I caught the Friday night 8pm showing of HUMP! 2, Seattle’s annual amateur porn festival and competition, and I may never be the same. The Stranger’s blog has the results and great comments on the videos; I wish I could have stayed for the afterparty. I would have totally humped Bo Logan’s third leg. (Did anyone get his phone number from the film’s credits?) I waited in line, and watched all the selections in a hot little packed art house theater filled with an excited, rambunctious crowd, and had the following thoughts, in order:
* omigawd that is hot.
* ug. this is lame.
* it is sad some people think copying mainstream porn is what constitutes porn. I am sad.
* I hope one of these films is about girls getting off. Soon.
* ohJEEZUSFUCK I never want to have sex again.
* holy shit, this film is incredible and cute and hot and hilarious and my face hurts from laughing.
* yay bend over boyfriend!
* oh, I *knew* Jack was a leatherfag.
* that gangbang is the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen. now I weep in the popcorn.
* wtf — this is a pro porn film. how lame. I shall fix my lipstick now.
* eeep, that thing is HUGE. the dick that ate Seattle.
* whoah, they are really doing this in public. I am not feeling very sex positive anymore.
More after the jump.
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They got a *lot* of high quality, and extremely explicit 8-minute videos submitted for this event. Wow. But it’s no surprise, as HUMP! does something unique to garner more submissions — they destroy all the films on the last night. The idea is that everyone in the films gets to be a porn star for the weekend, but the films are never used or shown again. They were crazy-vigilant in the theater about no recording devices, no camera phones, no cameras allowed at all, no exceptions, with swift action promised for violation of this rule. Dan Savage (who is fucking *cute* in person) introduced the films, laid down the law on privacy and demanded the audience be respectful, reminding viewers that actors were likely in the theater and not to be rudely vocal about seeing sex acts they may not like. Well done.
So my wrapup only has a few links to sites or films for you to watch, which in the cases of the insanely hot cute sexy funny smart films I saw, is saddening. If those films are the new wave of porn, Silicone Valley better look out. But some of the films made me want to butter my popcorn with lye — you should be glad you never have to watch scary Seattle-area swingers in Viking costumes with no pants and hardons saying “arrrr. I want pussy.” with a crib in the background and dogs walking around and then long drawn out shots of (Viking?) come dripping out of (Viking?) pussy. Argh. Ugh.
All in all, the descriptions of the films were spot-on. It was really interesting to see such an open call for porn, by the people, for the people, under the guarantee of anonymity, and see the results. The ideas and interpretations of porn were all over the place — beautiful and arty, way too arty like a Calvin Klein commercial, scary swinger Renfaire in the tract home come fetish porn, full-on scripted shorts, animated shorts, montages of stills set to music — some of these things were shockingly well done. Like the second place winner, which blew my mind: Getting a Leg Up In Porn is a laugh-out-loud hilarious black and white homage to 16mm doumentary/short instructional/industrial films, where the female protagonist is warned about the pitfalls of a career in porn in order to be successful. It’s crazy-funny watching her practice for facials with a squirt gun and mayonnaise packets… among many other super-smart satirical scenarios based on porn’s S&P’s. (This fine film was just made available on DVD for $10 — email/PayPal barlosss@yahoo.com, and see images here and here.)
One of the things I expected — or hoped for — was to see what porn looks like when people make it for themselves, or rather, not for mainstream porn’s commercial goals which is what I think handicaps almost all porn out of the starting gate. I think that with none of porn’s formula bullshit — six or seven sex scenes, six or seven positions, no attention to female pleasure, Barbie bodies, close-up shots, no kissing or smiling, no going through the motions… you know. I think without that shit porn could be hot. But in a signifigant amount of the films I saw, such as Attack of the Ninja Fluffers, they followed mainstream porn formula — clearly because they thought it was what they were supposed to be doing. And it was boring. Or as with the actual CraigsList selected gangbang in The Booker Hoss Show, just depressing.
And unfortunately, throughout the selections there was a lack of female pleasure. There were two films with squirting — but one was a non-ironic formula production from a mainstream porn company called Fast and Hard in the Wild West (*what* was this doing in there?), and the other was a very unsettling video of a couple having public sex all over Seattle, called Fucking Seattle. It wasn’t hot in either case; it was cold and removed from pleasure each time. It’s odd; apparently last year there were a number of lesbian selections and little gay, but this year no lesbian and a few gay picks. Though lesbian filmmakers shoulder the burden of representing female pleasure in these contexts enough, don’t you think? It’s time for straight boys to step up, I think. This year, they lacked.
The exception, of course, was the winner Come On Love, Bo Logan is Waiting. It was one of the best short films I’ve seen, period — and was all about getting to the girlgasm, with a lovely hilarious fake squirt as proof. Well shot, well acted, well scripted, great editing, and cuteness that could kill. In it, Bo Logan is the Dukes-of-Hazzard castoff in Seattle who just can’t understand why he can’t “get none” even though he has “the moves”, and while at the corner store buying Trojans, finds himself bumping into a pink-haired hottie (casually dropping an EPT box in her shopping basket). It’s love. Or something. He delivers a lot of really funny bad lines and she says, “Do you think I’m a hooker?” “Um, yeah.” So they go back to his place and “do it”. They keep their sunglasses on the whole time, and she keeps her cute stripey socks on, too. Bo Logan just won’t feel like a man until she comes and she demurs saying she ain’t never come before and don’t you have to be in love or something? Bo professes his love for her, and she says he’s full of shit. But then she decides trying to come might be fun — and then an unforgettable, incredibly well-timed visiul comedic segment begins, including comical ass slapping, overdone fake cunnilingus, chasing each other across the room, jumping on the bed — all resulting in the golden moment. It made me feel good about amateur porn and sex and hotness, which is just what I think porn should do. Even if this wasn’t an explicit film, it made me love porn just a little more.
Because I guess what disappointed me about many of the other selections is that the fun was missing — most especially in the mainstream Rodney Moore selection. Despite wondering how a pro film wound up in here, I’m glad it was included because then I could see in sharp contrast the difference between porn made for fun and porn made for work, under porn formula worldviews. Porn people make boring porn because they make it the way they think it should be made, not the way people want to see porn. In the Moore selection Fast and Hard in the Wild West, there was no irony, no sexual diversity, the humor was pizza delivery guy level, the sex was typical and overdone stuff people don’t do in real life (unless they work in porn), and ended with a stupid chorus of chicks going “I swallow!” And you know what? It was perfect. It was a cookie-cutter, totally typical porn film. And it didn’t win, nor did it get mentioned in any of the HUMP! comments. No one liked it, or missed it from the winner categories.
I hope that’s the sound of the meteor coming for the dinosaurs.
I liked the ones that were fun celebrations of sex (like Come On Love, Bo Logan is Waiting, Cute Sweet Hot Sexy, Gettin’ a Leg Up on Porn, Ignis Fatuus, Jacking Off). Two titles actually turned me on — Ignis Fatuus, a slo-mo watery wet spanking on a sexy altgirl’s ass, and Cute Sweet Hot Sexy, a fast-fading montage of stills depicting a blowjob on a fat cock, cunnilingus, and bend-over-boyfriend strap-on sex ending in a puddle. I’m really glad I went. I wish I could show you what I was talking about.
