Some 15 years ago, I asked the question, “What if I took what I know about making films and married it to images of real life lovers?” and over time the answer to that question became Comstock Films.
Now I’m turning things back around. The first post from CameraPlayForCouples.com (more…)
So yesterday I caught a disturbing post on filmmaker Angelo Bell’s blog. Here’s the gist:
So I get a call from the volunteer coordinator. It seems my “reputation” proceeds me. She confirms that I am signed up for a volunteer orientation for March 28th. But then she promptly says that she doesn’t think that I am “…the right kind of person we want to have as a volunteer.” (read the rest here.)
Being the kind of person that I am, I picked up the phone and called the Newport Film Festival and asked to speak with the volunteer coordinator. From yesterday’s post:
So I called up the festival myself and asked to speak to the volunteer coordinator. I read her Angelo’s blog post and asked her if it was true. I asked her what it was he had written, and she said that she couldn’t discuss it with me. I told her that wasn’t a very satisfactory answer, but if that’s what she wanted me to go with on my blog, that’s what I’d run.
She said that she was just a “lowly intern” and would have to check with some other people before saying anything more, which I suppose is fair enough. I told her I’d wait until 3PM EDT tomorrow for them to figure out what they wanted to say about what it what it was they read on Angelo’s blog that they were worried about, and I’d be happy to blog their response.
What I didn’t include in yesterday’s post is that the “lowly intern” told me that it wasn’t just what Angelo wrote on his blog, there were also “behaviors that were a concern.” But when I asked what these behaviors were, she said she couldn’t go into it. Hmmmm.
Well the “lowly intern” aka the volunteer coordinator called back today. She said that she had conferred with the excecutive committee and their position is that they don’t discuss personal matters with third parties. I guess that makes this my first dip into the nebulous category of blogger/citizen journalist.
Meanwhile, the Daily Pilot had caught wind of Angelo’s story, so I thought, “Fine, if Newport won’t talk to me, maybe they’d enjoy a call from a reporter at their hometown paper.” I called up Brianna Bailey at the Pilot and related Angelo’s story as I understood it, my two telephone encounters with the festival, and did my best stab at full disclosure as to why I have a dog in the fight.
So as of 6:00pm EST the response from the Newport Beach Film Festival is no response; Angelo is on the war path; and I’m waiting to see what’s going to happen next.
Of course there are all sorts of ideas buzzing around in my head about the relationship between film festivals and filmmakers, guerilla marketing, the future of journalism and the art and business of making films – erotic and otherwise.
Stay tuned…
About 30 minutes ago read this over on Angelo Bell’s blog:
I just got off the phone with the volunteer coordinator for the Newport Beach Film Festival. The number is 949-387-3489. You know, this is the festival that rejected my film, “Broken Hearts Club,” right? Well. At the time when I was waiting for an answer about the festival I went to the official website and signed up to be a volunteer. I figured, what the hell? Truthfully, I had no intentions of following up to do volunteer work. I’ve done my time volunteering for film festivals and award shows, thank you very much. But then again, one never knows how one might feel in the future, right?
But on with the story…
So I get a call from the volunteer coordinator. It seems my “reputation” proceeds me. She confirms that I am signed up for a volunteer orientation for March 28th. But then she promptly says that she doesn’t think that I am “…the right kind of person we want to have as a volunteer.”
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
If you know me, then you know there is NO way I am letting that slide. I asked her, “What makes you believe that?”
She stutters for a second. Gathers her thoughts and then says, “Well, it because of certain comments we’ve read. I don’t think you represent the kind of person we want interacting with patrons.”
I knew exactly about what she was referring. “Fair enough,” I said. We hung up.
So I called up the festival myself and asked to speak to the volunteer coordinator. I read her Angelo’s blog post and asked her if it was true. I asked her what it was he had written, and she said that she couldn’t discus with me. I told here that wasn’t a very satisfactory answer, but if that’s what she wanted me to go with on my blog, that’s what I’d run.
