Tony Comstock at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, photo courtesy of Kirby Ferguson

I don’t know if any of you noticed, but I didn’t quite manage to get an announcement of my appearance last week at NYU up on this blog, which constitutes a failure to meet the most basic obligations to marketing and promotion that an undertaking like Comstock Films demands. I didn’t get one up on the lecture’s website, The Intent to Arouse, either; which goes beyond the realm of inexcusable and into the realm of inexplicable.

Why, on the brink of legitimacy, would someone who’s worked so long and so hard to try and stake out a space for the wholesome enjoyment of sexual pleasure in cinema, free from puritanical arthouse tropes or pornographic banality, suddenly go AWOL? Why would someone who’s banged the gong and blown his horn over every minor achievement suddenly fall silent?

That’s what I’ve been masticating over the weekend, along with other things. And I guess I have some answers. Consider this post more of a note to myself than anything else. Some background:

This is note I sent to Violet Blue after I found out Chronicle editors wouldn’t let her link to ComstockFilms.com in her column:

Hello Violet,

As hinted at in my previous, 2009 is shaping up to be an exciting year for us. We’re looking to get the remainder of our films finished and we’re also going on the offensive with our PR campaign. If current trends in the complain-driven/somebody think of the children internet persist, things don’t look good for Comstock Films. Among other things, we’re exploring the possibility of legal action against private filtering companies for restraint of trade, and a number of other pro-active tactics. Sitting by and hoping that simply by making thoughtful and heart-felt films we’ll be treated fairly isn’t going to work, and I’d rather go down fighting than slowly get squeezed into non-existence.

The link FAIL in your Dec. 25 column offers an opportunity for an opening salvo. There’s something ironic in the fact that of all the places that have linked to us, the two that haven’t have both been SF news outlets. It’s too good not to try and use. Below is a preliminary blog-post/open letter. I’m sending it to you both as a head’s up, and also to check and see if you think there are any unfair characterizations.

Blood with flow this year, probably mostly mine and Peggy’s. We appreciate all the support you’ve given us over the years!

Yours very sincerely,
TC

As mentioned yesterday, I decided against sending my screed to Chronicle editors, but 2009 has indeed shaped up to be an exciting and bloody year, but not in a particularly good way. Instead of making movies, I’ve  been fighting a series of the behind the scenes battles over our films’ meta-data on the countless databases that drive commerce on the internet. I’ve been doing everything I can to make sure what happened to us with Google (a 75% drop in Google search driven revenue) and what happened to LGBT authors during the AmazonFail in March of this year (a 40% drop in our Amazon revenue) doesn’t happen again.

A two year graph of the number of comstockfilms.com visitors using the search [real sex]

Google’s re-calibration of its algorithms (begun in 2006 and finished by the end of 2007) that now regard ComstockFilms.com as a porn/spam website were a punishing blow to our operation. But even more damaging than our algorithmic marginalization was my naiveté. I went round and round with Goggle’s Matt Cutts trying to figure out what was “wrong” with our site’s SEO; thinking we must have been doing something wrong for Google to drop us down in the standings so much. Peggy and I wasted a lot of time and angst trying to “fix” our site, chasing down duplicate content, feeds, and generally pulling out our hair while sales plummeted.

It wasn’t until I uncovered Google’s secret “No Fly List” (if you want to know whether or not Google considers your site porn/spam, see if your site’s best search string autofills in Google’s search box,) and Google’s algorithmic treatment of [clitoris] that I finally realized that our site was fine, and that it was Google that was broken, and that Matt Cutts had been lying to my face.

The simple fact is this. Whether we’re talking about the search algorithm at Google, the linking policy at the San Francisco Chronicle, or merchandizing algorithms at Amazon, what Peggy and I do here at Comstock Films is regarded as an acceptable loss. And coming to that realization I’ve come to regard our efforts as little more than building sand castles at the edge of the seashore. And it was against that realization that I began to write and market The Intent to Arouse: A Concise History of Sex, Shame, and the Moving Image.

The Intent to Arouse was my effort to try and build something on higher ground; somewhere safe from waves and tide, an attempt to build something somewhere where all the time, effort, money and stress it takes to actually make something new wasn’t in danger of getting washed away by ever stricter anti-spam algorithms, or obliterated by “flag as inappropriate”. Something where I wouldn’t have to wonder when and if I’d get a link from The Chronicle, or PBS, or CNN.

I got a good start on The Intent to Arouse, cranking out over 20,000 words in just a couple of months. I got an invitation to speak at NYU Film School, and provisional invitations to speak at UCLA and USC. Then suddenly the wind went out of my sails. The words stopped flowing. I stopped making the calls I needed to make to pitch the lecture. The fire that I’ve felt in my belly for so many years died down to a bare glow.

Or maybe not so suddenly.

Over the past few years “tipping point” has become a cliche in the world of commentary and punditry; the moment when you push something far enough that it goes over and won’t come back. But I’m waiting for the pundits to get hip to the idea of free surface area.

“Free surface area” is how navel architects talk about loose water in the hull of a boat. Unlike fixed ballast, which stabilizes a boat and makes it more resistant to reaching a tipping point, loose water is dangerous because it can rush suddenly and unpredictably from one side to another – the mass and momentum of the water delivered full force to where it can do the most harm. And the more the boat lists under the weight of this loose water, the more the water pulls the boat down. (Practically speaking, that means a Bering sea crab boat  is relatively safe if its water tanks are completely full or completely empty, but is extremely vulnerable to capsize if its tanks are half-full.)

Up until last Wednesday night, I had secretly been thinking of my NYU lecture as my swan song; my failure to continue writing or even do the barest promotion a clear indication that I no longer had what it takes to continue fighting the fight.

In late August I decided it was time to fulfill my dream of making an extended bluewater passage, and I put out a call for crew to help me take my boat from New York down to the Virgin Islands; two weeks and 1500 nautical miles away from algorithms and cold-calls. Two weeks and 1500 nautical miles of knowing there is no fighting; only adjusting, and accepting, and surviving.

