A new documentary has come out about a cultural icon — what many see as one of the key milestones in the vulgarization of American culture: Deep Throat.
This is the movie with the title that became an easy laugh line for any comedian in the 1970s and 80s — and was the witty inspiration for the nickname of Woodward-Berstein’s still mysterious Watergate source. But, as Earthtimes reports, in reality the film had a very troubling subtext:
“Inside Deep Throat” is a documentary that examines the players involved in the film, the social controversy it caused and the somewhat divisive legacy it left behind. The film leaves no doubt that the movie was an important cultural lynchpin in the ’70s, but its import may have been swept away by the introduction of VCR.
As stories go, it’s more compelling, particularly the sections dealing with the film’s obscenity trials, one of which resulted in the conviction of star Harry Reems, and its complex finances. Made with organized-crime backing, the film’s supposed $600 million in profit disappeared into a network of “checkers and sweepers.”
It’s all told in a romping those-were-the-days style, and it could have been an entertaining film — except for a shadow so dark, it overpowers any lightness. The strange, sad life of Linda Lovelace (born Linda Boreman), star of “Deep Throat,” is etched here briefly.
After an abusive marriage to the man who got her into porn, Lovelace later became an activist, writing books and speaking out against pornography and the violence she endured as a battered wife. She died penniless in a 2002 car accident, having seen none of the movie’s millions. In the doucmunetary, it is shown her as saying: “When you watch ‘Deep Throat,’ you are watching me being raped.”
The L.A. Times today has a full page ad about this documentary, with raves from selected film critics (this does not include Michael Medved).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.