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Inside Deep Throat Review By Shawn McKenzie 02/24/2005 I’m a appreciator of porn (except when it affects my computer at unwarranted times), but I was kind of shocked when I saw the NC-17-rated Inside Deep Throat. I wasn’t offended, but I didn’t think that I would ever see hardcore sex acts in any mainstream ever, even though it is only for about five to ten seconds. This movie justifies its rating, and no one over the age of 17 should see this movie at all, but for those who are of the appropriate age, it’s a fascinating documentary about the most famous porn of all time, Deep Throat, and the effect on the culture of the country that it had at that time. Deep Throat opened in theaters on June 12, 1972. The plotline was simple, but inventive: Linda Lovelace (playing herself) seeks medical advice from Dr. Young (Harry Reems) to figure out why her sex life leaves her feeling unsatisfied. When Dr. Young examines her, he discovers that her “pleasure button” (that is a term I heard on VH1’s “Best Week Ever”) is in the back of her throat, and that she would have to practice some sword-swallowing techniques to get at it. Of course, the more than willing doctor volunteers his “sword” for practice, and he later hires her to be his nurse in his clinic. The movie was funny, but the acting was about what you would expect for a typical porno. Gerard Damiano, a hairstylist who owned a beauty parlor in New York City, directed the movie. When he listened to the housewives in his parlor complain about their sex lives with their husbands, it inspired him to make pornographic films. They wouldn’t be just little stag films with a Super 8 camera; they would be more like Russ Meyer films (the director best known for movies like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls)…only the sex scenes would be hardcore. He really envisioned pornographic movies and Hollywood movies merging someday in the future. The tagline in the ads say it all: “It was filmed in 6 days for 25 thousand dollars. The government didn’t want you to see it. It was banned in 23 states. It has grossed over 600 million dollars. And it is the most profitable film in motion picture history.” The documentary expands on what the tagline says above…and much more. Damiano had made it very cheaply, but apparently, he didn’t get to see much of the profits, because they had gone to his financial “backers,” a.k.a. the mob. The Peraino Family, father Lou “Butchie” Peraino and his son Phil, had pocketed most of the profits, and Damiano saw very little of this supposed $600 million. The mob had sent in bagmen to collect the cash themselves, so that’s why the filmmakers didn’t see much money coming their way. It was banned in 23 states, and the government went to great strides make sure that you didn’t see it, including submitting a report about the effects of pornography on the adult mind. They sentenced Reems to jail for five years (his conviction was later overturned) on obscenity charges. The movie goes on to explore the effect Deep Throat had on society. When it came out, it was just another porn for the raincoat crowd on Times Square in New York City, but then Ralph Blumenthal, a columnist from The New York Times, wrote an article titled “Porno Chic,” and suddenly everyone wanted to see it, from Jackie O to Jack Nicholson. Johnny Carson and “Laugh-In” even made jokes about it, and it became a pop culture phenomenon. The informant who had told Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward about the Watergate break-in was named Deep Throat (Bernstein appears in the documentary.) If it hadn’t been for the invention of the VCR, there is a possibility that porn might have gone mainstream and filtered into Hollywood movies (a plot point in the 1997 movie Boogie Nights.) Unfortunately, Deep Throat did not give the main players in the movie a happy life. Aside from Damiano’s loss of profits and Reems’ conviction, other bad things happened to them, which also happened to Lovelace. Reems attempted to go after a mainstream acting career, but virtually everyone shut him out. He had been up for the role of Coach Calhoun in Grease, but when they found out about his porn past, they didn’t want the bad publicity (the role eventually went to Sid Caesar.) He almost drank himself to death, but after doing the 12-step program, he cleaned himself up, moved to Park City, UT (home of the Sundance Film Festival), acquired a real estate license, met a Christian woman, and now lives a happy life. Lovelace, a.k.a. Linda Boreman, didn’t have such luck. According to her own accounts in her autobiography Ordeal, she had been forced by her manager/husband Chuck Traynor to perform in the movie. Her notoriety was short lived, as she ended up making only two full-length movies after that (Deep Throat Part II in 1974 and Linda Lovelace for President in 1975; both didn’t have any hardcore action in it, and the former was even rated R.) After leaving the porn industry, she became an outspoken critic of it, and she even testified to the Meese Commission against it in the mid ‘80s. In the final year of her life, she went back to posing for magazines, and on April 22, 2002, she died in a fatal car accident in Denver. The documentary shows the tragic life of Lovelace, but it does show her odd decision to become a censorship advocate, along the same lines as the Moral Majority. The film shows an interesting debate between Lovelace and Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, both on opposite sides of the censorship debate. Aside from the talking heads in the movie (John Waters and Helen Gurley Brown appear on the pro side; Charles Keating and prosecutor Larry Parrish appear on the anti side), there are a couple of interesting characters. The most memorable ones are Arthur and Terry Sommer. Arthur owned a Florida movie theater that had been showing Deep Throat. Throughout his interview, Terry, his wife, constantly interrupts and argues with him. We don’t get much information from it, but it is amusing nonetheless. Inside Deep Throat is an intriguing documentary, if you are brave enough to watch it. What is amazing is that Brian Grazer, who, along with Oscar-winning director Ron Howard, produced movies like Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind, and the Emmy-winning “Arrested Development,” produced this documentary as well. To take on such a controversial subject makes me respect him even more (and forgive him for The Grinch.) Talented documentarians Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato directed this movie, and I will be on the lookout for them more in the future because of it. The only movie that they have directed which wasn’t a documentary was 2003’s Party Monster, starring Macaulay Culkin (which was essentially the scripted version of their 1998 documentary of the same name.) I have also seen the 2000 theatrical documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye, but they have mostly done TV documentaries for HBO (all of which I have also seen.) In 1997, they did “Drop Dead Gorgeous (A Tragicomedy): The Power of HIV Positive Thinking” about HIV positive comedian Steve Moore, and in 2002, they did “Monica in Black and White” about controversial White House intern Monica Lewinsky. They also did “Dark Roots: The Unauthorized Anna Nicole” in 2003 for Showtime about Anna Nicole Smith, and even though I hated her E! Entertainment reality show, I liked the documentary about her. Bailey and Barbato were able to explore all angles of Throat, and even though they are obviously on the pro-porn side of the fence, they give the opposite argument a fair chance. I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw Bailey and Barbato walk away with an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature someday, assuming the Academy will ever have the guts to nominate them. For now, I think that this movie will shock many who venture out to see it, and whether or not you are for or against porn, you will definitely be talking about it.
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