Except where laws and politics relate to cinema and sexuality, I try to steer clear of politics on this blog. I don’t expect that anyone would have to agree with my views on the alternative minimum tax, or whether or not the F-22 is a good investment in our national security in order to enjoy our films, and I’d hate for any disappointment about my or Peggy’s politics on issues unrelated to freedom of expression or sexual liberty to come between someone and the enjoyment of our films. Pardon me this morning if I drift a little.

It should come as no surprise that making and distributing the films we make sometimes make me  feel estranged from the society in which we live. I’ve just finished reading my post from last May “Art with a Capital A” and it put me near tears. Our various  and ongoing misadventures with the powers that be  are a constant reminder that my views on sexuality and cinema is very much a dissident view. What seems natural and normal to me is, at best regarded as offbeat; at worst it’s regarded as criminal.

Even within the world of sexually explicit filmmaking, our approach is considered bizarre. For the sake of my own conscience (and other reasons) we only work with couples in pre-existing relationships, and we don’t ask them to do anything with each other that they are not already happily doing in their personal, off-camera sex life. The reason for this is simple: I’m not interested in asking people to take sexual risks for the sake of my films.

Because of my need for this sort of “moral insurance” we are only able to produce one or two films a year; which means we have to sell a lot more copies of each film; which means we have to make our films to the highest possible production standards; which means things like shooting film and extended post-production schedules; which means the films cost more to make; which means we have to sell that many more copies in order to make enough money to keep making films.

I suppose whether this is a vicious or virtuous cycle is a matter of perspective, but it’s the bargain we’ve struck with ourselves, and it worked for us. Which brings me to the political part of this post.

One of the main reasons that Peggy and I were able to enter into this virtuous cycle is that we’re both business-minded,  willing to take risks, and financially conservative. I don’t mean financially conservative in a no income tax on capital gains sort of way, I mean financially conservative in a shopping for clothes on 34th street between Seventh and Eight Ave sort of way; we’re financially conservative in a 30 year fixed mortgage sort of way; we’re financial conservative in a save 25% of your income sort of way.

As much as any thing else, that conservatism is what has allowed us to make the films we make. It’s allowed me to follow my conscience about what I will and will not ask people to do on my set, and it’s allow us to say no thanks to distribution “deals” that would have been financially ruinous to Comstock Films, or to PR “opportunities” that would have be entirely at odds with the reason we make the films we make.

That conservatism has allowed us to say “no thanks” to HBO, BBC, CBC, Pulse Distribution, Adam & Eve, Women’s Health, Pacific Media, Tartan Films, ThinkFilms to name a few. In each case we were faced with the same question: Do we give up control of our films, of our brand, our values for the chance of greater recognition, greater reach, greater revenue?

It’s an agonizing question. As an artist I want  my films to be seen as widely as possible. As a businessman I want Comstock Films to thrive so that I can live up to my obligations as a father. But in each case, we were able to look at our personal balance sheet – a balance sheet that’s the result of years of financial conservatism, prudent risk taking, and personal sacrifice – and decide we could afford to say “no”; that if we couldn’t make and sell films on our own terms, that we could simply do something else, something that didn’t demand we compromise our values; and we’d still have a place to live, we’d still have food to eat, we’d still be able to take our children to the doctor when they got sick.

Normally this is a source of (perhaps too much) pride. Being able to afford the courage of my convictions feels like fair-trade for the years off-brand clothes, the tent and sleeping bag vacations, the ten of thousands of dollars put into savings and filmmaking equipment, and all the other choices that Peggy and I have made to be able to make a film like “Bill and Desiree” or “Ashley and Kisha”.

But not today.

Today I feel as if the financial choices Peggy and I have made are as out of step with society as the films that we make. Today I feel as much a fiscal dissident as I do a social dissident. As much as I sometimes feel a fool for having devoted my artistry and intellect to making and fighting for my sex films, when I simply could have continued to make films about war and poverty and misery; today I feel a fool for having made the conscious choice to live within our means. 

And worse, it just doesn’t make sense to me. What could be a more normal, natural and healthy than the full expression of love between a committed couple? What could be more prudent, stable and pro-social than spending less money than you make and putting the rest away against the possibility of unforeseeable circumstance? 