Then something unexpected, something almost unwelcome happened: the lecture at NYU went really, really well.

I am not actually surprised the lecture went well. I’m quite happy with the writing I’ve been doing at The IntentToArouse.com, and I know from past experience I’m comfortable speaking to an audience, am good at speaking extemperaneously, and my bordering-on-tears sincerity (authentic yet mawkish!) is affecting.

What has surprised me is the effect one good night out had on my outlook. On Tuesday of last week I was quite ready to quit and sail off into the sunset. And not just ready, I was actively making plans to do the same. But by today I feel, if not renewed, at least strengthened. For a couple of years now I’ve been contemplating a way to beat Google, and the film festivals, and The Man, and all the other Enemies of Truth and Beauty at their own game. After  more than 15 years, I think I finally understand what it is I’m fighting against, and (more importantly) what it is I’m fighting for.

Brett and Melanie, and the other two unfinished films are coming on the boat down to the Caribbean with me. That’s right – I’m going down to St. Bart’s (or better yet, an island Angelina Jolie has never heard of) to finish up my current projects and start laying the ground work for what’s next. That sounds pretty cool doesn’t it. Like the Rolling Stone going to Jamaica to finish their album or something. What can I say, except life is weird. 

Sloop INTEMPERANCE in an isolated Bahamian cove in March of 2008

Violet Blue is pissed off:

This is not some obscure sex blog.

Who has unashamedly, happily (even proudly) linked to Tiny Nibbles from a mainstream site? Sex sites aside, here is a list that reveals why anyone who says they must obfuscate linking to my website for whatever (read: moral) reasons are no longer part of the modern media mindset regarding web standards:

Forbes, CNN, Google Inc. (as a 2x Tech Talk speaker), Web MD, MSNBC, cNet, ZDnet, Globe and Mail, RH Reality Check (UN sponsored health news outlet), BBC, New York Times, SF Chronicle/SF Gate, Gawker, Wonkette, Defamer, Gizmodo, (YES) Boing Boing, Laughing Squid, Oprah, ETech (proudly on the front page with photo), Wall Street Journal (same), South By Southwest (interactive and film), Mediabistro, Adrants, LA SF and Gothamist, Technorati (with photo, remember them?), Wired (many times), American weeklies like Villiage Voice + SF Bay Guardian + Seattle’s Stranger + LA Weekly + SF Weekly, LA Times, Webnation, Chicago Tribune, SJ Mercury News, The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Attack of the Show, Newsweek, PBS Mediashift, CBS Healthwatch, National Public Radio (NPR), CJR (Columbia Journalism Review)… and more second tier news/media outlets. Links are available upon request.

These people have all, and currently from the features, speaking engagements and media items, all link to this website. I’ve kept quiet about these bragging rights. But times have changed. Don’t tell me it’s an issue to link here, or show that you do. If so — you’re clearly not paying attention. And old media is leaving you in the dust.

Get over it, and welcome to global consciousness about human sexuality.

I know just how Violet feels. In 2007 I was pissed off and hurt when PBS refused a link to ComstockFilms.com on a story they did about the Great Google Bug, a story we broke in late 2006. Here’s our post about the Google Bug (Will Google Kill Comstock Films?) Here’s the PBS story (Google Search Snafu Can Have Huge Impact on Niche Blogs), and here’s me venting my frustration and hurt feelings (PBS Disappears Sex Links?) The gist of my ire was that while the story was picked up by Boing Boing, The New York Post, Search Engine Land and a few other places, PBS stood alone in refusing a link to our site. From my blog:

Perhaps it’s just an oversight. I hope so, but ten years’ experience of trying to bring the best of what I have, as a filmmaker and as a human being, to the depiction of sex makes me doubt that’s the reason that the PBS article doesn’t link to Comstock Films.

We’ve had printers refuse to print our inserts and posters because they were “pornographic”. I had my words used without attribution, let alone a link. Hell, I’ve even had a government ban one of my films from an entire continent.

So when PBS runs a story that started with a post that I made on my blog, and then doesn’t even link to my blog, it doesn’t surprise me. Am I disappointed? Yes. But surprised? No.

This is par for the course. Last month CNN re-ran Violet Blue’s 2007 Oprah article about “porn for women” and linked to a Christian sleep-away camp for grown-ups, but couldn’t bring themselves to link to Comstock Films or Marie Beatty’s site, both of which were also mentioned in the article.

This past Spring I had to virtually bully one of our films into the Sex Positive Documentary Film Series at the University of Illinios at Chicago because the series’ curator was worried she’d get in trouble if she showed a sex positive documentary film that actually showed sex.  Just like Violet’s post, I dumped a credentials avalanche on the series curator to show that I wasn’t just “some obscure sex film maker.” It all turned out okay in the end; the film was a big hit with the audience, and there were no negative repercussion for the series organizers, but the experience left me drained and discouraged.

And last year, on Christmas Day, I got to see our Penis/Clitoris Google SafeSearch research called out on Violet Blue’s San Francisco Chronicle column with links to people writing about my discovery, but without a link back to my original post.

Like I said, it’s par for the course. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt my feelings every time it happens. And as readers here know, when I get hurt, I get angry. And when I get angry, I write a letter. Here’s the letter I wrote to The Chronicle, including the preamble I was going to put in the accompanying blog post:

So Much For San Francisco Values (An Open Letter to Frank J. Vega, Publisher and President of  The San Francisco Chronicle)

Long time readers may recall that this blog broke the Great Googlebug story of late 2006 with our post “Will Google Kill Comstock Films?” The story was picked up by BoingBoing, SearchEngineLand, The New York Post, and PBS (through it’s SF affiliate KQED,) and several other. Of the websites that picked up the story, PBS was alone in its decision not to link to ComstockFilms.com. The explanation from PBS/KQED (delivered without irony) was that if their readers *really* wanted to find Comstock Films, they could google it…

Late this year we broke another Google related story with the post Penis vs. Clitoris. The story was picked up by Susie Bright, WebproNews, and just last week, the San Francisco Chronicle (through Violet Blue’s column.) And once again, the San Francisco news outlet separates itself from the pack by refusing to link to our site. I’ve already spoken with Violet about this. Apparently as far as her editors at the Chronicle are concerned, we’re to consider ourselves lucky that they’ve even printed our URL, as other sites that Violet has referred to in her column haven’t even been granted that (second-rate) measure of respect.

