The Romance of Fucking
Friday, July 8th, 2005This blog is getting a little heavy with all that talk talk talk; which is good, but needs balanced out. What better to provide some balance than some hype Hype HYPE!
About a month ago I was contact by journalist Amy Wolf, who was writing an article on DIY porn. We’ve already spent too much time on how I feel about the word “porn” so you can imagine she got an ear-full on that score. She also got an ear-full on DIY.
It’s not that what I do isn’t DIY (I am doing it myself), and even by the meager standard of the indie film world, our work isn’t low-budget, it’s no budget. But DIY porn conjures image of a gang of friends getting together fueled by ambition and good intention, hoping to change the world with a PD150 and Powerbook.
That’s not quite how things work here. We do shoot on video, but we also shoot plenty of 16mm film. I don’t pay my crew top dollar, but I do pay them union scale. The people who appear on camera are also properly compensated. In short, the investment of resources in each film we make is measured in tens of thousands of dollars, which is still a pityfully small amount of money by film standards, but not really what people think of when you say “DIY porn”.
Well the upshot of this is that Ms. Wolf decided not to include us in the DIY article (Oh no!). Instead she wrote an entire article about Comstock Films (Hooray!). Some highlights from Ms. Wolf’s article:
“Comstock Films has managed to break into new filmic territory by refocusing on the intense emotional bonds that fuel physical intimacy. The films empowers couples to reclaim the right to engage in, enjoy and watch hot, raunchy sex. Xana, of Xana and Dax: Opposites Attract, confesses while sweetly grinning to her lover, “It’s very romantic just to fuck.” “Tony Comstock seeks to infiltrate the minds of even the most conservative couple who are one step above doing “it” through a hole in the bedsheet. Consequently, he features couples that have traditional, often nuptial, home and sex lives.”
“Although Comstock works with demographically diverse couples, all relationships are rooted in good-old monogamy and fairytale notions of true love.”
“Sex doesn’t have to be bad, and neither do sex films. In the early 70s, porno movies were part of a larger social struggle against shame. The proliferation of porn stemmed from a Supreme Court ruling that clarified nudity as not obscene. Tony Comstock cannot fix or undo porno, but he will continue making movies until everyone, even your great aunt on oxygen and your fourth-grade teacher, are having copious amounts of good sex – and not feeling ashamed.”
You can read the rest of Amy’s very nice write up here.
Thank you Amy Wolf!
-TC