I can hear Don La Fantain’s voice in my head, “In a world gone mad…” zchunk zchah zchunk “One man will make films that treat sex as a beautiful wholesome part of committed, emotionally healthy relationships…” zchunk zchah zchunk zchunch “One family will not take a teaser rate ARM in order to buy  an oversized house in an obviously overheated housing market and put their entire financial survivability at risk…” zchunk zchah zchunk zchunch zchunch.

There’s a word for people who hear voices in their head – crazy. And today I’m considering the possibility that it’s me that’s gone mad and not them. That I’m the one who’s gone of the deep end and taken my family with me. That normal sane people don’t film people having sex, and don’t have trouble remembering the last time they bought a pair of pants.

Mine and Peggy’s is a mixed marriage, born from mixed marriages. Within our children mingles the blood of their Ashkenazi, Irish, German, and English ancestors.  Some arrived on the shores of this country within living memory, others have been here since well before the Declaration of Independence.

Though we are an areligious household, our children’s faith heritage is diverse. For us there is no sectarian drama surrounding the Winter holidays, only more ways to celebrate the season.

Christmas morning, we will make the three hour drive to my wife’s parents’ house for the annual gathering of the clan. This affair takes place in a rambling Victorian house on a tree-lined street; a veritable Norman Rockwell Christmas rendering, made modern by the presence of of Jews and Muslims and Buddhists, all gathered to enjoy the warm tidings of the season.

For me, perhaps the greatest reason to celebrate is that the days are now getting longer. Unlike my wife, I am a creature of neither the night nor the Winter. I pine for long days and warm weather.

Nonetheless, there is a certain majesty in the quiet and cold of a long Winter’s night. In the crisp still air, it does feel as if something normally distant comes a little closer.

Where ever you are, however you worship, whomever you love; warmest holiday wishes from me and Peggy. We hope you make merry, drink deeply from the Christmas cheer, and sleep in heavenly peace!

Yep. It’s Clementine oranges. Love them love them love them love them! 

I love the little wooden crates they come in. I love how easy they are to peel. I love how sweet and juicy they are. Love, love, LOVE! But you know what I love most? I love knowing I don’t have “manage” my Clementine consumption. I love knowing that I can indulge in Clementine orange gluttony with complete abandon.

Here’s why.

Where we live Clementines cost between $5-$10/box. At that price, and given our family income, if Clementines were available year round, my unbridled Clementine lust could easily put a dent in our household budget. Each individual Clementine would have to considered. Have I earned this Clementine? Can I afford this Clementine? Could I put off eating this Clementine till tomorrow?

Now mostly I don’t mind thinking this way; in fact, I take pride in being able to divine value, defer pleasure, and make rational decisions. But at times it seems as if my mind is a constantly running cost/benefit analysis spreadsheet.

If the newer car gets 25mpg, but costs $5K more than the 19mpg option, which should we buy? Do the benefits of shooting film instead of video offset the added risk, effort, and expense? Does the cost of paying my own way to a festival where our films are playing meaningfully enhance the publicity value of the event?

Hundreds, even thousands of dollars lie the balance of these questions; questions that don’t have clear cut answer. This sort of best-guess calculus is the nuts and bolts of being an independent filmmaker (or any small business owner for that matter.) It’s what I signed on for, and I’m not complaining.

But when you get in the habit of thinking this way, it can be hard to stop. We rarely eat dinner out, even when we feel like we can afford it. We’re weeks away from taking our first non-DIY vacation ever (a cruise), and even though it’s already paid for, I still feel vaguely uneasy. Spending money, even money we can afford – to make things easier, or just to buy something just because it’s nice makes – make me uncomfortable. I’m still not quite sure how you ledger pleasure in a cost/benefit spreadsheet.

But I know how to run the calculus for Clementine oranges! They won’t be here for long, so eat as many as you want for as long as they last! In fact, ever Clementine not eaten is a Clementine gone forever! A minor tragedy! If anything, enjoying Clementines while you can is practically a moral imperative!

As to all that other Christmas stuff; family, friends, good tidings and season’s greetings? I try my best to enjoy that stuff all year ’round.

Many thanks for chiming in with comments on yesterday. As with my mid-trip post, it is both surprising and touching to find out I was missed.

Yesterday I say I didn’t know where to start. But when it’s hard to know where to start, the easiest place to start is at the beginning, and where sailing is concerned my beginning is in Corona Del Mar, sometime in the late Seventies. My childhood best friend’s mother had remarried and I was just old enough to take the train up the coast to visit for a weekend during the Summer. The new husband (Ned) was a yachtsman. He had a big ketch, and my best friend (Jay) now spent his weekends sailing his sabot.

