Oy, where do I start? (cue Julie Andrews…)

Thanks to our wonderful sponsor, PjurUSA we printed up 250 posters and 2500 postcards in advance of this weekend premiere of DAMON AND HUNTER at the New York CineKink Film Festival.

And because Ell told me she had such fun and received so much love and support when she put out posters and flyers in Melbourne I thought it would be a good idea if I went out and postered for CineKink. After all, it’s a home town premiere, and there’s nothing like the personal touch, right?

So Saturday I came into town, posters and postcards in a big box, first stop Chelsea, which has (in many people’s eyes) replaced Greenwich Village as the gay ground zero in Manhattan.

Chelsea is fabulous. The streets are filled with fabulous looking men, there are fabulous boutiques and restaurants. Chelsea looks and feels like what you think gay New York would look and feel like. Chelsea does not care that you have a movie. Not even if it’s your home town premiere. Not even if it has beautiful young men kissing it. My sister and I schlepped around, hearing “no” more often than “yes”.

I also managed to dump the cart four times. It’s a toss up between the time that I hit the older gay man in the ankle with the cart and then dumped the contents all over the Southwest corner of Ninth Ave and 23rd (fourth dumpage), and the time I spilled all 250 poster and 2500 postcards over the narrow foyer of the porn shop on 21st just off Eighth (first dumpage) for low point of the evening. I know that a few people said nice things, but the specifics are lost in the haze of people who were disdainfully disinterested, or even down right surly.

We caught a cab back to my neighborhood (Hells Kitchen) and tried few places between where the cab let us off and my apartment. They were nice, they were interested. We had dinner, and as a last stop I put a poster and cards in the gay bar on Ninth between 45th and 46th. Everyone there down right friendly.

Sunday morning we had a diner breakfast and then when schlepping up Ninth Ave. I had resolved to ask at every place we past, no matter the toll it might take on my (already low) spirits. But instead of another ass-kicking, everyone smiled and said “sure!” and “congratulations” and “do you have tape”. Every Arab-run bodega said yes; every Korean run beauty salon said yes; every pizza place said yes, nearly every resturaunt. The cobbler said yes, the frame shop said yes, the barber said yes. By late morning posters for DAMON AND HUNTER were up and down both sides of Ninth ave, from 42nd to 57th, and I had received a bunch of well-wishes, good-lucks and way-to-goes.

My sister had a singing thing to go do up town, so I said goodbye to her and caught a cab downtown to the Village. Would the Village be more like Chelsea, or more like Hells Kitchen?

Well I’m pleased to say that the Village was like Hells Kitchen. Shop keepers and bartenders told me “tear down what ever’s out of date and put of your poster”, or “I have a lot of customers I think would really like to see this, can I have a few more cards?” I criss-crossed Bleeker and Christopher streets, Greenwich Ave, and Hudson, went up and down West 4th twice. Every where people were nice and interested and congratulatory. They made me feel like I had accomplished something special by having my movie play in New York! It was fun, and my spirits were buoyed!

Monday I made hand-deliveries to editors at HX and Gay City and Next. I stopped by both Babeland stores and got a warm welcome, and they turned me onto a few joints in their neigborhoods that were hip to having the poster up. I went to the Pioneer theater and they were nice enough to let me put out cards (they rent my movies at their Two Boots Video). I stopped by Kim’s Video on St. Mark’s Place, and all the cool indie kids said “congrats!” and “good luck”!

Then on the way home I visited my lab and my telecine house, and everyone came out and clapped me on the back. “Best Documentary! Good for you!” Higher-ups were fetched to see the poster, and everyone had a good laugh at the big “Banned” red dot. Not many people shot porn or docs on film anymore, and these were just the people who could appreciated what a risk I took shooting D&H on film. All the NYU film students who came in, their 100′ daylight spools of 16mm in hand, were eager to take cards, and excited to meet a real live DIY filmmaker who actually shoots film and makes a living.

I got back to my neighborhood, got a meatball hero and a beer. I ate the sandwich and drank the beer, and was asleep by nine o’clock and didn’t wake till nine this morning. Tonight is the opening party for CineKink. I’ve got a few posters left so I suppose I’ll take them. There are just enough postcards for the screening itself.