Naturally I am frustrated.

Of course I’m grateful that Violet has used her column to raise up this story, both for the benefit that brings to Comstock Films and because I think the story itself is an important reflection of so much of what our films hope to address. But I am furious about the Chronicle’s editors’ refusal to link to our site. It is a slap in the face, delivered on Christmas morning, and I am stung.

When it comes to sexuality, media outlets often adopt a condescension and entitlement that they would never dare with any other topic. Over and over again we are forced to measure our principles against the value of column inches; we are asked to distinguish between “half a loaf is better than no loaf” situations and when we are being asked to eat shit.

This morning I’m pushing the plate back and saying “no thanks.” I hope Violet understands:

Dear Mr. Vega,

My name is Tony Comstock. I am a documentary filmmaker working out of New York City. I am writing you in regard to the Chronicle’s decision not to link to a blog post  on our website which is the primary source for one of the “top five underreported sex stories of the year”  in Violet Blue’s December 25 column.

Violet Blue has been a long time friend to our efforts, and we are grateful to her featuring our research into Google’s “SafeSearch” in her column. Our films are made with the specific intention of addressing how and why sexuality is treated as it is by society; and how Google’s taxonomies and filters function is an important part of that conversation.

However, I would respectfully suggest that if the Chronicle thinks a story is important enough to fill its pages, when possible The Chronicle should link to the source of said story; if not out of courtesy to the source, then out of respect for Chronicle readers. The ability to link directly to sources is the very essence of what makes the web a unique medium, and the failure to do so is unprofessional, and disrespectful of both your readers and your sources.

The professional slight aside, your newspaper’s actions are personally wounding. In my fifteen years as a documentary filmmaker, I’ve covered topics as diverse as AIDS orphans in Africa; to the effect of the Civil Right movement on our visualization of God; to the spiritual aftermath of of the 9/11 attacks on New York City. For the sake of addressing these  and other topics honestly, I’ve subjected my audience to images the dead and the dying, and to personal accounts of unimaginable horror. I’ve asked my audience to see things no one should ever see, and to open their ears and their hearts stories of misery and deprivation, in the hopes that out of the suffering, something human and uplifting  might be found. I have no doubt that if Ms. Blue or any other of the Chronicle’s writers were to site this work in an online column, readers would have been given a link without a second thought.

Yet somehow, when the topic is sex, your newspaper can’t seem to located its journalistic ethics, or even common decency. A cursory search of the your paper’s website shows that its editors are more than happy to “sex-up” their pages with accounts of all manner of endeavors they are unwilling to link to. In the last year, my own company and our films have been mentioned several times on the Chronicle website, with nary a link. But this latest episode simply goes to far. In Ms. Blue’s column the editors have linked to a secondary source, Susie Bright’s blog, while refusing to link to the post on our site which is the primary source of the story. Presumably this because Chronicle editors feel their readers will be able to “handle” whatever they might encounter on Ms. Bright’s site, but fear the content on ComstockFilms.com might cause reader grievous offense.

What offense this might be I’m sure I don’t know. Our films have played in festivals and received awards in festivals worldwide, including: The Melbourne Underground Film Festival, The Sydney International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Outfest Atlanta LGBT Film Festival, The Long Beach LGBT Film Festival, and the Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival, The New Zealand LGBT Film Festival; each time to enthusiastic audiences who have found our films heartwarming.

Our films are held in the library of the Kinsey Institute at the University of Indiana  in Bloomington Indiana. Our films are used as teaching and training material at Planned Parenthood,  at The Gay Mens Health Crisis in New York City, and at the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline. Our films  are used in university courses on topics ranging from film studies, to sexuality, to women’s studies, and by private therapists across the country.

In the course of this endeavor, our site has been linked to from Richard Corliss’s collumn at Time.com; Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish at TheAtlantic.com; Women’s Health Magazine website, Tango Magazine Website, Jane Magazine Website, New York Post website, and many others. The links from these various and respectable sources did not provoke a flurry of angry letters, cancellation of subscriptions, or diminishment of these various publications’ prestige.

The Chronicle’s failure to link to our site is nothing less than hypocrisy, and whether this hypocrisy is a product of prudery or cowardice hardly matters. It is the same sort of hypocrisy that Google indulges in when they write their SafeSearch filter so that it returns over 33 million page for [penis], over 4 million pages for [glans], but not a single page for [clitoris] (the very subject of Ms. Blue’s column.) This sort of hypocrisy is pernicious, corrosive to civil society, contributes to a climate of shame and doubt around sexuality, and unworthy of a news organization with the storied history of the San Francisco Chronicle.

More over, I am a human being. The couples that appear in my films are human beings. We are not here to provide your newspaper with the opportunity to titillate its readership at one moment, then be shunted aside as second class citizens in the next. We are not here to be demeaned by the craven insinuation that linking to our website and the depictions contained therein would somehow be beneath the editorial standards of The Chronicle, or inflict trauma on its readers.

I would respectfully ask that the Chronicle provide readers a link to our blog post which is the foundation for the Chronicle’s news item. Failing that, I would ask that Chronicle editors give a candid account of their guidelines for external links, and how the decision not to link to our website was reached. I’m certain such an accounting would be illuminating for all parties concerned.

The courtesy of your response is greatly appreciated.

