For a film that even director Gerard Damiano admits, during the course of the excellent documentary Inside Deep Throat, was "not a good movie," the estimated $600 million worldwide gross says less about the film itself than it does about the very beginning of America's (and to a lesser extent, the world's) fascination with public cinematic sex.
Certainly the packed house at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood last night was a testament to the evolution of that notion, and to a large extent, that's what Inside Deep Throat is all about: Not so much the movie itself, which by today's standards is incredibly boring, but the phenomenon that both the movie's very existence and the attempts by law enforcement to suppress it have created – and the effects that making Deep Throat had on all the major players involved in its creation, most notably stars Linda "Lovelace" Boreman and Harry Reems, and Damiano himself.
Damiano was the surprise guest at last night's premiere, looking tanned and fit and not much different – perhaps a little thinner – than his on-screen persona, both in the interviews that appear throughout Inside, in the brief glimpse shown of his character from the end of The Devil in Miss Jones – and even in the pre-Throat home movies of Damiano in his "day job" as a hairdresser in his Queens beauty parlor.
Appearing alongside Bailey and Barbato during the Q&A session after the film concluded, Damiano laid a couple of rumors to rest: First, that he was made rich by the film's success – he didn't receive a dime over his director's salary – and second, that Linda Lovelace was forced, as she later famously testified before the Meese Commission and elsewhere, to perform the sex acts in the movie at the commands of her then-husband Chuck Traynor.
"Chuck was a very jealous guy, and Linda had fallen in love with Harry," Damiano recalled, "so when it came time to do her big scene, I could see she was nervous about it, so we sent Chuck down to Miami to buy some more film stock, and once he was gone, Linda gave us a great scene."
"Linda just needed to be told what to do," Damiano continued. "When Chuck told her to act in this movie, she did it, and she enjoyed doing it – no question in my mind. And later, when people told her to talk about how horrible it must have been for her to be forced to perform in the movie, she did that too."
Also on hand at the premiere was adult director Gino Colbert, who'd worked on some of Damiano's sets in the "old days," and the two, together with Damiano's son, reminisced about mutual acquaintances and memories of the early days of the industry.
"What an honor to see the master again," Colbert commented. "I have fond memories of working with him in NYC on his last pictures, and much later of his son working on my sets. He's still a great storyteller. And the documentary was mind-blowing. Just confirms what a major force he was in this industry."
But if Inside Deep Throat had only concentrated on the adult industry participants in the making and marketing of the original film, it likely would not have been nearly as interesting, nor received the acclaim it will undoubtedly garner in reviews leading up to the film's official opening on Feb. 11. Instead, Bailey and Barbato searched out some of the more famous mainstream folks, now all senior citizens, who'd been touched by Deep Throat since its Jan. 12, 1972 theatrical debut. These included Lovelace's mother, sister and best friend; directors John Waters, Francis Ford Coppola and Wes Craven; sexologist Dr. Ruth Westheimer; novelists Erica Jong, Camile Paglia, Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal; Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown (who waxes eloquently about the skin care benefits of a cum facial); talk show host Dick Cavett (who claimed he'd never seen the movie); Citizens for Decent Literature founder (and convicted swindler) Charles Keating; and prosecutor Larry Parrish and several other law enforcement officials.
On the adult side are presented entrepreneurs Larry Flynt and Hugh Hefner; veteran actress Annie Sprinkle, who talks about porn's early days – and performers Kaylynn and Mary Carey, interviewed at the 2003 Adult Entertainment Expo, displaying their ignorance (shared, to be fair, by much of the current talent pool) of Deep Throat and the controversy surrounding it.
Also interviewed are several theater owners who showed Deep Throat on the big screen in the '70s – and who here recount how the mob's share of the box-office receipts was collected, sometimes on a daily basis, by representatives of the film's owners, Anthony and Louis "Butchie" Peraino, who had previously forced their other partner, Damiano, to sign over his ownership interest.
Somewhat humorously (at least to those in the adult industry), the wife of one theater owner persistently interrupts her husband's interview to express fears that he and she might be attacked by the Perainos if they said anything amiss in the documentary. But the Perainos have been dead for several years – a fact apparently unknown to Bailey and Barbato. One of the disappointing parts of the post-screening discussion was Barbato's statement, prompted by a question about who currently owned the copyright to Deep Throat, that although the film was never registered with the federal copyright office, anyone who nevertheless attempted to duplicate it and sell it might receive "a visit" from either the Perainos, or Arrow Productions' current owner, Raymond Pistol – an idea that would be laughable to anyone who's ever spent five minutes in Pistol's company – which, of course, most of the audience hadn't.
Fenton and Barbato did manage to get an interview from Harry Reems, who hasn't talked publicly about the film in more than a decade. Good-natured and looking thinner than in his porn days, the white-haired Reems talked about having been arrested for appearing in the film, and his trial in Tennessee which resulted in a conviction for obscenity that was later overturned. He also talked about his XXX career, which ended in a fog of booze and drugs, to the point where he recalled that in his last feature, he was so out of it that he had to be carried on and off the set, and was unable to perform sex. Reems was also offered the part of Coach Calhoun in the movie version of Grease by director Randal Kleiser, but the decision was nixed by Columbia studio execs because of Reems' porn notoriety.
One particularly interesting piece of archival footage shows a younger Reems going head to head in defense of porn on a TV news program opposite the former chief counsel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, a gay-bashing anti-porn zealot who was later revealed to have been secretly homosexual, and who died of AIDS.
And then there's Damiano's recollection of Reems' attitude on the Deep Throat set, that, "He would get an erection at the sound of the camera motor."
The documentary also presents footage from Linda Lovelace's last interview, with journalist Legs McNeil, where she recounts her journey from being the world's best-known porn star, through her role as a spokesperson for anti-porn feminists – another segment shows her being interviewed alongside feminist/ex-Playboy bunny Gloria Steinem on the Phil Donahue show – to her feelings, at the time of the McNeil interview in 2002, that Deep Throat was essentially a "life lesson" for her and that she bore no ill will toward anyone involved in the production.
The above is, believe it or not, only a small sampling of the wealth of information and amusement to be found in this excellent documentary, which should be required viewing for all involved in the adult industry. It runs a very fast 92 minutes, is rated NC-17 – hey, they had to show Linda actually deep-throating Harry for about 30 seconds -- and will open on Feb. 11 at, among other venues, the Laemmle Sunset 5 on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood.
