REVIEW OF HUMP! FILM FESTIVAL >>>
If there's any lingering doubt about the mainstreaming of porn, even low-fi amateur porn, reflect that it launched the highly lucrative careers of a whole coven of Kardashians. We love porn. So while there were some timid faces in the crowd at Olympia's first-ever screening of Hump! last night, there was also an electric, anticipatory vibe. Whatever your taste, there's little chance you were disappointed.
The Hump! anthology of locally-made porn is the brainchild (loinchild?) of Dan Savage, editorial director of The Stranger, author of the syndicated advice column Savage Love, and spiritual leader of the anti-bullying "It Gets Better" project. Hump!'s rules are straightforward: no critters, no minors, no messy bathroom stuff. This leaves a wide-open field for creative expression - so wide, in fact, that it'll be difficult to describe the shorts without transgressing my editor's liberal subject policy. (Heh. I said "shorts.") Let's put it this way: I counted five different bodily fluids, plus a dollop of axle grease.
The first of no less than 27 flicks was a cartoon, Rumpy Pumpy, in which the phrase popularized by Roger Ebert is used to describe a parade of cartoon phalli and clams. (I'm referring to the bivalve. I swear!) What followed was a mixed bag of production values, narrative intents and proclivities. Whatever you're into, there was something to turn you on. There was also something to turn you waaaayyy the hell off. I'm looking at you, Mansmash! ... but only from the corner of my eye. Yikes!
To vote for best in show is to summarize one's sexual preferences. With that in mind, my choice was the very funny Magic Love, in which a straight couple (and, if memory serves, an extremely close friend) is stop-motion animated through a series of good-natured liaisons. I specify straight because gay content was represented in bacchanalian abundance. If that's a problem for you, Hump! will never be your cup of tea. If, however, you want to watch a dominatrix force two Rubenesque young women to eat meringue pies, your desires will be met.
I, on the other hand, preferred Dungeons & Dragons Orgy, in which rolls of a 20-sided die determine who'll pair up (or triple up) with whom. Then there's Dueling Dames, in which two bored women vie for the title of sexual champion, all in the style of a vintage silent movie. The encounter of Alice and Miles is as sultry and polished as a Shakira video. Speaking of which, the program concludes with a music video, the parodic Boyfriend, and it also features a rendition of Peter and the Wolf that'd give Prokofiev the screaming fantods.
I'd be remiss if I didn't praise the surprisingly affecting and empowering Krutch, in which a young woman with a disability entertains herself using one of her crutches. This activity is jarringly intercut with her struggle to get to a bus before it pulls away from the curb. Work like this gives the lie to the narrow-minded notion that all porn is antifeminist or otherwise diminishing. Emcee Lindy West suggests Hump will return to Olympia next year. Judging by last night's audience packed with flushed and appreciative spectators, I suspect they'll be deluged with Thurston county contest submissions.
I know. I said "submissions." Would "entries" have been any better?
CAPITOL THEATER, OLYMPIA FILM FESTIVAL, THROUGH SUNDAY, NOV. 18, $4-$10, 206 FIFTH AVE. SE, OLYMPIA, 360.754.6670