Indulgences in Self-Pity: Amateur porn film fest bares realistic, honest sexuality

I found the final seat available in the dank theater. I scooted past a 40-year-old man dressed like a ZZ Top member and sat next to a 60-year-old man in a clown suit and a rag over his lap.

The theater curtains parted, and the opening titles flashed onto the screen. ‘Amateur Cheerleader Sex Part Three,’ the screen said, as the sketchy guys round me grunted in approval.

At least that’s what I thought an amateur porn festival would be like. I had been frightened for months at the prospect of writing about the ‘You Oughta Be In Pictures’ film festival at Coolidge Corner Theatre. The festival, celebrating its fourth annual show, is the only amateur porn festival in America.

And it’s right here in Brookline.

The festival was the brainchild of Kim Airs, the ‘proprietrix’ of Grand Opening, a sex shop in Brookline. Proprietrix Airs takes video submissions throughout the year and edits all the submissions into an hour-and-a-half video for the silver screen.

Sound like something you’d want to see? It isn’t for most people. In fact, most of my friends girls especially had absolutely no desire to attend the festival. A lot of people were expecting the stereotypical porn theater, complete with clown suit. I was praying to God that ‘You Oughta Be In Pictures’ bucked the trend.

So I bought my ticket and went Thursday night with two friends. Even a half-hour before the show, the line for the sold-out show wrapped to the back of the building. The crowd included a bit of every demographic. Everyone from groups of college students to a group of 50-something men (I checked to make sure none of them were wearing clown shoes).

We stepped inside and soon the festival started. The first movie, ‘Dial W for Wang!,’ was a comedy written and performed by such notable names as Johny Longbow, Richard Bigun and Jefferson Davis. I was surprised to recognize the location on Cummington Street, right here on the Boston University campus. By the way, I wouldn’t use the right-side ATM at the Warren Towers Fleet anymore; something awful has touched that keypad.

That was nice and fun, but what about the orifice violation that’s so common in ‘regular’ porn movies? Actually, the entire night, it was nowhere to be found. These amateurs wanted to make a statement, not whore themselves on camera.

The videos ranged from an artistic piece called ‘Color Me’ that was based on painting ‘down there’ to a musical with flower costumes and spanking. And there was even a small doll skit staged by Proprietrix Airs herself, which had the following spectacular exchange:

‘Okay, honey. How about a little rope bondage?’ asks the husband.

‘That gets me wet!’ replies the wife.

You know, certain times I wish my grandparents didn’t read my column.

The audience laughed away at the comedies but, like many of us, didn’t know exactly what to do when a man in one video filmed himself putting on a diaper. The same man did an awkward strip show down to a thong, and then took the process to the obvious next step, which we’ll leave out of this family newspaper.

At this point in the show, I realized that amateur porn is an act of courage. How many people, even in a completely anonymous setting like ‘You Oughta Be In Pictures,’ would put themselves out on a limb like that in front of one of the largest theaters in Boston?

So even the fat man with a wedgie and a blow-up doll gets applauded.

So when the 50-something woman has sex with her husband while he’s wearing a harness and she has a horse-riding crop, I heard comments from the women behind me like ‘it’s adorable.’

And all of the videos are adorable, because they deal with sex in an authentic way, not in a demoralizing, dirty way that ‘real porn’ does. There’s a man who kneels on all fours and lives out his fantasy of being ‘milked like a cow.’ And half of the people in the videos weren’t particularly good-looking, either.

In fact, there wasn’t one truly erotic moment in the entire festival. But there were honest moments, which I found far more rewarding. What I had thought would be a disgusting display of sex turned into the most realistic portrayal of sexuality I had ever seen. They were real people doing real things, without any shame.

After tonight’s repeat showing, people will have no need to feel ashamed. That’s because Proprietrix Airs has already smashed Thursday night’s tapes with a streamer-adorned sledge and mixed them into a popcorn bucket of liquid latex and glitter glue. She’ll smash tonight’s tapes, the last copies in the world, after a midnight performance. So don’t be afraid. Go watch some porn.

[ Peter Myers, a sophomore in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press and can be reached at pmyers@bu.edu. ]