O: The Power of Submission (Adam & Eve)

Thanks, and I hope you had a delightful trip. Were you able to go outside at night and see starry skies?

[Link]

Just got back from D.O. last night. Had a fabulous time. A little rainy the first couple of days, but then cleared up with beautiful, sunny skies and perfect temps for wandering around nude. I had some fun adventures I'll be describing on nina.com.

Speaking of descriptions, here's a little more on the special O release. It will be pacakaged in leather-like box trimmed with studs and closed with a ring. Inside, there will be an accordian-pleat "file" containing the the actual 160 minute feature (and the hard trailer for it) plus a second disk with a custom-shot BTS almost as long, following the development of the project from first costume fittings on through the entire production. There are also separate interviews with Carmen and Ernest, an extended photo gallery, a special set of images from my Anal Kinksters series and two bonus scenes. That ought to keep everybody happily busy through many hours of viewing pleasure.

I'm not sure how many of the collectors' packages they're going to do, so I would order early if I wanted to own one.

[Link]

Regardless, I'll be buying my copy of O within the next couple of weeks, for sure.

Also, I don't think it's been mentioned here, so I want to be the first ADT'er to heartily congratulate you on the acceptance of O: The Power of Submission at the 2006 [invalid URL removed]CineKink film festival in New York. Looks like the website isn't yet updated, but if I'm not mistaken, O is scheduled for screening at 10:00 p.m. on October 21.

Edited by - YogaDame on 9/19/2006 10:41:30 PM

[Link]

And thanks for the congrats on Cinekink. It's quite an honor and one of the rare times I've seen Ernest get really excited by an event. He's never seen one of his pictures on a big screen in an actual theater, and the Cinekink audience is particularly important to him, as the validation of fellow kinksters means a lot from his POV.

The showing is scheduled for ten p.m. October 21.

[Link]

Ernest (and everyone else involved) has earned the right to feel proud about this project. I'm gonna try to quit gushing now, but I'm sure I'll be gushing even more when your book is released next month. I'm already totally in love with the cover illustration.

Time for me to head to bed and enjoy sweet dreams of Olivia pin-ups. I have to be offline for a day or two, but I'm sure I'll see ya back at your forums soon.

[Link]

The Rocky Horror Show it isn't.

Edited by - Nina Hartley on 9/20/2006 2:40:22 AM

[Link]

Of course, our running time is 160 minutes, so that could be a problem for us as well.

[Link]

Give it a look if you happen to be near a newsstand or bookstore that carries Skin Two, especially if you're unfamiliar with this first-rate pub that sets the pace for serious-minded kink-world coverage.

[Link]

I'm looking forward to this article (I read an article about "O - The Power of Submission" in Taboo about a month ago) and, even more so, REALLY looking forward the actual film.

Brian

P.S. Nina, are there any book tour dates yet for your upcoming book, "Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex?" Thanks.

[Link]

I'll be posting the promotional schedule for Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex over at www.nina.com as the dates firm up. The release date for the book is 10/19 and I expect to be on the road for at least ninety days thereafter.

And speaking of release dates, O - The Power of Submission is now officially released and can be ordered at www.adameve.com.

[Link]

Having shot actual piercings on a couple of occasions, it's been our experience that, to be done safely and correctly, they require a good bit of careful preparation and aren't all that dramatic to watch in real life. We felt it was more important to preserve the drama of the story than to stop the action dead for a long stretch of fussing with needles, Pennington forceps and clamps.

Glad you enjoyed other parts of the picture.

Edited by - Nina Hartley on 10/26/2006 3:06:39 PM

[Link]

First time on the big screen, first film festival (?), and the top award. Not a bad night out!

[Link]

Sorry we missed you at the festival. We were also in town promoting my book, Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex from Avery (buy it on Amazon today and help me become a best-selling author!) and most of our time in NYC was - pardon the expression - booked up.

But we both enjoyed the Cinekink showing tremendously and Ernest was really thrilled at the recognition from people whose opinons I know he respects tremendously - and that includes you most definitely.

And congrats to you on the great reception you got at the Cinekink as well. But then, we expected no less.

[Link]

Congradulations to Ernest on O taking the Audience Choice for Best Feature at the 2006 New York CineKink Film Festival.

First time on the big screen, first film festival (?), and the top award. Not a bad night out!

______________________________________

+1 Congratulations indeed; a very cool accomplishment!

[Link]

O: The Power of Submission — 5 stars

[Link]

What remains true is that O - The Power of Submission is a terrific, hot, enjoyable picture. It got three reviews here - two five-stars and one four-and-a-half, picked off a tough prize at Cinekink and got raves from Gram Ponante on three separate sites. Hustler rates it 100% erect on The Petermeter. Can't ask for much more than that.

