The producers of the documentary Inside Deep Throat are sparring with a Los Angeles Times business columnist over the accuracy of their claim that Deep Throat grossed over $600 million.
It all began two weeks ago with Michael Hiltzik, who writes a Times Business section column called “Golden State,” debunked the claim, first put forth by the documentary’s distributor, in a February 24 piece headed “Deep Throat Numbers Don’t Add Up.”
The columnist wrote that “logic and arithmetic alone” are enough to show that the numbers are inflated, basing his assertion largely on contemporary box office reports. He contends that, among other things, the movie did not play a sufficient number of theaters for that kind of revenue to be possible — especially at the much lower ticket prices of the ‘70s.
Hiltzik concluded the $600 million gross was an “urban legend” based on idle remarks made in later years by the movie’s star Linda Lovelace.
Producers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato responded with a letter published in the Times on Sunday, March 6, in which they debunked the debunker. Hiltzik, they claimed, had ignored key facts, such as that the film played in many more theaters than most adult movies, at admissions that were usually twice the going rate.
They pointed out revenue sources not taken into account, such as foreign grosses, and videocassette sales from the early VCR days when porn tapes often retailed at more than $100. They factored in $26.5 million for “skimming, shenanigans and lapses of accounting.”
They concluded that if anything the $600 million estimate is too low.
Hiltzik shot back with a second column in Thursday’s Times. Titled “Bad ‘Deep Throat’ Revenue Numbers Are Multiplying,” it questioned the producers’ computational methods. Hiltzik contended that they started with the $600 million figure, and then amassed sums from various sources until they reached that total.
Where does the truth lie?
AVN.com turned to AVN Senior Editor Mark Kernes, a 22-year veteran of the adult industry, who has closely followed the Deep Throat saga over the years.
"It's always amazing to me," he said, "that while the religious right consistently uses the high profits the porn industry generates as a reason why the industry should be more heavily regulated, some mainstream media get some perverse thrill by questioning the amount of those profits.
“In the heady days when Deep Throat first came out, there was no adult industry; just a bunch of, essentially, First Amendment freedom fighters furtively attempting to produce sexually explicit material and get it to the eagerly waiting public. Accounting books were not kept, mainly because their existence would be ipso facto evidence of a crime, so any attempt to measure profits in those days would rely purely on guesswork.
“However, there are some guides. We know that thousands of theaters worldwide played Deep Throat for months — and in some cases, years —straight, at admission prices above those charged for mainstream movies. We know that XXX video cassettes retailed generally for between $99 and $139 in the early days of home video — and we know that Deep Throat was among the most pirated of video cassette offerings, even back then."
Raymond Pistol, current owner of Arrow Productions and Deep Throat, agrees with the documentary’s producers. He told AVN.com he thinks the $600 million estimate is low.
Pistol said he had spoken to Times columnist Hiltzik and told him the same thing. “I give him credit for looking into it, doubting whatever he’s told, unlike so many do these days. He just doesn’t understand the whole phenomenon.
“First off, even before video, they used to sell the hell out of 8mm for a hundred bucks or more. Lou [Peraino, who owned the movie] had the biggest 8mm operation in the U.S. Even Disney had to come to him. Deep Throat and Snow White.
“Let’s say you sold a million cassettes at 100 bucks apiece, that’s $100 million right there. Lord knows how many 8mm he sold. Lou told me he didn’t have any honest, real idea of [exactly] how many cassettes he sold, but he said, ‘We sold more than 3 million.’
“It went all over the world, theatrical, and it was re-licensed and re-licensed and re-licensed. And now it’s being re-licensed again all over the world. All the VHS, DVDs, 8mm, made all over the world, I think that estimate is low.
“There’s no way of proving [Hiltzik] wrong except by anecdotal evidence, like the kind I’ve just quoted. If one theater [a Los Angeles Pussycat, where it ran for 10 years] did $6 million, what did the other theaters do? That adds up.”
Pistol said that in the early ‘80s, the Sony Corporation ran off 100 special TVs. “They gave one to Reagan, one to Gerald Ford and Number 3 went to Lou Peraino. They did so much business with him in Beta tapes, they thought he made the industry.”
And most of those blank tapes were for duplicating Deep Throat.