Yours sincerely,
Tony Comstock

I didn’t end up sending this letter to Mr. Vega. Whether that was the right decision or the wrong decision, I don’t know. Part of fighting well is knowing when not to fight, and if anything I suspect that sometimes I am too eager to get into a scrap, and maybe sometimes I end up cutting my own nose to spite my face.

But if you don’t ever fight, they win. That’s par for the course too. I guess that’s what Violet’s working out when she says “I’m working it out in my head so as to avoid an international incident.” Working it out, when half a loaf is better than no loaf, and when you’re being asked to eat shit is never easy. Whatever decision Violet comes to, I wish her the best.

September will be here in another week or two, with its strange mandate to “get back to work”. I might heed its stricture, then again, I might not. Meantime:

Jennifer Lyon Bell’s Matinee is a very excellent little film, and one which quite effectively destroys the notion that explicit sex has to be contextualized in a negative way to reside comfortably in a cinematic and satisfying narrative arc. Naturally Jennifer’s reward for creating a ground-breaking depiction of sex in a positive context is to have her film banned from the Melbourne Underground Film Festival by the OFLC. (I guess this is some sort of  rite of passage.) Whether or not Australia’s “artists and intellectuals” will come out in support of Jennifer, MUFF, and Matinee they way they came out for Bill Henson or Ken Park, who can say? I’m not holding my breath. Experience teaches that both the OFLC and Australia’s intelligencia hold dark treatments of sexuality in higher esteem than (mere?) love, consent, and affection.

Last week Peggy sent a note to our warehouse asking for an inventory count and we were slightly startled to find out that Marie and Jack, Xana and Dax, and Damon and Hunter were all under 200 units. Demand is still strong for these titles, so fresh pressings were ordered immediately, and we won’t have any stock outages. But I am wondering; these have to be the eighth or ninth or tenth pressings of each of these titles, putting them well past 10,000 units each. That has to be some sort of record for self-produced and distributed erotic films. I’ll go over our replication records for exact numbers. Maybe we’ll have some sort of celebration!

My debut as “Guest Lecturer Tony Comstock” at the New York University Film School is less than a month a way. In all honestly, as pleased as I am with the writing I’ve been doing at TheIntentToArouse.com, it’s made me aware of two things that aren’t so good for my out look.

First, simply summarizing all history and the various forces – intentional and unintentional – still arrayed against trying to make a serious cinematic treatment of sexual pleasure, the sort of forces Jennifer is coming up again right now, makes me wonder how it is I ever thought my films could ever make a difference. The von Triers and Larry Clarks of the world understand the rules about sex and cinema and play by them perfectly, and their films play at Cannes and Sundance (never mind the theaters are half empty by the time the house lights come back up.) People who try to buck the system (like me and Jennifer) get run over, or have people like Allison Croggon tell us about dead-eye Russian girls getting raped by dogs, as if that has anything to do with the films I make. The next person who says “artistic merit” will get a punch in the eye; even if I have to book a transpacific flight to do it.

The second is that by becoming “Guest Lecturer Tony Comstock” I feel like I’m am now employing the exact same tactics that I started making these films to try and tear down; getting my bone fides. Hell, maybe I’ll even one of those sham doctorates (or even a real doctorate from a real university!)  so I can put Dr. Tony Comstock Ph.D on our box covers, and we’ll change our URL to TheCenterForCinemaAndSexuality.org

Whether or not that will make a difference with the OFLC, or help spare us when the shit hits the fan (again) at Amazon, I don’t know. But it can’t hurt, right? Except down in my guts. I’ve always preferred to think of myself as an entertainer first and artist second, primarily because entertainers can’t get away with resumes, credentials and clever artist’s statements. Entertainers have to make people laugh or cry, and would be horrified to find a theater half -empty at the end of one of their films.

CameraPlayForCouples.com has laid fallow for the past couple of months, ironic because after 5 or so weeks of living back aboard our sloop, my Bitchen Boat Bod has returned, tanned and lean(er) than the plumper, paler body I inhabit for the rest of the year. I am contemplating changes that might allow the Bitchen Boat Bod to be my default state rather than the other way around.

I have no idea how this listing for Ashley and Kisha found its into the New York Magazine website. Usually I can suss it out, but this time I can’t. None of our other films are listed, which tends to rule out machine database propagation.

Our garden, pictured above, is quite lovely. Some of our tomatoes are fancy-pants “heirloom” varieties, some are common hybrids. All are delicious ripe from the vine. One thing I really like about the culinary arts is it doesn’t matter what a chef says about his food - where he went to school or where he’s cooked.  At some point you cut into the dish, put it in your mouth and chew. And it either tastes good or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t, no artist’s statement can change your mind.

As a part of the ongoing DIY colloquy that I’ve been having here on the blog, today I’m posting an interview with Courtney Leigh Newman of New York based Dirty Dolls Lingerie.

I met Courtney through her husband Brendan Koerner, writer and host of the ever fascinating Micro Khan blog. Like me, Brendan is a SoCal transplant to NYC, and while chatting on the phone one day I found out his wife Courtney was a lingerie designer and with her partner Erica had started their own company.

Entrepreneurship and sexuality? Tell me more! And before long Courtney and I were gabbing on the phone about the thrills and spills of staking your family’s livelihood on your creative vision.

Anyway, that’s the preamble. Save a couple of prompts, I’ll shut up and let Courtney tell the rest of her story:

TC: Why Dirty Dolls Lingerie was started?

CL: The answer to that question is easy. First off, sheer desperation compelled me to escape my job. I’d reached a point in my career in which I realized that it didn’t matter who I worked for—the fact was, I’d never be happy creating mass-market lingerie in a cubicle. If I continued down the path I was on, what would life be like? I knew that I’d probably be deeply unhappy, and would always wonder whether or not I could have done things my way. So I had to try.

TC: I think a lot of people can identify with that cubicle-fuel quite desperation to escape. What was missing from your work?

