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“A man, a plan, a butt plug.”
Such reads the description of one of 18 amateur porn films coming to the Woolly Mammoth Theatre next week as part of the HUMP! Tour. The tour comes from the mind of relationship and sex columnist Dan Savage and will bring homemade dirty short films to at least 30 cities this year.
In 2005, Savage started the amateur porn festival in the Pacific Northwest, hosting the event in Seattle and Portland. After “soaking in all the good vibes” in the West, Savage decided to take the titillating films national. (Washington City Paper, which runs Savage’s “Savage Love” column weekly, is the tour’s local partner here in D.C.)
Because the event organizers destroy the festival’s videos and most of the records each year, Robert Crocker, the tour’s executive director, said it took about a year and a half to track down all of Savage’s favorite entries from years past and see if the filmmakers would be willing to share their movies on a larger scale—all but two agreed.
In the smaller festival, audience members vote for categories such as “best kink,” “best sex,” “best humor,” and “best in show,” and winners go home with prize money; however, the national tour won’t include voting or prize money, so Crocker says the organization was able to give all the participants royalties for their films.
Selected titles include “Pie Sluts,” “D&D Orgy,” and “Hot ’N Saucy Pizza Boy.” Crocker cites “Mythical Proportions,” about women in love with centaurs, as one of his favorites.
All of the films on the national tour were drawn from past submissions from the Pacific Northwest festival, but Crocker says they’re soliciting submissions at all of the national screenings, and hope that in the future, the annual tour will include films new and old.
As for the venues, they aim for “old large movie theaters in the 500-seat range”—laughing with a large group helps put audience members at ease.
“The predominant theme is humor in this,” Crocker says.
The rules for film submissions are pretty simple—“no poop, no animals, no minors”—and filmmakers usually include a particular landmark or prop to indicate the film was made specifically for the festival. That’s why national audience members might spot packing peanuts, Hillary Clinton, or butt plugs in some of the past films.
Dan Savage hosts the HUMP! Tour at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre from March 20 to March 22.