So that’s what we did on my first visit to Jay’s new home. We sailed his sabot all around Newport Harbor, and by the end of the weekend I understood the basics of how a sailboat worked. I was also hooked, completing the surfing, fishing, boating trifecta that has formed foundation my avocational life ever since.

Since the late Nineties I’ve been building boats, crafts ranging from a six foot pram for my daughter to a 25 foot sharpie schooner named after her, and I had been entertaining the fantasy of building a boat that we’d all be able to sail away on (and come back!)

But the economics of the last few years have been so weird that building big boats makes less and less sense. The cost of materials (wood, epoxy, paint, etc.) has skyrocketed. Meanwhile there’s a surfeit of well-found GRP boats from the Sixties and Seventies. (The ultimate useful life of glass reinforced plastic hulls is still unknown, but so far they appear to be nearly indestructible.)

This all came into focus late last Summer (I was outlining yet another design concept on my lawn with stakes and string.) I realized that the fantasy of building a boat was getting in the way of the fantasy of sailing away on a boat. I began looking at classified ads.

In October I found a boat that was sea-worthy, big enough, and within our budget (which is to say we’ve put off replacing our 1990 Volvo with a minivan for another few years.) It was in Georgia, so I flew down to look at it and spent about a week sailing it and living on it. In November we bought it, and in late December we drove from New York to Georgia, got on the boat and began our adventure.

We spent the next few weeks working our way down the coast of Florida. By late February we had (somehow) made it to Lake Worth, and the day after the full moon, we set out for our first (modest) open water passage; the jump across the Gulf Stream to the Abacos.

We made it and spent the next four weeks in the Abacos, then sailed back, running the 140 miles from Grand Keys to Port Canaveral in one long 32 hour stretch. With the benefit of our hard-won experience, we made the trip back to our car in Georgia in another six days. (Going the other way, getting from the car to Grand Keys had taken two months.)

Our trip was plagued by, perhaps even characterized by bad luck, bad weather, neophyte mistakes, doubt and uncertainty. The Southeast had one of its worst Winters in recent years, and it turns out that the Abacos is about the worst place you could choose to go on a boat in March (frontal passages, often violent, every 48-96 hours; very few all-weather anchorages; none of them deep enough for our boat to enter on low tide, if at all.)

Yes, sprinkled in amongst the drama and the trauma there were some wonderful moments, but mostly it was the most relentlessly grueling thing I’ve ever done, and I did it with my wife (who’s deathly afraid of water over her head,) my eight year old and two year old daughters, a very big dog and a small cat. It was never truly dangerous, but danger constantly lurked at the edges of our trip. Stress makes people make mistakes, we were under nearly constant stress, and mistakes on a boat can kill you.

Yet somehow we made it. Things were often bad, but not once did things go from bad to worse. My hydrophobic wife is the same person who shot the beautiful and award-winning “Ashley and Kisha” the very first time she raised a film camera to her eye. My wife is nothing if not resilient, adaptable, and able to rise to a challenge. Yesterday I wrote about falling asleep while the boat made way under a starry sky; well that was on our run back across the Gulf Stream to Port Canaveral, and Peggy was at the helm.

My girls drove back from Georgia. I posted a noticed to a boat-building list that I needed crew, and four weeks later we were all together again, 1000 miles from where we first got on the boat. Who knows what our two year old thought of the trip, but our eight year old thought it was wonderful, says she’d do it again in an instant. (Has she already forgotten how scared she was when the last front that we endured started spinning off water-spouts at a rate of about one a minute, or just come to an early understanding that life is a rich stew of varied experiences? Or maybe sitting on the bow while dolphins splashed and lept was that good.)

Yesterday afternoon she and I went out to boat for study-hall (she is bedeviled by the same inane reading comprehension assignments that tormented me when I was in the third grade.) The weather’s just nice enough to be on the boat (with a sweater) but it’s still too early to be in the water. But those days will here soon enough, and they’ll be no insipid reading comprehension homework to muck it up.

I’m home, and it’s good to be home.

I am back home.

Peggy and the girls got home last month (they got off the boat in Georgia,) and I just finished the month-long task of bringing our boat up the Eastern Seaboard. I got home three days ago. I’ve been doing laundry, mowing the lawn, sleeping, and reading my friends’ and colleagues’ blogs to get up to speed on everything that’s been going on during my four month hiatus, and it looks like there are a lot of exciting projects cooking — books, collumns, art-spaces, new films — all sorts of things!