The last few days feels a bit mad. I actually lost a notch on my belt from all the walking around, and there were some moment where I thought I must be a bit crazy going door to door in Manhattan and with my poster and cards and DVDs. But here now, after three solid days, I think it was the right thing to do. Google results for “Comstock Films” have spiked and so have sales, so maybe people are actually seeing the poster, going home, and getting on their computer to find out who we are.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about the word “shameless”. One of the things I love about making my movies is when it looks as though the people are so lost in their pleasure that they’ve gone entirely beyond caring that the camera is there. Somewhere Saturday late evening I stopped caring about how silly I felt trudging up and down Eighth Ave with my little cart. Not caring didn’t make it fun, but it did allow me to keep going. I was shameless, and that shamelessness took me into the very nice days that I had Sunday and Monday, and now a few hundred more people know about DAMON AND HUNTER and Comstock Films, and that’s a lot better than a sharp stick in the eye!

Destricted

“The Destricted brand is the first in a continuing series. The seven films presented explore the fine line where art and pornography intersect. The films highlight controversial issues about the representation of sexuality in art: opening up for debate the question of whether art can be disguised as pornography or whether pornography can disguised as art or something else altogether. The result is a collection os sexy, stimulating, challenging, provocative, strange and sometime humorous scenarios that leave it up to the viewer to decide.”

Thanks for clearing that up. Can I have my hard-on now?

I hardly dare say it outloud, because we’ve had so many costly and embarrassing setbacks, but I think “Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together” is actually done; 5,000 of them sitting on a loading dock in Van Nuys, scheduled to ship out tomorrow. But I won’t actually breathe a sigh of relief until it’s in our garage warehouse, and the pre-orders are packaged and shipped. Many thanks and apologies to everyone who’s been so patient and supportive. I think D&H is our best film yet, and I hope you all think so too!

But there’s no rest for the weary.

I’m back to work on Matt and Khym: Better Than Ever, and Peggy’s turning her attention to a redesign of ComstockFilms.com. She’s taken the novel step of actually asking people who visit the site what they like, what they find troubling, what they might like to see added. (Some top level navigation to get to her blog is high on the list!)

So if you have a thought or two, stop by my wife’s blog and leave a comment. I know she’ll appreciate it!

For the last several days we’ve been getting a small but steady stream of traffic from the forum over at Ovusoft.com, but the URL in our logs resolves as a database error, and all attempts to find the thread that was sending us the traffic came up ziltch.

So last night I posted this in their catch-all forum:

SUBJECT: Hello from Comstock Films

Yours,
Tony Comstock

With in minutes the post was deleted.

Undaunted, I posted another:

SUBJECT: Did Ovusoft Eat My Post

Help?

Within minutes there were responses to this post, mostly accusing me of spamming, and doubtful that Comstock Films would ever be discussed by the women on the Ovusoft forums.

But a couple minutes more and it turned out that our movies had been mentioned, and our website had been linked to, it’s just it was in the Sexual Health forum, (a forum that is invisible and can’t be searched, and you have to be a member for 30 days and have made 50 posts to access it, which is why I couldn’t find it), in response to a woman who was asking for recomendations for sextoys and erotic DVDs.

There were a few more post, mostly accusing me of having a secret(?) agenda of wanting to promote my films. Of course this is absolutely correct. Anytime our company or our films get mentioned on a message board, I go, sign up, and see if I can talk to people about how they found us, did they like the movie, was it what they expected, etc. It’s part of my job, a part that I (usually) like.

This morning I went back to the Ovusoft forums to see if anything had been added to the thread. I suppose I hoped that maybe whomever first recommended us might have risen to my defense. But when I tried to reload the thread this morning, it was gone. My account was deleted too.

I know I shouldn’t take that personally, but I do.

In her March 31st blog post Joanna Angel writes:

“So the people at Hustler are trying to tell me that they’re having a hard time selling Joanna’s Angels 2. Apparently the porn buyers and distributors just don’t believe in xxx movies about horny superheros. It’s really lame.”

