It’s a big weekend for us over in Amsterdam at Jennifer Lyon Bell’s “Rated-X: Amsterdam Alternative Erotic Film Festival”. Over the next couple of days we’ll have three films screening: Matt and Khym: Better than Ever; Bill and Desiree: Love is Timeless; and Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together.

In the last decade, film festivals have sprung up like mushrooms all around the globe, devoted to every genre imaginable. Yet erotic film festivals remain a rarity, with only three or four world wide, most of which do not make it into their third season, mostly for the simple reason that after the first or second year, there simply aren’t enough serious erotic films for a festival director to put together much of a program.

Every couple of years we’re “treated” to the arthouse film directors’ vision of sexuality: bleak, alienating, and joyless; and of course the world is awash in transactionalized, dehumanized pornography. But the dearth of films that depict the normal everyday experience of sex begs the question - why is sex depicted the way it’s depicted in movies? Where’s the joy? Where’s the humanity? Where’s the pleasure?

It’s not a new question.  Film critics, anti-pornography crusaders from the left and from the right, and even filmmakers themselves have all taken their turns trying to answer this simple yet vexing conundrum: If sex is (mostly) so good, why are films about sex (mostly) so bad?

I think these explanations miss the mark because they focus too much on human intentions, and not enough on the legal and economic climate in which movies are made. Even the smallest film is a vast economic undertaking when compared to painting or writing; and you can’t simply make the film you want to make.

To be viable as a creative artist, you have to be viable as a commercial entity. However noble (or ignoble) a filmmaker’s intentions, simply wanting to make a film is not enough. Equipment must be rented, cast and crew must be paid, the lab bill comes due. 

In looking at the legal and economic climate in which erotic movies are made, the  tireless efforts of our namesake Anthony Comstock still cast a long shadow over our culture, and more than 80 years later, Justice August Hand’s unfortunate choice of word about the “intent to arouse” are still being mouthed as if they are an original thought,

But today, I thought it would be worth taking another look at this post from August 7, 2007 about the transition from the Hayes Code to the MPAA’s modern four-tiered rating system. It’s a story about economics, demographics, the sexual revolution, good intentions, bad intentions, and (by my reckoning at least) a pretty good explination why, if you want to drinking and dancing with your wife, there are plenty of perfectly respectable “adults only” joints, but “adults only” in movies means something entirely different.

 How “X-rated” Came to Mean “Porn” and the Death of Movie Making for Grown-ups

The poster for LAST TANGO IN PARIS, including X-rating symbol
(click to enlarge)

Fad23 is absolutely right. The X-rating was a part of the MPAA four-tier system first introduced in 1968.

But unlike G, PG, and R, X was not a trademarked MPAA property. The X rating was conceived of by the MPAA as a rating meaning ‘not suitable for children’ that could be and was self-applied by producers who did not feel their film needed and/or warranted a less restrictive rating.

But there have always been films deemed “not suitable for children,” and long before X or NC-17 there was an “adults only” classification, given to films like DUAL IN THE SUN, BABY DOLL, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, TO EACH HIS OWN and others that, by the standards of the day, were deemed to be inappropriate for children.

But in the 1950’s “foreign films”, made outside the (self imposed) Hayes Code that governed Hollywood production, began to make their way into the US. These films frequently addressed issues of sexuality in a manner that was far more frank than the coded subtexualized language required to address adult themes within the strictures of the code.

Poster for THE LOVERS, the film at the center of Jacobellis v. Ohio.

The 1950s also saw the breakup of the studio system, particularly the vertical integration of production, distribution and exhibition, which considerably loosened control on what theaters could and would screen, and by the 1960s cultural mores had shifted to the point that the old production code was becoming increasingly irrelevant. In response code was revised in 1966, and in 1968 the production code was abandoned in favor G,PG, R and X system (originally G, M, R, X.)

But it’s important to remember that from the start, the X-rating was always intended as a rating that could be self-applied by producers, and unlike G, PG, and R, the MPAA maintained no control over the X rating as a trademarked property. It’s also important to remember that when the system was introduce “X” had no special stigma, any more than the previous rating of Adults Only rating give to DUEL IN THE SUN, et al.

