From Fleshbot:

While we relied on our heart (and certain other parts) to come up with our top ten crush objects of the year, we used more a rather objective method to determine our list of 2006’s best gay porn movies: a formula which involved the number of days each movie remained in or near our DVD players; the number of times people asked to borrow our copy; the number of days (or weeks) it took said people to return it; approximate number of ounces of lube we went through while “reviewing” it; and the inverse coefficient of the number of times the word “hot” was used it its press release. So you see, it’s all very scientific.

#8 DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER
Though they’re no longer a couple, watching Comstock Films’ porn verité exploration of the relationship between then-boyfriends Hunter James and Damon DeMarco is more than an exercise in wistful nostalgia: the perfect antidote to the glut of overprocessed smut crowding the porn shelves, the conversational, intimate “Damon and Hunter” is both the kind of film your straight girlfriends will keep trying to steal from you as well as a rare look of what porn stars look like when they’re not having sex like porn stars. And any porn DVD that was banned in Australia deserves a space on anyone’s Best Of list as far as we’re concerned.

Just in case you were wondering how to say “Tony Comstock” in Russian. With the help of google’s translation tools:

“[The film] is able to convey a strong erotizm everyday life, which does not end when the cameras are off. This is not a rogue proximity, there is an attempt to portray a pornozvezda Jenna Jameson. Sex is portrayed as a natural element Romantic proximity, and charges of spectators positive sense, Aesthetics which disappeared from pornographic films in the late 1970s and early 1980s.”

A few months ago Jamye Waxman asked if I could send over some screeners for an article she was working on for WOMAN’S HEALTH MAGAZINE, the premise being that a couple was going going to explore using erotic videos to give their sex life a boost and report back.

Stacy and Bryce, 32 and 34, of Brooklyn NY were assigned the “homework” of checking out a few titles and reported back in the December 2006 issue. On Saturday Jamye brought me a copy of the just off the presses issue at the CineKink filmmakers panel, and Peggy and I read it the next morning over a proper Hells Kitchen diner breakfast. I’m pleased to say the report is good. In fact, the report is very good!

Following the recommendations of a female friend who enjoys porn, Stacey brought home three movies. At 10 P.M. she popped [DVD #1] into the DVD player, and before long she and Bryce were both laughing and rolling their eyes. “We weren’t into the beefcake/Barbie-doll sex,” Bryce says. “It was weird to see so many fake boobs and unnatural bodies.” The next night, a second title, [DVD #2], got an equally bad review. “We fast-forwarded right through it,” Stacey admits. “The sexual acrobatics were awkward.” The third flick, Xana and Dax by Comstock Films ($25, Comstock Films), was different. “This was our favorite,” Bryce says. “There was no plot; it’s a real couple having sex. They looked like people we would know and be attracted to.” Stacey agrees. “I loved Xana and Dax because they’re a real couple, with genuine orgasms and a sincere admiration for each other,” she says. “We watched it straight through, and even though we were as tired as usual, we had sex right after.” And they changed their usual routine by trying a new position from the video. “Now we’re starting to incorporate more porn in our sex life,” Stacey says. “We even brought some on vacation right after doing this assignment.”

The rest of the article is online at the Women’s Health Magazine Website

Thank you Jamye, for inviting us to lend a disc to this important work (helping couples have more hot sex!) and thank you Stacy and Bryce ever so much for liking what we do! We’re working hard to make more films that I hope you’ll enjoy too!

More film festival news! This time the world premiere of XANA AND DAX: WHEN OPPOSITES ATTRACT at the Berlin Porn Film Festival. XANA AND DAX will screen October 22th at 10pm at the Kant Kino 5 at Kantstraat #54.

XANA AND DAX is an inside look at the sexual and emotional relationship of Xana and Dax Star, and is said by critics to contain the most intimate 69ing footage ever captured on film. Just this Summer, XANA AND DAX was named Best Straight Sex Scene at the 2006 Emma Awards for Feminist Porn in Toronto Canada.

The Berlin arts festival will also include works from many of the worlds most provocative erotic artists, including: Andreas Fux, Bruce LaBruce, Richard Kern, Maria Cyber, Anja Weber, Emilie Jouvet, Christine Wons, Nan Goldin, Charles Gatewood, Henning von Berg, Isabelle McEwen, Eon McKai, Emilie Jouvet, Annie Sprinkle, Maria Beatty, Todd Verow, Jerry Douglas, Benjamin Meade, Yuji Kitano, Chris Ho, Maria Cyber, Andreas Fux, Christina Wons, Anja Weber, Petra Joy, Eran Kedar, Louis Dupont, Jörg Andreas, Falk Lux, Horst Braun, Akihiro Suzuki, Ela Troyano and Tessa Hughes-Freeland.

