Stills from HUMP! entries Jell-O Fantasies, Cube and Need, and Pit of Pleasure.
It was the early 2000s, and The Stranger coworkers Brad Steinbacher and Dan Savage floated a NSFW concept at, effectively, work: Might they placed on a selfmade porn competition? And publish a name for submissions within the well-known different newspaper?
“It was a giant ask. Ship us a VHS tape that you simply made—as a result of it was earlier than digital every part—and allow us to watch it, after which we’re gonna put it on a movie show display screen for a weekend,” Savage says; on the time he was the alt-weekly’s editor in chief. “And , your boss or mother and father would possibly present up.”
For 3 full years, publishers nixed the thought time and again, not satisfied that anybody would mail in submissions, a lot much less purchase tickets. However they couldn’t kill the venture. When Savage lastly received the inexperienced mild in early 2005, dozens of tapes flooded in. The Stranger booked the Northwest Movie Discussion board for the inaugural HUMP! Movie Competition, and tickets offered out immediately. They prolonged the run, and people seats went simply as quick.
“Oh my God, there’s an viewers for this, an viewers that desires to expertise porn collectively,” Savage remembers pondering. He had successful on his palms.
Now in its twentieth 12 months, HUMP! flips the idea of sleazy grownup film theaters (“how our grandparents watched pornography,” says Savage) to one thing fashionable, a celebration of intercourse, kink, and variety throughout sexual orientation and gender expression. The competition screens about two dozen quick movies in every iteration,from a whole bunch of submissions, all hand-selected by Savage and his jury. He does rather a lot nowadays—podcasting, writing intercourse recommendation column “Savage Love,” and authoring books and essays—however nonetheless curates his brainchild.
So what makes a HUMP! movie? Documentaries, kinky scenes between duct tape puppets, movies starring salt and pepper shakers, individuals being hit within the face with pies over and over, and James Bond parodies have all screened through the years. Some aren’t even explicitly sexual, however the lineup is about as removed from business pornography because it will get.
Savage discovered that audiences responded greatest to movies that “generally did not appear to be porn in any respect, typically stuff that was humorous. And it was this marriage of graphic porn—precise intercourse on movie—and commentary or comedy or one thing else occurring on the identical time that often would not be taking place in a straight porn clip.”
Whereas the competition did implement a streaming possibility throughout the early years of COVID, the HUMP! ethos has all the time bent towards collective viewing in bodily theaters. And that’s necessary. At house, viewers have a fast-forward button and a litany of selections catered to their gender expression, sexual orientation, kink, or mate goal. At HUMP! audiences climb aboard a curler coaster, they usually’re alongside for the trip.
“Folks come to HUMP! to have enjoyable and be challenged and be scared and have their minds blown,” Savage says. One among his favourite elements yearly is a second—a palpable shift—in every viewers.
It all the time goes the identical: first, there’s the shock: “The homosexual guys going, ‘Oh my god, there’s large cunnilingus taking place on this display screen in entrance of me.’” Then comes a definite camaraderie as audiences notice every part they share (“need, vulnerability, a humorousness, danger taking”) inside every movie. By the tip, a room of 400 is cheering for every movie. “You are seeing the straight guys cheer for the homosexual guys, and the vanilla individuals cheering for the kinky individuals. And there is simply this second the place everyone feels seen and secure and affirmed,” he says.
HUMP! has grown effectively past its preliminary Northwest Movie Discussion board run. Lately, the fest screens two lineups annually. “It was felony what number of nice movies we have been leaving out to get it down to 1 night of movies,” Savage says. Even with the second slate of screenings, choice has gotten harder: About half of submissions would make the ultimate reduce throughout the first few years, however now Savage estimates solely 5 to 10 p.c go all the way in which.
Movies that claw their manner onto the docket are rewarded with an equal reduce of ticket gross sales, and audiences vote to crown Greatest Intercourse, Greatest Kink, Greatest Humor, Greatest in Present, and Most Artistic titles—profitable erotic bragging rights and a money prize. Whereas the fest hasn’t forgotten its PNW roots, it’s not only a Seattle phenomenon anymore. The fest excursions 40 cities across the globe, from Bend to Amsterdam, and submissions hail from even additional.
It received particularly meta in 2009 when the late hometown director Lynn Shelton launched Humpday, a comedy movie whose fictional protagonists try to movie a HUMP! submission—regardless that they’re each straight and each male.
“It’s an actual Seattle factor—not fairly like Microsoft or Starbucks—nevertheless it’s one thing that was created in Seattle and unfold,” says Savage of the competition. “Seattle was the suitable place to beta check and launch HUMP! due to who individuals are and what intercourse tradition in Seattle is like.” He is aware of Seattle as a spot with lively kink, swinging, and queer scenes, but additionally devoted group areas that heart extra than simply intercourse.
The fest’s longest run is its Seattle residency, from February 14 via March 15 at Decrease Queen Anne’s On the Boards. Tickets for the twentieth anniversary present go for $25, and Savage expects a 12 months of surprises: “Something comes and goes at HUMP!, actually.”
