My glib but true answer for why I make films is that there are things I want to express about sexuality, intimacy and cinematic eroticism that I cannot express with words. 

After reading Domina Doll’s review of BILL AND DESIREE: LOVE IS TIMELESS words fail me again, except to say thank you for taking a chance on this film, and for seeing it with the kindest of eyes.

I didn’t know quite what to expect when I received “Bill and Desiree: Love is Timeless” by Comstock Films for review.  Would I enjoy watching “older lovers” in their “later years” making love on film?  Well, within the first few minutes my doubts were eased as I watched Bill passionately recount how he and Desiree first met and how he was “blown away” by her “beautiful genitals” in the pre-sex interview.  I was immediately drawn into the film through Bill’s joyful candor and enthusiasm, who is like a school-boy enamored by new love.  I thought: “This is not going to be your typical film.”  And, it definitely isn’t.  Bill and Desiree have much to share with the viewer through their celebration of sex, love and desire, with a few erotic revelations thrown in that might surprise you as well.

Bill and Desiree are an attractive 50-something couple who are recreational naturists and happened to meet at a “clothing optional” event.  Bill is charming, endearing and gregarious; a bohemian poet who is thrilled to be in the prime of his life.  Desiree is exquisite (Bill refers to her as a “Goddess”) with a lovely glowing face, expressive eyes and an animated smile.  You can immediately tell that they are each other’s “soul mates” as they reminisce about their “delirious” love making on their first real date in Sam Taylor Park under the Redwoods where they are stumbled upon by a spotted-owl researcher.

During the interview, they talk about the importance of human touch and how they stay connected through what Desiree calls “a daily nourishment”.  Bill also discusses how mainstream pornography and sexual “how-to” advice can be damaging as it sets unrealistic goals to perform and try to achieve magic every time.  “Peak experiences are just that,” says Bill, “Not every experience is Mount Everest”.  What I learned through watching Bill and Desiree is how accommodating and self-less they give themselves to each other, not always interested in orgasm for themselves, but delighted to give each other pleasure and enjoy what they receive with so much gratitude.  This is the way relationships should be and I have to thank Bill and Desiree for sharing their respect, love and passion with the world, for it is so inspiring and wonderful to see.

Another aspect of their relationship is that they approach their lovemaking as an adventure, constantly trying new things.  Bill laughs as he tells the viewer about Desiree making love to him with her strap-on, then later in the film gives her dildo a blow-job as they giggle blissfully.  They use a lot of variation during their lovemaking scene, switching sexual techniques and types of foreplay with penetration and back again.  This takes the pressure off Bill to constantly perform as their desire gains momentum through sensual valleys and rapturous peaks, building until their ultimate climax.

Everything they do, they do with exhilaration and wild abandon.  They explore their sexual love like children who are delighted and amazed by everything they see and touch.  I had a perma-smile welded on my face as I watched them make love with such tenderness: their smiles, laughter and joy radiating out of the screen to affect me as well.  It was so powerful and beautifully poignant to watch their sweet ecstatic moans and tearful orgasms as they convulsed with ecstasy.

This film could not have been made by anyone else.  Tony Comstock’s camera-style invites you in-close and intimate-focusing on the joy on their faces, the tenderness with which they hold each other’s hands, the gaze in their eyes as they immerse themselves in their shared moment of bliss.  Comstock uses what I call a “haptic” style of cinematography, in that the lighting is soft and muted with a somewhat diffused quality and close-up sensuality that evokes the sense of touch.  Unlike mainstream porn that is glaring, stark and in your face, Comstock’s films seductively roam the bodies of their participants like a lover’s touch, moving in and out of focus, in a way that highlights the physical beauty between two lovers and celebrates sexual intimacy as an art form in itself.  In this way, Bill and Desiree become more than just the components of their sexual moving parts, as their emotional, spiritual and amorous bond transcends the screen.

“Bill and Desiree: Love Is Timeless” is a magnificent film: a sexual tapestry of touch, unconditional love, and vivacious desire.  This film should be a part of the curriculum in Sex-Ed classes and is a must-see for all couples regardless of age.  It will inspire couples how to stay passionate, vibrant and innovative in their approach to love and sex, no matter at what stage they may find themselves on their journey through life.

When I first entered college my declared major was mathematics, but that was only because I didn’t quite have the courage to declare as a music major. So I started in on the math requirements while “secretly” taking a freshman music major’s course work. Two terms later I had to make a choice, between the calculus sequence and a throw-away but required music class. I chose music. The trouble was, I wasn’t a very good musician, and another year later I (thankfully) stumbled into photography.

But the love of music remains, and some of the sensitivity as well. What aptitude I have for editing I find draws on my musical sensibilities, and I have had the chance to work with composers to produce original music for a couple of my non-erotic films. For films that didn’t have the budget for original scores, even the process of selecting and editing pre-existing music has been immensely satisfying. (I once actually got rights to four tracks from Ennio Marconi’s THE MISSION score to use in a film about refugee resettlement.)

