Distribution thought for the day:

Even if I buy a film for a dollar, it’s still gonna cost me $20 million to market the damn thing.

A friend of mine is on the edge:

“Inevitably, it seems that these days someone is always annoyed with me and my inability to do things faster. And I’m annoyed with myself, but also my life at large… I have a new short film that I want to campaign around, but…. I have two porn films that I have the green light for, but…I have a literary agent but haven’t written any pages of my book-to-be… Teaching at Rutgers is taking up 20+ hours of my week, and I’m sinking under the pressure…I can’t get to my email in a timely way… I’m making enough money to live, but not enough to feel stable… I need to take up projects that will yield something more concrete (like cash) instead of prestige and good press clips… I think this is a cry for help.”

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I have a half-finished post on this notion of mine of “Sustainable Success”. Then over on the D-Word, someone posted a link to this rant by the irascible Harlin Ellison. Not so different from the rant my mentor gave me 20 years ago. (Actually the version I got was more like a pep talk. Same ideas though.)

Enjoy!

With Always Aroused Girl’s help, we gave away some films over the weekend. The best part was to be elligible to win, you had to leave a comment on her blog. Do some house work. Check nice comments at aagblog. Play with my kids. Check nice comments at aagblog. Go to beach with kids. Check nice comments on aagblog. Make love to my wife. Check nice comments on aagblog. Best weekend ever!  Lots of heartwarming thing said, but this might be my fave:
 

I watched the straight ones, then the lesbian one…….then I decided to watch the two guys going at it. I have been hetero all my life, but hats off to you, Tony, your body of work enticed me to watch a male homosexual clip, and I FUCKIN’ LOVED IT! In fact, I’d like to suggest that my swag is made up of a few more of those…you know, just to round off my collection. Man, what the hell is happening to me?

A week or so ago I made a post in which I said that I make these films because I want to call into question everything we think we know about sex, film, and art. It’s easy to want. Doing is harder. But this morning, the above comment from aagblog makes me feel like just maybe I’ve done it!

Distribution thought for the day:

You will never see Violet Blue’s EROTIC ROLE PLAY: A GUIDE FOR COUPLES in the remainder bin at Barnes & Noble.

It’s Saturday Swag over at Always Aroused Girl’s blog, and this week the sway is two complete sets of our films. That’s fives DVDs for two lucky winners. So if you want to win, go over to aagblog.com, read the her post, and leave a comment with a working e-mail address. It’s that easy. Good luck!

http://aagblog.com/2008/06/07/saturday-swag-from-comstock-films/

Distribution thought for the day:

There’s no sense starting your first film unless you’re committed to finishing your third.

John Stagliano is charged with a crime against public decency. He is charged with distributing videos of acts that, although are not crimes in and of themselves,  are acts thought to be of such depravity that the very depiction and distribution of these act through the medium of photography constitutes a felony.

Think about the legal theory at work here. Through the magic of photography, non-criminal acts have been transformed to criminal documents. Through the magic of photography, non-criminal acts have been transformed into a criminal idea.

 You can imagine, as a photographer and filmmaker, how it makes me feel; to have my medium legally imbued with the magic power to turn the expression of my thoughts into a crime. And though it’s hard to imagine that my films would ever be attacked, there’s no being certain. Things change.

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Distribution thought for the day.

Go over to Amazon and look up a newly released book or DVD. Ask yourself: Why is this title available from so many sellers at such a deep discount when it’s only been out a year, a month, a week, a day?

“I want National Geographic color.”

That’s what I tell the colorist who does our telecine transfers from Super16 to tape. It’s short-hand for “The look I want is no look; natural, normal skintones, nothing affected, artsy, or edgy.”

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