the barber said yes. By late morning posters for DAMON AND HUNTER were up and down both sides of Ninth ave, from 42nd to 57th, and I had received a bunch of well-wishes, good-lucks and way-to-goes.

My sister had a singing thing to go do up town, so I said goodbye to her and caught a cab downtown to the Village. Would the Village be more like Chelsea, or more like Hells Kitchen?

Well I’m pleased to say that the Village was like Hells Kitchen. Shop keepers and bartenders told me “tear down what ever’s out of date and put of your poster”, or “I have a lot of customers I think would really like to see this, can I have a few more cards?” I criss-crossed Bleeker and Christopher streets, Greenwich Ave, and Hudson, went up and down West 4th twice. Every where people were nice and interested and congratulatory. They made me feel like I had accomplished something special by having my movie play in New York! It was fun, and my spirits were buoyed!

Monday I made hand-deliveries to editors at HX and Gay City and Next. I stopped by both Babeland stores and got a warm welcome, and they turned me onto a few joints in their neigborhoods that were hip to having the poster up. I went to the Pioneer theater and they were nice enough to let me put out cards (they rent my movies at their Two Boots Video). I stopped by Kim’s Video on St. Mark’s Place, and all the cool indie kids said “congrats!” and “good luck”!

Then on the way home I visited my lab and my telecine house, and everyone came out and clapped me on the back. “Best Documentary! Good for you!” Higher-ups were fetched to see the poster, and everyone had a good laugh at the big “Banned” red dot. Not many people shot porn or docs on film anymore, and these were just the people who could appreciated what a risk I took shooting D&H on film. All the NYU film students who came in, their 100′ daylight spools of 16mm in hand, were eager to take cards, and excited to meet a real live DIY filmmaker who actually shoots film and makes a living.

I got back to my neighborhood, got a meatball hero and a beer. I ate the sandwich and drank the beer, and was asleep by nine o’clock and didn’t wake till nine this morning. Tonight is the opening party for CineKink. I’ve got a few posters left so I suppose I’ll take them. There are just enough postcards for the screening itself.

The last few days feels a bit mad. I actually lost a notch on my belt from all the walking around, and there were some moment where I thought I must be a bit crazy going door to door in Manhattan and with my poster and cards and DVDs. But here now, after three solid days, I think it was the right thing to do. Google results for “Comstock Films” have spiked and so have sales, so maybe people are actually seeing the poster, going home, and getting on their computer to find out who we are.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about the word “shameless”. One of the things I love about making my movies is when it looks as though the people are so lost in their pleasure that they’ve gone entirely beyond caring that the camera is there. Somewhere Saturday late evening I stopped caring about how silly I felt trudging up and down Eighth Ave with my little cart. Not caring didn’t make it fun, but it did allow me to keep going. I was shameless, and that shamelessness took me into the very nice days that I had Sunday and Monday, and now a few hundred more people know about DAMON AND HUNTER and Comstock Films, and that’s a lot better than a sharp stick in the eye!

I had an interview yesterday with Lisa Vandever and Darklady on Darklady’s Ynot radio show (link forthcoming), and the very first question Darklady asked me was, “Your name isn’t really Tony Comstock, is it?”

It is not, and the question puts Darklady in a (to me surprizingly small) group of people who even think to ask.

“Tony Comstock” was part of the same moment of inpiration that gave me “Real Life, Real People, Real Sex”. In that instant I saw what I was doing as a crusade to reclaim images sex from extremist of all stripe; from those who seek to use the awesome power of sex to advance their own selfish and hateful agendas. As I said to Caitlin Corrigan in Clamor Magazine:

“By taking his name, by calling ourselves Comstock Films, that’s my way of saying this company is going to be devoted to bringing that same fervor that a Comstock-like person would use on being agitated, incensed, and hateful; but we’re going to put it into professionalism and energy and enthusiasm for the work that we do.”

In that moment, I had thought I was being clever, I had thought I was making an obvious, winking joke that most people, or at least most people who spent any time thinking about sex and censorship would get. But most people don’t. Richard Corliss, film critic for Time Magazine, quoted me twice, and never seemed to notice. Nor did the writers, researchers or editor at Jane, Men’s Fitness, Esquire, Tango, or Time Out New York. Or maybe they did, and they just didn’t think it was clever or funny.

But Giacomo Tramontagna of Guide Magazine noticed, and in his September review of DAMON AND HUNTER he wrote about it:

“It’s worth noting that the director’s pseudonym, Tony Comstock, pays subversive tribute to Anthony Comstock, the militant prude who in 1866 founded the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and set the tone for American censorship into the 20th century.

Turning the tables on his namesake, this 21st-century Comstock has made it his mission to acknowledge the role of sex in human relationships, depict it graphically, and celebrate its power.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Image from the upcoming ASHLEY & KISHA

I don’t know why it’s happened, but in the last week Comstock Films has risen to the second page of google for the search string “real sex”, and as a result “real sex” has been our number one search string for the last week. (That space is usually occupied by “Comstock Films”.)

I remember, I was in the shower when it came to me, fully formed:

Comstock Films: Real People, Real Life, Real Sex

Real people, meaning folks who seem whole and authentic; real life, meaning a point of view about sex that sees it as a part of the greater human experience, and one of its great joys; and real sex, meaning depicting sex in a way that is at least about the mutual pleasure of the subjects as it is about indulging the voyeuristic fancies of the audience (and the filmmaker!). It’s a tagline that would suppose to differenciate what we do from what is more commonly available to people who go looking for a film about sex with the very specific intent of watching it and getting turned on.

But lately I’ve been thinking the problem with porn isn’t that it’s not real enough, but that it’s too real. Too much of the time porn looks exactly like what it is (people having sex on camera for money), and not enough like what we wish it was (people having sex on camera because it makes them feel good). Instead of emotional, porn feels transactional; alien instead of fantastic.

That doesn’t mean we’ll be changing our tagline anytime soon. A lot of people who say they want something different say that what their looking for is something that feels “more real”, and a lot of those people find what they’re looking for in the films we make. But our tagline not withstanding, more and more I’m thinking the Comstock Films difference isn’t between “real sex” and “fake sex”, it’s between real intimacy and real alienation.

Many thanks to PjurUSA and my lovely wife Peggy!