What the fuck? Just three months ago I saw a 30 foot high poster of Joanna Angel lording over the main entry to the AVN convention hall, every week since then I’ve been asked by one journalist or another to offer my take on the New York alt porn revolution. Don’t tell me it’s over already? (FWIW, My take is I’m 40 years old and get nostalgic when I hear 80s hair metal)

Actually I think I know what the fuck.

We’ve been approached a couple of times by traditional porn distributors who’ve caught a whiff of the Comstock buzz and thought they might be able to make us all a little richer by distributing our work. In each case the ultimate outcome is that neither we, nor the distributors had any confidence that they knew how to sell our films.

In each case the numbers of units these outfits thought they could move for us were lower than the number of units we already move on our own. In each case it would have been bad business; bad for Comstock Films and bad for the distributor. And in each we and they said, “Hmmm. These figures just don’t add up,” and that was the end of that. No hard feelings, but no covetted distribution deal either.

The problem is that you don’t build a business to do things differently, you build a business to do what you do better, faster, more effectively. Comstock Films isn’t going to suddenly start making six scene double anal gonzo movies, Joanna Angel isn’t going to suddenly start making fresh-face cheerleader girl videos, and a company like Hustler, which has been making and marketing more or less the same thing to more or less the same audience for years isn’t going to suddenly figure out how to reach a different market. That’s just not the business that Larry Flynt built.

Probably most of the people who would groove to Joanna’s version of nasty would never go into the porn shops that Hustler counts as their customers. Certainly most of the people who enjoy our films won’t. And you’re not going to reach them selling films the same way you’d sell Barely Legal 16 or Anal Invasion 17. It’s not Joanna’s fault, and it’s not Hustler’s fault either. It’s just the way (I think) it is.

Now maybe I’m wrong. Ms. Angel as asked her internet army to descend on the porn shops of America and ask them “Where’s Joanna’s Angels 2. It might work. Every once in a while we get a note asking why such and such porn shop doesn’t carry our film, and our answer is always the same – ask them to. And more often than not that end up becoming an order from the shop in question. But for us those have been incidental sales. Presumably Ms. Angel’s can move a few more bodies than we could if we called for a mobilization.

I still think there’s going to be a revolution. But when it comes it’s not going to be real people real sex doco porn, or a funny haircut and a skull tattoo. That’s a change of pace, not a revolution.

When the revolution comes it’ll leave all of us, Comstock, Joanna, Hustler and the rest with pockets full of lint, scratching our heads and wondering what happened.

I know I’m a little late to this, but you mean to tell me that JT Leroy isn’t the same guy that Oprah was all mad at last month? Just how many fake sob-story memoirist are there out there?

While we’re on the subject, and before you here it from anybody else: I’m not really a middle-aged married white man living in a ranch-style house in the suburbs with two cats, two dogs, and two children. This, in fact, is a fiction I’ve promulgated in the hopes that it makes the films I produce seem more interesting and exciting.

The “real” Tony Comstock is, in fact, a 72 year old asian spinster, living in a cramped Murry Hill apartment with one cat.

Please do not judge me too harshly. Had you been in my position, you would have done the same thing.

A few days ago I wrote that I thought that video podcast porn (or erotica, or smut, or adult videos or whatever it is that people need to call it to feel good about buying it and watching it) will ultimately be very big in the women’s market because it will give them the abilty to buy and watch explicit sex with the same degree of privacy that they currently enjoy when buying and reading written pornography (Oops! Excuse me, erotica ;)) in e-book form.

All that’s missing are films/videos that are both sufficiently filthy and well-crafted to hold these women’s attention and not make them feel like their inteligence or sexuality is being insulted; and a way to get the iPorn onto women’s iPods, and their money back into the pockets of the producers.

(So what you’re saying, TC, is that what’s missing is quality product and a distribution system for the product. Is that all?)

Well okay, the “all that’s” is a pretty big all that’s. But it’s not insurmountable. Once again I’ll point to the wonderful variety of very lovely things that women now have to shove up their cunts that simply didn’t exist only a few years ago.