My erotic films do not have music, and are constructed in a way that doesn’t require music; a choice made against two realities. 1) It’s very hard to produce great original music, especially where subtly is called for. I really can’t imagine how a composer would even begin to attack the challenge of scoring one of these films. (Partly because building them in a way that does not require music inherently makes them hard to score.) 2) Licensing good music is extremely expensive relative to the returns in independent filmmaking (another reason that indies that get the mainstream distribution treatment don’t make money.) I had looked into rights for a track from one of the artists mentioned by Damon and Hunter at the beginning of DOING IT TOGETHER to use under the credits. The rights to one song would have cost as much as it cost to produce the entire film.

The result is that these films go naked, and that’s not the worst thing. The emotions and ideas stand bare, with no “musical cue” to the audience for how they should think or what they should feel. The effect can be, at times, little stark; but it also lends a certain feeling of honesty to the films. Music can be used in wonderfully manipulative ways, but there’s no danger of that in my erotic documentaries. The emotions rise organically from the testimony, the flicker of expression, the movement and interplay of lovers’ bodies.

Still, I miss working with music. It used to be part and parcel of my filmmaking, but not anymore.  In 2002 I got to work with a composer to produce a suite of about 10 piano and guitar tracks for a 9/11 film. In 2003 I worked with another composer to produce a smaller suite of guitar, drum and strings tracks for a short film about disaster relief. But since then, nothing.

The story goes that when George Lucas first showed his new space opera, without music to all his buddies from film school (who were now big wigs in the movie business) they all thought Lucas had made some remarkable technical breakthroughs, but that the film itself was an unwatchable disaster. After the luke warm reception, the “naked” film went off to John Williams and with the addition of Williams’ music, Lucas’ technically remarkable, but utterly unwatchable space opera became STAR WARS. I don’t think any such miracles await me, but I hope that someday I will have the opportunity to work with erotic imagery and music. 

In the meantime, yesterday I made passing reference to the late great Don LaFontaine, “the voice” of movie trailers for most of my life. That’s another common documentary device absent from my films - voiceover. But what fun it would have been to have him do the voiceover for a trailer for one my films! Sadly no chance of that now. But Carmina Burana is still available! I’m thinking I might ask Michael to cut us a trailer:

Make sure to read the translation. Kind of matches the mood of yesterday’s post, doesn’t it? Then watch this “alternate lyrics” version:

And then just because I think this is the most wonderfully yearning, optimistic melody in all of human history, here’s Igor Stravinsky conducting the finale to his own FIREBIRD SUITE:

Spring is a time of rebirth, is it not?

From Professor Edelman’s “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?” published in Harvard’s  American Economic Association’s Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 23, Number 1—Winter 2009 

Table 1 

Adult Entertainment Subsectors 

Category 

Retail sales in 2006 

(millions of $) % Growth from 2005 

Video sales and rentals $3,622  15.4% 

Internet $2,841 13.6% 

Clubs $2,000 0.0% 

Cable/pay-per-view $1,745 34.2% 

Novelties/merchandise $1,725 15.0% 

Magazines $950 5.0% 

Mobile $39 11.4% 

Total $12,815 0.0% 

Source: “Industry Stats,” AVN Media Network (2008). 

In Professor Edelman’s study, Utah comes out as the nation’s number 1 downloader of internet pornography, but I can’t help wondering if Prof. Edelman even knows that many retailers in Utah are afraid to carry sexually explicit DVDs, even our own very tame, recognized by health professionals, erotic documentaries. Skimming his article, I don’t think so. I wonder how this information might change his conclusions…

 It’s a pity Prof. Edelman isn’t an “Art & Business of Making Erotic Films” reader, otherwise he wouldn’t have missed my mention four years ago of these two articles:

Forbes Article One

Forbes Article Two

Pity too that BoingBoing.net took down that “Porn Girth” article I fed Xeni Jardin two years ago. Some good info there about the size of the adult industry. Fortunately it’s archived at VioletBlueVioletBlue.org

Prof. Edelman shouldn’t feel embarrassed. Folks are willing to believe almost anything if it’s mentioned in the same sentence as the word “pornography.”

AP reporter David Crary was willing to believe that John Harmer was a Utah-based (Utah?) auto executive and anti-porn crusader, when in reality he’s just a republican hack.

The New York Times and dozens of other media outlets waited with bated breath for the adult industry to throw its weight into the HD-DVD v Blueray format war. (BTW, Sony’s put a very high hurdle on Blueray that very few porn companies will ever be able to leap, and won the war as well. I guess they didn’t care about losing the porn business…)

And of course lots of daring college professors tackle the porn question in books and titillating classes for credulous undergrads. After all, anything that generates $12B/year in revenue is worthy of serious critique, and if you have a problem with that, you’re obviously both a prude and critically unsophisticated.

And lastly let’s not forget those jillizionaire porn magnates that only drive their Rolls Royces on the weekend. Thanks for that one PBS!

Anyway, the $12/B figure is in print again. This time in a journal published by the Harvard B-school. American Economic Association. Never mind the only place the figure has ever appeared as original data is in the ever reliable AVN, and AVN’s source is (when asked by an enterprising Forbes reporter) “a pie chart.”