Around the same time, there were court decisions established the legality of both producing films depicting actual sex acts and showing them in theaters. This new legal climate gave rise to the open production and theatrical screening of films featuring depictions of actual sex acts. Because X, which meant “adults only” was a self-applied rating, producers of these films were free to give their films an X-rating with or without the MPAAs approval.

At first this was done to give these sexually explicit films an air of legitimacy, but with no control over who could or could not use the X-rating it quickly became associated with very low-budget products concerned with little more than creating a vehicle for the presentation of explicit sex. It was at during this time that films like MIDNIGHT COWBOY, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and others moved to have their ratings changed from X to R. Sometimes this was done by petitioning the MPAA to re-evaluate the rating, sometimes by simply editing out the “offending material”.

The stigma of the X-rating was further deepened when some producers began using XXX an gimmick to communicate that their films were especially raw or filled with sex, as opposed to merely X-rated, which could and did refer to films (such as MIDNIGHT COWBOY or A CLOCKWORK ORANGE,) that were unsuitable for children, but contained little, if any, explicit sex or nudity.

42nd Street, circa 1975 (click to enlarge)

This was also a time when many urban areas were in decline, and many theaters were turning to sexually explicit movies to draw audiences to theaters that would otherwise have been empty (think Times Square in the 70s.) In response, theater landlords began to write “no x-rated films” into their leases. Also theater chains enforced “no X” policies on their fanchiseese, and many newspapers had “no X” advertising policies.

Now remember, R means a film may be suitable for suitable for children when accompanied by an adult; X meant a film is not suitable for children at all. The concept of an “adults only film”, a concept that had existed from the beginning of commercial cinema, suddenly collapsed. It became impossible to advertise or exhibit a film that that was not suitable for children. For a film to be able to advertise in most newspapers, or play in most theaters, it had to have an R-rating, and that meant the omission of any element–sex, violence, language, drug use–that was not suitable viewing for children.

This collapse was not some grand conspiracy on the part of the MPAA to put an end to films for grown-ups. It was the result of the collision of changes to the MPAA ratings system, court decisions that allowed the production and public exhibition of films featuring depictions of actual sex acts, demographic and social changes that altered theater going habits, and the odd quirk that the MPAA had allowed their X-rating to be “public property”.

As a result, the X-rating was more or less abandoned by all parties. Hollywood producers weren’t going to invest millions of dollars in a film that couldn’t be advertised or screened in legitimate venues, and restricted their “adult” efforts to R-rated films. And producers of sexually explicit film and videos preferred to label their product as XXX, rather than the seemingly milder X. According to their own website, no films were rated X by the MPAA during the entire decade of the 1980s, (and virtually none in the 1970s.)

What that means is that for 20 years, all films produced by the Hollywood establishment that were produced within the confines of what could conceivably be shown to children. Moviemaking for grown-ups died.

Poster for HENRY AND JUNE, 1990, NC-17

In 1990 the MPAA attempted to reestablish a “legitimate” adults-only movie-making space with introduction of the NC-17 rating. Not wanting to repeat their mistake with the X-rating, the NC-17 is a trademarked property that can only be used if you submit your film and advertising to the MPAA process. But it was too little too late.

Not understanding the history of the X rating, and convinced that the MPAA was simply trying to put a new name on porn, most exhibition and advertising venues simply re-wrote their rules to prohibit the exhibition and advertising of NC-17 films. To this day some of America’s largest theater chains will not exhibit NC-17 movies, and many of America’s largest media outlets will not accept adverting for NC-17 movies. A few NC-17 art-house films were made, mostly in the nineties, and in 1995 MGM/UA gambled (and lost) on the NC-17 rating with the laughably bad big budget feature SHOWGIRLS. But in this decade (2000s), only a small handful of films have been rated NC-17, (including our own MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY.)

Now lest I be seen as an apologist for the MPAA, I think they were slow to understand what was happening to the X-rating, slow to take action, (nearly 20 years!) and when they did finally introduce the NC-17 rating, they did “drop the ball”. More over, as far as I can tell, they’ve done precious little since then to correct their mistake.

