Courtesy Of Comstock Films

Comstock Films is a business venture of husband and wife filmmakers Tony and Peggy Comstock. They make sexually explicit films that document real couples. In spring 2006, Comstock released its first film to feature a gay male couple, Damon and Hunter: Doing It Together; it has become Comstock Films' fastest-selling title to date.

Damon DeMarco and Hunter James are, among other things, porn stars. The filmmakers interview them, separately and together, in a way that portrays them as real people. And it shows them having sex, not as porn stars would, but as real-life lovers would.

As Hunter James told JustUsBoys, "Tony was more worried about our story, and our backgrounds and us a couple than he was about the sex itself. The movie Tony made is a true story about actual people, about our real lives and experiences, rather than being fictional characters involved in some sort of sex scene."

The film has garnered both praise and condemnation. It was widely reviewed in magazines and newspapers, and in July, the Comstocks submitted it to the Melbourne (Australia) Underground Film Festival, where it played to sold-out audiences and won the "Best Documentary" award.

That win earned the filmmakers an invitation to show the film at QueerDOC in September. QueerDOC is an all-GLBT documentary film festival held each year in Sydney. But the Australian Office of Film and Literature lowered the boom and declared the film unsuitable for public screening. Two scheduled showings were canceled after the Comstocks refused to edit the film to suit the censors, and festival producers were left holding the bag of 50,000 festival programs and hundreds of posters and flyers.

Following the cancellation, Tony Comstock wrote "An Open Letter to the OFLC" which was reprinted on anti-censorship Web sites and in several magazines. The text of the letter can be read HERE.

Tony wrote to me in an e-mail that some retailers in Australia offer the film, in defiance of the ban, but for now it is illegal to sell or show Damon and Hunter: Doing Together in that country.

But the news is not all grim. Damon and Hunter had its official U.S. premiere in October, as an entry at the New York CineKink Film Festival.

Tony told me, "The NY screening had nearly a sold-out house, and the audience (mostly straight and kinky) seemed to really like our very vanilla, very gay film. A number of straight guys came up after the show to 'confess' they weren't sure what to think of seeing two men having sex, but by the time it got to that, they were so comfortable that it just seemed natural and normal.

"It was also the first chance I've had to seen the film with an audience, and it was a lot of fun hearing the audience respond -laughing, sighing, applauding - just the way I hoped!
"My one regret is that we didn't do as good a job as we might have getting the word out to gay New York. I saw a few gay couples, but nothing like the turnout in Melbourne."

Damon and Hunter, unfortunately, were not able to attend the screening. Hunter told me, "It premiered in New York shortly after our breakup and neither of us were really in the mood to go see a movie documenting our relationship at the time."

Despite the breakup, Hunter says, "We're still best friends and we still live together, just in separate bedrooms now. Neither of us are all that active in the industry anymore, at least not on the talent side of it." Although Damon and Hunter made numerous mainstream gay porn films, they only worked together onscreen in two other titles, a two-man scene in Unzipped Video's Camp Freshman and the pool orgy in Chi Chi LaRue's Wrong Side of the Tracks, part 2.
But their relationship will live on in Damon and Hunter: Doing It Together. The film will be shown in January, in San Francisco, at the Yerba Buena Arts Center. After that, it will tour throughout the USA for the rest of 2007.

The Comstocks were recently invited to submit Damon and Hunter to the Istanbul International Film Festival, to take place in February, 2007 in Istanbul, Turkey. After seeing the film, festival organizers asked to see the rest of the Comstocks' films, and now they're thinking about a pan-sexual night of "Comstockery," featuring Damon and Hunter, Matt and Khym (a straight title), and Ashley and Kisha (lesbian).

Viewers who can't attend a screening can, of course, purchase the DVD or view 3- to 5-minute podcasts of Damon and Hunter, available online at the Comstock films Web site, www.comstockfilms.com. I asked Tony Comstock why a straight couple known for filming sexually explicit films of other straight couples would venture into same-sex territory. Tony replied, "I like the way our approach contextualizes sex, and I thought it would be fun/interesting/sexy to film two men, so I began looking for the right two men to make a film. When I met Damon and Hunter, I knew they had an interesting and heartwarming story to tell, and it would be a real treat to see them make love. They were everything I expected and more. By the time we wrapped, I felt I had something very special."

More gay - and lesbian - titles will follow, as a result of that experience, and couples wanting to see themselves on film are now approaching Tony directly. In addition to Ashley and Kisha, two other lesbian couples' films are "in the can" and the Comstocks are in pre-production on two more gay films: one featuring a couple in their late 40s, together for more than 20 years, and another featuring a leather couple in their mid thirties. Neither couple has done any published erotic work.

Tony says. "I want to work with interesting couples who are genuinely excited by the films we make and are ready to share themselves in the way these films demand. As Guide magazine noted about Damon and Hunter, 'In their porn work for Falcon, Channel 1, and other studios, neither has shown the humanity or screen presence both exhibit in this 46-minute film.' It's that humanity and charisma I'm looking for in a couple. Humanity is what makes this work interesting to me and to our audience!"
As for the censorship issues, Tony comments, "This work we do is not without risks. Every now and then I imagine how I'll feel when I come home from picking up my daughter at school to find U.S. Marshals parked in my driveway.

"Damon and Hunter has been recognized for its value as a life-affirming and educational document. It is held in the Kinsey Library at the world-renowned Kinsey Institute. It's being used by the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York, and by the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline. It was passed around at the 16th Annual HIV/AIDS Conference in Toronto. Why? Because it is singular in its compassionate, humane, frank, and erotic depiction of gay love and gay sex. And apparently that's something that the government of Australia needs to keep people, especially the gay men, from seeing."

Tony Comstock has his own blog at his Web site, www.comstockfilms.com, and he is a regular contributor to the forums here at JustUsBoys.