Over on the JustUsBoys.com blog, JD says:

Comstock Films is just about to release an intimate film featuring two of our favorite porn performers and real life lovers, Damon DeMarco & Hunter James. Comstock sent us a screener DVD and I really enjoyed the scenes of loving, natural sex interspersed between interview clips of the boys talking about their relationship and sex life. Unlike a typical studio release, this film turns us into voyeurs by letting us peek into the bedroom of these two beautiful men.

Thanks JD!

Our films are well-loved in the sex-positive, couples, and gynocentric segments of the adult market, but it might suprise you to know that there are plenty of hardcore gonzophiles that enjoy the change of pace our productions offer (after all, gonzophiles are people too!) As proof, I offer this five-star review from XrentDVD’s Big Dave:

Comstock Films successfully walks the delicate tight rope of making a film that is not only stroke worthy but won’t have you sleeping on the couch if your wife finds it in the DVD player. Xana and Dax: When Opposites Attract disproves the theory that you have to stay on the beaten path to make an erotic skin flick. By using real people in established relationships the film generates instant chemistry and dramatic heat between not only the couple but with the viewer as well. This film demonstrates that you don’t have to hide your DVDs and be ashamed of your porn anymore.

You can read the rest of this very nice review here.

If you’d like to “try before you buy”, you can rent from XrentDVD here.

I’ve made no secret of my antipathy towards most mainstream porn. But I get lost in my own point of view just as much as anyone else, and it’s easy for me to forget that just because someone likes porn just fine the way it is, doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy the way we make our films too!

Thomas Roche of Eros Zine writes:

Comstock Films has been creating some of the most interesting offbeat porn around. Their last title, Xana & Dax: When Opposites Attract followed what should be a tried-and-true video-erotica format, because it’s so damn effective: interview scenes spliced with hardcore sex. The resulting video portrait feels bizarrely intimate, especially since the sexual scenes feel so strangely natural, disarming, and hot.

Both Xana and Comstock’s first release, Marie & Jack were about straight couples; Damon & Hunter, shot on film, is about the relationship between two gay men. In choosing this feature, you might think that TC may be torpedoing his chances for mainstream distribution — mixing gay & straight content just isn’t done in Porn Valley. But if you spend any time reading his blog, you’ll walk away with the sense that he doesn’t so much give a flying fuck. In that sense, Damon & Hunter goes to a brave place, a place unsullied by the ringing of 818 cell phones and the clickety-clack of stiletto heels.

You can read the rest of Thomas’s very nice review here.

Thomas is right. I don’t give a flying fuck, but that’s just as much a business decision as it is a creative one.

Mainstream porn distribution is built on the idea of churning out a high volume of low profit margin work. Studios are lucky if they clear a few thousand dollars on each title, so the key to any sort of financial success is to keep costs as low as possible and crank out as many titles as possible.

Even if a person had the skills and desire to do more finely crafted work, by working in this environment they would be handcuffed by a business model that doesn’t allow for the investment of the kind of time and money that it would take to elevate their work. (This is what I mean by “film will not yeild to an act of will”.)

Over the past couple of years we’ve had a few inquiries from “mainstream” porn distributors, but none of them has been able to understand our business model: we spend as much time and money as we can possibly justify on each title, and then hope that the films have the longevity needed to recoup our investment. We bank on selling more copies of fewer titles.

This approach what lets us shoot film when almost everyone else is shooting handicam, this is what lets us take months to edit our films when most porn is edited in days. By not tying ourselves to high-volume/low-margin and all the other “rules” of mainstream distribution, we can afford to make the films that we want to make, the way we want to make them. We can even make (shock! horror!) a gay title if we want to, and I can’t wait for the chance to do it again!

Okay, enough with the good deeds and crybaby posts. How about some good old fashioned shameless self-promotion!

In their article “Was That Movie Good For You?” this month’s Tango Magazine offers their advice on the never ending search for erotic films that men and women can enjoy watching together, and we’re pleased that for the second time in as many months, Marie and Jack: A Hardcore Love Story occupies the top spot on a films for women/couples list. Says Tango:

“Marie and Jack, porn stars married in real life, have the genuine chemistry and knowledge of each other’s bodies to make this film sizzle. It starts slowly, with the couple discussing the intimate details of their love, before getting down and dirty. “

Tango also gave a nod to Xana and Dax: When Opposites Attract, as well as titles from Libido Films, Candida Royale, Veronica Heart, and Maria Beatty.