These days there’s very little movie-making that is truly for grown-ups. Even “serious films” that have no interest in attracting a teen audience have to be made “suitable for children” to avoid the dreaded NC-17, so even “realistic adult dramas” have an odd lack of candor in the way that sex is depicted visually.

The situations are adult, the language may be frank, but the sex and nudity is strangely demure. Sex is always under the covers, or with the lights low, or the camera-angles are cheated just enough to the left or the right to preserve the all important R-rating.

As a result we have a cinematic landscape where every other aspect of the human experience is rendered in vivid detail (with often a special fetishization of violence,) but the simple truth of what people look like naked, or what people look like when they give themselves over to sexual desire remains largely unexplored by filmmakers, and remains largely unseen by audiences.

Production still from MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, 2002, NC-17

In the comment of my post from 2005 The Porn Monster I wrote the following:

Whatever what label they’re given, my films are made on the hope that, like me, there are many people, both women and men, who find that the moving images of sex they’ve seen rarely rise even to the point of being offensive, and more often such depictions are merely boring; and that if I’m going to ask these people to sit for an hour, I’m going to have to remember that not everyone will desparately endure any sort of cinematic travisty just to see a little fucking. (In fact, I think many, pehaps most people won’t.)

Three years and five films later, there is mounting evidence that I am not alone in my feelings about the collision of sex and the moving image. Writes Goose, of TheGooseAndTheGander.blogspot.com:

I, generally speaking, am not a fan of traditional porn. I’ve tried it many times, much as I’ve tried foods I don’t like just to see if I’ve finally developed a taste. Every few years or so, I’ll come back to the porn well, ladle up a movie or two and watch. Sometimes alone, sometimes with Gander. And the result is quite usually the same. Some mild amusement or arousal, laughter, leading to an acute sense of unease mingled with doubt of my sexual progressiveness, all ending up in a morass of academic thought on feminism, power and sexuality. And no sex during or after.

So much for “traditional porn”, but what about “alternative porn, Goose?

I’m not a huge connoisseur of alternative erotica and porn, either. There is likely tons out there that is of extremely high quality, tender, humorous etc. I just haven’t found it. What I’ve seen usually makes me feel pessimistic about sex and sexual education, and openness and women’s rights, and so I usually don’t go looking around for it. This makes me kind of sad, cause I do actually like watching sexual activity.

I suppose this is where Goose feels like a blasphemer, and I guess I do too. I want to like “alternative porn”; all the explanation of why it was made and how it was made, peppered with words like “empowerment” and “agency” hit the right notes. But when the rubber hits the road… No, just no. I don’t see it on the screen. I see the same lack of craft, the same inattention to detail that I see in “traditional porn”.

Leaving the film-craft aside, I just don’t understand the attitudes being expressed about sex, connection, love. Maybe around the edges of the frame I can hear the echo of something familiar, but mostly I see a disconnectedness that leaves me cold. I think, “Is this how the people who made this movie really feel about sex?” Sometimes that makes me feel angry. Sometimes it makes me feel like a freak. Sometimes, like Goose, it makes me feel sad.

I decided to purchase a movie from Comstock Films, after hearing really good things about them from a friend. We watched Matt and Khym: Better Than Ever last night, and I have to say I came away from the viewing with a really renewed sense of hope surrounding sex positivity. They were a happy couple, a lovely couple, and you could see how much they cared for each other’s pleasure, how long they’d been together, how delighted they were. The movie was filmed beautifully as well and I can only imagine the excellent and ethical communication skills and fierce vision needed to build trust and comfort between producer and participant, cinematographer and performer to create something really intimate.

Intimacy. That’s what’s so missing from the cinematic artifacts of my so-called sex-positive culture, at least that’s how it seems to me. And sometimes I feel like maybe I’m the oddball for finding it’s absence so conspicuous; like there’s something strange about me for craving imagery the reflects my sexual reality; that sex is consequential.

And I feel like a bit of a blasphemer for calling it out.

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!