Since The Velvet Rope is on a temporary hiatus, I thought I would contribute some new material by writing another “Robin’s Underrated Gems” column that appeals to fans of both that site and The Back Row. And I can’t think of a more appropriate subject than a documentary about the film that made The Velvet Rope possible. Even those who wouldn’t be caught dead watching a porn film have probably heard the title, Deep Throat. Released in 1972, Deep Throat is undoubtedly the most famous adult film of all time and wound up bringing a crossover appeal to the porn industry that no one would have ever thought possible. Young readers may find this unfathomable, but there was a time when porn wasn’t just a click away on the Internet in the privacy of your own home. Every time you wanted to watch it, you would actually have to go through the potentially embarrassing indignity of going out in public and interacting with other people in order to fork over the money to see it. However, thanks to Deep Throat, there was a period when going to see an porn film in a theater was considered socially acceptable and you would actually feel like a bit of an outcast if you DIDN’T go to see it! When Johnny Carson was making jokes about the film on The Tonight Show and a secret informant who leaked information about the Watergate scandal was going under the pseudonym “Deep Throat”, it was obvious that this cheap little adult flick had become a pop culture phenomenon. Inside Deep Throat, a documentary from Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, is an incredibly fascinating and entertaining look at the film’s cultural legacy, and the positive and negative effects that it had on American society in general. While older viewers may already know a lot of the information that is provided by this film, those who were not alive when Deep Throat was released will probably be shocked to see just how the different the world was before it came along.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2cNTQMAtCM
The poster for Inside Deep Throat features a lot of a lot of great soundbites about the film it examines, and they each provide varying degrees of truth. “It was filmed in 6 days for $25,000”. “The government didn’t want you to see it”. “It was banned in 23 states”. “It has grossed over 600 million dollars”. “It is the most profitable film in motion picture history”. Well, the first three facts are certainly true, but I wouldn’t put too much stock into the last two. It is highly unlikely that the film grossed $600 million and since precise box office tallies were never kept, no one can really be sure if Deep Throat is actually the most profitable film of all time. In fact, the documentary reveals that the mob owned most of the theaters where Deep Throat was screened and that they probably inflated box office receipts as a means of laundering money from their other ventures! However, the claims about Deep Throat being one of the highest-grossing and most profitable films of all time only add to its legend, and man, does it have one hell of a fascinating legend surrounding it. One of the main subjects of Inside Deep Throat is Gerard Damiano, the man who directed the film and, in spite of its massive box office success, barely saw any of the profits from it. He did indeed make Deep Throat in only six days for $25,000, and cast two unknown actors, Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems, who would soon garner more mainstream recognizability than a porn actor had ever seen before. Unlike many other adult films of the time period, Deep Throat did have a plot and a sense of humour about itself, and while virtually everyone who saw the movie would acknowledge that it’s a piece of shit, its explicit, but light-hearted portrayal of sexuality somehow translated to mainstream appeal. Of course, the biggest draw of the movie was Linda Lovelace’s infamous “deep throat” scene and no one had ever seen an act of oral sex like that on film before. The context of that scene is that her character is told that the clitoris is located on her throat, and the film conveys the message that an act of fellatio will be just as pleasurable for her as it is for the male! Believe it or not, oral sex was still such a taboo subject in 1972 that people actually believed this crap was true!
Once Deep Throat was labelled as “porn chic” in a New York Times article, it suddenly became fashionable to go see this film. Adult films used to be taboo pieces of filth that only perverts in trench coats would go to watch in a grungy theater, but suddenly, couples and even mainstream celebrities were going to screenings of Deep Throat and openly admitting it, because watching explicit sexuality portrayed on the big screen suddenly wasn’t so embarrassing. Of course, the film’s success lead to massive controversy as certain people in power (including President Nixon) thought Deep Throat violated obscenity laws and screenings of the film were raided by law enforcement on numerous occasions. Needless to say, the immense controversy only increased people’s curiosity and turned Deep Throat into an even bigger success. Today, it’s probably unfathomable to think that the FBI would bother devoting so much time and resources to stopping a harmless little dirty movie like Deep Throat and prosecuting the people responsible for making and screening it, but that’s exactly what happened. Even more unfathomable is the idea that Harry Reems would be prosecuted and nearly sent to prison for simply acting in the film, causing major Hollywood celebrities like Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty to leap to his defense! It’s probably inevitable that a documentary about a subject this wild would feature a lot of colourful characters and Inside Deep Throat does not disappoint. A lot of unintentional humour is provided by the deeply religious, ultra-right-wing prosecutor on the Deep Throat case, Larry Parrish, who actually states that he wishes the damn terrorists would go away so that the government could start devoting more energy to fighting obscenity again! Many of the people behind the making and distribution of Deep Throat provide some hilarious interviews and a lot of celebrities, such as John Waters, Bill Maher and Dick Cavett, provide their own personal memories from when the film was came out.
Indeed, despite Deep Throat‘s massive box office success, it seems that most of its profits did go to the mob and things did not turn out well for a lot of the people who made it. The documentary provides a particularly sad account about the life of the late Linda Lovelace, who was seemingly pressured into making the film by her abusive husband and, after her 15 minutes of fame were up, decided to align herself with a feminist movement against porn in the 1980s. Even though Deep Throat signified the beginning of a boom period for the adult industry that has allowed it to achieve the success it still enjoys today, the industry never did achieve the mainstream acceptability that it desired. Once the hype surrounding Deep Throat died down, normal everyday people no longer felt compelled to go see adult films at the cinema, and the industry would find its bigger market on home video by the time the eighties rolled around. However, I guess there is some comfort to be found in the fact that a documentary about Deep Throat could be financed by a major studio like Universal, produced by an Academy Award winner like Brian Grazer, and released into theaters with an NC-17 rating (due mainly to its decision to show the footage from the most infamous scene in Deep Throat). Some critics complained that Inside Deep Throat could have delved a little deeper into the people behind it, and that the documentary mostly just provided them with information that they all already knew. However, those criticisms were largely made by those who actually lived through the Deep Throat phenomenon. Those who were not around for it are going to find Inside Deep Throat to be a very illuminating documentary that provides an eye-opening look at a dramatically different era. Younger viewers will have a hard time imagining that an adult film could generate so much controversy and the intervention of the federal government, but they will also have a hard time believing that there was once a brief period where you could go comfortably on a date with your other half to see an adult film in a theater. If you want to find out how a shoddily made, ultra-low budget porn flick could launch an entire sexual revolution, then you will find Inside Deep Throat to be a very compelling piece of documentary filmmaking.