Pioneers like Joani Blank and Dell Williams didn’t start by offering premium dildos, they started by offering a premium shopping experience (distribution), and slowly be surely products evolved to take advantage of the niche they created. Yes, Doc Johnson is still selling crap by the truckload, but the good doctor no longer is the sole arbiter of what a dildo can or should be. In fact, Dr. Johnson’s vision of what a sextoy is gets more and more quaint looking as more and more beautifully made pleasure instruments find their place in the market.

I think we make movies that are good enough to reach women (and men for that matter) whose tastes and expectations have been formed by the wealth of well-written porn (Oops, I did it again – erotica) that’s available online (scroll down to see what ERWA has to say about Xana and Dax), and it respectable places like Barnes and Noble. But it might be a while before there’s an Ellora’s Cave of video smut for women, or till you see our DVDs for sale at places like Blockbuster. Two decades of porn that seems to get meaner and less well-made by the month has soured a lot of people on the idea that watching real flesh and blood people have sex can be fun.

So for now, we do it the old-fashion way, but with a electronic twist. We’re like a baker, and the internet is like a giant farmer’s market. Our video podcast is that tray of free samples that makes you slow down.

“What sort of a chocolate cake (or cup of coffee or bottle of beer) could be worth double what they get for the same thing at the SuperSaver. Then you taste, and if you like it you buy. And if it really is that much better, you tell your friends!

When we started podcasting serialized versions of our films, it wasn’t because we hoped people would be watching Xana and Dax 69ing on the LIRR. No, we did it because podcasting is a good distribution system for making people familiar with Comstock Films, and because we think our films are well suited for serialization, and podcasting gives us a nice way to show people what makes our films different without giving away the store. We certainly didn’t have visions of people loading up our podcasts onto an iPod and enjoying them privately.

But I’ve now just realized that iPod porn is going to be huge, especially with women.

It might surprise you to know that there are legions of women, especially red-state women, that are downloading the most appallingly filthy stories onto their e-book appliances. Elora’s Cave has built a minor empire catering to these women, and the e-book format is perfect because it offers a safe, secure, and private way for these women to enjoy whatever it is they enjoy, without having the incriminating books lying around the house.

An e-book appliance can hold a wealth of filth, all private and password protected. New titles can be purchased in the privacy and security of one’s own home. No nosey neighbor, upset husband, or curious children finding their way into mommy’s private world of delicious perversity.

Of course video porn has a way to go before it will be able to reach these women. While perhaps not masterworks of the English language, the average novel at Elora’s Cave is about 1000 times better crafted than the average porno film – that’s partly because a writer has 100% control over her world, but I don’t think that’s the only reason these books are better made than most porn videos.

Adding to the control a writer has, a cursory glance around the various forums devoted to these novels, the authors who write them and the fans who eagerly devour them show there’s a lot more love between the people (mostly women) writing and distributing and the people (mostly women) reading.

Where the male dominated world of porn reeks of desperation and shame, this female dominated world, while no less filthy, is about a 1000 times more fun. (It reminds me of nothing more than the difference between the atmosphere at an average strip-club, which is usually almost unbearably morose, versus the atmosphere at a Chippendale’s revue.) Within this fun-loving atmosphere, women are reading, writing, and making good money off some of the most shockingly depraved things I’ve ever read.

And when someone starts offering these same women an equally fun-loving, well-crafted and private visual experience, they’ll make a mint.

Two things happened this week that prompted this post.

The first was that I got a note from someone who works at an adult mega-retailer and really likes the films we make. She’s lobbying for us with the person who decides what they’ll carry, but cautions “…our stores are all about cheap pricing and long running times, I’m not holding my breath.” Of course we’re thankful and flattered by her efforts on our behalf, but we’re not holding our breath either.

Indeed, while places like Blowfish.com have carved out niches offering premium products at premium prices, the lion’s share of the adult market is dominated by buyers and sellers that see sex products, and especially porn, in much the same way that it sees coffee (Folger’s) and beer (Budweiser): a base delivery system for a mild buzz.