UPDATE:

Okay, I thought I should actually Benjamin’s paper, but I don’t know if I can go on after reading this:

More recently, as studios evaluated competing high-definition DVD formats HD-DVD and Blu-ray, at least some studios chose Blu-ray upon observing that adult studios favored that format 

Umm, no. Porn studio were overwhelming choosing HD-DVD because it had much lower mastering and replication costs. And as I said above, from the start Sony put lisensing hurdles on Blueray that most porn studio will never be able to clear. None the less, Blueray won the format war.

I know, I know. It’s so much more fun to think that the “adult industry” is a cabal of Rolls Royce driving moguls with their tendrils extending into every aspect of our lives. But in reality, it’s mostly a bunch of not very bright, not very good at what they do, and not any good at anything else chumps who think that the word “Negro” is going to be their salvation as sales decline.

UPDATE II

A correction via e-mail from Prof. Edelman. The article in question was not published by Harvard/Harvard B-school. It was published by the American Economic Association. My bad. Strike-throughs and corrections made above. Thanks for getting in touch, Ben!

UPDATE III

So I got in touch with Anne Norman, editor at The Journal of Economic Perspective. She’s a very nice woman and we had a nice phone chat. I asked her if there was some way I could comment on Ben’s article and she asked me if I was a member of the American Economics Association, and I explained that I was a filmmaker, and gave her my perspective on the deficiancies of the data that Ben cited in his paper. I told her that my interest was piqued when I saw Utah jumping of the map, and about my experience talking to retailers in Utah. (This especially seemed to catch her attention.)

Anyway, long story short, she invited me to submit a response for possible publication in an upcoming edition of the journal, so it looks like I’ll be reading Ben’s paper with a fine-toothed comb. At a glance, most of it looks way over my head, but just reading through the bibliography, I see some of usual suspects, so there’s almost no doubt there are a few more erroneous claims on top of the AVN $12B/year figure and format wars nonsense. Time to take off my trouble maker hat and put on my interested academic colleague mortar board.

Except where laws and politics relate to cinema and sexuality, I try to steer clear of politics on this blog. I don’t expect that anyone would have to agree with my views on the alternative minimum tax, or whether or not the F-22 is a good investment in our national security in order to enjoy our films, and I’d hate for any disappointment about my or Peggy’s politics on issues unrelated to freedom of expression or sexual liberty to come between someone and the enjoyment of our films. Pardon me this morning if I drift a little.

It should come as no surprise that making and distributing the films we make sometimes make me  feel estranged from the society in which we live. I’ve just finished reading my post from last May “Art with a Capital A” and it put me near tears. Our various  and ongoing misadventures with the powers that be  are a constant reminder that my views on sexuality and cinema is very much a dissident view. What seems natural and normal to me is, at best regarded as offbeat; at worst it’s regarded as criminal.

Even within the world of sexually explicit filmmaking, our approach is considered bizarre. For the sake of my own conscience (and other reasons) we only work with couples in pre-existing relationships, and we don’t ask them to do anything with each other that they are not already happily doing in their personal, off-camera sex life. The reason for this is simple: I’m not interested in asking people to take sexual risks for the sake of my films.

Because of my need for this sort of “moral insurance” we are only able to produce one or two films a year; which means we have to sell a lot more copies of each film; which means we have to make our films to the highest possible production standards; which means things like shooting film and extended post-production schedules; which means the films cost more to make; which means we have to sell that many more copies in order to make enough money to keep making films.

I suppose whether this is a vicious or virtuous cycle is a matter of perspective, but it’s the bargain we’ve struck with ourselves, and it worked for us. Which brings me to the political part of this post.

One of the main reasons that Peggy and I were able to enter into this virtuous cycle is that we’re both business-minded,  willing to take risks, and financially conservative. I don’t mean financially conservative in a no income tax on capital gains sort of way, I mean financially conservative in a shopping for clothes on 34th street between Seventh and Eight Ave sort of way; we’re financially conservative in a 30 year fixed mortgage sort of way; we’re financial conservative in a save 25% of your income sort of way.

As much as any thing else, that conservatism is what has allowed us to make the films we make. It’s allowed me to follow my conscience about what I will and will not ask people to do on my set, and it’s allow us to say no thanks to distribution “deals” that would have been financially ruinous to Comstock Films, or to PR “opportunities” that would have be entirely at odds with the reason we make the films we make.

That conservatism has allowed us to say “no thanks” to HBO, BBC, CBC, Pulse Distribution, Adam & Eve, Women’s Health, Pacific Media, Tartan Films, ThinkFilms to name a few. In each case we were faced with the same question: Do we give up control of our films, of our brand, our values for the chance of greater recognition, greater reach, greater revenue?

It’s an agonizing question. As an artist I want  my films to be seen as widely as possible. As a businessman I want Comstock Films to thrive so that I can live up to my obligations as a father. But in each case, we were able to look at our personal balance sheet – a balance sheet that’s the result of years of financial conservatism, prudent risk taking, and personal sacrifice – and decide we could afford to say “no”; that if we couldn’t make and sell films on our own terms, that we could simply do something else, something that didn’t demand we compromise our values; and we’d still have a place to live, we’d still have food to eat, we’d still be able to take our children to the doctor when they got sick.

