Hump HUMP 2 Storms Seattle!
Northwest Film Forum was packed last night with porn fans and porn stars—and a good time was had by all. I’m too busy tearing tickets and policing the screenings (no cell phone cameras allowed) to write a full report. But the PI’s Vanessa Ho wrote up HUMP’s opening night in this morning’s paper.
It may seem strange that in a city where you can’t get a lap dance, can’t smoke in a bar and can’t buy high-octane beer downtown (as of Nov. 1), you can watch a whole bunch of amateur porn and not feel like a total pervert….This year, films include gay, straight, funny and group sex; copulation between a salt shaker and a napkin; beautiful, artsy sensuality; and raunchy, stop-motion sex between two dolls.
Some people say the popularity of the festival, which ends tonight, is a liberation of sexual taboos and a dig at what some people view as an increasingly dour City Hall.Others say Hump! is an ideal blend of Seattle’s love of film, do-it-yourself leanings and a Northwest sexiness borne of rainy winters and rugged summers.
“There’s the long, dark winters in Seattle that lend themselves to sex,” said Rachel Venning, co-founder of Seattle-based Babeland, a chain of sex-toy stores. “It’s the perfect event for Seattle. It’s no wonder it’s so successful.” …
“It’s a window in the collective erotic imagination of the city,” [Stranger editor Dan Savage] said. “Even if every film isn’t to your taste, it’s interesting to have that window into your fellow citizen’s inner life.”
My HUMP highlight so far: Getting to shake the hand of the man—or the hot gay boy, I should say—whose performance in “Lawnboy,” an audience favorite, inspired Bradley Steinbacher to write this HUMP capsule review:
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UPDATE: From the Comments…
Oh, and I’ll ask again here (‘cause, who reads the forums anymore?): why no dyke films in competition? Not complaining, since I assume there’s a reason… just wondering what the reason is. No films? Bad films?
A very interesting question, Violet DaGrinder. Last year HUMP had no gay films and tons of lesbian action. Who can forget the piss-and-play-piercing action in “Grinding Gears”? Or the expert sword play in “Pirate vs. Ninja”? There were lots of gay men at HUMP last year, but almost no gay action on the screen. Gay men complained about, we called them on their bullshit (don’t bitch about there not being any gay films, guys, if you’re not prepared to make one!), and we got a good selection of gay films for HUMP 2.
We were shocked—shocked and saddened—when we finished watching this year’s submissions and realized there was no lesbian action. What happened? We dunno. There was one “lesbish” submission: “The Passion of Idaho.” This film feature no actual lesbians, or lesbian action, just a few lesbian-identified potatoes rolling around. The jury felt that the lesbian potato film didn’t make the grade—and, really, lesbians have enough body-image issues without seeing themselves played by potatoes at HUMP.
UPDATE 2: Sex writer, educator, and blogger Violet Blue is in town for HUMP and she’s digging Seattle.
HUMP! is a great example of what I’m feeling right now about how Seattle is pushing ever forward with sex culture in America. Something as wildly popular as HUMP! takes porn out of the hands of small-minded southern California businesses and shows that “porn by the people, for the people” is viable, valid, thriving, healthy and fun. This film fest started small last year but exploded in its second round, with fourteen sold out shows starting tonight and hundreds of entries my friends at The Stranger told me are of incredibly high quality. [Actually, it’s “dozens,” not “hundreds”—but, yes, the quality is high!] Believe me—read the film reviews of the homemade hardcore films I’ll be seeing tonight (and know it’s a boiled-down sampling of the over 3 hours of under 8-minute films that were submitted for the fest). People did this!So Seattle—thank you.
Thank you, Violet Blue!
UPDATE 3: Q13 Fox News was here earlier today. If you missed HUMP but wanna see what the action was like and hear some reactions from HUMP goers, check out Q13 tonight at 10.
UPDATE 4: Holy shit. Hundreds of folks lining up on 12th Steet, people clamoring to get rush seats, guys outside stapling dollar bills to their chests, lots of foggy looking people with the munchies getting popcorn. Sorting and counting ballots after the screening. And doing it again and again and again—six screenings Friday, eight screenings Saturday. We are fucking fried. If I never see another porn again—particularly one featuring female ejaculation and/or come running out of someone’s vagina—it will be too soon.
But check with again tomorrow and I’ll probably be back to my old self. Right now, though, I’m ready to hand out some prizes and hit the sack.
Oh, one last observation: There were so many completely fucking hot people in the audiences—folks who, you know, really should have been up on the screen. I’m not saying that average folks shouldn’t be up on the screen too—I like the mix at HUMP. Young folks, old folks, buff folks, softer folks. Still, it was hard not to wish some of the folks walking in had made films. There were just so many guys—and a few gals—coming through the doors that I wanted to see naked.
And hopefully now that we’ve done this twice, and folks have seen that it’s fun and safe and we do our damndest to protect folks who participate (I even make a speech asking people to be nice—me!—telling the crowds no booing, no mean-spirited cracks), more of the people who come to HUMP will feel like they can participate next year and put themselves up on the screen. (I tell people no mean-spirited cracks because they could be sitting next to the folks whose images are up there on the screen.)
And, yes, I mean you in the second row.
Okay, HUMP 3! is one year from today. Get busy folks.
UPDATE 5: Okay, it’s all over. At the end of the last show we destroyed our only copies of this year’s HUMP entries—our tapes and our backups—in front of the final sell-out crowd. So if you missed “Lawnboy,” “Come On Love,” “Getting a Leg Up in Porn,” “Condoments,” “Jacking Off,” “Cute Sweet Hot Sexy,” “Fairies on a Ferry,” and all the rest of this year’s HUMP films, well, you missed them. These films will never be seen again—unless the folks who made them elect to show them to you.
Okay, we’re counting the last batch of ballots, and then we’re off to Havana to hand out the prizes…
Yeah, it's a really amazing cock. I mean. . . yeah. Wow. Even my extremely homosexual girlfriend was impressed by that guy's cock. It's hard to overstate the largeness, and excellence, of that particular cock.