CL: I’ve have always had a deep passion for all things vintage, and for all things lingerie. The idea of creating a line which married these two loves truly stirred something inside of me.

TC: How did this go from a cubicle-bound day dream to a reality?

CL: I met my partner Erica at one of my first jobs. She and I became fast friends; I was inspired by her active spirit. I remember taking a sick day from my job to “find myself,” and I came up with this idea that I should open a lingerie/boudoir lifestyle boutique in Harlem. When I ran it by Erica, she was completely onboard from the get-go. Of course, the concept and the idea changed quite a bit during our frequent brainstorming sessions. We realized pretty quickly that there was no way we would be able to get enough cash together to open a storefront in NYC.

TC: I’m always interested in how people get around financial obstacles. What did you do?

CL: We decided to base our business on the home-party/shopping-night model, along with building a spectacular retail webstore. The more we worked out the details on this plan, the more excited I became—I sensed early on that things were really going to happen for us. Still, it took three years of after-hours meetings to finally figure out a way to make the plunge. It was really scary to leave a well-paying job and invest every cent I had ever saved into this dream. But, we’d reached the point where there was no turning back. Dirty Dolls Lingerie would definitely not exist without the positive partnership I’ve managed to create with Erica. Both of us have said time and again that we would never have had the guts to do it alone.

TC: So how does it compare to being an on-staff designer?

CL: When I worked for other people, my tasks were relatively easy by comparison. I had to design, execute and help sell a collection each season. With Dirty Dolls, each step along the way seemed like this monumental challenge. We saved every penny we could in order to buy an insane amount of high-end fabric—just so we could complete our line as we’d envisioned. I remember feeling that as soon as we had this fabric, the rest of the process would be smooth sailing. A few months later, I felt the same way once we’d finally secured a small-business loan to pay for our product. Every time we cleared an obstacle, in fact, I was sure we’d never encounter another—but sure enough we always did.. But I just believed so strongly in the Dirty Dolls dream, I kept on pushing forward..

TC: After many years of this, I’ve come to the saying that, “Every success is merely the chance to work harder and take bigger risks…

CL: We’ve had a lot of lucky breaks along the way. Our very first photoshoot is an excellent case in point. We managed to convince an unbelievably talented and professional photographer, Eric Tu to shoot our gorgeous Dirty Dolls models. We somehow managed to rent The Slipper Room for an afternoon, and we survived a few last-minute changes to our models lineup. We were also fortunate to have some friends show up to help with lighting, hair and makeup. Once our shoot was done, fate brought us in touch with a Detroit-based web designer who goes by the name of “Z”< http://www.i-am-z.com/>–the visual genius behind our site. As so many pieces magically fell into place, I got to feeling as if nothing could stop The Dolls.

TC: What about bad luck?

CL: Well, there was no plan for launching our business during the biggest economic nosedive since the Great Depression. And The Dolls have occasionally been bruised by the rough times. As you might imagine, that’s resulted in some moments of sheer terror and stress. The bottom line is that I’m staking my family’s future on the idea that ladies with hard-to-find bra sizes want lingerie inspired by vintage burlesque—sounds so crazy when I type it out! I have an eighteen-month-old son, a mortgage, a start-up business, and lots of debt. Thankfully, I also have a very supportive yet overworked husband who understands how much I want this to work.

TC: I hear you there. When we made our first film everyone said “This is great! But there’s no market for it. It’s distribution proof.” We had just bought a house, and had our first child, and somehow I thought the right thing to do what make more “distribution proof” movies. But every step along the way, my wife said, “Do what you need to do. If it doesn’t work out, I can always get a real job.” Still, sometimes I feel like I must have lost my mind.

CL: I’m still fighting for the Dolls’ cause on a daily basis. I just can’t give up, because I know deep down that we’ll survive the recession—and grow to prosper! Besides, how could I turn my back on this? I’d so miss the buzz of getting those “thank you for creating this bra” reactions from our satisfied customers. Those are hard to come by amidst the cubicles of Fashion Avenue.

Be sure to head over to Dirty Dolls Lingerie and check out Courtney and Erica’s work. And if you like what you see, buy something!

For the next post, I’ll be giving a shout out to one of the great entrepreneur’s of the sex positive movement, Good Vibrations founder Joani Blank.

Joani was one of the first people to recognize  that Marie and Jack: A Hardcore Love Story was something special, and a person who gave me the encouragement to continue when nearly everyone else said it was “distribution proof”. 

Joani’s been living the courage of her convictions, ethically and economically for several decades, and she’s got a new blog up where she is laying it all out; what it actually takes to live your life on your own terms, and what kind of an impact just one person can have if she is willing to do it.

In three days Bill and Desiree: Love is Timeless is going to have it’s North American Premiere when it plays in the Sex Positive Documentary Film Series at the Hull House Museum on University of Illinois at Chicago Campus. Clarisse Thorn has done a remarkable job of curating and organizing this year long film series, and Peggy and I are delighted that Bill and Desiree is included among so many other outstanding films.

We’re also delighted because this North American Premiere of Bill and Desiree almost didn’t happen, and the reasons why this screening almost didn’t happen are more or less the same reasons why yesterday, when CNN re-printed Violet Blue’s Oprah Magazine from 2007, they linked to Pure Life Ministries (a porn addiction sleep-away camp for adults), but did not link to Maria Beatty or Comstock Films, which are also mentioned in the piece.

I first became aware of the Sex Positive Documentary Film Series when my good friend Ell pointed me to a comment she left on Clarisse Thorn’s blog:

Great list but I’m surprised to see no films from Comstock Films included – I know of no other documentaries that would more closely match your desire to screen films that present a positive, informative spin on human sexuality and love.

Good luck with your program!

Clarisse responds:

@ Ell: I’ve been all over the Comstock Films website and watched one of their movies. I wouldn’t exactly characterize their usual stuff as “documentary”. Which isn’t to say I don’t support what they’re doing — just that I don’t think it’s right for this series. I am seriously considering shifting things around a bit and screening the feminist porn documentary “Hot and Bothered“, though.

