I'll admit. My mom and my grandmothers deeply instilled morals into my Norwegian heart and soul - and those did not include watching porn. It has taken years to get past those ideas, and realize, oohhh, this isn't smutty (well, okay, sometimes it is) and it is not sinful. I'm no prude, but porn had the connotation of dark back alley.
Which is to say, it took me several years before I mustered up interest to go to "HUMP," the extremely popular film festival of homemade porn that started in Seattle, curated by Dan Savage and spread to Portland before going nationwide last year. (The festival repeatedly sells out cities like New York and Chicago.) I definitely went with trepidation.
I left wondering: What took me so long. These are truly fun and wonderful films (okay, not all of them, but I never thought that such a clever and funny film could be made about a butt plug; no spoilers here). Watching porn in a crowd, I found, actually washes away some of the stigma of "naughtiness" or antisocial behavior.
Remarkably, there are tickets remaining: HUMP sells out Portland in minutes, and the promoters need to add extra nights in cities like Chicago and New York to accommodate demand. But Bend?
Grab the last few tickets here.
In this week's issue, we have an interview with Dan Savage about the film festival. It provides some great insights.