Comstock Films produces award-winning, documentary-style erotic films that explore and celebrate the connection and chemistry of real couples having real sex. Comstock Films titles have enjoyed worldwide recognition as outstanding achievements in cinema, appearing in festivals and taking home prizes in Canada, Australia, Sweden, Germany and here in the US.

Other Comstock Films titles include MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, named Best Documentary and Best Overall at the 2002 SinCine New York Erotic Film Festival and Best of the Fest at the 2002 Sexual Health and Pleasure Film Festival; DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER, name Best Documentary at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival; and the soon to be released MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER, Comstock Films’ first shot-on-film, anamorphic widescreen title featuring a straight couple.

Regular readers have probably noticed that of late posting has been a little spotty.

Partly it’s because it’s August and there’s nothing I enjoy more than being on the water with my kids. A few more weeks and it’s back to school time, so I’m trying to get in as many beach hours with them as possible.

It’s also because MATT AND KHYM is taking up a lot of my creative energy. The problem (if one can even call it that) is that they’re too good. Their interview runs well over an hour, and it’s all good. Charming, sexy, sweet, humorous; it’s been really hard to figure how to cut in down to a managable length.

Lastly, I haven’t been writing in the blog much because I’ve been having to do A LOT of correspondence in support of DAMON AND HUNTER. It is abolutely our most successful release so far, both in terms of recognition and units shipped, and it turns out that trying to take advantage of that success take a lot of time.

We’ve been especially please with the reception DAMON AND HUNTER has received in Australia. It’s been covered in a number of magazines and newspapers, including DNA, The Melbourne Star, B-News, MCV, and QMagazine.

In July it played to an overflow audience at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, and went on to be named Best Documentary at the fest. From there we were invited to show the film at QueerDOC, the world’s premiere gay and lesbian documentary film festival, in Sydney this September. All great news, with lots of thank you notes to write, journalist to talk to, and of course, boxes of DVDs to send to Australia.

Then late last week, the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification dropped the hammer on DAMON AND HUNTER.

On the 15th, QueerDOC received notification from the OFLC that screening D&H would be a violation of Section 8 of the 2004 Film Festival Guidelines. That’s right, in Australia the government can tell you what you can and can’t show at a film festival.

What will happen now, I don’t know. The festival has already distributed nearly 50,000 copies of the program, including two screenings of DAMON AND HUNTER (which the festival expected would sell out). We’ve already printed up hundreds of posters and flyers and made arrangements to have them distributed throughout Sydney. The festival is currently in negotiations with the OFLC to see if they can show DAMON AND HUNTER in some sort of edited form, and we’re trying to make an appeal of the ratings. (Winterbottom’s 9 SONGS, a film that featured explicit footage of straight sex received a reduced rating from the OFLC. But without the major distributor backing of a film like 9 SONGS, and the very short notice, I’m doubtful our appeal will be successful.) If I were a betting man, I’d bet that Sydney is not going to get the chance to see the film that Melbourne enjoyed so very much.

And then there is still the question of what might happen to the organizers of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival and the owners of the venue that had the audacity to show DAMON AND HUNTER on not one, but two screens. Each violation of Section 8 is punishable by a year in jail and a $20,000 fine. Perhaps I felt a bit histrionic when I said that MUFF and Glitch were doing something courageous by showing DAMON AND HUNTER, but I don’t feel histrionic now.

Of all the films the OFLC might target for censorship, DAMON AND HUNTER seems like a particularly inappropriate choice. Aside from the recognition the film has so far received as an outstanding work of cinema, it’s also been recognized for it’s value as a life-affirming and educational document. DAMON AND HUNTER is held in the Kinsey Library at the world renowned Kinsey Institute at the University of Indiana. It’s already being used by the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York, and by the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline. Just this week it’s been being passed around by deligates at the 16th Annual World AIDS Conference in Toronto Cananda. Why? Because DAMON AND HUNTER is singular in it’s compassionate, humane, frank, and erotic depiction of gay love and gay sex.

And apparently that’s something that the government of Australia needs to keep the people of Sydney, especially the gay men of Sydney, from seeing.