She said that she was just a “lowly intern” and would have to check with some other people before saying anything more, which I suppose is fair enough. I told her I’d wait until 3PM EDT tomorrow for them to figure out what they wanted to say about what it what it was they read on Angelo’s blog that they were worried about, and I’d be happy to blog their response.
I’ll also hold my own commentary until tomorrow.
You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium’s
Liable to walk upon the scene
Coming to a more grown-up sex-positivity has bubbled up in no less than three places in the last month. First over at Susan Quilliam’s blog, in her post “Reclaiming Joy“:
Sorry to revisit a topic I was going on about only a few weeks ago… but if there is one thing that I really “got” when I was rewriting Joy of Sex, it is that while sex may be the same as it was in 1972, the joy certainly isn’t. Given the drip feed of horror stories in the press and the continuous warnings about the dangers of sex from all sides, we’ve somehow lost our optimism, our innocence - somehow, we’ve flushed the joy baby out with the bathwater.
Don’t misunderstand. I’m not advocating condom-free orgies or emotion-free lust-fests. I’m as aware - and as vociferous - as anyone about just what we all need to do is order to make sex safe, sane, concensual and super-enjoyable. But I do feel that we’ve forgotten that sex is a Good Thing.
Then over at Clarisse Thorn’s Blog in relation to the screening of SEX POSITIVE in the sex-positive documentary film series:
As someone who grew up in the late eighties and nineties, it’s stunning for me to think about a time when safe sex was considered a sex-negative idea. Everyone in the subcultures I run in takes the idea of safe sex for granted … including just about everyone I’ve ever met in my age group (though maybe we should keep in mind that I was raised in liberal New York). Sure, we aren’t always perfect about practicing safe sex, but we take it for granted that we should be — and we all know exactly where we can go to get information on how to have safe sex. In fact, safe sex messages bombard us so thoroughly that we’re practically bored by them (another point highlighted by the documentary).
… the film raises personal questions about how important certain messages can be — how important we find certain messages, and what we’re willing to sacrifice to promote them when we know the task could be (a) totally thankless and (b) an eventual failure, partially or completely.
And here’s another activist-type question, arguably harder, raised by Lisa during the discussion: Obviously, Berkowitz was somewhat silenced by his community because his criticism was perceived as an attack … but his criticism was also necessary and important and, in the end, lifesaving. So how do we ensure that our communities allow space for tough criticism? How do we make sure that we ourselves give a fair chance to messages that could require us, and our communities, to change — change in major, identity-threatening ways — but that could be so important?
And then picked up by Audacia Ray at her blog WakingVixen.com in post Sex Positivity Includes Negative Experiences
This and conversations at the event last night really made something click for me, and that’s the title of this post: sex positivity includes negative experiences. Sometimes sex positive people get upset or squirmy when unpleasant conversations see the light of day (and that’s viewed as the airing of dirty laundry), but these conversations and challenges need to happen in order for sex and culture to evolve in a healthy, boundary-pushy, stigma-defying way.
Here’s the comment I left at Susan’s blog:
If I look at the films from that same era, what I see is a tremendous degree of naivete. It would seem that the denizens of the early 1970s thought that the pill and abortion would do away with all negative consequences of sex. (Or that anyone who suffered any sort of a wound that was not related to an unplanned pregnancy was simply a “prude” who needed to “get over it.”
Of course by the end of the 70s it was becoming rather clear we had not entered a new, care-free sexual utopia. New physical dangers emerged, and there was still (and ever will be) the chance of getting your heart broken.
My own thinking about sex, both in my personal life, and as a filmmaker is tremendously influenced by my experiences as a surfer, rock climber, skier, and various other pleasures that reward responsible risk taking. Some of the most interesting literature in the mountaineering world is devoted to forensic examination of tragedies, which necessarily invite the reader/climber to reflect on their own values and form judgments.
“Judgment” is fairly nearly a dirty word in the sex-positive community, but it need not be. Good judgment is at least as fruitful a route to joy as anything else.