I still love it and I still think most of you will too if you give it a look. In the meantime, I hurt not only for my husband, but for Carmen, who started this thread, who worked her pretty butt off in the part and who deserved to be recognized for pushing against the limits of what a "porn star" is supposed to be all about. We love you sweetie and we're pulling for you in the categories for which you were righteously nominated. Personally, I look forward to working with you again on any future project.

So go out and buy the movie and make up your own minds already!

Edited by - Nina Hartley on 11/15/2006 8:07:07 PM

Edited by - Nina Hartley on 11/15/2006 8:12:17 PM

[Link]

But the simple fact is that the proliferation of AVN noms/awards means that it's just not that uncommon for a porn film to lay claim to these laurels, where as it's quite rare for a porn film to garner recognition that O has already received outside of AVN's sphere of influence. I've no doubt with a little luck and cleverness, the recognition that O has already received can be parlayed into more.

And if our own experience is any indication, a nod from YogaDame is strongly suggestive that there is a large and enthusiastic audience for O . The trick will be making them aware of the film, and then convincing them that it really is something different. To that end, being "shut out" of the AVN awards may be a strong selling point.

Edited by - TonyC on 11/15/2006 10:53:55 AM

[Link]

I'm not unaware of how effectively that can be done. My instructional series, while backed by the undeniably mainstream Adam&Eve, has never received much notice from industry "opinon makers" and still managed to sell close to 600,000 units.

Likewise, Ernest's BDSM pictures get an occasional specialty award from the folks at AVN, but they've been little advertised and their rather astonishing sales are almost all a result of favorable comments from within the community.

Of course, one difference between our approach and yours is that we still depend on conventional producers to fund and distribute our work. Neither of us has much inclination to build a whole production company from the ground up and, unfortunately, existing producers tend to look at things like AVN nominations when they decide what projects to back. It's much easier shopping new deals when you can simply wave your list of noms in the air and not depend on busy company execs to sit down and actually watch what you've made.

Ernest and I remain convinced of the quality of O and hang onto our hopes that it will find an audience among independent viewers who look at a variety of sources before making buying decisions instead of rushing out to grab the latest artificially hyped title anointed by the gods of AVN this week.

And one very, very good feature of working with Adam&Eve is their extremely strong retail marketing operation, where O is already doing some pretty impressive numbers. Unlike wholesale, which tends to peak and fall off pretty quickly (with notable exceptions like Fashionistas or Pirates), retail stays out there for new audiences to discover.

If there's one thing the two of us have learned from over twenty years in this medium, it's the virtue of patience.

Edited by - Nina Hartley on 11/15/2006 8:09:02 PM

[Link]

At BlackAndBlueUSA.com, we list at least one class or signing featuring Nina or Ernest every two months. They're always doing something in the eye of fans and kinksters across the country.

Nina and Ernest also support their local leatherfolk by attending events like Domcon, Bondage Ball, and Bizarre Bazaar, along with promoting "O" at Bar Sinister.

People remember stuff like that. If Nina had done just one instructional video and never promoted it, it's doubtful anything would have come from it. Nina's series is one of the most recognized by pervs and vanillas alike.

I suspect "O" will have a lot of staying power in stores and video catalogs for a long time to come.

Sincerely,

Jay

[Link]

And while expressing gratitude, let me not leave out the four ADT reviewers who have treated us so generously. YogaDame, barretman, dandaman and picman, many thanks. Two five-star reveiws and two four-star reviews definitely add up to the kind of appreciation any director or producer dreams of.

No honest review can be entirely positive. No picture is perfect. We learn from the observatons, including the critical observations, of others. When you work as long and hard on any project as we did with O, you're likely to overlook things that others can see more clearly at a slight distance.

For what it's worth, I think Ernest would have liked to include more BDSM-specific content in the final product, as that is his specialty. We certainly do plenty of elaborate, detailed BDSM play in our bondage videos, often involving clamps, weghts, candle wax, suction devices, gags, hoods, harnesses, fucking machines and other fun toys. But with O, I think Ernest made the conscious decision to focus on relationship elements (while still sneaking in some modern-style kink here and there, such as shibari ropework and suspensions) which were really the engine of the original story. If we'd wanted to make a big, fancy bondage movie we could have, but we were looking to attract a wider audience that we felt responded to the strange love story that sustains the novel, which really is more about D/s sex than sophisticated kink technique.

And even if we had been given the means to shoot the picture in Paris (we love the place!), Ernest saw some real parallels between the Paris of O's time and modern L.A. When he wrote the script, he emphasized elements that he felt were relevant to the contemporary lives of the largest segment of the watching public, which is located here. Interestingly, O is doing strong business in European licensing, which suggests that European viewers are also curious to see the story transposed into an American setting.

