It’s hard to think of what to call INSIDE DEEP THROAT. No doubt it makes an effort to be a documentary. There’s lots of charming interviews with former and current porn stars, profiles of politicians, attorneys, distributors, gangsters, and the details of the story that made DEEP THROAT a cultural phenomenon. But a documentary? The illusion of impartiality is everywhere in journalism these days. Especially in this movie.

Subject matter aside, INSIDE DEEP THROAT could probably have earned an easy “R” rating had they not included about twenty seconds of the offending oral maneuver that turned Linda Lovelace into a celebrity. As a result the NC-17 flick will likely see no large release except on DVD. There’s no doubt the movie is entertaining, if a little too cutesy in places to be taken seriously. Dennis Hopper provides narration, and the film was produced by Brian Grazer who became interested in the history of the film after talking about the movie with his grandmother. When Grazer found out the film made over $600 million dollars (and counting) he thought it might bear researching. That number, after all, makes DEEP THROAT the most profitable movie in history.

Cut Out: Hairdresser Richard Damiano had an epiphany while coiffing women’s dos and listening to them complain about how dissatisfied they were with their husbands and lifestyles in the late ‘60s: he was sitting on the verge of a sexual revolution. So Damiano decided to make a sexy movie. A few years later, the movie had made millions. Damiano took a mobster for a business partner to help with distribution. Damiano’s profit to this day? Nothing more than his initial fee.

Censorship sucks, okay? Everybody knows that. And we should all be able to police ourselves in a democracy, but it’s pretty obvious some people can’t. People should be free to conduct themselves in any amorous way they wish behind closed doors without big brother wagging fingers and talking about what’s ‘proper’ or ‘normal’.

That’s kind of the message here. I think.

It’s a little hard to see beyond all the conservative bashing that takes place. Non-liberals are made to look like unenlightened apes enslaved to a ridiculous code of passe’ ethics and ideals; small-town hicks who have no idea that the larger issues of free speech could never *gasp* be governed by decency laws.

What this documentary largely ignores is that the prosecution of the stars and makers of DEEP THROAT was unprecedented. It was, largely, a social and political experiment. Yes, modern perspective makes it easy to see a McCarthy style witch hunt of people who were just trying to make some money…and, well, get laid. But at the time, the public didn’t know that. American sexual culture was as confused then as it is now. Maybe more, if such a thing is possible. But the rosy glasses that are applied with 20/20 clarity on the past here are a little convenient a little too often. It’s difficult to look at the makers of the first wide release X-rated film as the scions of free speech that they’re painted as here, possibly because rather broad strokes of a very whitewashing brush are applied to people with ties to organized crime, violence, drug abuse, sexual addiction, and so on. At the very least, the audience should be allowed to make up its own mind…that’s sort of what documentaries are there for, no matter what Micheal Moore might have to say on the subject.

The general public in the 1970s had no experience with this kind of imagery on such a massive level. Dirty pictures have been around in one form or another since before the Greeks began decorating their pottery with ribald scenes of saucy sexiness. Stag films (and worse) have circulated in an underground celluloid black market since the advent of the nickelodeon. But DEEP THROAT, well, DEEP THROAT smashed a hole in popular culture so wide, little grannies in their Sunday best were lining up at theaters on the wrong side of town to see what all the fuss was about. The New York Times ran an article on it. And finally, Johnny Carson gave it a coveted Tonight Show monologue mention which transformed DEEP THROAT from dirty movie to dirty blockbuster juggernaut, sending tickets sales through the roof, spawning illegal prints of the movie to be made, and even causing the death of a manager who let twenty grand he was meant to bring back from a screening go missing (though no one was ever collared in that killing, of course).

Head Shot: Harry Reems was arrested by US Marshalls in connection with his starring role in DEEP THROAT and convicted. After a major indignant outcry from some of Hollywood’s biggest names, the conviction was overturned.

Those who made DEEP THROAT were largely destroyed by it, ending in the sad recesses of obscurity and regret. Writer / Director Gerard Damiano saw about $1200 for his efforts. After that, he was mob-muscled out of every drop of profit the film ever made. Cheeseball leading man Harry Reems was actually up to play the coach in GREASE before the studio quashed the idea. After Reems was prosecuted for his role in the film, he hit rock bottom, pulled a 180, and now is a shiny happy Christian real estate agent. For awhile there, Linda Lovelace recanted, and turned to Congress, stating on-record that she had been an unwilling participant in the entire making of the film, becoming a very vocal critic of pornography. Later in life, she returned to make an appearance in a skin mag at the age of 52.

The construction of INSIDE DEEP THROAT as a piece of entertainment is impeccable. Slick editing, a snappy soundtrack, unseen ‘70s-era footage of celebrities like Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, modern perspectives from manly-man intellectual Norman Mailer, Playboy’s Hugh Hefner, the always entertaining John Waters, and a great deal of levity help make what used to be a very embarrassing subject more palatable.

What’s missing is objectivity. Then again, modern audiences seem less inclined to want to make up their own minds these days.

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