– that’s like a knife in my gut. I’ve been making talking-heads based documentary films for 15 years. If you removed the “below the waist” sexually explicit footage from one of my films, i.e. created a “R-rated” version, my films would shrink by perhaps 15%-20%  and still leave a coherent, if someone bloodless narrative. (I know this because I did this to try and satisfy the OFLC’s demands around the 2006 queerDOC Sydney Gay & Lesbian International Documentary Film Festival.)

If a self-described sex-positive BDSM activist putting on a sex-positive film series can’t take my work seriously, can’t respond without maybe I have been fooling myself all these years.

Ell responds, including the dictionary definition of “documentary”:

Hey it’s your program Clarisse but I do know several well respected film festival directors have included the Comstock Films in their documentary programming and one of the films took a “Best Documentary” prize at a festival.

“of a movie, a television or radio program, or photography) using pictures or interviews with people involved in real events to provide a factual record or report”

Cheers

Ell

Clarisse responds:

@ Ell: Wow, that’s fascinating. I can’t decide how I feel about it, actually. On the one hand, it’s really cool that Comstock Films productions are taking prizes at festivals. On the other hand, I find it sort of depressing that they have to be labeled “documentary” in order to succeed. See what I’m saying? I mean, I’ve always called Comstock Films features “porn”, although now that I check their website again I see that they call themselves “documentary fims”.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that I would rather people tried to legitimize porn, than that they made interesting porn but called it documentary.

At any rate, while I can get away with a lot in programming this series, it is still going up at an academic institution and I am already screening some pretty radical material. Now that I’m thinking about it more, I do believe you’re right that it would be cool to screen a Comstock Films feature as a documentary, but man … that would be really pushing the envelope. I’ll think about it some more and talk to the Hull-House Museum people. Thanks for the suggestion!

At this point I feel like I have to weigh in. As is my wont, when I go, I go heavy:

Clarisse,

Please don’t depressed. As a sex-positive, pro-sex, pro-queer, pro-kink person, I’m sure you understand that people have the fundamental right to identify as they think best suites them and to name that identity as they see fit. I am a filmmaker. I make documentary films; erotic documentaries in the case of the work in question. The people appearing in my films are (documentary) subjects. If it pleases you to call our films something else, that’s certainly your right, but please don’t suggest that you are “depressed” because we’re not doing what you wish we would do to serve your agenda.

I am glad to hear you are reconsidering the inclusion of one or another of our films in your series. After all, what could be more appropriate for a sex-positive film documentary film series that films that document the importance and pleasure of the sexual bond between loving and committed couples; depicted with all the frankness, candor and beauty that is a part of any healthy sexual relationship!

None the less, I understand your concern about the venue (in fact, those concern speak volumes to the difficulty that filmmakers face in trying to create and then have seen by the public, films that treat sexuality as a legitimate subject matter for artistic inquiry.) My experience is that academic institutions are often more able to understand and evaluate the bone fides of artwork than the work itself. In the hopes of helping you make your case for the inclusion of one or more of our films in your series I have appended below a list of the various film festivals, awards, and other recognition that our films have received in both the cinematic, educational and therapeutic community.

Thanks again for your consideration!

Yours,
TC

BILL AND DESIREE: LOVE IS TIMELESS (December 2008)

Official Selection, 2009 Amsterdam Erotic Film Festival
Held in the Kinsey Institute Library at the University of Indiana
Held in the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline Library

ASHLEY AND KISHA: FINDING THE RIGHT FIT (July 2007)
Winner, Best Foreign Film, 2007 Melbourne Underground Film Festival
Winner, Best Foreign Director, 2007 Melbourne Underground Film Festival
Official Selection, 2007 Long Beach LGBT Film Festival, Long Beach, CA
Official Selection, 2007 Out on Film LGBT Film Festival, Atlanta, GA
Official Selection, 2008 Tel Aviv LGBT Film Festival
Official Selection, 2009 Lesbian Cinema Arts Program, NYC LGBT Center
Held in the Kinsey Institute Library at the University of Indiana
Used in Planned Parenthood Outreach Programs
Held in the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline Library

MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER (January 2007)
Official Selection, 2009 Amsterdam Erotic Film Festival
Held in the Kinsey Institute Library at the University of Indiana
Used in Planned Parenthood Outreach Programs
Held in the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline Library

DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER (May 2006)
Winner Best Documentary, 2006 Melbourne Underground Film Festival, Melbourne Australia
Official Selection, 2006 QueerDOC Film Festival, Sydney Australia
Official Selection, 2006 CineKink Film Festival, New York
Official Selection, 2007 Outtakes Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, New Zealand
Official Selection, 2008 Tel Aviv LGBT Film Festival
Official Selection, 2009 Amsterdam Erotic Film Festival
Held in the Kinsey Institute Library at the University of Indiana
Used in Planned Parenthood Outreach Programs
Held in the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline Library
Used in Gay Mens Health Crisis Outreach Programs.

XANA AND DAX: WHEN OPPOSITES ATTRACT (May 2005)
Held in the Kinsey Institute Library at the University of Indiana
Used in Planned Parenthood Outreach Programs
Held in the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline Library

MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY (October 2002)
Best of the Fest, 2002 Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality Sexual Health and Pleasure Film Festival, Los Angeles
Best Overall, 2002 SinCine Film Festival, New York
Best Documentary, 2002 SinCine Film Festival, New York
Held in the Kinsey Institute Library at the University of Indiana
Used in Planned Parenthood Outreach Programs
Held in the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline Library

Clarisse is gracious:

Yikes, Tony! It sounds like I offended you, and I’m really sorry. I always thought that you considered yourself a pornographer. When I first started looking into Comstock Films about a year ago, I read a bunch of interviews and blog posts that — I thought — said that you were intending to make porn movies that would work against the dominant porn paradigm.

