Coming Soon!

Have you every noticed that talking/debating about porn is (mostly) more engaging than actually watching it?

Anyway, Ms. Naughty, just back from bushwalking and wine-guzzling has added her two cents to the porn/blowjob/feminism debate in a post entitled Boring Blowjobs and Feminist Facials. This is the part that jumped out at me:

“Can a facial ever be “feminist”? My answer is yes. As always, context is everything.”

I agree. Context is everything. I’d even go as far as saying context is the only thing. Porn is often criticized for being fake and/or lacking context, but this is utterly untrue.

Porn is vividly real and hypercontextual. The very essence of photographic pornography is the depiction of actual sex, and it doesn’t get more “real” than two people actually fucking.

The problem is that (overwhelmingly) the reality depicted and the context in which it’s placed is utterly unappealing if not downright offensive. But when it comes to photographic images of sex, like the words “porn” and “feminism”, “reality” and “context” are at least as slippery.

Is “reality” the degree to which the viewer becomes engrossed in the narrative conceit of the film, or does “reality” extend to how well the narrative conceit jibes with the particulars of the production?

Similarly, is context limited to the moment when the house lights go down to the final fade to back? Or does it include the director’s Q&A after, or the Behind-The-Scene on the DVD? Or how about an e-mail exchange between the film’s director and a disappointed viewer? This is a post I made back in September of 2005 entitled Real Porn (No, Really):

Two days ago I received a note from a fellow who, although he liked many things about Marie & Jack and Xana & Dax, was rather disappointed that both love scenes ended with external ejaculation. Here’s a bit from his note (used by permission):

These videos have what I have been looking for that is missing from the usual “porn” videos with one exception. You claim that these represent real sex but in both cases the man pulled out prior to cuming and we were shown proof that he came… Maybe these couples actually have sex in this way but I doubt it. If they do I suggest using some couples who do not as well. This was a particular issue in the Xana & Dax video where he spent some time masturbating himself to climax. Why miss out on the wonderful sensations of being in your woman before cuming unless you are not able to do so for some reason. That, to a large extent, ruined the movie for me.

Also, my wife does not often watch explicit videos because she misses the loving relationship aspect of sex that makes it good for her. There is much in these movies that I suspect she would enjoy but I am sure she would be put off by this as well. She has made similar comments about other explicit videos.

He was also concerned that this might also be the case in Matt & Khym, which he had on pre-order. I wrote back:

Dear XXX,Thank you for your thoughtful e-mail. It very succinctly addresses some of the vagaries of shooting sex scenes of people having unscripted and and undirected sex. With your permission I’d very much like to use your letter in an upcoming blog post. FYI, Matt and Khym’s love scene ends with Matt ejaculating inside of Khym. No particular effort is made to “prove” that he ejaculated, but afterwards Khym does reach down to catch a little on her finger and taste it.

Yours,
Tony Comstock

This seemed to (mostly) satisfy his concerns:

From your response I take it that Xana & Dax and Marie & Jack choose to handle the men’s ejaculation without any direction or suggestions. If so I wonder if that is how they normally have sex or if they did it that way because they thought that it might be expected, maybe from watching “normal porn”. You might want to make it clearer to those you film that they don’t have to do things differently, especially that.I am not complaining if that is normal for them. It just seemed faked because of the way men’s ejaculation is handled in most porn.

The “might make it clearer” comment reminds me of the conversation I had with Desiree in the weeks prior to shooting her and her husband Ben.

“Oh, so you don’t want him to cum all over my face then?” she asked in response to my saying I just wanted them do have nice normal natural sex.

“Um well,” I stuttered, ” I don’t want you to do something you don’t enjoy when it’s just the two of you just because the camera is there, or because you think we want or need you to do something like that.”

“Oh no. I love having Ben blow on my face. I think it’s great, we do it all the time!”

“Well okay then. Please don’t let our being there inhibit you!” (It didn’t. Desiree had three orgasms that were very nearly disturbing in their intensity.)

Meanwhile, a tempest in a teapot seems to be swirling over similar question about what is and isn’t real over at SuicideGirls.com. Between kids, station wagon, suburban tract house, and a BMI of 26, I’m not really an alt kind of guy, (and even when I was young and broke and played my guitar too loud, I still wasn’t wasn’t an alt kind of guy) so I don’t really know that much about SuicideGirls, besides the fact that the chicks have downtown hairstyles, tats and piercing, and the photography style tends toward the deep focus/small focal plane style that I don’t really dig.