Would you like to know about our trip? I’d like to tell you, but it’s hard to know where to start, except that long before I ever had any aspiration to make films, I dreamed of sailing a boat out of sight of land, through the night, and on to someplace with warm clear water.  I can now say, with more than a little satisfaction, that I’ve fallen asleep on deck while the boat made way under a star-filled sky, and I’ve played with my children in water as clear and warm as any five-star hotel’s pool. Some days were heaven, some were indescribably hard; little, if any of it, was anything like a vacation.  But in the sum and total the trip was one of the most worthwhile things I’ve ever done.

Against that, I am, for the moment, enjoying the fantasy that making films and getting them seen is going to feel easy by comparison to what we’ve just done. But of course they are different adventures, each with their own frustrations and satisfactions. But maybe (just maybe) I’ll find that I have a little more perspective on the film ‘ting. No matter how frustrating (or financially damaging) it may be to have a film banned, or passed over by a festival, neither poses a risk to life or limb.

So, back to the edit bay, and “Bill and Desiree”. Back to blogging. Back to newsletters and press releases. Back to all of the things that are my (so called) real life. And it’s good to be back. It’s good to be home.

Hard on the wind, somewhere in the Gulf Stream

First: an apology. I didn’t mean to disappear without a trace; and it really didn’t occur to me that anyone would notice, let alone worry.

Second: thank you, thank you, thank you! Thank you to my friends who wrote me when our Web site went offline. Thank you to my friends who wrote to say , “Is everything okay?” And thank you to my friends who wrote to say, “Hey, I miss you.”

Everything is fine. Peggy and I are spending some long overdue time with our children, having one of those family adventures that has been as much hard work as it has been adventurous fun. (Yesterday we sailed through a 40kts+ squall, with blinding rain so fierce it blocked our GPS signal for 15 minutes. Thank goodness for compasses and the rock solid reliability of the Earth’s magnetic field!)

I thought I might get some work done on this trip. Ha! If you think it’s hard to find time to edit while managing the marketing and promotion of a small film production company, try going sailing with two young children, a dog and a cat! So for those of you who have asked, no, there isn’t another film on the eve of release.

But, we’ll be back home before too much longer, and I’ve learned one thing that will (hopefully) help me get the next film finished. These films are good enough that they keep selling, even without me flogging them relentlessly. Hopefully that will help keep me from worrying that this will all come crashing down around me while I’m spending time in the edit bay instead of blogging, writing press releases, and generally blowing my own horn.

Speaking of blowing my own horn, some exciting news. Both DAMON AND HUNTER and ASHLEY AND KISHA will be a part of this year’s Israel International LGBT Film Festival, taking place June 24-28 in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa. And this morning we got a request to submit a screener of ASHLEY AND KISHA to New York’s Newfest. No, I won’t be going to Israel, so cross your fingers for Newfest. I’d really like to see ASHLEY AND KISHA play in front of an audience!

Now I’ve got to use the rest of my internet time to see if I can find an “Idiot’s Guide to Tapping Aluminum.” The boat’s boom and gooseneck are trying to part ways, and there’s still 500 miles between us and where we left our car…

Winter 2002 was not a happy time here at Casa Comstock. Two years earlier the dot com bubble had burst, cutting Peggy’s web design business by 75%. Over the next year, a couple of solid commissions for my documentary work kept us more or or less even, but after 9/11, the phone went silent. I took advantage of the quite that Autumn and edited MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, which had been shot earlier that year.

By February 2002 thing were dire. M&J had been finished for five months, but was going no where fast. We hadn’t renewed the lease on our midtown office, but trying to hang tough in the six months of the lease after 9/11 had drained our savings. To make end meet our apartment in New York was sublet, but our house is too long a commute to pick up day work in the city. I checked eBay daily and watch the value of my AVID go down down down while it sat idle. Finally, at the end of February I sold my AVID – the cpu, the card, the RAID, the two 20 inch monitors – for $4,000, less than 10% of what I bought it for a few years earlier. I was officially dead in the water.

But I did have a plan.

If by some miracle I got my teeth into a job, I figured I’d by a Macintosh and a copy of FinalCutPro, Apple’s new, hardware independent, “AVID for the masses.” By hook or by crook I’d use FCP to cut the job. With whatever was left over I’d figure out what to do next.