With that in mind, I assumed that you “had to” rename your films “documentaries” in order to gain acceptability. Does that make sense? That’s why I was bothered — I thought that you considered yourself a pornographer but that you were forced to use the “documentary filmmaker” label in order to legitimize your work.

Of course, if you consider yourself a documentary filmmaker and have thought of yourself that way all along, then this is my mistake! I certainly wouldn’t want to label you or your films in a way that you find objectionable. Nor was I trying to co-opt your films into my “agenda”. Honestly, I am just happy knowing that Comstock FIlms is out there — whether you call your movies documentaries or porn.

OK, that’s a lot of words just to get across one point, which was: I’m sorry it seemed like I was renaming your films to suit my agenda. That wasn’t my intent.

I will consult with Hull-House and I’ll get in touch if we can include Comstock Films material.

Do you see the trap here? Clarisse would “rather people tried to legitimize porn, than that they made interesting porn but called it documentary,” but only when my films are framed as documentary (which has do be done by argument and presentation of bona fides rather than simply by watching a film where more than half the footage is two people, fully clothed, sitting and talking about their relationship) will they be considered for inclusion in her Sex Positive Documentary Film Series. And even then Clarisse is concerned about whether or not the Hull House will allow sexually explicit footage.

Long time readers know that I’ve stopped thinking of pornography as a genre and have begun to look at it as a business model that is ultimately dependent in illegitimacy. I’ve been exploring this in great depth over at The Intent to Arouse: A Concise History of Sex, Shame, and the Moving Image.

But even if you don’t agree with my (admittedly radical) take on pornography, I don’t know how Clarisse or anyone else who seeks the “legitimization of pornography” ever hopes to accomplish this legitimization when they routinely engage in the sort of casual dismissal and marginalization of sexually explicit films that is simply taken for granted at places like CNN or the San Francisco Chronicle, or PBS.

But that’s not what I said to Clarisse. After all, I wanted her to play one of my films!

No, no offense taken!

My feelings about porn/pornography started off ambivalent and have moved to antipathy; partly because of what I’ve learn about the “porn industry” over the years, partly because it keeps the people who would most like to see our films from seeing them. With your indulgence, links to a few blog posts:

http://www.comstockfilms.com/blog/tony/2005/01/27/the-first-post/

http://www.comstockfilms.com/blog/tony/2005/06/30/whats-in-a-name/

http://www.comstockfilms.com/blog/tony/2008/11/23/forced-into-googles-sex-ghetto-kicking-and-screaming/

At that point the conversation between me and Clarisse move to the telephone, and I was genuinely surprised at how anxious Clarisse was at making the case for the inclusion of a film (from a multi-award winning director) that included sexually explicit footage. My advice was simply to present it an appropriate curation choice given the mission of the film series, and to express shock and umbrage if anyone dared to express concern; in short, to use the same tactics I had used on her.

Deciding when, where, and how to make these fights is never easy. Last December, following the SF Chronicle’s not linking to my post on Violet Blue’s Top 5 Under-reported Sex Stories of 2008, I had an excoriation loaded up and ready to blast at The Chronicle’s publisher. I ended up holding my fire, but in the process of coming to that decision, I fear I have irreparably damaged my relationship with Violet, someone I’ve been proud to call friend and ally for more than six years.

Yesterday, even as we enjoyed a notable surge in traffic (and modest rise in sales) I was mowing the lawn, and composing in my head an “open letter” to CNN and their parent company Time/Warner, but this morning the skies are grey and I don’t feel the same lust for battle I felt yesterday when the skies were blue.

Whatever my films might get called, fighting for their legitimacy is hard work; fighting for their legitimacy requires taking risks, both emotional and financial; it requires being willing to lose more often then you win, and hoping that when you do win, you win big enough to cover your losses. It takes a strange mix of calculated reckless and gentle belligerence, or at least that’s what it takes for me to do it. 

I am bummed that my relationship with Violet has become awkward. I am mixed about the CNN thing (a financial plus, an emotional minus.) I am thrilled about Bill and Desiree playing in the Sex Positive Documentary Film Series. Thrill partly because it represents a minor victory in the fight for legitimacy, but mostly because I know it’s a good little film and that something special happens when people get the chance to see my films in the communal setting of a theater, when they get a chance to laugh out loud together, and sigh together, when their own reactions are amplified and affirmed by the people siting all around them. There’s precious little opportunity to get to do that in sex-positive context, and I’m proud I’ll be helping that happen in Chicago this Tuesday!

Bill and Desire: Love is Timeless, North American Premiere
with Hot and Bothered, Feminist Pornography
Tuesday July 29, 7PM

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
800 South Halsted
312.413.5353
FREE
All are welcome!

I am at T minus 60 days until my debut at the New York University Film School as “Tony Comstock, Independent Scholar.” Today’s post at TheIntentToArouse.com puts me just past the half-way mark in the first section: SEX, CENSORSHIP AND TECHNOLOGY: AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW. I’m up to about 15,000 words so far, which I guess means I’ve got about another 45,000 to go. Long time readers know there’s never been a shortage of words here at The Art and Business of Making Erotic Films, so I should make it. The real question is how to condense all that back down into a 60-90 minute presentation!

Anyway, I think today’s post is a good one. Here’s the pull-quote:

When I say Betamax vs. VHS is the wrong question, what I mean is that it doesn’t matter. Whichever format might have prevailed and for whatever reason, the future of sexuality and cinema took a decisive turn when it moved from a high risk, high expectation, high volume, high reward production and distribution format (theatrical) to a low risk, low expectation, low volume, low reward distribution format (home video).

Home video would utterly change the creative and business calculus both; replacing the need and potential reward of producing a film that could be enjoyed as a collective experience in communion with fellow audience members, with the much more fragmented task of producing sexually explicit erotic material that would be enjoyed in private. 

