Coming next month, the first ever public screening of MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER. Yay!

Pinched, Amsterdam June 2
Feminist Fantasies

An evening that focuses on female sexuality and pornography. Jennifer Lyon Bell (Blue Artichoke Films & Rated X Festival) will create a film program especially for PINCHED. Marije Lieuwens(Beperkt Houdbaar) will express her views on female pornography in a column that she presents at this theme night.

Programme:
“Matt and Khym: Better Than Ever” (Comstock Films, Dir: Tony Comstock)
“One Night Stand”/”Red Fetish Bathroom” (Hysterie Production, Dir: Emilie Jouvet)
“Afrodite Superstar” (Femme Chocolat, Dir: Venus Hottentot)
“Intimate Moments: More Real Orgasms” (abbywinters.com)
“Headshot” (Blue Artichoke Films, Dir: Jennifer Lyon Bell)

PINCHED is about the countermovements in the field of love, sexuality and pornography. What are the daring initiatives we can find when we look at art, theory, practice and academics? In what way can sexuality be set free from the commercial pornographic representations we find in everyday life? The current debate concerning these topics focuses on suppression and exploitation, where are the positive alternatives?
We want to take the debate to another level in a serie of theme-nights, an exhibition in collaboration with Meneer de Wit, centre for art, culture and development, and an international festival on the 21st of June.
New and daring thoughts and ideas will seduce you to look beyond that what pretends to be our ideal standard.
During these events the audience is confronted with questions like: how are women dealing with commercial representations of their sexuality, what can we learnfrom the sexualrevolution in the 60s and 70s and our main question: are we part of the sexual revolution of the 21st century? We will be looking for answers in on different levels: lectures, screenings, performance and media-art.

http://www.pinched.nl

Posted the same to a professional documentary forum that I’m fairly active on and got this:

I think it’s very complimentary that you are the only male director in the lot. You must be incredibly sexually sensitive… uh… emotionally speaking, of course.

Replied:

Tea shot out of my wife’s nose when I showed her your post. None the less, the sentiment is appreciated.

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.

Three new reviews for MATT AND KHYM last Thursday. From the couple sexuality website Freddy and Eddy:

“Love stories and Porn don’t usually go together, in fact they never seem to cross over or even intertwine. Comstock Films doesn’t produce porn, they in fact produce true love stories. Hence, Matt and Khym was created. The story of Matt and Khym is truly a love story, where the audience are introduced to two people who fell in love in their teens and yet show such a strong bond with intense erotic wantonness years later. We then follow along and become voyeurs to watch how their relationship blossomed into the wonderful art of lovemaking.”

From S&SM on Amazon:

“Matt and Khym is a wonderful introduction into the joys of married sex. When you look at this movie, you can see the genuine love Matt and Khym have for each other. Matt and Khym are so candid in talking about their life in and out of the bedroom that you come away feeling like they could be your next door neighbors or close friends. The scene at the end of their lovemaking when Matt looks lovingly at Khym is the way any girl would want her guy to look at her. I replayed the promo at Tony Comstock’s web site over and over again, just to see that look.”

And from L. Fox, also on Amazon:

“I first read about this DVD in the O magazine and thought that it might make a fun gift for my husband and I as we are trying to have a second baby and it can become less about us and more about the having to get the job done. We have never watched porn together and I thought something with a little class might do the trick. Within ten minutes of watching this movie we were both so turned off that we had to distract ourselves and try again later.

“We now have a DVD that besides the fiscal cost, nearly cost us our own passion for eachother and sex. We have hidden this dreadful DVD in the closet and are trying to find fun ways of getting rid of this waste of time and money. I would not advise spending a penny on this product, I wish I hadnt.”

Woah! Wow! Ouch!!! My mantra when making films is “Whatever you do, don’t ruin someone’s evening!” and it looks like I failed (bigtime!) over at the Fox household! Two things about this review are especially distressing:

Mrs. Fox really (really!) reacted badly to the way I portrayed Matt, and that makes me feel bad for both of them. I spent a lot of time talking with Matt and Khym before we did the on camera interview, Matt is a devoted, loving and sensuous husband, and when people agree to appear in one of my films they put a huge amount of trust in me and how I portray them. If Mrs. Fox found Matt “slimy and repulsive”, I’ve failed both of them.

The second thing is that it sounds like there was a lot riding on this DVD at the Fox household. Peggy and I have two children, and know that baby-making can be stressful enough, even when everything is going right. It would have been thrilling to hear our DVD helped make the baby-making seem “less like work,” but instead we just made things worse. Hearing that makes me feel just awful!

Of course this all a part of the package put yourself or your ideas in the public eye. Not everyone is going to like what you do; some people are going to hate it; and when you tackle love and sex, you’re wading into territory that is heavily laden with whatever each individual viewer brings to the show. When a film makes a connection it can be powerfully positive, or profoundly negative.

Anyway, you take the bad with the good, that’s life, and I’d guess Mrs. Fox’s feelings are hurt more than mine or Matt’s. You can’t please everyone.

I was going to leave this for Peggy to blog; she’s the one who went to Toronto, and she’s the one who brought back the big lucite buttplug trophy (much to the amusement of the Toronto baggage screeners!) But she’s going hammer and tongs with complete redesign of ComstockFilms.com, so I guess that leaves it to me.

