Posted on 01/23/2005 5:44:19 PM PST by wagglebee
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) - "Inside Deep Throat," a documentary that premiered this weekend at the Sundance Film Festival, examines the legacy of the 1972 flick, a forerunner of today's hardcore adult-entertainment industry and a touchstone for obscenity laws.
"Deep Throat" was shot for $25,000 in just six days. Its male star was a film-crew member shoved in front of the camera as a last-minute replacement. Its director readily conceded it was not even a good movie. Yet it was a cultural phenomenon whose theatrical grosses are estimated at $600 million, and it became an emblem of decadence for anti-pornography crusaders and the namesake for an informer who helped bring down a president.
"Inside Deep Throat" - produced by Brian Grazer, whose films include "Apollo 13" and "A Beautiful Mind" - opens theatrically in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and five other cities Feb. 11.
Grazer had been contemplating a film about "Deep Throat" star Linda Lovelace, who died in a 2002 car crash, but found the focus too narrow.
"I was less interested in the story of Linda Lovelace and more on the movie's effect on popular culture," Grazer said.
Porn movies previously had been made under the thin guise of sober sex-education films, but "Deep Throat" had an irreverent attitude.
Co-star Harry Reems, the lighting director on the film who stepped in after the original male lead did not work out, played a doctor helping a patient played by Lovelace cope with an unusual "condition" - a sexually sensitive area at the back of her throat.
"It was the first porn film to drop any pretense that it had educational value," said Reems, now a real-estate broker in Park City. "There was no socially redeeming value, and so the word of mouth went out from people who saw it saying 'This is just a comedy. It's great. You've got to see this.'"
Its director, Jerry Damiano, said he did not think "Deep Throat" was a good movie, yet it overcame its preposterous story and cheesy production values.
After "Deep Throat" opened in Times Square, attention from media critics and outraged conservatives turned it into a must-see movie. Arriving amid the women's liberation movement, "Deep Throat" was also heralded as a celebration of female sexual fulfillment.
"It was the first time respectable middle-class women went to porn theaters," social critic Camille Paglia says in an interview in "Inside Deep Throat." Other cultural commentators appearing in the documentary include Norman Mailer, Ruth Westheimer, Gore Vidal, Erica Jong and Hugh Hefner.
Incorporating explicit oral-sex footage from the 1972 original, "Inside Deep Throat" has drawn an NC-17 rating, prohibiting people younger than 17 from seeing it.
Showing the notorious sex act was necessary for the documentary, said "Inside Deep Throat" directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, the filmmakers behind such acclaimed documentaries as "Party Monster" and "The Eyes of Tammy Faye."
"There was no way we were going to make a film called 'Inside Deep Throat' without including the act," Barbato said. "Our film is not salacious or gratuitous. That scene needed to be in there."
The movie was so ingrained in popular culture that "Deep Throat" became the nickname of the source who helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein investigate the Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon's resignation.
"Deep Throat" was the object of repeated legal assaults by anti-smut forces. The most notable case was aimed at Reems, who was convicted of obscenity in 1976 and faced a potential five-year prison term. Celebrities including Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty came to Reems' defense, and the conviction was overturned.
What happened to its supposed $600 million in theatrical revenues is a mystery. Lovelace, Reems and director Damiano never got any of it.
Normal film-distribution channels were closed to "Deep Throat" because of its subject matter, so much of the distribution was handled by outfits linked to organized crime.
Theaters were visited daily by bagmen who collected the receipts in cash. There was no formal accounting and everyone involved skimmed off a piece of the action, Bailey and Barbato said.
"I suppose it's kind of Hollywood-like," Bailey said. "The money just disappears."
"Sorry, but I don’t buy the victim bit. She deserves at least six Oscars for Best Actress over several years if she was at gunpoint and being raped."
LOL!
That is so naive, it is incredible.
In case this is news to you, women engaged in the sex industry do not enjoy the sex 99.999% of the time. It is nothing special to them any more, and scenes in movies where they have pain, humiliation and obvious discomfort inflicted on them (like being choked on a penis). In such scenes it is a certainty that they are being forced in some fashion.
Now movies where women are sexually tortured are commmon. Movies where women scream in hideous red-eyed pain are easily available; do you think that these women are enjoying it too?
We have monsters, vampires, in our society who feed off the lives of others. Lovelace was one of those victimized by them.
"Who says this wasn't an education film.....I bet plenty of gals learned new skills from that film.....Let's at least be honest: when done properly is an art that is just short of a blessed event."
Do you have a daughter?
Maybe she is learning them as well?
Is it different considering this vile trash when it relates to someone you might actually love?
Daughters are being picked up at bus stations across the country on a daily basis, hooked on drugs and forced into the sex industry. Is this something that would be acceptable to you if it happened to your daughter, too?
I doubt that more than 5% of the women in the sex industry want to do that crap. Almost all of them are addicts or afraid to try to leave. That is why so many bordellos around the world are run by criminals who will kill the girls if they try to leave.
You are correct. "I Am Curious Yellow" came out in 1967. I remember taking a date (now my wife) to see it.
Watch all of Linda Lovelace's movies made over several years including the 8mm made prior to "Deep Throat" and then tell me who is the naïve one in this exchange. Go to the adult movie annual awards show in Las Vegas, that usually overlaps the consumer electronics show, and tell me all of the women there are victims.
Sorry to break the news to you, but there are women who enjoy doing the things depicted in those movies and who will do it for free. I have known some.
I became acquainted with a woman that worked summers in a legal brothel in Nevada. The rest of the year, she was a grade school teacher in New York City. Her words were, “It is a lot of fun and I make a lot more money in three months than I do as a school teacher the other nine months.”
You would be extremely surprised at the education levels and backgrounds of the women voluntarily working in legal brothels in Nevada. If they test positive for drugs or STD's, they are fired. Many of the brothel madams and owners are women. Check the help wanted adds in a Nevada newspaper under the heading of brothels. Get out and see a little more life and then tell me who is naïve.
Heheh, I have seen plenty of life and I have seen plenty of death too.
Some women may enjoy letting themselves be exploited and used just like some women like being hung up by scores of fish hooks. But they are still the vast minority.
Most women in the sex industry are exploited and would not be there if they had the choice. That is why the sex industry has always had ties to 'white slavery' and the drug industry and organized crime.
And it may surprise you, but most 'pros' know that making the customer think she is enjoying everything is a big part of having repeat business, so they fake enjoying it, duh.
Good greif.
Sorry, I was not their customer so they were not looking for my repeat business. They were my wife's customers for required background checks. You can believe anything you want, but most of the women in legal brothels are there for the money and/or they like the work.
Maybe in legal brothels, but what percentage of prostitutes work in legal brothels as compared to the street walkers?
Most prostitutes are on the street.
So, who is exploiting who some of the women who used to work in sex movies are now directing them. Marilyn Chambers just made a new movie after 25 years retirement. Nina Hartley is directing now. Even Ginger Lynn who made movies before she was 18 and is now trying to become a legitimate actress never said she was forced. You may believe what you liie but in todays world with womens lib and every Tom Dick & Harry ready to go to bat for these women should they bring up such charges, Where are the charges?
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