Having sex together is fun, and watching sex together can be fun too – if you find the right movie – so these sorts of articles are a perrenials in both men’s and women’s magazines, and I’m please but not surprised to see Marie & Jack and Xana & Dax mentioned.

But what I want to know is which one of these magazines will have the stones to put Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together on the list? A lot of women have been pretty good natured about their husbands/boyfriends enjoyed a little hot lesbo action (Tango’s list includes an all-woman BDSM title). Do you think men are willing to be as indulgent when it comes to their honeys getting off a beautiful man on man love? We’ll soon see.

-TC

The same friend from the Freddy and Eddy message board was kind enough to send me scans of the Men’s Fitness cover and article, and the rumor is true. The August 2005 issue has an interview with Tera Patrick and gives us her list of the ten best adult videos that “are best for for passionate together time.”

Well guess what? Marie and Jack: A Hardcore Love Story hold the number one spot, beating out titles like Stud Hunters from Femme Films and Beautiful from Wicked Entertainment.

Of course it’s just one woman’s opinion, and I’m not sure I agree. Good as Marie and Jack is, I think Xana and Dax is even better. I guess the only thing for you to do, dear reader, is get them both and decide for yourself!

-TC

This blog is getting a little heavy with all that talk talk talk; which is good, but needs balanced out. What better to provide some balance than some hype Hype HYPE!

About a month ago I was contact by journalist Amy Wolf, who was writing an article on DIY porn. We’ve already spent too much time on how I feel about the word “porn” so you can imagine she got an ear-full on that score. She also got an ear-full on DIY.

It’s not that what I do isn’t DIY (I am doing it myself), and even by the meager standard of the indie film world, our work isn’t low-budget, it’s no budget. But DIY porn conjures image of a gang of friends getting together fueled by ambition and good intention, hoping to change the world with a PD150 and Powerbook.

That’s not quite how things work here. We do shoot on video, but we also shoot plenty of 16mm film. I don’t pay my crew top dollar, but I do pay them union scale. The people who appear on camera are also properly compensated. In short, the investment of resources in each film we make is measured in tens of thousands of dollars, which is still a pityfully small amount of money by film standards, but not really what people think of when you say “DIY porn”.

Well the upshot of this is that Ms. Wolf decided not to include us in the DIY article (Oh no!). Instead she wrote an entire article about Comstock Films (Hooray!). Some highlights from Ms. Wolf’s article:

“Comstock Films has managed to break into new filmic territory by refocusing on the intense emotional bonds that fuel physical intimacy. The films empowers couples to reclaim the right to engage in, enjoy and watch hot, raunchy sex. Xana, of Xana and Dax: Opposites Attract, confesses while sweetly grinning to her lover, “It’s very romantic just to fuck.” “Tony Comstock seeks to infiltrate the minds of even the most conservative couple who are one step above doing “it” through a hole in the bedsheet. Consequently, he features couples that have traditional, often nuptial, home and sex lives.”

You can read the rest of Amy’s very nice write up here.

Thank you Amy Wolf!

-TC

Okay, okay, maybe you’re getting tired of seeing nothing but good reviews for Xana and Dax on my blog. But I’m not! Here are bits and pieces of another very warm review; this time from Abby Ehmann, who some of you may know as Editrix Abby. Says Abby:

“They look and sound and have sex not just like “real people,” but people I’m actually friends with. They talk about how they met, how much they enjoy each other’s bodies and their general love and appreciation for each other in a way that you won’t see in any other ‘porn movie.’ “

I really like that Abby put porn movie in quotes. Ten years ago I called myself a pornographer with a certain roguish pride, “No, it’s not erotica, it’s porn. Cunt and cocks and cum. It’s porn.” (I wanted to distinguish what I did from films that promised the goods, but never delivered.) Not anymore. Porn has become embarrassing (if not down right upsetting) on so many levels it’s sometimes hard to find words. That more than one person has said X&D doesn’t feel “porny” is very gratifying.

