Have you every noticed that talking/debating about porn is (mostly) more engaging than actually watching it?

Anyway, Ms. Naughty, just back from bushwalking and wine-guzzling has added her two cents to the porn/blowjob/feminism debate in a post entitled Boring Blowjobs and Feminist Facials. This is the part that jumped out at me:

“Can a facial ever be “feminist”? My answer is yes. As always, context is everything.”

I agree. Context is everything. I’d even go as far as saying context is the only thing. Porn is often criticized for being fake and/or lacking context, but this is utterly untrue.

Porn is vividly real and hypercontextual. The very essence of photographic pornography is the depiction of actual sex, and it doesn’t get more “real” than two people actually fucking.

The problem is that (overwhelmingly) the reality depicted and the context in which it’s placed is utterly unappealing if not downright offensive. But when it comes to photographic images of sex, like the words “porn” and “feminism”, “reality” and “context” are at least as slippery.

Is “reality” the degree to which the viewer becomes engrossed in the narrative conceit of the film, or does “reality” extend to how well the narrative conceit jibes with the particulars of the production?

Similarly, is context limited to the moment when the house lights go down to the final fade to back? Or does it include the director’s Q&A after, or the Behind-The-Scene on the DVD? Or how about an e-mail exchange between the film’s director and a disappointed viewer? This is a post I made back in September of 2005 entitled Real Porn (No, Really):

Two days ago I received a note from a fellow who, although he liked many things about Marie & Jack and Xana & Dax, was rather disappointed that both love scenes ended with external ejaculation. Here’s a bit from his note (used by permission):

These videos have what I have been looking for that is missing from the usual “porn” videos with one exception. You claim that these represent real sex but in both cases the man pulled out prior to cuming and we were shown proof that he came… Maybe these couples actually have sex in this way but I doubt it. If they do I suggest using some couples who do not as well. This was a particular issue in the Xana & Dax video where he spent some time masturbating himself to climax. Why miss out on the wonderful sensations of being in your woman before cuming unless you are not able to do so for some reason. That, to a large extent, ruined the movie for me.

Also, my wife does not often watch explicit videos because she misses the loving relationship aspect of sex that makes it good for her. There is much in these movies that I suspect she would enjoy but I am sure she would be put off by this as well. She has made similar comments about other explicit videos.

He was also concerned that this might also be the case in Matt & Khym, which he had on pre-order. I wrote back:

Dear XXX,Thank you for your thoughtful e-mail. It very succinctly addresses some of the vagaries of shooting sex scenes of people having unscripted and and undirected sex. With your permission I’d very much like to use your letter in an upcoming blog post. FYI, Matt and Khym’s love scene ends with Matt ejaculating inside of Khym. No particular effort is made to “prove” that he ejaculated, but afterwards Khym does reach down to catch a little on her finger and taste it.

Yours,
Tony Comstock

This seemed to (mostly) satisfy his concerns:

From your response I take it that Xana & Dax and Marie & Jack choose to handle the men’s ejaculation without any direction or suggestions. If so I wonder if that is how they normally have sex or if they did it that way because they thought that it might be expected, maybe from watching “normal porn”. You might want to make it clearer to those you film that they don’t have to do things differently, especially that.I am not complaining if that is normal for them. It just seemed faked because of the way men’s ejaculation is handled in most porn.

The “might make it clearer” comment reminds me of the conversation I had with Desiree in the weeks prior to shooting her and her husband Ben.

“Oh, so you don’t want him to cum all over my face then?” she asked in response to my saying I just wanted them do have nice normal natural sex.

“Um well,” I stuttered, ” I don’t want you to do something you don’t enjoy when it’s just the two of you just because the camera is there, or because you think we want or need you to do something like that.”

“Oh no. I love having Ben blow on my face. I think it’s great, we do it all the time!”

“Well okay then. Please don’t let our being there inhibit you!” (It didn’t. Desiree had three orgasms that were very nearly disturbing in their intensity.)

Meanwhile, a tempest in a teapot seems to be swirling over similar question about what is and isn’t real over at SuicideGirls.com. Between kids, station wagon, suburban tract house, and a BMI of 26, I’m not really an alt kind of guy, (and even when I was young and broke and played my guitar too loud, I still wasn’t wasn’t an alt kind of guy) so I don’t really know that much about SuicideGirls, besides the fact that the chicks have downtown hairstyles, tats and piercing, and the photography style tends toward the deep focus/small focal plane style that I don’t really dig.