On Clarise’s blog, I simply commented on the sex-positive community’s ongoing failure to distance itself from AVN:
Watch it happen in real time as the sex-positive community grapples with its association with and patronage of AVN.
And on Dacia’s blog, I expanded on my comment left at Susan’s blog:
I would go on to say that the 70s naivete has been (largely) replaced by a stultifying combination of cynicism and/or pranksterism; hardly an environment that fosters being honest about sexuality as a holistic human experience, or reclaiming joy. (What was that line in Shortbus? “It’s like the 70s, only with less hope.” Something like that.) I also can’t help but think that much like the late 60s/early 70s, we’ve come to the end of an era and let yet another opportunity slip through our fingers. Over on thebuild.com, Blowfish’s Christophe placed (correctly in my opinion) the end of the organic search gold rush at September 2006. The marketing calculus for new ideas has changed, and not in way that favors new ideas about how sexuality can and should exist in our culture. While sex-positivity dithered over being inclusive and non-judgmental, the cynics and the clowns defined what sexuality, and especially what commercial sexuality is, with the same predictable result.
The conversation’s overdue. Maybe the next time a golden opportunity comes along, it won’t be squandered.
One conversation I think is long overdue is a sex-positive examination of the attitudes towards STIs in the “adult industry.” A few years back, when Vivid backtracked on their condom-only policy, I remember Chi Chi La Rue stopped working for the company. He said he couldn’t reconcile his concerns and public record advocating condoms and safer sex with Vivid’s new policy. But other than La Rue, I don’t remember anyone taking much notice.
From a producer’s point of view, building an industry around the acceptance of STI transmission between those who work in “the trenches” doesn’t seem very “sex-positive” to me. From a viewer’s point of view, watching depictions of people engaged in high frequency, multiple partner, unprotected sex doesn’t seem very “sex-positive” or for that matter, very entertaining.
The argument is that “the market” demands condom-free performances. The argument is that male performers find condoms inhibit their erections and that female performers find them irritating, especically in the extended sex sessions that are standard practice in the “adult industry.” The argument is that without the expectation that performers engage in high volumes of unprotected sex with multiple partners, the “adult industry” would not be economically viable.
All these things may be true. But whether or not Vivid, or Evil Angel, or any other “adult entertainment” company can survive is not my concern. My concern is that I make films in a way that does not treat my subjects’ sexual health as something that can be sublimated to concerns about profit. That means I don’t ask people to do things in front of my camera that they are not already enjoying together as a part of their own, personal, off-camera sex life.
I simply cannot see how the introduction of a camera makes it “sex-positive” for performers to do things that we would decry in any other circumstance. Would a “sex-positive” person claim that a sex-worker is exercising ”agency” if she engages in unprotected anal intercourse with multiple clients? Or would we call this out for what it is, an unwise and risky practice? And when the sex positive community judges the “adult entertainment industry” by a different set of safer sex standards than we offer in any other circumstance, we diminish both the concepts of sex-positivity and safer sex.
The sex-positive community has already had, on more than one occasion, self-satisfied three-minute hates about phthalates and anal-ease, where we congratulated ourselves on our modern and progressive notions about sexual health and our discriminating taste in sex toys. We have repudiated the makers and purveyors of these products for being unconcerned with the with the health of their customers.
Will the sex-positive community be able to muster the same level of outrage and reject the health risks that are currently accepted as part and parcel of making “adult entertainment?” And if we did, wouldn’t that bring the world a little closer to a more grown-up and joyful understanding of sex?
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.
Today marks the fourth anniversary of this blog. From the first post:
My name is Tony Comstock, I am a filmmaker, and this is my blog.
I make films about sex. I work with straight people, gay people, lesbian people. I don’t really care who sticks what where. I do care whether or not the people I work with are actually enjoying being with each other and being on camera. I’m not a good enough filmmaker to create the illusion of people enjoying themselves, I can only hope to capture it when it happens. To that end I work exclusively with people who have sexual relationships with each other when they’re off camera.