The second thing is that Peggy bought some cheap coffee. Premium coffee is normally one of our indulgences, but when she was shopping yesterday there was a bag of a less expensive brand on super discount, $2.99 to be exact, so into the shopping cart it went in place of the $9.95/bag brand we usually buy.

I have a one cup a day habit. It’s part of my wake up routine, a steaming mug of sweet, bitter, caffiene-infused creaminess that I sip as I put our house into motion in the morning, and this cheaper coffee just isn’t up to snuff. It seems to be every bit as caffinated as our premium brew, maybe even more so. But it just doesn’t taste as good.

Now how do you quantify taste? Cost? Sure. Caffiene content? Okay. But can a cup of coffee taste half as good? A third as good? And is a cup of coffee that tastes half as good, but costs a third the price a good value? (If there’s an MBA out there, how about a spread-sheet for the pure cane sugar and light cream squandered in this inferior brew? And what about the time I wasted making and drinking it?)

The history of beer in this country, and how we arrived at the post-war epoch of a very few, very similar brands of very thin lager (Jim Koch’s father, a brewmaster himself, once told Jim the ideal brew was “water that would hold a head”) is an interesting tale of immigration, legislation, technology and marketing, with more than a few parallels to the track that porn has taken over the last 40 years.

In the Seventies, I remember seeing the beginings of the New American Beer in the form of my father’s wacky friends seeking out ever more exotic imports, and ultimately brewing their own beers as an alternative to the Bud/Miller/Coors hegemony, and thirty years later there’s a rich and thriving market in what’s come to be known as “craft-brewed beer”.

Coffee has travelled a similar path, to the point that Starbuck’s is now a reviled corporate uber-culture of its own. (But don’t you wish you had bought stock?)

Will porn travel the same path?

When I look at what Peggy and I do, its looks an awful lot like the approach my dad’s friends took to their brewing: premium ingredients (film, real relationships, first-rate crew), and the kind of time and money no cold, calculating businessman would lavish on porn (or beer, or coffee).

Or maybe it’s even a little like Jim Koch’s outfit up in Boston. No, the Samuel Adams Brewery is not as big as Anheuser-Busch, and it never will be. But it is making money, and it’s making pretty good beer too!

In her recent “Op-Ed”, AVN’s Heidi Joy Pike writes:

“This is my main problem with many “couples” or “woman-friendly” smut stores that I enter. While there’s all the instruments of a good time present — most of these stores have a bitchin’ novelty section and even, in many cases, a superb BDSM supply section — but when it comes to the porno, well, the offerings often come up on the anemic side. I have the suspicion that it’s because too many “couples” retailers aren’t updating their concept of what couples really like to see these days. Sexually, people are more advanced than ever in their knowledge of what gets them off and more vocal about sharing that with their primary partner. While traditional, plot-based features may be able to serve their titillation needs, there’s the general fact that gonzo’s got the goods to fill those needs quickly.

“Plot-based stuff is thoughtful and gorgeous, but the basic fact is that many people don’t need to have some director’s vision of — as good as it might be — pirates or vampires in love to get off. Something uncomplicated taking place on a couch in Granada Hills with two people who fuck each other like they don’t care if the encounter will kill them both will do the job, too. It’s real stuff. The couch encounter is taking place in the real world, and it has an undeniable set of emotions that people can relate to. There are no characters diluting the lust, the fear, the wanting, the ambivalence, the drive. Nope, just real people feeling what they feel and fucking so other people can watch. No gorgeous locale and no Herculean amount of art direction can save a lackluster fuck, and all that effort to make things look like eighteenth century America for the fuck vid can really wipe the players out, resulting in sex that’s sometimes on the stale side.”

Great novelty section, superb BDSM equipment, “anemic porn section” – it sounds like Ms. Pike has just paid a visit to the newly open Babeland store in Los Angeles. But I think Heidi’s got it wrong as to why the porn section is “anemic”.

Have a look at these butt plugs from NjoyToys.com.

Njoy’s finely crafted beauties were conceived by a fellow with a background in the engineering and design of consumer products. They’re fabricated in a facility that also manufactures aerospace components. These are not “novelties”, they’re the latest in a growing world of highly refined pleasure instruments that are available in medical grade silicone, Pyrex, and now, thanks to Njoy, stainless steel!