I do know what I thought I knew about SG, which was that I thought it was some hip, alternaporn site, run by technologically empowered female scenesters who were using the internet and cheap digital cameras to deconstruct the traditional pin-up. Okay, that’s cool in concept, even if I don’t really dig it as art, let alone as stroke material. Now it turns out that maybe SG is just some site run by some guy who’s making money off a lot of 18 year old girls’ yearnings to be a little less anonymous in the celebrity-obsessed world that we inhabit. Somehow that doesn’t seem quite so hip.

So what’s it all about, Alfie?

Back during that internet thing, people would sometimes say, “Content is king,” and the inflection they used seemed to indicate they thought they were offering a pearl of wisdom. Well here’s my pearl of wisdom, at least when it comes to making sex films: Context is king. Context is king, and when you use ‘reality’ as your conceit you walk a fine line. Most audiences are sophisticated enough to know that “the truth” is not the same thing as what you would have seen if you were on the set that day. But they’re also sensitive enough to know when the “reality” you try and present is too far way from what they would have felt if they had been on the set.

I don’t know what the “truth” is about SuicideGirls. The truth about Comstock Films is that all the way along there is a conspiracy between me and the couple I’m working with to present a very idealized portrait of their sexual relationship. It’s no more (or less) real than the nightly news or a novel.

Before their scene I asked Matt and Khym how they intended to enjoy Matt’s orgasm (experience has taught me not to assume that a “real couple” doesn’t enjoy the “so fake” external pop shot). When they told me that he was going to cum inside of her, I made a couple of suggestions for how we could visually signal the audience “yes, it really did happen.” The result can be seen in that lovely Comstock Films button that Mrs.C made for us.

Does that ruin it for you? I hope not.

As a director my ideal is that everything that an audience needs to know to enjoy one of my films should be presented within the confines of the film itself. If any information from “outside the frame” enhances the enjoyment the film, that’s fine, but the film itself should be the essential experience. If a viewer is on the fence until I’ve explained my intentions at the Q&A, or they seen everyone goofing off and having a good time in the BTS, or been given my assurances that it was “real” in a private e-mail exchange, then in my mind, the film has failed that viewer.

But film is first and foremost a commercial undertaking, so as a producer and marketeer, I recognize that creating and shaping an external context for our work is an essential part of the art and business of making films. “Real People, Real Life, Real Sex”; that’s the “frame” with in which we present our “erotic documentaries.” (Of course “erotic documentaries” is yet another frame.)

But for all the effort we put into framing our work, there’s a limit to how much control we have over the context in which our films are understood. By my reckoning, at the very most even a filmmaker like Steven Speilberg only has control over 49% of how any given viewer sees and understands one of his films.

I work on the assumption that I have even less control, so a lot of my effort goes into being mindful of vast space into which viewers will pour their own understanding and life experiences, and recognizing that each viewer is going to create their own context, based on their own understanding of sex, relationships, and pleasure.

Sometimes this works.

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

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

Sincerely,
L–, California

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

And what about empathy?

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

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

This is rubbish.

If you’re not a registered user with your super-secret “adult titles” search enabled, you can’t.

You can find 9 SONGS, a film about a fictional pair of rock-show going, coke-snorting lovers, that famously features explicit footage of felatio, cunnilingus, coitus, and even a pop-shot.

You can find PLAGUES AND PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA, the film that shared the Best Documentary prize with DAMON AND HUNTER at the 2006 Melbourne Underground Film Festival.

You can even find MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, our first erotic documentary title.

But you can’t find DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER.

Says IMDB:

“The IMDb contains over 400,000 different movie titles. The aim of the database is to cover as many titles and genres as possible. As a result, some of these titles contain words or expressions that some of our users may find inappropriate and some movies themselves may also fall into this category. To provide some level of control for those of a sensitive nature some adult titles have been made searchable only by users who are registered with the IMDb and have requested access to this material.”

“Inappropriate.” Apparently an intimate film about two young men in love, and loving one another is “inappropriate.”

Caligola,, Bob Guccione’s notorious bait and switch production isn’t “inappropriate.”

Neither is Love Camp 7, the infamous Nazi exploitation flick. (From the IMDB listing, “The film contains numerous scenes of women prisoners being abused, tortured and humiliated by their Nazi captors. Indeed the whole purpose of the work is to invite male viewers to relish the spectacle of naked women being humiliated for their titillation. LOVE CAMP 7 contains both eroticised depictions of sexual violence and repeated association of sex with restraint, pain, and humiliation.”)