Some people call what I do porn. I pay people to have sex while I film them, so I suppose it is not an inaccurate description. Still, it’s a label I’m uncomforatble with. As a woman we worked with last weekend said, “Porn is so degrading to sex.” I couldn’t agree more, and I’d add that porn degrades filmmaking. I’m trying the best I can not to be degrading to sex or filmmaking.
When I made that first post, we had released one film, MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY. It was carried by a handful of sexuality boutiques, but regarded by most people as a unmarketable oddity.
Today MARIE AND JACK is still selling well, and we’ve released five more titles: XANA AND DAX; DAMON AND HUNTER; MATT AND KHYM; ASHLEY AND KISHA; and BILL AND DESIREE. These titles have become best sellers at sexuality boutiques, but our films are also available at places like Barnes and Noble, Blockbuster, and Amazon.
A few other things that have happened along the way, in no particular order:
Despite the considerable pride I take in having made the films I’ve made, a lot of what’s allowed things to work out as well as they have has just been dumb luck. Being at the right place at the right time; getting a tip or a hint on how to do things from someone who really had no reason to help; or having someone say something nice about my film when there were a dozen others she might have mentioned.
As the saying goes, it’s better to be lucky than good; and more than anything else, I’ve been very very lucky that people have been willing to look past all that my films aren’t to see what these films are trying to be. What success these films have had suggests they attract a generous and indulgent audience, and I am forever grateful.
If it is the Winter of my discontent, well mostly that’s because they’re all Winters of my discontent. I like sunshine and warm water; and probably suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder to boot. But there is also a sense that the world is not the same place that is was in June of 2001 when we shot MARIE & JACK, or even the same as it was in January of 2005 when I made the first post on this blog. I’m not the same either, and I’m unsure what the future holds. To everything turn turn turn…
In any event, thank you very much for reading; thank you more if you’ve linked to anything you’ve read here; and thank you most of all if you’ve bought one of our films, watched it, and thought your time and money well-spent. I hope you’re here a year from now, still reading, still linking, and still watching and enjoying our films!
Mine and Peggy’s is a mixed marriage, born from mixed marriages. Within our children mingles the blood of their Ashkenazi, Irish, German, and English ancestors. Some arrived on the shores of this country within living memory, others have been here since well before the Declaration of Independence.
Though we are an areligious household, our children’s faith heritage is diverse. For us there is no sectarian drama surrounding the Winter holidays, only more ways to celebrate the season.
Christmas morning, we will make the three hour drive to my wife’s parents’ house for the annual gathering of the clan. This affair takes place in a rambling Victorian house on a tree-lined street; a veritable Norman Rockwell Christmas rendering, made modern by the presence of of Jews and Muslims and Buddhists, all gathered to enjoy the warm tidings of the season.
For me, perhaps the greatest reason to celebrate is that the days are now getting longer. Unlike my wife, I am a creature of neither the night nor the Winter. I pine for long days and warm weather.
Nonetheless, there is a certain majesty in the quiet and cold of a long Winter’s night. In the crisp still air, it does feel as if something normally distant comes a little closer.
Where ever you are, however you worship, whomever you love; warmest holiday wishes from me and Peggy. We hope you make merry, drink deeply from the Christmas cheer, and sleep in heavenly peace!
In the comment of my post from 2005 The Porn Monster I wrote the following:
Whatever what label they’re given, my films are made on the hope that, like me, there are many people, both women and men, who find that the moving images of sex they’ve seen rarely rise even to the point of being offensive, and more often such depictions are merely boring; and that if I’m going to ask these people to sit for an hour, I’m going to have to remember that not everyone will desparately endure any sort of cinematic travisty just to see a little fucking. (In fact, I think many, pehaps most people won’t.)
