A very nice note came in over the weekend. By permission of the author:

“Hi Tony,I suspect you are at the AVN Awards tonight — having a lovely time I hope — but I just watched _Matt and Khym_ (I was a pre-order customer) and couldn’t wait to email you. I found this couple utterly delightful and feel I could not overstate my praise for this film.

Coming on the heels of our misadventure with PBS, this note is especially welcome.

We make enough money through this work to sustain us financially, but against the constant backdrop of vilification, it can be tremendously draining emotionally. Whether it’s the OFLC or PBS, or printer that won’t print a poster because it’s “pornographic”, their cravenness and my own impotence in the face of that cravenness is exhausting, it’s discouraging, and sometimes I just want to quit.

Then I get a note like Emily’s, or I read a post like Jenn P’s, and I feel like we’re doing something important, something that matters, something that makes the world a better place. And I decide I can quite tomorrow.

Erika Lust, producer/director of the award-winning erotic short, THE GOOD GIRL is in post production on her next (untitled?) production, and she’s got a trailer up on her blog that you’ll probably want to check out.

Trailer/Teaser for Erika Lust’s New Project

My first impression? Again, Erika leaves most of the rest of the erotic filmmaking world in the dust. While the 818 still thinks that punk circa 1997 is a cutting edge look, the styling in Erika’s clip is as fresh and contemporary as anything you’ll see on MTV or a fashion mag. Erika’s clip looks pretty and sexy and glamorous. Life the way you think sexy young European jet-setters must be living it.

Will the glamour hold up under the stresses and strains that is ultra-low-budget filmmaking (ie porn?) We won’t know till we see the finished cut. But if I had to bet on anyone, I’d bet on Erika. She’s got style to spare!

Erika Lust, director of the award-winning erotic short “The Good Girl” is blogging at http://erikalust.blogspot.com/. There are also links to an online version of the movie, but I can’t seem to get it to work right now. But I’ve seen the trailer and it’s pretty cute.

Comstock Films owes Erika a debt of gratitude. She’s the one who sent Esquire in our direction last Spring, and that little PR boost finally tipped this operation over from red to black, so it’s not without some mixed feelings that I say this:

Erika, enough with the man bashing.

With no more than 10 posts so far, at least two of them lay the blame for crappy porn on the fact that it’s mostly made by men.

Sorry Erika, women have been directing porn for some twenty plus years now, and with a very few exceptions, it hasn’t made much of a difference.

Porn is dissapointing for three reasons:

1) Porn cannot raise the capital needed to finance even the most basic of productions.

2) Since “the industry” can’t offer either money or the opportunity for professional advancement, porn cannot attract talented professionals to the creative process.

3) Mainstream distribution channels remain uninterested in poorly made sexually explicit movies (and unless/until someone makes them again, we may never know if they’d be interested in well-made sexually explicit movies). Without the access to the much higher revenues found in mainstream distribution, porn will remain an ultra low-budget ghetto, characterized by shabby, thoughtless productions. (See #1 and #2.)

These are the cold hard facts. What you’ve got between your legs doesn’t change them. Bitchen hair cuts and a badass tattoos don’t change them either. And the gender politics “only women really know what women want” is distracting window dressing at best; devisive, short-sighted marketing at worst.

If Erika succeeds, it’s not going to be because she has to sit down to pee. It’s going to be because she finds an inventive, sexy and financially viable way out of the strangle-hold that porn has (for the most part) put on itself. Judging by The Good Girl, she’s off to a good start!

UPDATE

I got the download to work, and I saw two things I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a sexually explicit film. 1) Scripted awkward/playful moments that worked. 2) Authentic seeming laughter between lovers while they fucked.

I also like the way the sexual explicitness is casually frank. We see cunt and cock because that’s what you’d see if you watched people fuck. The camera doesn’t linger, but it doesn’t go all coy either. Our desire to him in her is joyously indulged (I love being indulged!)

Even the porno cliche reverse cowgirl position looks like “just happened”, and when the de rigor facial pop goes meta (”I want you to come on my face like they do in the porn movies!”) and I’ll be damned, it works – probably because the Good Girl is smiling so happily and lustily while the pizza boy (yes, the pizza boy) unloads on her face, and then he lays a tender smooch on her jism spattered lips!

Bravo Erika!

I just got off the phone with Esquire Magazine, which is trying to answer the age old question “Isn’t there anything out there I can watch with my wife/girlfriend?” They’re pursuing the “porn by women for women” angle, so my first question for Esquire was “It’s Tony with a Y. What brought you to Comstock Films?” Well the answer is Erika Hallqvist of Lust Films, who passed along our name to an Esquire researcher.

If you’re not familar with Erika and Lust Films, you should be. While her approach to filmmaking is considerably more ambitious than ours (real scripts, real acting), her goal is the same – the explicit depiction of real sexual passion. Of course it doesn’t hurt that her erotic short The Good Girl has one of the best looking men I’ve ever seen having sex on camera.

So take a trip over to Lust Films, have a look at the trailer for The Good Girl and her behind the scenes clip, which will show you how much effort goes into her work. While you’re there, why not drop her a note of encouragement. Going against the grain is tough, no matter what you’re doing; and believe me, every little bit of encouragement helps!

-T.C.