Apparently Pink Flamingos, which (among other things) features an actor eating dog shit, isn’t “inappropriate” either.

But according to IMDB, DAMON AND HUNTER, an award-winning documentary film featuring a consentual love-scene between committed lovers is “inappropriate,” and viewers with more delicate sensiblities must be protected from the pain they might feel should they accidentally stumble across DAMON AND HUNTER in the course of browsing through IMDB.

We’ve been here before.

Last Summer, the Australian OFLC “protected” the good people of Sydney from accidently stumbling into the queerDOC Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and being exposed to DAMON & HUNTER.

Last Fall, a printer in North Carolina refused to print the above poster for DAMON & HUNTER, lest anyone in their plant be exposed to the image of two men about to kiss.

IMDB’s been here before too. Last January, IMDB hid John Cameron Mitchell’s SHORTBUS in the section for “inappropriate” films. (An uproar ensued across the indie film world prompting IMDB to move SHORTBUS from the “inappropriate” section to the “appropriate” section” by the end of the day.)

Of course compared to us SHORTBUS and ThinkFilm are a marketing juggernaut. John Cameron Mitchell’s been quoted in a hundred places pronouncing that SHORTBUS isn’t arrousing and isn’t porn, where I’m quite proud of the fact that (at least for some people) DAMON AND HUNTER is quite arousing, and I’m ambivalent about the p-word. (Short version, it tells you more about the person saying it than it does about the film they’re applying it to.)

I’m also ambivelent about trying to get IMDB to change the listing. Not because I’m happy to have DAMON & HUNTER hidden away, but because I know that trying to get IMDB to change it will take a lot of time and effort. Comstock Films is me and my wife Peggy, there’s only so much of us to go around. And after financing, producing, editing, and marketing these films, there’s not always that much left over for fighting battles with people like the OFLC or IMDB. Sometimes I feel a little ground down,

What I am not ambivalent about is that Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together is not “inappropriate” film, and if “sensitive” IMDB users don’t need to be protected from stumbling across listings for CALIGOLA, LOVE CAMP 7, or PINK FLAMINGOS, they most certainly don’t need to be “protected” from accidentally seeing the listing for DAMON & HUNTER.

UPDATE

You can also find HONEY AND BUNNY, which played along side DAMON & HUNTER at the New York CineKink Film Festival, and features close-up shot of a half-eaten peach lodged in a woman’s vagina, as well as FILTHY FOOD, which also played with D&H at the CineKink Film Festival, and features close-up footage of a woman performing “oral sex” on a variety of foods in the place of penises, vulvas, and breasts.

Press release speak:

MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY earns an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America.This February, MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, the first erotic documentary from Comstock Films underwent review by the Motion Picture Association of America and was assigned an NC-17 rating for it’s explicit sexuality.

I’ve never seen something like this for any other Gooogle search:

Have you?

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not dead. They are alive, and apparently they are living inside our film, DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER. SARA SCHIERON, of the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

“Almost a brother film to WebCam Girls [another film playing at CineKink], Damon and Hunter: Doing It Together is a short feature nested in the Passion Plays Program (Fri/19, 9 p.m.). For the women of WebCam Girls, the issue of individualism is essential (Anna Voog makes Rorschach-inspired videos for her word-association songs, and Ducky Doolittle puts on fashion shows), but Damon and Hunter are like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: porn stars with protected identities as opposed to global brands. Primarily composed of one talking head interview with the two lovers, director Tony Comstock’s documentary intercuts a XXX scene that is more sweet than erotic. The footage feels deliberately contrary to a porn aesthetic, giving the impression that we’re observing, with anthropological so-called neutrality, the well-worn sex life of a couple. One partner asks, “Are you comfortable?” and the request for consent is like a demonstration of love.”

I’ve never seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but I have seen Hamlet, twice. Still, I have no idea what Ms. Schieron is talking about. To tell the truth, I’m not even sure if this is a good review or a bad review, and it makes me feel a little slow-witted. At any rate, apparrently reports of Rosencrantz’s and Guildenstern’s deaths are greatly exaggerated.

Reports that DAMON AND HUNTER is a great date movie are not. If you’re looking for romantic evening out in San Francisco this weekend, you could to worse than DOING IT TOGETHER.