From the GayVN.com website:

MELBOURNE, Australia - New York-based filmmaker Tony Comstock’s Damon and Hunter: Doing It Together will be shown here as part of the 2006 Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF).

Describing the movie, Comstock said, “Damon and Hunter is a frank, humane and erotic exploration of the sexual and emotional relationship between longtime lovers Damon Demarco and Hunter James. The film offers a candid look at the central role that sex plays in the relationship between these two men.”

The two men are also U.S. porn stars. Demarco has appeared in such movies as Titan’s Alabama Takedown, James in Rascal Video’s Wrong Side of the Tracks 2.

“It is my absolute intention and hope that watching Damon and Hunter will be an erotic and arousing experience,” said Comstock. “Just as the director of a horror movie hopes to scare the pants off an audience, Damon and Hunter is absolutely intended to have an effect below the belt. I want people who see this film to think about how good sex can and should be; and in the same way that a horror director wants a physical reaction from his or her audience, I want a physical reaction as well. I want this film to turn you on, and I want you to feel good about the way this movie does that to you.”

Festival Director Richard Wolstencroft said, “Damon and Hunter is confronting, in your face, open and sexually frank… exactly the kind of film we like at MUFF.”

The movie will be screened on Tuesday, July 11, at 9 p.m. at The Glitch bar in the North Fitzroy district of Melbourne.

The MUFF program can be viewed at MUFF.com.au.

A warm welcome to visitors from the UK! We’ve got preview clips scattered around the site and the Comstock Films Video Podcast offers serialized version of our films. It’s great way to find out what makes Comstock Films different!

http://feeds.comstockfilms.com/ComstockFilmsVideoPodcast

Now as to this metrosexualization of yours truly:

A few weeks ago I got an e-mail request for a phone interview from a woman who said she worked for a British newspaper with an impressive circulation. Since people tend to exagerate put their best foot forward when making these sorts of requests, I chopped a couple of zeros off what she claimed was the daily readership of her newspaper.

I was wrong. I was really wrong.

Yesterday The Metro introduced Comstock Films to a couple million Brits. There was no hot link to our website, but this AM google.uk is our number one referrer, pouring several thousand visitors into our site. And they’re buying too. Not counting our Hurricane Katrina fundraiser, yesterday was our biggest single day of sales ever!

Here’s a bit of the article:

Metrosexual: Between the Sheet
‘Watching two professional actors having sex in a porn film is no different to watching two horses have sex,’ says amateur porn producer Tony Comstock. ‘Neither is very interesting.’

‘It’s just another positive experience we have had together,’ says Sam. ‘It is nice to think that years from now we’ll have a memento of when we were young and sexy.’

You can read the rest, featuring commentary from Wired’s Regina Lynn at the Metro website.

And to those of you worried that this metrosexualization might have involved a haircut, waxing, or manscaping, there’s no cause for alarm. I’m still the same shaggy beast you know and love.

We just got the word this morning; Damon and Hunter (in handy DVD form!) have been invited to the world famous Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. When they get to the institute, they’ll take up residence in the Kinsey Library and Special Collection along side Marie & Jack and Xana & Dax.

Without Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey’s ground-breaking work, it’s unlikely Comstock Films would exist, and we are honored to add another film to the collection that bears his name!

Monday night at Golapagos I spoke about erototoxins, and other silly and sad ideas that some people *cough*Mike*Nichols*cough* have about what does or doesn’t happen when you make or look at a picture of a cock going into a pussy (or mouth or asshole, we’re not picky here). Well I guess we’ve caught the zeit geist(sp?) or it’s the phases of the moon or something.

Always eager to find a way to run “an important story about pornography” the AP and reporter David Crary have put their (dubious) crediblity behind the silly idea that porn is addictive. Nevermind that there is no scientific evidence for this, The AP knows porn=readership so lets run with it! Wheee!

But you know what’s even funnier than the addiction/erototoxin thing? Dig this:

“[40 year anti-porn activist] John Harmer is part of a cadre of anti-porn activists seeking new tactics to fight an unprecedented deluge of porn which they see as wrecking countless marriages and warping human sexuality. They are urging federal prosecutors to pursue more obscenity cases and raising funds for high-tech brain research that they hope will fuel lawsuits against porn magnates.”

Porn magnates? Are you fucking kidding me? There are no deep pockets in porn.

David Crary, if you can find me 50 people who make more than $1,000,000/year from porn I will blow you. (For comparison’s sake, each cast member of Friends got $1,000,000/episode for four seasons. Do the math.)

You can’t? What a surprise.

