Inside Deep Throat Reviews

Offbeat documentary filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato dissect the history and legend of perhaps the best known and most profitable pornographic movies ever made, the taboo-busting, precedent-setting Deep Throat (1972). Producer Brian Grazier initially imagined a documentary about Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace, but apparently found her sad story lacking in the third-act redemption department. The big-picture story of the movie itself, by contrast, was a gold mine of giddy highs, stygian lows and colorful dramatis personae. Clown-prince of porn Harry Reems, who naively imagined the movie's notoriety would help jump-start a mainstream acting career, spent years battling legal prosecution (though persecution is really the more appropriate term) and sank into a deep, alcohol fueled depression before remaking himself as a small-town realtor. Lovelace, who later claimed she was forced by then-boyfriend Chuck Traynor to appear in the film that made her famous, drifted into unhappy obscurity haunted by her liberated alter ego and died, broke, in a 2002 car accident. Hairdresser-turned-smutmeister Gerard Damiano, cut out of the profits by his Mafia-connected backers. Henpecked Florida theater owner Arthur Sommer and his shrewish wife. Moral crusader Larry Parrish, who tried to lock up Reems and throw away the key for the crime of being in a blue movie and, years later wishes terrorists would go away so America's watchdogs could return to combating "prostitutes and whoremongers"… you couldn't make these people up. But Fenton and Barbato also place Deep Throat firmly in the context of a turbulent time, when making a sex movie was an act of rebellion (however Quixotic), rather than a mercenary grab for the goodies. Descended from a long line of smokers, stag loops and white-coaters, Deep Throat — by any objective standard a lead-footed comedy with artless hardcore scenes — was the thin edge of the wedge. Much watched, more discussed and indisputable proof that there was more money in the adult film business than anyone ever dreamed, it appeared as the legacy of 1960s counterculture turmoil was wreaking unprecedented change on American attitudes towards women, free speech and sex. It triggered court cases, tempted dirty-movie virgins into porno theaters, added a fresh term to the lexicon of dirty talk, and brought both sexually explicit movies and the debate over their place in a free society into the spotlight. All but unwatchable in light of today's slickly produced smut, Deep Throat ran a carnally candid banner up the flagpole and America saluted.