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?

Time and again I’ve offered that one of the problems with “porn for women” is that it’s based on the idea that majority of the porn that’s out there is “porn for men”; and while it seems to be true that “mainstream porn” might mostly watched by men, it’s also true that mainstream porn leaves many (most?) men just as puzzled, bored, and/or offput as it leaves many (most?) women. So when a producer sets out to create “porn for women” by using “porn for men” as an antimodel, the results are often just as unengaging as “mainstream porn”, but for different reasons.

My experience has been that women like sex for more or less the same reasons that men do, and that where men and women seem to be different, those differences are as likely to be complimentary as combative – the idea that men and women want something so very different and incompatable from sex just isn’t supported by all the very enthusiastic fucking and sucking that’s going on all around us each and every day.

It doesn’t make any more sense to me that men and women want something so very different from porn.

With this in mind, you can see why I was thrilled when W.S. Cross blogged about our films in her post entitled “Sex Films for the Rest of Us”. Says Ms. Cross:

“I don’t like porn films.

…Director Comstock [is] clearly making movies for a different audience than the Chatsworth, CA adult film industry.”

Of course Ms. Cross is exactly right. I’m not making movies for the people who are content with the erotic output of the 818 area code. I’m making sex films for the rest of us.

Today Mrs.C is working on site updates (aside from shooting the close-ups and reverses, she does all our web and graphic design,) and I’m working on the February 2005 Comstock Films Newletter. If you’d like to receive the newsletter, you can join the e-mail list by clicking this link: Sign Up Now.

This months newsletter will have links to pages with more pictures of Ashley & Kisha, and Damon & Hunter. If you’re concerned that we might do something evil with your e-mail address, you can read our privacy policy here.

-T.C.