Consolation prize: Find me 50 people who work in porn with a networth of more than $10,000,000 and I’ll give you a handjob. Porn magnates. Give me a fucking break.

Of course that won’t stop Mr. Hammer from “raising funds”, or stop Crary from writing about it.

You know who’s addicted to porn?

The AP is addicted to porn. John Harmer is addicted to porn. David Crary is addicted to porn. They’re addicted to the money and attention and titilation they get by talking about porn, “researching” porn, “documenting” porn, and otherwise flitting around the edges and then wringing their hands over the growing porn crisis. They’re addicted the sloppy, slip-shot, or down right deceptive things that “tackling the important issue of porn” allows them. (Anyone notice this sounds an awful lot like what most pornographers like about working in porn?)

These people don’t want porn to go away. If it did, they’d have to report on real news. They’d have to find a new way to get themselves on the TeeVee. If it did they’d have to get a real job, or at least find a new scam to get people to send them their money.

A poster, a press-release – this blog-reading things has gone from being a lark of an idea at an informal Manhattan gathering to seeming like something real. (A good poster and a few pithy bios will do that, you know.) And I’m not embarrassed to say I’m gosh darned excited to be a part of it!

These people are a part of it too:

Audacia Ray
Audacia Ray is a New Yorker, writer, sex worker rights advocate, alternative model, safer sex educator and intrepid pervert. Her personal essays have appeared in Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong and First-Timers: True Stories of Lesbian Awakening. She is executive editor of the Utne Independent Press Award winning $pread magazine, edits porn website reviews at SugarClick.com, and was named #3 on Fleshbot’s Top Ten Hotties of 2005.
Audacia blogs and shows her boobs at Wakingvixen.com.

Chelsea Girl
Chelsea Girl lives in Chelsea, where she enjoys hobbies like writing, reading, fucking, and mocking, not necessarily in that order. Other enjoyments include her right to free assembly, oxygen, and full use of her opposable thumbs. Born under Scorpio in the Year of the Tiger, Chelsea is suffused with animal magnetism. Her turn-ons include long walks on the beach, cold nights by a blazing fire, leather pants, and cinematic decapitations. Her turn-offs include phony people, sociopaths, poor personal hygiene, and Vegans. Her blogs is Pretty Dumb Things.

Cherry Bomb
Born and raised in the hot hot heat of the dirty South, Cherry Bomb has been performing since she was just a young blossom. Conceived in the throes of a passionate one-night stand between bell hooks and RuPaul, writing and activism is built into her sordid DNA. These days you can catch her twirling tassels at The Slipper Room, and with Wasabassco Burlesque at The Living
Room Lounge in Brooklyn. Catch tales of her exploits at her blog, The Queen of Cream: http://cherrybombnyc.blogspot.com

Jefferson
When Jefferson met his future wife, he was a long-haired bisexual art student. She encouraged him to fly right, and for the next fifteen years, Jefferson lived a life of monogamous heterosexuality, complete with kids, pets and a house in the suburbs.

Until his wife announced she no longer cared to be married, thank you very much.

Jefferson’s blog, One Life, Take Two narrates his new life, balancing fatherhood, bisexuality and a parade of friends and lovers, many of whom participate in orgies he regularly hosts. It is the life of a parentand pervert in New York City.

Lex Konrad
Once upon a time Lex Konrad drove in the Paris-Dakar rally, crashed his car, scaled the sand dunes of the Sahara, threw snowballs atop the Atlas mountains and found definitive proof of the existence of a god. That was the longest day of his life. He now resides in Manhattan, where he lives with his lovely fiancée and writes sordid tales of the city’s nightlife.
Naked Loft Party.

Tess
Five years ago, Tess, author of Urban Gypsy, was your average neurotic wife, mother and accountant, living in not so quiet desperation in the suburbs. Then an old crush came into her life sparking a never quite extinguished passion for love and life. Tess, newly awakened, decided to blog about her passions, BDSM and whatever else maybe of interest. Urban Gypsy documents one woman’s journey in search of passion and more passion.

Viviane
Viviane is a research librarian and blogger. She thinks about sex all of the time, and blogging most of the time. She started the group blog Viviane’s Sex Carnival in 2005. She is also editor of TGP.com.

The Perverts’ Saloon came in to being this past February, when she decided she was tired of wanking off to words, and wanted to meet the bloggers in person. The bloggers who met bonded over boobies, blogging and a broken glass mirror. She likes computers and technology, red wine, men with a sense of humor, and long walks on the beach.