Normally this is a source of (perhaps too much) pride. Being able to afford the courage of my convictions feels like fair-trade for the years off-brand clothes, the tent and sleeping bag vacations, the ten of thousands of dollars put into savings and filmmaking equipment, and all the other choices that Peggy and I have made to be able to make a film like “Bill and Desiree” or “Ashley and Kisha”.

But not today.

Today I feel as if the financial choices Peggy and I have made are as out of step with society as the films that we make. Today I feel as much a fiscal dissident as I do a social dissident. As much as I sometimes feel a fool for having devoted my artistry and intellect to making and fighting for my sex films, when I simply could have continued to make films about war and poverty and misery; today I feel a fool for having made the conscious choice to live within our means. 

And worse, it just doesn’t make sense to me. What could be a more normal, natural and healthy than the full expression of love between a committed couple? What could be more prudent, stable and pro-social than spending less money than you make and putting the rest away against the possibility of unforeseeable circumstance? 

I can hear Don La Fantain’s voice in my head, “In a world gone mad…” zchunk zchah zchunk “One man will make films that treat sex as a beautiful wholesome part of committed, emotionally healthy relationships…” zchunk zchah zchunk zchunch “One family will not take a teaser rate ARM in order to buy  an oversized house in an obviously overheated housing market and put their entire financial survivability at risk…” zchunk zchah zchunk zchunch zchunch.

There’s a word for people who hear voices in their head – crazy. And today I’m considering the possibility that it’s me that’s gone mad and not them. That I’m the one who’s gone of the deep end and taken my family with me. That normal sane people don’t film people having sex, and don’t have trouble remembering the last time they bought a pair of pants.

From Simon Blake’s blog:

In November I posted a comment saying I was writing to google to ask why clitoris was banned from in their safe search option when penis and scrotum were not.  Last week someone called to say it was a technical issue and they were going to look into it.  He agreed to contact me when it was sorted.  I will keep you informed.

Three cheers for Simon for following up on this. But a “technical issue” strikes me as an odd way to characterize Google’s decision to include “clitoris” on a list of SafeSearch banned words that also includes “nude’, ‘naked’, and ‘bastard’.

Of course maybe it is a technical issue. After all, the mere misplacement of a ‘/’ caused Google to classify every page on the World Wide Web as malware. Here’s hoping Google can get its bugs ironed out. If they do, maybe people will be able to use Google to find out the [clitoris] vs. [penis] story started right here on this blog.

Last week’s Youtube’s map of popularity for our DAMON&HUNTER clip

The week before last I made an odd and unsettling discovering about the passage from DAMON & HUNTER that we put up on YouTube a couple of months ago. As the above graphic shows, the clip was was, for a short time, more popular in Iran than anywhere else in the world, and by a wide margin.

When I come across things like this, I can’t help but obsess over them, so I dug around a little more, and through YouTube’s traffic analysis tools, I discovered all the views of the DAMON & HUNTER clip came on one day, January 21st; a one-day burst of about three dozen views. Not a single view from Iran before January 21, not a single view since then.

This factoid has lodged in my brain and gotten stuck. My imagination keeps constructing scenarios of how it was that on that one day the clip was viewed in Iran some 36 times, and then nothing more.

What changed from the 20th to the 21st? What changed from the 21st to the 22nd? I don’t suppose I will ever know, and when I consider the various possibilities I suppose there’s a chance that I’d rather not know. Still, I can’t help but wonder.

“Fidelity”: Don’t Divorce… from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Just last month Peggy and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary. Someday soon I hope to be able to make one our love and sex documentaries about a gay or lesbian couple that has been together as long or longer than Peggy and I have been together. And I hope that someday soon, commitment between gay and lesbian couples will be afforded the same respect and legal rights that commitment between straight couples is presently afforded.

Until then we stand in opposition to California’s Proposition 8, and all similar measures; and send our best wishes to those who are fighting to keep their families intact.

There wasn’t enough room in for the full title in the header, so for the benefit of clarity, here it is in all its verbose glory:

How Film Festivals and Distribution Deals Kill Independent Films, Part 3
A Room Full of Strangers: Film Festivals that actually help independent filmmakers and what that means in a post-DVD world

In Part 1 I made the general case for why the dream come true fairy tale story of festival glory leading to a lucrative distribution deal is really more of a nightmare; a system that can’t help but be gamed in favor of everyone except filmmakers. 

In Part 2, A Tale of Two Indies I got into specifics. I compared financial trajectories of two indie films; one of them an indie doc that Time Magazine called “one of the 10 best films of 2006″, and the other our virtually unknown ASHLEY AND KISHA. Both films came out on DVD in June of 2007. But by June of 2008, the festival award winner, the film that got great reviews in the NYT (and many other places) and a “ligit” DVD distribution deal hadn’t sold that many more copies than ASHLEY AND KISHA, and hadn’t returned anything to its producer. By contrast, a year later ASHLEY AND KISHA was still selling briskly and still generating returns for its producers (that’s me and Peggy.)