Long story short, last Thursday we dropped Peggy off at the airport. A few hours later she was at a pre-event event, a chance to meet the other panelists, and the Good For Her crew. The next night she was up on the dias, giving her take on how our work fits into the feminist porn paradigm. Later that evening MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER was named Hottest Love Scene. Many thanks to Good For Her for a great event, and congradulations to the rest of the evenings winners!

Hottest Group Sex Scene
Under the Covers | Candida Royalle; Femme Productions

Indie Porn Pioneer
Anna Span; Easy On The Eye Productions

One surprising thing, to me at least. I figured they wouldn’t go to the expense of flying Peggy up if they weren’t going to haul her up on the stage to give her an award, but I thought it was going to be DAMON AND HUNTER; as a way of recognizing that a lot feminists love looking at men, especially if there’s more than one of them, naked, kissing and fucking. That’s my wife and most of her friends. But even though there were awards for straight sex scenes, lesbian sex scenes, and even an award for Hottest Trans Scene (Go Shine!), nothing for straight up man-on-man action. I guess women getting off to gay sex is still too avant garde, even for porn-positive feminists. There’s always next year!

MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER is listed on IMDb, and surprise surprise, it’s out in the “real world”, with films like LAST TANGO IN PARIS, PINK FLAMINGOS, and SCHOOL HOLIDAY 10: TEENAGE SPERM ORGIE. No frustrated blog posting, no angry letters to IMDb.

Does this have something to do with the fact that Matt and Khym are a nice married couple and Damon and Hunter are just a couple of dirty porn boys? Who knows. That’s the trouble with the “Is it art or is it porn?” question; the answers are opaque, subjective, and punitive.

Block Busted

One of the things you get to do when your an independent filmmaker is scour the internet to see who’s saying what where about your films. This is mostly pleasant work, dipping into a blog or bullettin board to say “thanks”. Sometimes you find something disappointing. From the forum at Talk Sex with Sue Johanson:

Posted by P. on March 20, 2007 at 07:12:27:
My husband and I wanted to try an adult video. There is a new dvd I am hearing about “Matt and Khym: Better Than Ever” (Real People, Real Life, Real Sex series) by Tony Comstock (DVD - Jan 3, 2007). I am interest in finding a dvd that is not a sleezy/cheesy porno, Something that is couple friendly with nothing ‘fake’. Do you recommend this dvd? Or could you let me know of some you do recommend?
Thanks!

Webmaster Reply:
I don’t know this DVD, but last season, the crew did try to find couple-friendly videos and really only found one they liked - “Pirates”. It is in our Bookshop. The most consistent producer of non-sleazy erotic films is Better Sex. Their videos, which are instructional and use real couples, are beautifully produced, totally explicit, and very erotic. There’s something about watching people who are actually in love (as opposed to “hired hands”) that is very, very sexy. Go to bettersex.com and peruse their catalogue.
Randy

I don’t take the Better Sex recomendation too hard. In fact, our films are well liked by the people over at the Sinclair Institute and available on the BetterSex.com website. Unfortunately, because of the size and inertia of their marketing machinery they have a very long acquisition process, and MATT AND KHYM won’t be available from them until this Summer.

But PIRATES? PIRATES? Randy, how could you do us like that? Well I guess there’s no accounting for taste.

But the thing about this that really gets my panties in a twist is that we’ve been sending screeners and e-mail updates to the Sue Johanson show for three years, and have never had as much as a “thanks, we’ll have a look.”

This is the not so much fun part about being an independent filmmaker. Even when you send your stuff out to a person or organization you think will be really receptive, usually they’re not. It’s a noisy crowded world, and places like Sinclair/Better Sex or Digital Playground have the muscle (money) to cut through the noise and get noticed by people like Sue Johanson. Meanwhile here at Comstock Films, we live by our wits and (hopefully) the quality of our films.

Also peeving me is that there is no way to respond directly on the Talk Sex with Sue forums, so for the time being, “Canada’s foremost sexual educator and counsellor, recipient of the distinguished Order of Canada” will continue to be unaware of Comstock Films, and continue to offer PIRATES (available in Sue’s online store) to people looking for something that is “couple friendly with nothing ‘fake’”.

Grrr.

The Toronto sex store Good For Her will forever have a warm place in our hearts here at Comstock Films because Good For Her was the very first place that bought our first film, MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY. We sent them a screener, they watched it, and then they placed an order. After nearly a year of hearing other people tell us why MARIE AND JACK was great, but not salable, we were thrilled!

Now we’re thrilled all over again with Good For Her’s fantasitic review of our latest, MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER:

This installment from award-winning documentary-style filmmaker Tony Comstock is a revelatory look inside the intensely intimate and incredibly sexual relationship of two young, attractive people.

Think there’s nothing new in the world of porn? Think again. Matt & Khym sets a new standard for documentary sex films.

If you’re up North and want to do your shopping in-country, nothing would make us happier than if bought our films from Good For Her. And if you’re in Toronto, Good For Her offers our titles for rent as well!

Amazon.com has just decided to pick up MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER, complete with kind words from Violet Blue, Thomas S. Roche, and Fleshbot.com. Now all the listing needs is some great customer reviews.

So if you’ve seen MATT AND KHYM and have some nice things to say about it, please head over to Amazon.com and let the world know just how much you enjoyed watching our movie!

http://www.amazon.com/Matt-Khym-Better-Than-Ever/dp/B000NA1NXA/ref=dp_return_1/103-6000559-6764636?ie=UTF8&n=130&s=dvd

Thanks!

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.