Three years and five films later, there is mounting evidence that I am not alone in my feelings about the collision of sex and the moving image. Writes Goose, of TheGooseAndTheGander.blogspot.com:
I, generally speaking, am not a fan of traditional porn. I’ve tried it many times, much as I’ve tried foods I don’t like just to see if I’ve finally developed a taste. Every few years or so, I’ll come back to the porn well, ladle up a movie or two and watch. Sometimes alone, sometimes with Gander. And the result is quite usually the same. Some mild amusement or arousal, laughter, leading to an acute sense of unease mingled with doubt of my sexual progressiveness, all ending up in a morass of academic thought on feminism, power and sexuality. And no sex during or after.
So much for “traditional porn”, but what about “alternative porn, Goose?
I’m not a huge connoisseur of alternative erotica and porn, either. There is likely tons out there that is of extremely high quality, tender, humorous etc. I just haven’t found it. What I’ve seen usually makes me feel pessimistic about sex and sexual education, and openness and women’s rights, and so I usually don’t go looking around for it. This makes me kind of sad, cause I do actually like watching sexual activity.
I suppose this is where Goose feels like a blasphemer, and I guess I do too. I want to like “alternative porn”; all the explanation of why it was made and how it was made, peppered with words like “empowerment” and “agency” hit the right notes. But when the rubber hits the road… No, just no. I don’t see it on the screen. I see the same lack of craft, the same inattention to detail that I see in “traditional porn”.
Leaving the film-craft aside, I just don’t understand the attitudes being expressed about sex, connection, love. Maybe around the edges of the frame I can hear the echo of something familiar, but mostly I see a disconnectedness that leaves me cold. I think, “Is this how the people who made this movie really feel about sex?” Sometimes that makes me feel angry. Sometimes it makes me feel like a freak. Sometimes, like Goose, it makes me feel sad.
I decided to purchase a movie from Comstock Films, after hearing really good things about them from a friend. We watched Matt and Khym: Better Than Ever last night, and I have to say I came away from the viewing with a really renewed sense of hope surrounding sex positivity. They were a happy couple, a lovely couple, and you could see how much they cared for each other’s pleasure, how long they’d been together, how delighted they were. The movie was filmed beautifully as well and I can only imagine the excellent and ethical communication skills and fierce vision needed to build trust and comfort between producer and participant, cinematographer and performer to create something really intimate.
Intimacy. That’s what’s so missing from the cinematic artifacts of my so-called sex-positive culture, at least that’s how it seems to me. And sometimes I feel like maybe I’m the oddball for finding it’s absence so conspicuous; like there’s something strange about me for craving imagery the reflects my sexual reality; that sex is consequential.
And I feel like a bit of a blasphemer for calling it out.
Yesterday we put up a trailer for Bill and Desiree on our YouTube account. Today YouTube deleted the video for a TOS violation. Here’s the trailer, off our own server:
Here’s a College Humor clip from YouTube.com that’s received over 4,000,000 views:
This is what YouTube has to say about sexuality and nudity:
YouTube is not for pornography or sexually explicit content. If this describes your video, even if it’s a video of yourself, don’t post it on YouTube.
Most nudity is not allowed, particularly if it is in a sexual context. Generally if a video is intended to be sexually provocative, it is less likely to be acceptable for YouTube. There are exceptions for some educational, documentary and scientific content, but only if that is the sole purpose of the video and it is not gratuitously graphic. For example, a documentary on breast cancer would be appropriate, but posting clips out of context from the documentary might not be.
Of course anyone who’s clicked around YouTube knows there are all sorts of “sexy” video clips on YouTube, so before we put up the trailer we clicked around a little to get an idea of where YouTube draws the line. Here’s a little of what we found.
A bit from a Lindsey Lohan movie:
At the end of the Lohan clip, YouTube suggest we might be interested in this Japanese schoolgirl fetishist clip:
At the end of the quasi-pedophiliac video, YouTube thought we might be interested in a little sex ed:
Then YouTube thought a testicular exam was in order:
And then finally this clip, mislabeled “Britney Sex Tape”:
After watching the above clips, you might feeling a little confused about what is and is not acceptable on YouTube. The trailer for “Bill and Desire” does not show full nudity. There are no female nipples shown, and the swell of Desiree’s breast is barely discernible between her and Bill’s bodies. There is no pubic hair and no genitals. There are no buttocks or ass-cracks. In short, there is no objective difference in the degree of nudity shown in the trailer for “Bill and Desiree” and these other clips that YouTube is hosting. But YouTube has an answer:
Please take these rules seriously and take them to heart. Don’t try to look for loopholes or try to lawyer your way around the guidelines—just understand them and try to respect the spirit in which they were created.