In this installment I’m going to talk about film festivals that actually help filmmakers; what makes them different, and how that difference is an asset to an independent film producer and distributor. I’ll say it again, independent producer and distributor. If you’re not an independent distributor, then you’re not an independent filmmaker. If the previous two installments in this long-winded rant haven’t convinced you of that, you can quit reading and follow your bliss.

Still here? Okay then! Let’s get on with it.

As I said in yesterday’s post, a few hours after posting Part 2, I got an almost providential e-mail from a small Slovenian film festival. Here’s what happened.

The inquiry came through our DVD shop form mail. In polite, even deferential language the note gave a brief explanation of the festival’s history and mission and then asked if we would be interested in allowing our films to be screened. Apologies were made that because they were a small alternative festival with no sponsors they would not be able to fly us in, but they were prepared to either buy screening copies or borrow them and pay for shipping both ways. And oh yes, they also offered a modest screening fee.

Compare this to the usual process for a second-level festival in the US: Fill out e-form on WithOutABox.com, including the $25, $35, $50 fee. Send DVD screener. Wait until five weeks before the festival and then receive a form-letter explaining that there were 2,000 or 4,000 or 10,000 entries this year, and many worthy films were not included. (Or in our case, you might get a slightly more personal note explaining they “really liked your film, but since it’s already out on DVD…”)

Participating in this whole process might make sense if there was a pot of gold at end of the rainbow, but there isn’t. Getting into the “festival circuit” could well put you and your film on the road to financial ruin. Yeah, I know, that sounds like sour grapes; and with all the hype around Sundance, Tribeca, Berlin, whatever, it’s hard to accept that there isn’t any money in it. But fortunately for our fragile filmmakers’ psyches we don’t have to accept that there’s no money in it. We just have to understand where the money is going.

The news organizations covering the festivals are making money; magazines, TV shows, newspapers. Everyone working for them is getting paid. The PR people, the folks – the people charged with turning the screening of a bunch of no-name films in with unknown actors into a media event – they’re getting paid. The folks printing up all the posters, palmcards are getting paid. The venues are getting paid. A few people higher-ups at the film festival are getting paid. The restaurants and hotels are getting paid, and a bunch of people I can’t think of right now.

So yes, a lot of money is changing hands. The problem is: 1) somehow in the middle of all that commerce none of that money makes its way back into filmmakers’ pockets, and ; 2) all that time doing the “festival circuit” is draining the filmmakers war chest and cannibalizing the film’s audience.

So then what did we tell this virtually unknown Slovenian film festival?

Why we told them yes, of course! And we didn’t just tell them yes, we told them we wanted to support their festival and that we’d be happy to send the films they wanted at our own expense; and that their offer of a screening fee was very gracious, but that we’d rather they put the money towards printing their (very beautiful) poster. (see above)

So now maybe you’re thinking,  if festivals are so bad for indie filmmakers, why did you 1) say yes to having your film shown, and; 2) turn down their money?

A big part of the answer to that can be found in last month’s screening of ASHLEY AND KISHA at the NYC LGBT Center. What’s worth noting about that screening was that a huge percentage of the women (my editor Michael and I were the only men in attendance) who came out to the screening had already seen the movie on DVD; and of the women who had already seen the film on DVD, a  lot of them even already owned the DVD, which means they could watch ASHLEY AND KISHA at home any time they wanted. Those that didn’t already own the DVD were paying $10/person to sit on a folding metal chair to watch the film being projected on a pulldown screen in a boomy concrete room. If you came as a couple, add subways or cab fair and you could buy the DVD from us and come out ahead.

Except it’s not the same thing.

Watching at home is great. Peggy and I are huge fans of the whole DVD thing. We have a 42″ LCD TV, and even when were were on our boat last year, we took along about 100 DVDs and watched one or two of them on Peggy’s laptop most nights. But watching a DVD at home, by yourself or curled up with your lover is not the same experience as watching a film in room full of strangers.

It’s not the same thing, and people are willing to go out of their way to have the experience. Put the right film in front of the right audience and they will sit on folding metal chairs for the chance to be a part of an audience that’s going to get all the in jokes and the asides, that’s going to sigh and tear up at the more subtle passages. It’s not church, but it might be the closest thing we have in secular society, the communal experience of audience cohesion under the thrall of a film that moves them.

But what does that mean for the independent filmmaker?

Well first it helps you set a standard for yourself. YouTube’s proven just how hard it is to monetize even legions of online viewers. Every other day one video or another goes “viral” without putting a penny in the producer’s pocket. The festival circuit? We’ve covered that ground. No gold at the end of that rainbow, not for the filmmaker at least. But if you can make a film that can draw a paying audience, a film that can pack the house, even when they could stay home and watch it on DVD, you just might be on to something.

The second is that festivals like the one being put on by these lovely folks in Slovenia are going to help you better understand who wants to see your film and how you’re going to reach them. Festivals like this will help get you in the mindset of putting your audience first. Not praise from other filmmakers, not festival programmers, not distributors; none of these people are interested in giving you a dime. But if you can make ordinary people feel like watching your movie was time well spent, they’ll be happy to give you their money.