And while we know we could have gotten rougher sex, not only out of a different cast, but from the cast we did have (Kiley and Adrianna, for example, are always down for some harder performances) we really weren't out to make that kind of picture. It would be lots of fun to do so, as Ernest has some surprisingly dark and edgy concepts he'd love to try out in a different kind of vehicle, but the intention here was to stay with the tense psychological elements in the story. In some ways, it's more daring to make a movie about unconventional dramatic relationships than to go for the familiar physical stunts we have also seen so many times by now. And the concept was always to open the story for a wider audiences than BDSM fans alone. As it is, the sex in O isn't exactly tame. There's penetration with bondage, DPs, five anals in six scenes, snowballing and plenty of other fun nastiness. The whipping Justine took is totally for real and, (this is particularly important to me and to other female viewers) we put a strong emphasis on feminine pleasure, which we felt was woefully absent from the novel. There are at least seven real female orgams in O, which is far from common in either features of gonzo these days.

One last thing: while the dressage whipping of Carmen at Evan's place was :"cheated" as we showed in the BTS, she really did take a hard flogging from me in the opener and stepped up to the physical and emotional demands of a part that had her naked and doing something sexual on virtually every page of a very long script. She really proved what she's made of on this gig, and it's mighty durable stuff. Everybody pictures O a different way, but Ernest always felt Carmen's inner passion and her conflicted response to D/s situations made her an excellent choice for the story's complex and paradoxical protagonist.

We really feel she did us proud, and of all the disappointments surrounding AVNs lack of recognition for this movie, none was more painful than seeing her overlooked in the Best Actress category. There were a lot of stand-out performances this year, to be sure, but hers was certainly one of them and we're frankly baffled and stung by what both Ernest and I see as a real injustice in this case. Carmen gets our vote, and clearly she's gotten the votes of lots of other critics and lots of buyers, so that's really what matters the most.

Edited by - Nina Hartley on 11/25/2006 3:23:12 PM

[Link]

I've been offline for a few days and have just caught up with the latest comments.

I am truly stunned that the initial whipping has been denounced as "phony" and "fake" in the two most recent ADT reviews. Guys, do you not have your glasses on? The caning portion later in the movie was realistically cheated, yes—the behind-the-scenes is completely honest and clearly shows that Nina took the real strokes for the sound effects. I totally respect that. Canes have very little air resistance and also concentrate the force into a narrow, intense area. Thus they are extremely "bite-y" and apt to leave serious marks. They're not for everyone.

That first whipping with the multi-tail flogger is totally real, though. It looks to me like they couldn't shoot a direct view of Carmen's hind-side because there might've been windows in the background, wreaking havoc with lighting and reflections. Regardless, watch the flesh at Carmen's hips. It clearly undulates upon impact. How much more evidence do you really need?

Geesh.

Nina, I would agree that the novel contains some very rough sex, and yet it's primarily a book about the psychological aspects of D/s play (some of which it gets right, and some of which it gets wrong). I believe that O: The Power of Submission nails the essence of it, in exactly the correct proportions. It's what a story-driven, feature movie should be. I'm glad you made it.

[Link]

You speak the sooth. I did whip Carmen's ass quite briskly with what I'll admit was a fairly soft flogger, but if you watch the rest of the scene, you'll notice that her butt remains quite red from it. And the dressage whipping of Justine later did indeed leave marks that lasted a couple of days.

Just because we didn't do a lot of choking, slapping and spitting (all of which are fine by me but not present in the original material and not relevant to the story Ernest was trying to tell) doesn't mean the BDSM details weren't authentic. They were, in fact, far more real and far more subtle than the kind of thing your routinely see in trashy pictures that have the word "slave" somewhere in the title.

I particulary liked the comment from the last reviewer who was offended because "Carmen doesn't have a submissive bone in her body." Talk about missing the point. It's O's inner conflict over the kind of sex she likes as opposed to the way she sees herself in everyday life that makes her story compelling in the first place.

I guess for some men, a woman isn't submissive unless she's a whimpering, beaten down wreck with running mascara and bodily fluids smeared all over her. The notion that a submissive woman might just have a will and a personality of her own seems to threaten their tenuous hold on their own dominant identities.

Speaking as someone who plays the submissive role often herself in real life, I can tell you it would be my pleasure to straighten out some of these abusive bullies who call themselves dominant on what makes an effective kink player different from a poseur whose total BDSM experience consists of watching rough sex vids and cyber-sceneing with partners he'll never actually touch, thankfully.

[Link]