Friday, January 19, 9:00PM
Yerba Beuna Center for the Arts
701 Mission St @ 3rd
415.978.ARTS (2787)

Comstock Films’ DAMOM AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER will have it’s West Coast Premiere in San Francisco on Friday January 19th, 9:00PM at the Yreba Buena Center for the Arts as part of the Passion Plays session of the CineKink Film Festival.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street (@ Third)
San Francisco

The award-winning DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER is the third in an ongoing series of documentaries from New York based director Tony Comstock that explore the real and vital role that sexual pleasure plays in human relationship. In this case, the couple in question are long time lovers Damon DeMarco and Hunter James, and the film centers around an explicit portrayal of Damon and Hunter making love.

“From the first moment we turned the cameras on Damon and Hunter, I knew I had the opportunity to capture something very special, and by the time the shoot wrapped I knew we had the raw material to make a very wonderful film,” says director Tony Comstock. “The reception the film has received has been overwhelming. It’s a very tender-hearted film, but explicit film that has provoke both praise and condemnation, and I can’t wait for the chance to show this film in San Francisco!”

In July 2006 DAMON AND HUNTER was name Best Documentary at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival in Melbourne Australia, but was subsequently banned by the Australian government from showing a the 2006 QueerDOC Gay and Lesbian Film Festival held this September in Sydney Australia. The film went on to be named to several “Best of 2006″ lists, including Fleshbot’s Top 10 Erotic Gay Films of 2006

Comstock Films produces award-winning, documentary-style erotic films that acknowledge the role of sex in human relationships, depict it graphically, and celebrate the power and joy of sexual pleasure and emotional intimacy. Comstock Films titles have enjoyed worldwide recognition as outstanding achievements in cinema, appearing in festivals and taking home prizes in Canada, Australia, Sweden, Germany and here in the US.

Other Comstock Films titles include MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY , named Best Documentary and Best Overall at the 2002 SinCine New York Erotic Film Festival and Best of the Fest at the 2002 Sexual Health and Pleasure Film Festival; XANA AND DAX: WHEN OPPOSITES ATTRACT , named Hottest Straight Sex Scene at the 2006 Emma Awards for feminist porn in Toronto, Canada; and the just released MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER, Comstock Films’ first title featuring a Bay Area Couple.

From the Nina.com Forum. Says Nina:

“Percentage-wise, I’d conjecture that less than 15% of women have real orgasms at all. Five percent or so have them regularly, as they are women who come easily. Aria is in this catagory. Her orgasms are real, as she can have them several different ways.

“Remember, I’m a performer. I love what I do, and that what I do is sex, but the mission objective is to leave behind a good, hot, fun, timeless scene that will please viewers always.”

I understand exactly where Nina is coming from on this. Films, even documentary films, are illusions. They are shadows dancing on a wall, or phosphores flickering on screen. They have an effect on us not because they are real, but because they they appear to be real. A performer’s job, whether she’s a hoofer on Broadway, or an adult actress is to make it look like she’s having the time of their life, even on the days when she’d really rather be doing anything else. The thrill comes as much, or more from making the audience happy as it does from the dancing, or the sex.

When I first set out to make erotic films my “mission objective” was to create an entertaining, explicit, convincing, and arrousing depictions of sexual pleasure. From there I took into consideration my limitations of talent and resources, the limitations of the market for sexually explicit films (especially for sexually explicit films made with the intent to arouse,) and the formal effects of explicit depictions of sexuality on various film genres.

That’s a fancy way of saying I decided to make movies of real couples having (and enjoying!) real sex it was because I didn’t think I had the talent or the money to fake it in a convincing and entertaining way!

To that end, I find people who see working with us as a chance to share something about themselves and their sexuality with the world at large. I do my best to make my set (both the love-making set and the interview set) a place where people can relax and be themselves, a place where what is unique and special about them, as a sexual being and as a human being, is valued, indeed prized.

It all sounds embarrassingly touchy-feely, doesn’t it? It makes our set sound like some sort of encounter group or other relic of the 70s; before herpes, before HIV, before sex became so fraught. (In 1975 I was nine years old, so I’m really just going by what I’ve read or been told by people who were in the thick it.)

Well in a way I suppose it’s true. I try to create a set that is insulated as possible from all the worries that can make it hard to relax and enjoy sex. The thing I always tell my crew is that we have to make the set a safe place. We’re going to be asking people to reveal themselves in the most intimate ways, and we have to create an environment where it is easy, even pleasurable for them to open up; to each other, to me, and through that, to the audience.

Come to think of it, that’s what couples do for each other when they make love, and maybe that’s what makes the lovemaking in these films feel so wonderfully intimate and private, even what it’s happening for the whole world to see!