I do know what I thought I knew about SG, which was that I thought it was some hip, alternaporn site, run by technologically empowered female scenesters who were using the internet and cheap digital cameras to deconstruct the traditional pin-up. Okay, that’s cool in concept, even if I don’t really dig it as art, let alone as stroke material. Now it turns out that maybe SG is just some site run by some guy who’s making money off a lot of 18 year old girls’ yearnings to be a little less anonymous in the celebrity-obsessed world that we inhabit. Somehow that doesn’t seem quite so hip.

So what’s it all about, Alfie?

Back during that internet thing, people would sometimes say, “Content is king,” and the inflection they used seemed to indicate they thought they were offering a pearl of wisdom. Well here’s my pearl of wisdom, at least when it comes to making sex films: Context is king. Context is king, and when you use ‘reality’ as your conceit you walk a fine line. Most audiences are sophisticated enough to know that “the truth” is not the same thing as what you would have seen if you were on the set that day. But they’re also sensitive enough to know when the “reality” you try and present is too far way from what they would have felt if they had been on the set.

I don’t know what the “truth” is about SuicideGirls. The truth about Comstock Films is that all the way along there is a conspiracy between me and the couple I’m working with to present a very idealized portrait of their sexual relationship. It’s no more (or less) real than the nightly news or a novel.

Before their scene I asked Matt and Khym how they intended to enjoy Matt’s orgasm (experience has taught me not to assume that a “real couple” doesn’t enjoy the “so fake” external pop shot). When they told me that he was going to cum inside of her, I made a couple of suggestions for how we could visually signal the audience “yes, it really did happen.” The result can be seen in that lovely Comstock Films button that Mrs.C made for us.

Does that ruin it for you? I hope not.

As a director my ideal is that everything that an audience needs to know to enjoy one of my films should be presented within the confines of the film itself. If any information from “outside the frame” enhances the enjoyment the film, that’s fine, but the film itself should be the essential experience. If a viewer is on the fence until I’ve explained my intentions at the Q&A, or they seen everyone goofing off and having a good time in the BTS, or been given my assurances that it was “real” in a private e-mail exchange, then in my mind, the film has failed that viewer.

But film is first and foremost a commercial undertaking, so as a producer and marketeer, I recognize that creating and shaping an external context for our work is an essential part of the art and business of making films. “Real People, Real Life, Real Sex”; that’s the “frame” with in which we present our “erotic documentaries.” (Of course “erotic documentaries” is yet another frame.)

But for all the effort we put into framing our work, there’s a limit to how much control we have over the context in which our films are understood. By my reckoning, at the very most even a filmmaker like Steven Speilberg only has control over 49% of how any given viewer sees and understands one of his films.

I work on the assumption that I have even less control, so a lot of my effort goes into being mindful of vast space into which viewers will pour their own understanding and life experiences, and recognizing that each viewer is going to create their own context, based on their own understanding of sex, relationships, and pleasure.

Sometimes this works.

Last year I got e-mail from a reporter who said she wrote for a British newspaper called The Metro. Never having heard of it, I was cautious when I talked with the reporter, and didn’t expect much.

But it turned out The Metro prints about two million copies of each edition and is read by about five million people each day. After the article ran orders from the UK picked up substantially.

Last week another Metro reporter got in touch, wanting to know my take on YouPorn, and how budding internet exhibitionist could put their best foot (tit?) forward. This time the communication was entirely through e-mail, and it offers a good chance to compare what I wrote with what made it into print. Here’s what I wrote:

Tony Comstock’s Tips for Putting Your Homemade Smut Online

Keep these things in mind and you can make pics and vids that are dirty fun, not dirty stupid. And if someday in the future someone tries do get down on you for it, you can say “Yeah, that’s me. I’m having sex. And don’t I look good!”

This is what made into the article titled I Spy with My Little Eye:

Want to look good on camera? Erotic filmmaker Tony Comstock shares his top tips:

*Smile! The most consistently sexy thing a person can do is smile. Yes, pouty can be oh-so- sexy, but an authentic smile shows you’re having fun. it also gives a feeling of reality to the images that commercial porn doesn’t have.

