DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER just got its first review on the consumer review site AdultDVDTalk.com, and what makes this review especially interesting is it’s from straight man.
Last year, when we had our one day Katrina fund-raiser there was a fellow who wanted to make a donation, but had already either bought or pre-ordered everything we offer, everything except DAMON AND HUNTER. He’s a customer I know by name, and I saw his name come through with a pre-order for D&H about 12 hours into fund-raiser, followed shortly by an e-mail that said, “What the heck, it’s for a good cause!” The below is from the end of his review:
Gay or straight, Tony has created a film that has something to offer everyone, even if the sex isn’t going to be up your alley, he has still painted an enlightening look into the lives of Damon and Hunter that can entertain, and possibly educate, viewers of all sexual orientations. And he does it all with class and a beautiful visual styling that should please all viewers. After the film is over, don’t forget to check out the extras, The Making of a Love Scene feature is worth the purchase itself if you are interested in the techniques that go into making a film. Even if you keep it to yourself that you viewed it, I’d give this film a chance, I’m glad that I did.”
A lot of people seem to think that it’s the erotic charge, the “intent to arouse”, that separates art from porn. When SHORTBUS was still in pre-production, John Cameron Mitchell was quoted as saying:
“The purpose of pornography is to arouse, whereas here the priority is the emotional life of the characters. Sex has been cheapened by porn. Why can’t we not focus on sex, as porn does, but make sex part of the film?”
Since SHORTBUS’s release he’s offered that the sex in SHORTBUS was intentionally de-erotisized to make cinematic space for other emotions.
When explaining granting DESTRICTED’s and R-rating, dispite its graphic sexual content, Sir Quentin of the British Board of Film Classification said that Destricted was so explicit that it would normally attract an R18 rating but he judged that it was a work of art not intended to arouse:
“In purpose and effect, this work is plainly a serious consideration of sex and pornography as aspects of the human experience. We think that there are no grounds for depriving adults of the ability to decide themselves whether they want to see it.”
I admire John Cameron Mitchell tremendously, and I’m sure Sir Quentin is a perfectly nice fellow as well. But on this “intent to arouse” thing, I think they’re wrong, wrong, wrong. (I really think they’re wrong.)
In fact, the central concern of my films is to try to find a way to create sympathetic and engaging characters, use their relationship to create an engaging story-line, without undercutting the eroticism of the sex, which is to say, the power of the sexual image to make cocks hard and pussies wet. In fact, if anything I’m trying to find a way to use character and relationship to make the sex more erotic and arousing in my films.
With that as the central artistic concern of DAMON AND HUNTER , Flash’s very kind review is especially gratifying. It’s exciting to think that I’ve made a film where the characters and their relationship are sufficiently compelling to not only get a straight man from the beginning to the end of a gay sex film, but to earn a five-star review in the process!