For the rest please head over to TheIntenttoArouse.com and read Why Betamax vs VHS was the wrong question, and is still giving us wrong answers.

Over at Amazon, Daniel Rapheal gave a really really nice review to Ashley and Kisha:

A Tender and Candid Romance

This is a DVD that I wish everyone would see. Even the most repressed and biased people would derive some benefit from seeing this. The sweetness between these two young women is right there to see–and the fact that this is presented with their sexual feelings for each other, makes this a very constructive and hopeful presentation. The story of how they met and fell for each other is so similar to so many other stories–regardless of sexual orientation–that it is easy to relate to. It helps that, while they look nice, neither of these women is a stereotype of beauty. The greater part of their appeal is the emotional intelligence and genuineness of their mutual affection and attraction. It’s a good sign that a real-life story like this is widely available, because that in itself means there is reason to expect that ignorance and intolerance will be accordingly diminished.

There’s a special sort of poignancy reading this review today, because today I also read Ms. Naughty’s reaction to her first viewing of 9 Songs. There’’s not much I can add to Ms. Naughty’s reaction. 9 Songs got an X-rating from the OFLC (no public screenings, no festival screenings, highly restricted DVD sales) and through an expensive appeals process was able to get that reduced to an R-rating (the Australian equivelent of the MPAA’s NC-17 rating.) Apparently one of the reasons the OFLC saw fit to reduce the rating for 9 Songs from X to R was that they thought the people who were likely to see 9 Songs would be intellectually equipped to understand Winterbottom’s use of sexually explicit imagery.

A few years later Ashley and Kisha was banned from the Melbourne Underground Film Festival on the grounds that if it were to be classified by the OFLC it would likely receive an X-rating. How did the OFLC make this determination? By looking at the X-ratings it gave to my previous films Marie and Jack, Xana and Dax, and most notoriously Damon and Hunter, which was chased out of the queerDOC, the Sydney International Gay and Lesbian Documentary Film Festival with threats of fines and imprisonment made at the festival director.

Had Ashley and Kisha been submitted by a different festival (the Australian Center for the Moving Image) or by a different director (Michael Winterbottom or John Cameron Mitchell, or perhaps even Shine Louise Houston)  or if I had a better class of friends in Australia (Margaret Pomerance or Alison Croggon for example) the result might have been different.

Of perhaps if I had used the usual ploys – “It’s educational don’t you know, and besides, it’s not porn, it wasn’t made with the intent do arouse. Nobody got an erection…” – well anyway too late for that. I was silly enough to think my films would speak for themselves. Now I know better.

I am exploring the whys and where-fors of all of this at TheIntentToArouse.Com and will be giving a lecture of the same name at NYU in about two month’s time.

None the less, I am extremely grateful to Daniel Rapheal and the hundreds of other people who have told me how much they have enjoyed our film, and to the thousand and thousands of people who have bought our DVDs. 

Reviews like Daniel’s let me know that while I might have been stupid to go about marketing my films the way I did, I wasn’t crazy in making them the way I did. There’s more than a little comfort in knowing that.

The title of this blog is “The Art & Business of Making Erotic Films.” Today’s post over at TheIntentToArouse.com just might be the best bit of writing I’ve ever done on the business side of why sex on film — from porn, to art films, to sex-ed —  looks the way that sex on film looks:

“The second couple with whom we ever did a study enjoyed (much to our surprise) some relatively exotic sex acts as  a part their bedroom play, including vigorous fisting, female ejaculation (squirting) and anal sex. This couple was long married and none of what they did with each other was illegal in the state of New York. The film we made was and remains private, and has only ever been shown to invitation-only audiences in New York and California.”

For context, click on over to TheIntentToArouse.com and read Miller vs. California: The “Miller Test” and how the magic camera transforms legal actions into criminal thoughts.

We’re into Jacobellis v Ohio today at TheIntentToArouse.com:

For me the great irony of the colloquial use of “I know it when I see it” is that it rests on the idea that obscenity/pornography can be readily identified by strictly (as Walter Murch might put it) “in the frame information.” Yet the various legal and quasi-legal definitions rest entirely on “out of the frame information,” i.e. the ability to divine the intent of the artist, and/or the effect on the viewer. From a practical stand point, what it means for an artist who explores sexuality is that one’s work will be found to be obscene/pornographic at the convenience of the person laying the charge, and that whether or not the charge sticks is pure realpolitik.

It means that the same night that Destricted plays at the government funded Australian Center for the Moving Image (complete with a panel discussion on the difference between art and pornography), the same government will dispatch  armed police to prevent the world premiere of Ashley and Kisha: Finding the Right Fit at the (privately funded) Melbourne Underground Film Festival. 

It means that when a District Attorney in Utah decides that “penetration is illegal” the only thing he has to do to make his interpretation of obscenity stick is to drop off his business card in a lingerie shop owner’s mailbox every few weeks (I met this women at an apparel trade show in 2007 where she decided she couldn’t risk offering our films to the women who frequent her shop.)

It means that when I met a Harvard-educated professor teaching at a university in Oklahoma at the 50th annual meeting of of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality  and he picked up on of my DVDs and asked me if my films showed penetration, and I answered “Of course,” he set the DVD back down and told me “Oh, then I can’t use them. Penetration is illegal in Oklahoma.”

It means that after 15 years of making my films first and foremost for the entertainment of my audience, I feel compelled to pause, and turn my attention towards making explanations for the benefit of critics, theorists, and lawyers.

To read the rest, click on over to Jacobellis vs Ohio: “I know it when I see it.” at TheIntentToArouse.com

A not to be dismissed lightly New York media outlet is doing a Top 10 Best Selling NYC Produced Porn Films story and wants to know what our best selling title is (and whether we’d give them a copy for a reader give away.) 

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

I’ll be talking to the writer later today. I should be thankful for the chance (once again) to reevaluate my values, convictions, and branding strategy. Right?