(Most of the links to follow are at least a little bit NSFW, unless, like my wife, you work for some kind of a porn-friendly smuttery.)

So last night Heather took me to the premiere of Superfreak at the Little Roxy. It's the second film by director Shine Louise Houston, the presiding genius behind Pink & White Productions, an indie feminist lesbian porn production company. (You can order the film here).

It was really good! I've seen a whole lot of porn -- I used to see sort of normal amounts of porn, but since Heather's been working at Blowfish, I've seen a lot -- and this one was sexy, funny, and genuine. You can tell the performers were actually having fun. The whole vibe is utterly unlike mainstream porn, which can be very dehumanizing and artificial, but the genuineness doesn't equate to amateurishness in this case; Superfreak has high-quality production values. I'm not really the target audience -- it's porn by and for lesbians, and I was one of about five guys in the audience, and probably the only one who wasn't somehow connected with Blowfish (which helped produce the film) -- but it was still very hot, especially the last scene (which featured three femmes, so I guess I'm a pretty typical dude in that respect) and all the scenes involving the adorable Madison Young.

It was a bit odd, admittedly, to see video of someone having sex on a screen, bigger than life size, while that same someone was sitting in the seat directly in front of me. But it wasn't as weird as I expected. (It helped that the one actress in the film I have a fanboy crush on wasn't at the premiere. Around her, I would've stammered.)

The high concept behind the film is that the ghost of Rick James possesses people at a party, thus prompting them to super-freaky acts of lust. And the ghost of Rick James? Was played quite adroitly by the director, complete with beaded hair.

The making-of documentary was really interesting, too. If you find yourself bewildered by the idea of feminist indie porn, well, get the flick and watch the documentary.

Shine's previous film, Crash Pad, was widely celebrated, and is quite good, but I actually like this one better -- it's more playful, and, well, it involves Madison Young. Which doesn't hurt.

Amusingly, I've been listening to David Foster Wallace's essay "Big Red Son" this week, about the 1998 AVN awards, and the porn industry as a whole. Everything Wallace found repulsive, vulgar, and petty about porn is absent from Shine's productions. Though the cognitive dissonance he describes at encountering, in the flesh, people you've seen capering on screen... yeah, that's the same.