Google’s search algorithms would seem to have undergone another fairly major revision, at least around sexuality. What makes me say that? In the last month, people finding their way to ComstockFilms.com on the search [real sex] have fallen by about 80%, while people finding their way to ComstockFilms.com on the search [nina hartley] have risen by about ten-fold. Yesterday we actually got more visitors looking for Nina Hartley than we are looking for real sex, which probably isn’t good for Nina, Comstock Films, web-searchers, or Google for that matter.

I suspect this has something to do with the Googlebot trying to distinguish between spamblogs and original content, but who can know for sure?

The good news is that this hasn’t had nearly the same effect on us that the Great Google Disaster of 2006 did. Since last year we’ve taken steps to make sure our fortunes aren’t so dependent on the visisitude of inscrutable Googlebot.

Did you miss the New York and San Francisco screenings of DAMON AND HUNTER, and all the other fun/sexy films in the Cinekink Film Festival? We’ll if you live near Portland, OR, you’re in luck!

DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER
Best Doc, 2006 Melbourne Underground Film Festival
Offical Selection, 2006 Sydney queerDOC, 2007 New Zealand OutFest, 2008 Torino LGBT, 2008 Tel Aviv LGBT

Cinekink Film Festival, Passion Plays Session
Clinton Street Theater
Portland, OR
November 2, 9PM
$6 at the door

Why do I make films? So I can get note like this!

Tony,
My wife and I watched this DVD last night. It was a wonderful change from the more typical adult films on the market. You feel as though you really get to know Matt and Khym. There are so many similarities between my wife and I and Matt and Khym. We met when I was just out of high school and my wife was still a junior in high school. We are both in our early 40’s and rarely can you find an adult film with people our age. Just like Matt and Khym, once we bought our home it seemed as though we always have others living with us. Even now, with 2 children and a mom in the home it feels as though we do have to “sneak around” to make love. We also look forward to the day when we can “do it” any time the feeling is there. The lovemaking scene was wonderful. We barely made it all the way through before our own desires took over. Thanks again for a great film about making love.

Sincerely,
L–, California

“Porn is about fantasy.” In the last ten years, I’ve heard that refrain a thousand times; mostly as an excuse for pornography’s manifold shortcomings. Fantasy as an excuse for misogyny. Fantasy as an excuse for racism. Fantasy as an excuse for bad movie-making.

And what about empathy?

DIE HARD is a fantasy, with automatic weapons and explosions and a dozen other things (we hope) we’ll never experience in real life. But it’s our empathy with Everyman John McClane that makes the movie work. If we don’t care about John McClane, we don’t care about the peril he is in, and we won’t care when he triumphs in the end. This is entertainment 101, understood at least since Aristotle.

In more recent times it has been suggested that arousal is incompatable with empathy; that desire, enflamed by explicit depictions of sex, casts a haze through which no other emotion can penetrate; that this haze must be “wiped way” in order to see other, deeper, more important emotions.

This is rubbish.