What that means is you need to find film festivals and other curated cinematic events that see their mission as serving an audience. You’re not going to see that in most of the festival hype. They’ll go on about how they really care about filmmakers (they don’t); or how they get x many industry buyers; or whatever. All that stuff is bullshit. You don’t want it, you don’t need it, it’s not going to help you make money off your movie.

The festivals that will help you are festivals that are focused on making their audiences happy because that’s what your focus as a filmmaker needs to be. You need to make films that makes audiences happy.

What will help you make money off your movie is: 1) movie that people want to pay (you) to see; 2) finding the people who want to see your movie. An example:

About  year and a half ago I met David Bennencourt, director of the doc YOU MUST BE THIS TALL: THE STORY OF ROCKY POINT PARK on the semi-private professional documentary forum The D-Word. Rocky Point Park was an amusement park in Rhode Island that almost everyone in the region above a certain age had fond and nostalgic memories for. David had pulled together archival footage and interviews in a straight-forward historical documentary style, and and on the forum he was telling amazing stories about the successes he was having marketing his film. He was actually walking in off the street to regional Barnes & Noble stores and selling DVDs by the hundred-count box load.

He was able to do this because once he finished YOU MUST BE THIS TALL he screened it to every church, civic group, school, to any place and to anyone he could think of within driving distance of the now torn down Rocky Point Amusement park. And guess what? People loved it! He got all kinds of local press coverage; newspapers and magazines. He got TV coverage, with clips of the film and shots of people standing in line to see it. He even picked up a few film festivals along the way, including the prestigious Rhode Island International (how could they resist?). But it wasn’t the film festivals that helped sell DVDs. It was making a film that people (all caps now) WANTED TO PAY HIM MONEY TO SEE.

Last I heard David was taking his profits and rolling them into his next film.

Now you’d think that the D-worders would have been fascinated and inspired by David’s success. He made a documentary film, on his own terms, on a subject close to his heart. No investors to charm, no grants to write, no distributors to fuck him over. But they weren’t. They had all sorts of excuses for why David’s success was exceptional; all sorts of reason for why David’s approach wouldn’t work for the kinds of movies that they wanted to make; all sort of reasons why they had to play the funding game, and the festival game, and the distribution game. David quit posting. I don’t know if he was discouraged, disgusted, or just too busy selling DVDs to care, but he quit posting.

(Not too long after David quit posting I pointed out to some of the D-word heavies that they had treated David pretty condescendingly; and that even the D-worders who played the grant/festival/distributor game perfectly didn’t end up with much money in their pocket, or even financing for their next project; and spent an awful lot of time complaining that the system was broken. That wasn’t well received either, so I moved on too.)

The “problem” with David’s approach is that it seems both too easy and too hard. Too easy because he selected a subject with an obvious market; too hard because his approach required a big down payment in money and shoe leather both. People are threatened by that kind of success because it sort suggests that they’re stupid and lazy and afraid to put their money with their mouth is. Nobody, most especially not people who see themselves as “independent” appreciates that!

But what makes David’s approach work is the same thing that made Bruce Brown’s approach work, or our approach for that matter. Bruce, David, me; we all took down every obstacle between us and the one gatekeeper that matters the most – the person with a $20 bill in their pocket, trying to decide whether or not to trade it for a copy of one of our movies. It’s worked for our films, and it can work for anyone who makes a film about something they’re passionate about, and makes that film well enough that people want to watch it.

This is where the rubber hits the road. Not in at an assistant festival programer’s desk, where he’s got a stack of 200 DVD-R screener, fast-forwarding through one after one, looking for a reason to hit eject and move on to the next one. Not in a distributor’s office where they “bottle” and market movies the same way that Coca Cola bottle and markets bubbly brown liquid.

What makes independent film different and special is that it’s a way of doing business that connects filmmakers and the films they make directly to the audience that want to see them. It’s not about Cinderella success stories or all the other  Hollywood hype on the festival circuit. And whether the subject matter is surfing, or regional nostalgia, or love and sex, the common denominator is the unmediated connection between artist and audience.

Part four of this already long and threatening to get longer rant is tentatively titled “The Great Internet Swindle”, and will look at what the internet can and cannot do to help independent filmmakers promote and sell their films. Recommended reading before the next installment is “Against Search”, by Christophe Pettus.  Christophe has been a computer programmer since forever, an internet merchant since 1993, and for the last few years, an independent DVD producer and distributor. This passage in particular is key:

Remember how people told us that the Internet would completely disintermediate everything, and it would be a direct artist-to-consumer paradise? They lied.

Now go read the rest!

For those of you who’ve come back hoping for the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything, aka Part 3 of How Film Festivals and Distribution Deals Kill Independent Film, I got an amazing, almost providencial inquiry from an Slovenian feminist/alternative/LGBT film festival that more or less proves everything you’re going to read in Part 3 as absolutely and unfailingly true and the key to your happiness and success as an independent filmmaker.

But that’s not what I’m writing about today. Today is a regurgitation of Blowfish’s very very nice promotional write up of BILL AND DESIREE: LOVE IS TIMELESS.