It’s a simple fact of life that these sorts of things get edited for length and style, and overall I’m happy with how The Metro distilled what I said (though I do with they had got more of the gist of my primping tips. I was talking about making sure you don’t have spinach in your teeth more than making sure your twat is well-groomed.)

But it doesn’t always turn out this way. Last month I had a go around with a magazine that had given us some great coverage last year, and came back for “tips” on an upcoming sex article. The magazine wanted me to be their “expert” on how couples might move from smoothly from position to position.

My first thought was “no.” I’m a filmmaker, maybe even an expert in making a certain kind of sex film, but I’m no sort of bedroom advisor. But it’s publicity, right? So I reconsidered and decided that after 10+ years of watching people have sex, and ten years of editing loving-making with special attention to “transition continuity” I might have some useful things to say about how to get position to position smoothly. My underlying theme was (big surprise) don’t worry too much about it.

Big mistake.

When the magazine’s fact-checker showed me “my tips”, not only was it like they had been written by someone else in terms of style, most of the tips completely contradicted what I had said. I referred them back to the original text, but to no avail. The upshot was that I got a terse note from the managing editor that they had found a different “expert” to sign off on the article.

Oh well.

Dealing with “the press” can be a funny thing. On one hand, good press coverage is vital to a small company’s success. Good press relation is the marketing budget at a place like Comstock Films. On the otherhand, there is sometimes an odd expectation that the little guy (that would be us) will be willing to do anything to get in a magazine, or get on TV. Often times there’s a strong feeling that the article is already written, or the “documentary” segment is already cut, now there’s just trying to find some faces to put on their preconceptions. (TV people are by far the worst. We’ve had very odd encounters with HBO, the BBC, and the CBC.)

But what good is it to be on TV or in a magazine if the picture they want to paint isn’t you, isn’t your work, isn’t something you’d be proud to put your name on? So you learn to say no. You think about the spike in sales that came with the last bit of national coverage, then you remind yourself that who you are and what you do got you where you are today, and you say no.

Unless it’s the right time to say yes.

Our first film, MARIE AND JACK: A Hardcore Love Story has been picked up by Amazon.com, where it’s listed as being a part of the Comstock Films “Real People, Real Life, Real Sex Series. The Amazon listing is also the first time we’ve been able to show off MARIE & JACK’s spiffy new NC-17 rating.

Many thanks to Ellinoz and Emerald for their very nice reviews of MATT AND KHYM: Better Than Ever. With their help, Amazon is doing brisk business on that title, and we hope some of you out there have some nice things to say about MARIE & JACK as well!

MARIE AND JACK: A Hardcore Love Story on Amazon.com

That’s the title of AVN’s cover story this month. In a nut shell, the article seems to suggest that since women (mostly) don’t buy what Chatsworth is selling, the women’s market is a niche market where the usual rules of making and selling porn don’t apply. Says Meredith Christopher, head of production at Adam and Eve:

“I really don’t think there’s a true women’s market. About 30% of Adam and Eve’s online customers are female and they buy primarily toys and lingerie. We think about 7 percent of women buyers actually buy video, which is a fairly small number. Women are happy with their toys. They don’t necessarily need the visual as much. My theory is that they’re open to adult video, they enjoy watching it with a spouse or a boyfriend, but I don’t know that they purchase it for solo use like men do.”

50 years ago, before most people had ever heard of Napa, or Sonoma, or Pinot Noir, one might have concluded that the American wine market was also a niche market where the usual rules for selling alchohol didn’t apply. True as that might have been, it misses the broader truth that American wine wasn’t very good, and Americans’ taste in wine wasn’t very sophisticated, and that people can’t ask something if they don’t know it exists.

I reckon that right now, all we really know about what women watch is that (most) women won’t watch crap, and that until we see erotic films that are made as well and thoughtfully made as the work of coming Njoy Toys or Fun Factory, we’re not going to have much of a clue what women do or don’t want to watch when it comes to sexually explicit entertainment.

Meanwhile here at Comstock Films, women continue to be a very important part of our audience. About half the people who buy DVDs directly from us are women, and our films do very well at stores that cater to women. We know from the letters we get that these women are enjoying watching our films both alone and with their lovers. (Hences Peggy’s tag-line for our new affiliate ads, “Women love real sex.”)