Six long weeks later, my miracle came.

It came in the form of a commision to produce a documentary about a small slice of the 9/11 recovery effort. We shot it on the same two Sony PD100a cameras that were used to shoot MARIE AND JACK, and it was the first film I edited using FinalCutPro on a powerbook.

The Powerbook/FCP combo proved surprisingly capable. I ended up editing and finishing a couple more commissioned pieces, as well as XANA AND DAX: WHEN OPPOSITES ATTRACT on the same machine. (DAMON AND HUNTER was also edited on that machine, but was finished on a more powerful edit station, capable of working with uncompressed HD footage.) The powerbook became my e-mail and web machine. All the ranting and raving you read here, as well as any unhinged e-mails any of you may have received were typed on that machine.

All but this post I’m typing right now.

Half a year ago, my second daughter, just learn to walk, tried to kill my trusty 400mHz powerbook when she careened into it as I sat with her watching MAZY MOUSE and reading blogs. She didn’t kill the machine outright, but she did bust the hinges. I’ve been restricted to ranting at my desk, screen propped up against my NTSC studio monitor since then.

But tonight the powerbook met its end. Again my younger daughter was the culprit.

While I was ranting on the phone to Tony Hey at the MPAA (he’s the finest kind of old movie buff, and we were talking about war movies,) she climbed my office chair and tried to get at my razor phones that try to keep out her reach on top of the NTSC monitor.

Leaning as far as she could (the chair was away from the desk) she capsized the chair, with my old faithful powerbook in the fall line. Down came the computer, down came my daughter, down came one of the phones too. The crippled screen was ripped from the keyboard, wires and all.

My daughter is fine. My phone is fine. But my old friend, the powerbook that saved my family from dying in the cold is done. It’s in two pieces that will never again be one.

Just last week Peggy got a new MacBook to replace her toddler damaged 400mhz Powerbook. I took the drive out of my dead machine and now it’s in Peggy’s old machine. The hinges on this machine are fine, but somethings wrong with the screen. When the machine heats up, the picture breaks up, and that’s what’s happening now as I finish the eulogy to my old friend. I can barely see what I’m typing, which I guess means this rant is over.

The oars are coming along nicely. Did some sanding on Monday, but mostly I sat in front of the computer, fretting about when the Oprah thing was going to come out, until my daughter’s classmate’s father called and asked if my daughter and I wanted to go sailing. That was much better than sitting and fretting. Not too long after I got home, Violet posted her pictures, which was exciting.

This morning I went down to the drugstore, put in my wife’s prescription for birth-control and bought two copies of the July issue of O. Then I walked across the way to the hardware store and got a quart of varnish. The humidity was high today, so even though I put the varnish on before noon, it was still tacky last I checked. I also did some work on the boats (pictured below) that these oars are for. The one on the left needs its shear-clamp replaced, (you can see the sticks for that task in the boat.) Both need new cleats for the oarlock sockets, and a fresh coat of paint.

Other than a Fleshbot mention and Violet’s post, and of course holding the magazine in my hand, you’d wouldn’t know the Oprah thing had happened. No sudden dramatic increase in traffic, no sudden flood of sales. After mentions in Time, Esquire, Penthouse, Jane, and few others, I’ve learned not to expect such things, but it doesn’t stop me from daydreaming!

In a comment on the recent “ASHLEY AND KISHA Ships! post the Always Aroused Girl asked, “Do you do nothing but watch people fuck?”

As it happens, she asked this question while I has enjoying my first Saturday off in over five years.

What I mean by that is this weekend is the first weekend since the Spring of 2002 that I have not owed someone a movie. In those five years I have produced the five erotic documentaries offered here, two commissioned docs (one on 9/11 and one on grass-roots relief work,) and one self-produced short doc about the indigenous fishery on Lake Victoria.

I tend to think of my self as a lazy(ish) person. I tend to think of myself as a person who wastes a lot of time worrying about things instead of doing things about things (because it’s true.)

But when I contemplate the fact that in the last five years I’ve produced, directed, and edited eight films, each well received, with a total running time of about 275 minutes–well my goodness, that’s something, isn’t it? Add to that creating, from the ground up, a distribution system for films that were (until we did it) regarded as “undistributable”, we’ll that seems like a bit of an accomplishment, doesn’t it.

Yesterday, on my first Saturday off in five years I went to the lumber yard and got a couple of planks and made them into a pair of oars. The boats I made them for need a little patching up before they’ll be ready for an outing. I might do that today. I might do it on Monday. The boss has given me the day off!