I did the same thing almost three years ago for their write-up of DAMON AND HUNTER in a post entitled “Blowfish Gets It.” Of course one of the things I meant by that is that Blowfish gets what I was trying to do in DAMON AND HUNTER. But I also meant that Blowfish gets what I’m trying to do with these film. But even more than that I meant that Blowfish gets this whole selling sexuality thing. Blowfish was the first place I ever bought lube and a silicone dildo (c. 1997); and Blowfish was the first US retailer to buy our first film (MARIE AND JACK in the Spring of 2003).

Six years and five films later, and after some BIG changes in the sexuality retailing landscape, Blowfish still gets it. Blowfish still has their eyes on the prize. I couldn’t be happier with what they have to say about BILL AND DESIREE. From their weekly newsletter (which you should subscribe to!)

What’s on TV?

The essence of Tony Comstock’s films is quite simple: these are documentaries about people in love, making love. Bill and Desiree: Love is Timeless differs from other installments in the series in that it features an older couple (who happen to be recreational naturists). Bill is a fairly distinguished-looking guy with a white beard and white hair, while Desiree is a lovely woman who’s remained beautiful into middle age.

The discussion about the way they met (at a clothing-optional event) is sweet and weird and funny, as when Bill says, “I was just blown away by her genitals . . .. They were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen . . .. I actually went home and wrote to friends about them.” I guess when you see each other naked straightaway it removes certain obstacles to connection . . . They met again at a hot springs resort and spent a night together, and proceeded to hike around Northern California and make love outside. (Occasionally stumbled over by spotted owl researchers and the like.) They have some adorable bicker-banter too, with her correcting details in his stories — and, clearly, they’re very comfortable with each other, and very much in love. They definitely have a California bohemian post-Hippie sort of vibe — he even reads a poem he wrote about her (at the moment you can even buy his poetry collection at Amazon.com).

And they’re not totally vanilla, either — they tell a story about her fucking him with a strap-on, him giving her fake cock a blowjob, etc. As usual in these films, the first half is a conversation, the recounting of a love story from two separate but overlapping points of view, and the second half is fucking. The sex is hot — they’re experienced, they laugh a lot, and they’re clearly very much in love. (And, indeed, she wears a purple Feeldoe dildo, which he sucks, making it one of the kinkier films I’ve seen in this series.) Like other Comstock films, this is a sweet, sexy, intimate glimpse into real-life lovemaking.

In yesterday’s post, I made the general case for how the indie film model — the festival circuit to get a distribution deal/theatrical run as a promotional event for DVD sales — hurts independent filmmakers. And by hurt I mean it’s a system that by its very nature puts filmmakers at a disadvantage in negotiations, and puts less money in filmmakers pockets, making it harder for them to pay their bills, let alone make more movies. 

Today, specifics. 

A TALE OF TWO INDIES

“It was the best of time, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it ws the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everythying before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, their period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being recieved, for good or for eveil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

In 2006 a colleague released a low budget documentary onto the “festival circuit.” It wasn’t shot with a cellphone in a favela, but it was made almost entirely out of found and handicam-acquired footage, so his shooting costs were low. But he’s not an editor, so shaping his footage into a film cost him some money, and I’m pretty sure he paid his composer as well.

This fellow had a good track record in the doco world, lots of connections and contacts. But as he likes to say, “Knowing people just means you get to hear ‘no’ faster.” But in the case of this movie, he didn’t hear “no” nearly as much as most of us do. He heard “yes” from the right people in the right places. And he should have. He had a damn good film.

The film was about as well-received as one could hope for, playing some of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. On the strength of the festival run, the film was able to attract investors to finance a limited theatrical run. The theatrical run is key because without a theatrical run you can’t get reviews from mainstream film critics (NYT, Time, etc.) or Oscar consideration. In terms of press, the theatrical run was a success as well – called “one of the ten best of 2006″; and the film was on the shortlist for consideration for nomination for an Academy award.

But financially the film was anything but a success. Even with reviews a filmmaker doesn’t dare dream of, the theatrical run lost money. Even as one of “the ten best films of 2006″, the advance for the DVD rights was about $35K, and didn’t go into the filmmaker’s pocket. Well actually it did go into his pocket, and then right back out again to pay back the people who invested in the theatrical run.

The film came out on DVD in June of 2007, months after all the good press. And of course by that time, a lot of the film’s potential audience had already seen it; either on the “festival circuit” or in its theatrical run, so not one dollar from that ended up in the filmmaker’s pocket. Whether any of the people who’d seen the film in the theater also bought the DVD is hard to know, but if they did, none of that money made it back into the filmmaker’s pocket either. By the Summer of 2008 the film had sold about 6,000 units on DVD (a pretty respectable number for an indie doc) but had still not earned out its advance.

After all that work and all that success – making the film, touring the film, promoting the film, a theatrical run with great reviews and DVD distribution deal – the filmmaker had made nothing.

As it happens, our film ASHLEY AND KISHA: FINDING THE RIGHT FIT also came out on DVD in June of 2007.