Returning to Abby’s review:

“When she sucks his cock, he looks positively beatific; their 69 is almost too intimate. And when they do it doggie style, Xana experiences an eyes-rolling-into-the-back-of-her-head orgasm. Whew! What you see on screen is two people very much in love and truly enjoying themselves both spiritually and sexually. It is hot!“

Again Abby is picking up on something I very much wanted to get across. In crafting X&D, I wanted to create a film that felt intensely voyeuristic, intensely private, but I wanted the audience to feel at ease with the intimacy. I wanted to find a way to tell the viewer it’s okay to want to look, it’s okay to want to see, it’s okay to feel turned on.

This is very similar to what Audacia Ray said in e-mail: “[Y]ou’ve managed to do a very delicate thing, which is that you’ve created a film that feels naughty, like the viewer is seeing something he or she isn’t supposed to see, without making the act of watching feel shameful.”

There is a tendency to discount the nice things that people say, but when you hear it twice, you start to let yourself think it might be true!

Near the end of her review, Abby turns her attention to the production design/art direction.

“It was nice not to see the usual tacky LA ranch house or odd personal effects surrounding the sex scenes and be able to focus on the couple themselves. (Sorry, but I am often thrown by particularly egregious lamps, carpets and tchotchkes in the background. Bad taste is so not sexy!)”

That strange brand of aspirational art direction that is practiced in Porn Valley has to be one of the most bizarre aspects of “the industry”. There always seems to be an awkward mismatch between the way the talent looks and talks, the cars they drive and the houses they live in. And the tchotchkes always seem like they’re a 15 year old boy’s idea of classy.

I think the approach is some sort of bastard child of Hugh Hefner’s waspy contrivances and Bob Guccione’s italianine* fantasies, but back in the Seventies, when Hef and Bob were establishing their signature looks, they were working with real money. You can’t do a the club/palazzo/chateau fantasia on the cheap (well you can, but it looks like crap), so we try to do “no art direction” art direction (in the hopes of not giving the audience a reason to start giggling). It’s nice that Abby noticed. (And even nicer she didn’t giggle!)

You can read the rest of Abby’s very nice review at Eros-Zine.com.

Thanks Abby!

-TC

* Mrs. C is Brooklyn born and bred. Italianine is what happens when italianate goes too far.

There’s another review for Xana and Dax up on AdultDVDTalk.com, another five stars, this time from Loraine, who some of you may know from her blog or from the Smart Girls Porn Club. Says Loraine:

“I just saw a love story. One with all the makings of a fine, sweet tale — you know how it goes — the handsome young man who spies the pretty woman at a party and smiles, but doesn’t think he stands a chance with her. The pretty woman who swoons a little when she sees him walk by, the friend who acts as the conduit for secret messages about the woman’s desire to know him and kiss him…want to know how it turns out?“Well, so did I — desperately.

(You can read the rest of Loraine’s review here.)

It’s interesting to note that Astroknight and Loraine have very different perspectives on sexually explicit films. Astro is a dedicated, long-time viewer of hardcore material, with over 1600 reviews to his credit. Loraine is a relative newcomer, on a self-described (and largely failed) quest to find “watchable porn”. Astro loves porn, Loraine is largely disappointed by it. Some (not me, of course) might even point out that Astro is a man and Loriane is a woman. But despite this “vast gulf” that separates them, Astro and Loraine agree that Xana and Dax: When Opposites Attract is something to be excited about, something that turns them on, something makes them happy.

If I seem to bristle at the label “porn for women” it’s because that seems to imply that in making a film that someone like Loraine can enjoy, you can’t make a film that someone like Astro can enjoy too. I don’t think this so. Men and women enjoy sex. Men and women enjoy watching movies. And if you make a good movie about sex, men and women will enjoy that too!

-T.C.

About a year ago, Ms. Naughty wrote a very nice review of our film Marie and Jack: A Hardcore Love Story

Of our latest release, Xana and Dax: When Opposites Attract, Ms. Naughty says:

“This film offers the real thing, with all the intimacy, laughter, love and genuine pleasure that we ourselves experience during good sex. I can’t recommend it enough!”

We say, “Thank you Ms.Naughty!”

-T.C.