More film festival news! This time the world premiere of XANA AND DAX: WHEN OPPOSITES ATTRACT at the Berlin Porn Film Festival. XANA AND DAX will screen October 22th at 10pm at the Kant Kino 5 at Kantstraat #54.

XANA AND DAX is an inside look at the sexual and emotional relationship of Xana and Dax Star, and is said by critics to contain the most intimate 69ing footage ever captured on film. Just this Summer, XANA AND DAX was named Best Straight Sex Scene at the 2006 Emma Awards for Feminist Porn in Toronto Canada.

The Berlin arts festival will also include works from many of the worlds most provocative erotic artists, including: Andreas Fux, Bruce LaBruce, Richard Kern, Maria Cyber, Anja Weber, Emilie Jouvet, Christine Wons, Nan Goldin, Charles Gatewood, Henning von Berg, Isabelle McEwen, Eon McKai, Emilie Jouvet, Annie Sprinkle, Maria Beatty, Todd Verow, Jerry Douglas, Benjamin Meade, Yuji Kitano, Chris Ho, Maria Cyber, Andreas Fux, Christina Wons, Anja Weber, Petra Joy, Eran Kedar, Louis Dupont, Jörg Andreas, Falk Lux, Horst Braun, Akihiro Suzuki, Ela Troyano and Tessa Hughes-Freeland.

Comstock Films produces award-winning, documentary-style erotic films that explore and celebrate the connection and chemistry of real couples having real sex. Comstock Films titles have enjoyed worldwide recognition as outstanding achievements in cinema, appearing in festivals and taking home prizes in Canada, Australia, Sweden, Germany and here in the US.

Other Comstock Films titles include MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, named Best Documentary and Best Overall at the 2002 SinCine New York Erotic Film Festival and Best of the Fest at the 2002 Sexual Health and Pleasure Film Festival; DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER, name Best Documentary at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival; and the soon to be released MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER, Comstock Films’ first shot-on-film, anamorphic widescreen title featuring a straight couple.

DAMOM AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER will have its US premiere at the 2006 CineKink Film Festival, going on October 17-22 at the Anthology Film Archive in New York, NY.

DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER will screen on Saturday October 21 at 8:30PM, and director Tony Comstock will be part of a panel with other New York erotic filmmakers Candida Royalle, Joanna Angel, Joe Gallant, and Michael Lucas, and moderated by Audacia Ray, held at 4:30PM that same day.

DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER is the third in an ongoing series of documentaries from New York based director Tony Comstock. Comstock’s films explore the real and vital role that sexual pleasure plays in human relationships, depict it graphically, and celebrate its power. In this case, the couple in question are long time lovers Damon DeMarco and Hunter James, and the film centers around an explicit portrayal of Damon and Hunter making love.

In July DAMON AND HUNTER was name Best Documentary at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival in Melbourne Australia, but was subsequently banned by the Australian government from showing at the 2006 QueerDOC Gay and Lesbian Film Festival held this September in Sydney Australia.

Says director Tony Comstock, “I’ve long known that by making a movie like DAMON AND HUNTER I was charting a course toward making films that would ask provocative questions about collision of sex and the moving image, and personal freedom and the boundaries of the legitimate role of the state. But in all honesty, I never expected DAMON AND HUNTER would be the one to bring these issues to the fore. It’s a very tender-hearted film, there’s really nothing “controversial” about it in anyway, save the fact that we actually see what physical love between two men looks like in intimate detail. I can’t think of a better way to get over the disappointment of not having the film screen in Sydney than by having our hometown premiere at CineKink!”

CineKink is an organization that recognizes and encourages the positive depiction of alternative sexuality in film and television, most visibly through its annual film festival, CineKink NYC.

Comstock Films produces award-winning, documentary-style erotic films that explore and celebrate the connection and chemistry of real couples having real sex. Comstock Films titles have enjoyed worldwide recognition as outstanding achievements in cinema, appearing in festivals and taking home prizes in Canada, Australia, Sweden, Germany and here in the US.

Other Comstock Films titles include MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, named Best Documentary and Best Overall at the 2002 SinCine New York Erotic Film Festival and Best of the Fest at the 2002 Sexual Health and Pleasure Film Festival; XANA AND DAX: WHEN OPPOSITES ATTRACT, named Hottest Straight Sex Scene at the 2006 Emma Awards for feminist porn in Toronto, Canada; and the soon to be released MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER, Comstock Films’ first shot-on-film, anamorphic widescreen title featuring a straight couple.