Where once people had to be satisfied with flaccid (and vaguely off-putting) rubber phalluses from Doc Johnson Novelties, this new generation of pleasure instruments have raised the bar on what people expect when they plunk down their hard-earned cash for something nice to shove up their asses. No wonder the “couples” or “woman-friendly” smut stores that Heidi visits focus their attention on these sorts of products!

Now compare these lovingly made and altogether lovely sex toys to the “thoughtful and gorgeous” porn features that bore Ms. Pike, or the “two people who fuck each other like they don’t care if the encounter will kill them both” gonzos that she says many couples prefer. Do any of these videos look as well made and carefully crafted as one of Njoy’s beautiful butt plugs? Of course not! Making a film is an enormous undertaking, and there is simply no way to make a film that is anywhere near as refined as an Njoy plug on even the most lavish porn budget.

But now let’s set craft aside. You’re not actually going to shove a video up your ass, so it doesn’t have to be as polished as a butt plug. But what about the sincerity of the offering? When I pick up something from Njoy, or Fun Factory, or Pjur, I have no doubt that what I’m holding in my hands was made with the utmost consideration of what I’m going to do with it, that the plug or vibrator or lube is going be used in the most intimate of ways.

But when I put a porn DVD in the player, I don’t feel that way. In fact, I feel waves of cynicism and/or apathy (”It’s just porn”) pouring out of the scene – and this is true whether I’m watching a “two people who fuck each other like they don’t care if the encounter will kill them both” (charming way to put it, no?) gonzo or a “thoughtful and gorgeous” (?) plot-based porn feature.

So when Ms. Pike says that “No gorgeous locale and no Herculean amount of art direction can save a lackluster fuck, and all that effort to make things look like eighteenth century America for the fuck vid can really wipe the players out, resulting in sex that’s sometimes on the stale side.” I completely agree with her. From a producer’s point of view, it’s just plain silly to try to make an “epic” on a six-figure budget, and from a director’s point of view, it’s probably a bad idea to muck up a good story with too much sex, or muck up good sex with too much story.

But when she goes on to say that gonzo offers an “undeniable set of emotions that people can relate to”, I honestly wonder what she’s watching.

Mostly what I see in a typical gonzo flick is bunch of people paid to show up at a sparsely furnished nouveau-riche Southern California McMansion (in Granada Hills perhaps), take off their clothes, and fuck while someone records it all with a handicam. That’s not an engaging fantasy or an emotional situation that I can relate to.

I’d like to give the director and the performers the benefit of the doubt that some more is happening, and perhaps if I knew the players better (as I presume an industry insider like Ms. Pike does), I would see these videos as an unvarnished document of a lusty sport fuck. Sex for sex’s sake is hot—most of the sex my wife and I have it sex for sex’s sake!

But that’s not what I see when I watch these videos. And if that’s what’s actually happening on the set, it’s not being recorded and edited in a way that I can see it. Apparently the “couple” and “women-friendly” smut shops with “amemic porno selections” can’t see it either.

Of course for me, the whole discussion begs the question: What about those of us who aren’t turned on by “thoughtful and gorgeous” features or “two people who fuck each other like they don’t care if the encounter will kill them both” gonzo?” Are we even on Heidi’s radar? Or have we simply been written off as prudes who just have hang-ups about sex and porn?

15 years ago, I bet the folks at Doc Johnson thought the same thing about people who weren’t interested in the cadaverous, flesh-colored rubber dildos they wanted us to buy. Of course this simply wasn’t the case. We were just waiting for someone to offer us something better – something worthy of the privilage of being shoved up our ass. And thankfully they did, and now there’s a wealth of very lovely toys and lubes for people like us to choose from.

Of course Doc Johnson is still out there, probably doing better than ever, and you can buy their stuff if you want to too. The point is it’s no longer your only choice if you want to shove something up your butt. Do you think that 15 years from now “the rest of us” will have a wonderful variety of sex films to choose from too?