I endeavor to avoid writing about politics on this blog, except when politics intersect with sex. I avoid politics because I don’t want how I feel about deficit spending, or gun control, or NAFTA or other rancorous issues to become entangled in how people understand my films. So much at I might be tempted to vent, I don’t. Not usually.

Some background.

Peggy and I have two children, two daughters, one seven and a half, the other not yet two. Before I became a parent, the guiding star for my work was that I did not want to do anything I would be embarrassed or ashamed to show to my mother. After I became a parent I stopped looking back and started looking forward. My daughter became my new star, and my new guidance was that I did not want to do anything that I would be embarrassed or ashamed to explain, when the time came, to my daughter. What we tell our older daughter about our work is calibrated to what she knows about sex.

She knows about reproduction, and is fascinated by the workings of genetics (I am a recessive blue dark-eyed person, Peggy has fair eyes. There have been many discussions Mendelian principals.) She knows the proper names of her sex organs so far as she’s asked, which is to say that she knows her vagina is different from her vulva. She knows the name of my sex organs too. She knows that her mother’s body is different from hers, and that when she is older, she will get breasts and pubic hair, and her body will change from being a straight-sided child’s body to a more or less curvy woman’s body. She knows about menstruation.

I also know that she knows that people who love each other enjoy being close to each other, and I think she understands that although there are many similarities in the way that she snuggles with me or her mother, there is also something different in the way that Peggy and I snuggle, that it means something different when mommy and daddy snuggle. She knows about eggs and sperm, and how babies grow in their mother’s tummies. She knows that babies emerge from their mothers’ vaginas. She has yet to ask just how the sperm gets into mommy’s tummy. When that day comes, I’m not sure what I’m going to tell her, except that whatever it is, it is going to be the truth.

Against this understanding of her knowledge, we tell her that we make films about the good feeling that it gives people to be close to someone they love, and the good feeling it gives people to hear stories about that good feeling and see people who are in love.

Back to politics.

A couple of months ago, on the way to drop my daughter off at school, she asked me about the war in Iraq. I did my best to explain in simple, objective facts, without betraying my own bias. I thought I was doing pretty well until she asked me, “Who started it?”

I felt myself freeze for a moment, then I said, “We did, honey.”

“We did?” bewilderment running across her face. “Why?”

We had arrived at school and I was let off the hook. “If you want, we can talk about this some more after school,” and politics did not come up again, until last night. Last night our daughter asked me why people are saying we torture people.

“Why are people saying we torture people?” How do you answer that question? How do you calibrate your answer against what you think your child knows about stress positions and water-boarding and the Geneva Convention and the blast radius of a suitcase nuke? After a bit of hesitation, I told her, as simply and gently as I could, what I believe to be the truth.

There is a lot of worrying in our country about what happens if children are exposed to sexual ideas or sexual imagery before they are ready to understand it. I think these concerns have merit, but I also think part of my responsibility as a parent is to give my children the knowledge they need to, as best they can, understand and incorporate sexuality as a part of the human experience and as a part of their own experience. To my mind, this is the best prophylactic against their inappropriate exposure to sex, and to mitigate whatever ill effects it might have. It’s hard to know if you’re doing too much, or not doing enough, but Peggy and I bumble along as best we can.

But as ill prepared as I might feel about being my daughter’s guide on her journey from a child’s understanding and experience of sex to that of an adult, I am far far less prepared to be her guide in a world where her own government subjects prisoners to water-boarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques.” When I was her age, I was indoctrinated in the idea that we simply didn’t do things like this in America, and that’s what made us different and better than our mortal adversary, the Soviet Union. I was taught this difference was something worth making sacrifices for, worth killing for, even worth dying for if need be. I was indoctrinated in these ideals and I still believe in them. I don’t know how to explain torture to my daughter without becoming confused and angry. Compared to explaining torture, explaining why mommy and daddy make dirty movies seems like a walk in the park.

Perhaps some of you think I’m naive, and perhaps you even disagree with me. If so, I hope you will chalk it up to the same idealism that has sustained our efforts to make our films, and excuse this outburst as the ranting of an overwrought parent who only wants the best for his children, and wants them to grow up in a country that is regarded throughtout the world as a place that is different and special.

Torture, as defined in the US Legal Code

Verschärfte Vernehmung (Enhanced Interrogation)