Anyone who just can’t get enough on-screen glory holes will be glad to know that it’s once again time for the HUMP! Tour, Dan Savage’s traveling amateur-porn film festival. It’s been 10 years since HUMP! started in Seattle, and it’s coming next week to the Roxie (February 25–28) for 10 screenings, bringing unusual blowjobs, an update of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” involving three horny, hairy bears, and a vagina that has mastered the French horn.
The 18 shorts in the fest’s 2015 iteration make for an entirely different lineup from last year’s, comprised of a mix of brand-new shorts as well as some “Best of” favorites from past festivals. “This year’s tour is about 60 percent stuff from this year’s HUMP! Festival in Seattle and Portland, with some other greatest hits,” Savage told me. And you’ll never see any of them on Netflix, either. HUMP! takes the performers’ anonymity very seriously, so you gotta see them live. (And no Snapchatting! They do confiscate phones.)
Savage loves HUMP! not only for restoring the collective-viewing element of vintage porn theaters but also because people see things they might never otherwise watch. “You go online and click only on exactly the things you want to see,” he said. “At HUMP!, you have straight people watching gay porn, gay men watching lesbo action, cisgender people watching trans porn, and vanilla people watching some hard-core kink porn.”
It’s titillating at first, but then the communal vibe kicks in. “After those first few films, then everyone begins to see what’s the same: the lust, the desire, the sense of humor, the vulnerability, the passion. Halfway through the festival, everyone’s really relaxed, no one’s flinching anymore, everyone’s cheering, and it’s really fun to watch.”
A recurring use of certain props makes the festival even less like Times Square circa 1977. Savage calls the practice “extra credit, an Easter egg,” which filmmakers can choose to put in “for the audience to spot and have a laugh.” “It’s a zeitgeist-y thing,” he said, ticking off past examples — “Cocktail umbrellas, bowling pins, Joe Biden, duct tape. One year it was Sarah Palin’s book.”
Undeniably, Dan Savage represents the apex of sex-positivity to many people, but he’s also been glitter-bombed by activists (twice). When I asked if HUMP!’s curatorial vision had changed over time, he agreed. “It’s still the same delicious randomness as ever, but to ensure the broadest, most diverse program, the jury pool is not 10 gay white men, just to reassure people,” Savage said. “It’s men and women and some genderqueer and trans folks, and even a straight guy.”
I suspected that if I asked what his favorite was, Savage would diplomatically reply to the effect that he loves all his smutty children equally. But he singled out The Grocer and Humparaoke as films that might play particularly well in the Bay Area. Humparaoke is “a boy-boy-girl three-way that breaks out at a karaoke party. There’s real sex and real boners and real cunnilingus and real fellatio, but you can also tell these are people who are really into each other.” (There’s also a film about Burners.)
And you don’t even have to particularly enjoy porn to have a great time. “I’ve had people come up to me at HUMP! who were dragged to it by friends who say, ‘I hate porn, but I loved this.’ The beef of people who dislike porn is that it’s dehumanizing, and the porn you see at HUMP! is very humanizing.”
In a sense, this festival is all about the redeeming power of porn. It’s all part of a larger project of ending society’s confusion and ignorance and hang-ups about the body, even in artsy, progressive circles. Sex columnists too get taken aback — in Dan Savage’s case, by one film involving bedroom fire play and another in which a woman was lifted up by her vulva. “The HUMP! Jury — sometimes our jaws drop, and we’ve been doing this for a decade. You think you’ve seen everything, you think you’re unshockable, and you’re not.”
HUMP! will be at the Roxie from Feb 25–28, with each screening hosted by Dan Savage in person. This festival usually sells out pretty fast, so get your tickets here.