That clears it right up, doesn’t it. Like YouTube’s parent company Google, YouTube favors pranksterism over candor. The College Humor clip shows just as much skin as our trailer, but it’s meant as a joke, so that a-okay. Lindsey Lohan’s orgasmic moaning and groaning is okay because we know she’s faking it. The pedophiliac fetish schoolgirl clip – even the part with “POV” intercourse between the videographer and the model – is okay because she’s wearing white cotton panties and covering her breasts with her hands. The penile exam clip is just fine because it’s medical.
Oh, speaking of medical, next month “Bill and Desiree” will be playing for faculty and clinicians at the Martha Stewart Center for Center for Living at the Mt. Sinai Medical Center.
“Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being the helpless prey of impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, and crowning injury inflicts upon him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself.” – Paul Valéry
“Impotent rage.”
That would more or less sum up my mood this morning. We can talk all we want about “independent production” and “new digital distribution models”, the simple fact remains: when you move a physical product through a physical distribution pipeline it’s a lot harder for the powers that be to fuck with you than when all they have to do is screen your work against a list of banned keywords and off-limit domain names.
Erotic writers are still be able to get there stories onto the mainstream bookstore shelves under the rubric of “erotica”, but what do you think is going to happen when the text is digital – and searchable. What do you think is going happen when Paypal starts backtracking search results the way Google is doing right now? And how about when image recognition software comes of age? Flick of a digital switch, and *poof*, we will disappear.
For years we have battled to make a place for our work at the “grown-up table”, but today I despair. Today, despite all our successes, our victories seem small and fragile. Today I question the wisdom of pouring still more time, money and hope into such a lopsided battle.
But it’s not all bad news. This morning (via Google alerts, of course) there are some people saying some very nice things about our films. I’m especially tickled to see Hot Movies for Her making Em & Lo aware of our work. I’ve been trying to get there attention for years without any success, but the Porn Librarian came through!
From the Porn Librarian on Em & Lo’s Daily Bedpost:
Em & Lo: What would you recommend for women, gay or straight, who just don’t like porn (the lighting, gynecological detail, fake boobs, bad acting), but wish they did, or wish they could get into it with their partners, or wish they could accentuate their fantasy lives with it, with something?
Porn Librarian: I would start by looking at something from Comstock Films. Tony Comstock creates these really interesting sex documentaries that star real life couples. There are lengthy interviews, so you really get to know about them before getting to the dirty part.
And a new friend, Dr. Strokes at the Swarthmore Daily Gazette:
Comstock Films are so perfect for couples even Oprah recommended them and so hot that they’re, well, molten. These are documentary-style films of real couples who tell you how they fell in love and then invite you to look in on their bedroom. Right now they have a gay feature, a lesbian feature, and two straight films (one featuring an awesome interracial couple), but once you’ve watched those and realized you can’t get enough, don’t despair! They’re coming out with more soon, including an older straight couple, which rocks. I can’t recommend this company enough.
As for the future, well I’m not quite ready to quit yet. But I do feel increasingly pinched between two possibilities:
1) Reconsidering the offers we’ve received from the biggies of the “adult entertainment” world, which would embed our films in a more established and less vulnerable distribution chain. Of course that would mean higher production quantity, which in turn would mean lower production values and diminished emotional and physical safety for the people I film. Not an especially attractive option.
2) Backing away from my commitment to explore sexuality as frankly and honestly and cinematically as I can. There are good films, and a good living to be made without showing cunts and cocks and jizz. Google rankings/listing for my non-erotic documentaries are stable, and none of those films have ever been banned.
Not even the one with the man getting his head cut off with a machete.