ASHLEY AND KISHA was a hybrid production shot on Super16 film and 24p video. Everyone who worked on the production was paid union minimum or better. The editor didn’t get paid because (for better or worse) the editor was yours truly. There were no DVD authoring costs because over the years that’s something I’ve learned how to do too (it’s not that hard.) All the packaging and marketing artwork was produced by Peggy, because over the years that’s something that she’s taught herself to do. I’m lining all these things out to give an idea of what it  took in terms of creative resources and money to get each of these films to DVD. I think it’s a fair guess that A&K cost more to produce (crew, subjects, equipment, filmstock and processing,) and the other film cost more in post (editor, composer, DVD authoring and package design.) 

The DVD release of ASHLEY AND KISHA didn’t have any festival buzz or critical acclaim behind it, but it did have a string of modestly successful, well-branded productions preceding it. People knew the name “Comstock Films” and had a certain level of expectation for a Tony Comstock-directed film. Over the years we had leveraged that branding and expectation into an in-house distribution system, just the way we had taught ourselves to shoot, edit, author and package our films. We even had “investors” of a sort; the first copies of ASHLEY AND KISHA didn’t go out to festival programers, distributors, or buyers. They went out to the 500 or so people who had pre-ordered the film, and paid in advance in exchange for a discounted price (and netting themselves a nice ROI!)

A year later, ASHLEY AND KISHA had played a few festivals and garnered a few honors, which is always gratifying, but most importantly people were buying the DVD. Before the year was over, the first pressing was sold out and demand was still strong. We sent off a reprint order, and Peggy updated the insert artwork to include our festival laurels. Before this year is over we’ll do another pressing and Peggy will update the artwork again.

Our distribution model doesn’t have the same “out the door pop”  as traditional DVD distribution, but we also don’t have ultra-discounted copies of our DVDs showing up at places like DeepDiscount.com the day of release either. And because we make money on every copy that somebody buys, we have ongoing incentive to continue to promote our films. Long after a traditional distributor would have lost interest and moved on, we’re still we’re still banging the gong for ASHLEY AND KISHA. Hell, we’re still banging the gong for MARIE AND JACK; which is somewhere in its fifth or sixth pressing.

Now I can hear what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking that our movies have explicit sex in them and that’s the difference. It’s not. If it were, then films like SHORTBUS or 9 SONGS or DESTRICTED would be big hits. Obviously they’re not. Michael Winterbottom hasn’t seen any reason to further explore explicit sex. Within a year of HEDWIG John Cameron Mitchell was already talking about “The Sex Film Project” but more than two years after SHORTBUS there’s no news of his next project. And DESTRICTED, well what can one say about DESTRICTED, except to be thankful that promises of it merely being the beginning have gone unfulfilled.

And despite everything you’re heard about the “adult industry” being a multi-jizzilion dollar business where the studio heads are Roll Royce-driving jizzilionaires, the simple truth is that pornography is a very low volume, low margin business. Most adult DVDs only sell a few hundred copies. Even Vivid, the 800 pound gorilla of the adult industry, typically sells only 5,000 -10,000 DVDs per title.

So there it is. A tale of two indies. A tale of two approaches for getting films out into the world so people can see them (aka distribution.) The traditional approach, playing the festival game and touring your film nets more recognition but not very much money. The DIY distribution approach flies below the radar, but puts more money in your pocket. Which one is right for you and your film depends an awful lot on what you want to get out of being a filmmaker.

But when considering that question, it’s worth thinking about the case of Bruce Brown, director of one of the greatest indie film success stories there ever was, “The Endless Summer.”

Bruce Brown started shooting surf films back in the early sixties. He’d spend half the year making a film, and the other half of the year four-walling it. (Four-walling is when the filmmaker rents the venue, does his own publicity and promotion, and pockets all the sales. 100% of the risk, 100% of the reward.)

Then he’d take the money he made from the previous film, and put it into his next film. After five years of this he felt like if he could take two years to make a film that could really raise his game; and he had built up enough of a reputation and war chest that he had the time and money to do it.  

The result was “The Endless Summer”, which was an instant hit on the surf-film circuit. But the story doesn’t end there.

When distributors told Brown that his film would “never play 10 minutes from the coast”, he had the gumption and the money to four-wall it in Witchita, Kansas, a venue as far away from the ocean as he could find. And it was a hit.

When distributors told Brown that Wichita was a fluke, he had the gumption and the money to take the film to New York City and four-wall it there. It played to sold-out audiences for a year.

When distributors finally noticed all money that “The Endless Summer” was making in New York, and tried to low-ball Brown, he said, “Thanks but no thanks. We make more than that in a single week.”

When distributors told Brown, “We have a better idea for how to market your film to a general audience. More girls, less surfing.” Brown told them they were wrong and walked away.

Of course there was no Academy Award nomination for “The Endless Summer”. The Academy is and always has been rather notorious for being blind to films made outside the system. Brown had to make another film, “On Any Sunday” to get his Oscar nomination; which I’m sure he was happy to have, but doubt that he needed to pay his bills.

Next up, Part 3, A Room Full of Strangers: Film Festivals that actually help independent filmmakers and what that means in a post-DVD world