Also, while we like to think we’re equal opportunity arousers here at Comstock Films, the fact is, when I’m editing, it’s usually with a woman in mind as my audience. Call it my heterosexual bias, but when I’m cutting a film, I imagine the effect it’s going to have on a woman, particularly the effect it’s going to have between her legs. I’m not ashamed to say that making films that turn women on turns me on. It gets me fired up creatively knowing that my films are causing women to have gushy afternoon wanks, or inspire women to try new sex position with their husbands.

Does that mean I know what women want to watch? Well I suppose I know what some women want to watch. But I do know what films I want to make, and count myself lucky that enough women (and men) like watching them that I’m able to keep making them!

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!

Real Couples, Real Talk

One of AdultDVDTalk.com’s most prolific and respected reviewers, Astroknight, has just posted the first review for MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER. Here’s my favorite part of his very nice review:

“It takes a wonderful look at not just the sexuality between a couple, but how it got to be there. That thought of sex as a journey doesn’t seem to come up for too many directors, but at the same time is something that almost any couple who’s been together for any length of time realizes. It’s a movie about passion and romance not only existing together, but also feeding off each other to draw two people even closer. It’s a beautiful thought, and one that had a smile on my face within the first few minutes of the movie.”

The thing I love about reading Astroknight’s reviews of our films is that they come from someone who is truly passionate porn. Astro’s written about 2000 (yes, 2000) reviews for ADT, covering nearly the entire porn spectrum. He’s both a porn conesuer and a porn omniover. He’s as likely to pass out praise (or scorn) to a gonzo anal raunch fest as to a couples feature.

When Astro gives us praise, it gives me a feeling of extra satisfaction. A lot of the people who enjoy our films don’t really like porn, but I also like knowing that Astro thinks what we do is pretty nifty too. I like the idea that there are straight people like our gay film, gay people like our straight films, and people like Astro who can dig the Comstock vibe too.

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.

From the Nina.com Forum. Says Nina:

“Percentage-wise, I’d conjecture that less than 15% of women have real orgasms at all. Five percent or so have them regularly, as they are women who come easily. Aria is in this catagory. Her orgasms are real, as she can have them several different ways.

“Remember, I’m a performer. I love what I do, and that what I do is sex, but the mission objective is to leave behind a good, hot, fun, timeless scene that will please viewers always.”

I understand exactly where Nina is coming from on this. Films, even documentary films, are illusions. They are shadows dancing on a wall, or phosphores flickering on screen. They have an effect on us not because they are real, but because they they appear to be real. A performer’s job, whether she’s a hoofer on Broadway, or an adult actress is to make it look like she’s having the time of their life, even on the days when she’d really rather be doing anything else. The thrill comes as much, or more from making the audience happy as it does from the dancing, or the sex.

When I first set out to make erotic films my “mission objective” was to create an entertaining, explicit, convincing, and arrousing depictions of sexual pleasure. From there I took into consideration my limitations of talent and resources, the limitations of the market for sexually explicit films (especially for sexually explicit films made with the intent to arouse,) and the formal effects of explicit depictions of sexuality on various film genres.

That’s a fancy way of saying I decided to make movies of real couples having (and enjoying!) real sex it was because I didn’t think I had the talent or the money to fake it in a convincing and entertaining way!

To that end, I find people who see working with us as a chance to share something about themselves and their sexuality with the world at large. I do my best to make my set (both the love-making set and the interview set) a place where people can relax and be themselves, a place where what is unique and special about them, as a sexual being and as a human being, is valued, indeed prized.

It all sounds embarrassingly touchy-feely, doesn’t it? It makes our set sound like some sort of encounter group or other relic of the 70s; before herpes, before HIV, before sex became so fraught. (In 1975 I was nine years old, so I’m really just going by what I’ve read or been told by people who were in the thick it.)

Well in a way I suppose it’s true. I try to create a set that is insulated as possible from all the worries that can make it hard to relax and enjoy sex. The thing I always tell my crew is that we have to make the set a safe place. We’re going to be asking people to reveal themselves in the most intimate ways, and we have to create an environment where it is easy, even pleasurable for them to open up; to each other, to me, and through that, to the audience.

Come to think of it, that’s what couples do for each other when they make love, and maybe that’s what makes the lovemaking in these films feel so wonderfully intimate and private, even what it’s happening for the whole world to see!