Inside Deep Throat
When it opened in midtown Manhattan during the summer of 1972, "Deep Throat" showed moviegoers things experienced, for the most part, only in their own bedrooms. The movie was a dingy work of porn that told the tale of a sexually underwhelmed woman who's shown by a doctor that the reason she's dissatisfied is because she's been doing it all wrong.
The film and the scandal it caused is the subject of "Inside Deep Throat," the sniggering new documentary by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. "Deep Throat" prompted government hearings, nationwide police crackdowns at adult theaters, scientific studies about the effects of pornography on the adult mind, and hyperventilating non-scientific rebuttals. It created a commercial porn industry and inspired millions of Americans to traipse to their local dirty movie houses (albeit with their hat brims pulled low) to find out what the devil was going on.
The documentary has no great overriding argument it wants to make -- neither about the politicians-turned-censors who thought the world was coming to an end nor about those who saw "Deep Throat" as the apotheosis of American liberty. It's an unfocused overview that intersperses choppy interviews and observations with clips from "Deep Throat," including some of its most notorious and explicit scenes.
"Deep Throat" cost about $25,000 and grossed $600 million, most of which wound up going to the movie's mob backers. Linda Lovelace, the movie's 23-year-old lead actress and stuntwoman (there's no other way to put it), became a star, then a media figure who went on to denounce her participation in the film. Harry Reems, the movie's male lead, was brought up on porn-related obscenity charges but continued a long career as an adult film star. The director, Gerard Damiano, went on to make dozens more pictures, including "The Devil in Miss Jones" and "Joint Venture."
Bailey and Barbato, meanwhile, have made a name for themselves as kitsch-ologists, having made movies about Tammy Faye Baker and murderous nightlifer Michael Alig. They have a habit of over-applying their teasing camp sensibility, making their work look cheap, like a debutante with too much eyeliner. Meanwhile, their production company, World of Wonder, cranks out one glib offering after the next: maybe you've seen "The Reality of Reality" or "The Christmas Special Christmas Special." Their interest in "Deep Throat" is appropriate: They make porn for pop-culture fanatics.
Narrated by Dennis Hopper, "Inside Deep Throat" speaks in the idiom of the VH-1 popumentary. It features a jukebox of evocative hits (the ones here appear to be on loan from the "Boogie Nights" soundtrack); entertaining archival footage (elderly and enthusiastic post-screening "Deep Throat" patrons); and a load of talking heads willing to say anything to avoid the proverbial cutting room floor.
The film tracks down, among many others, Norman Mailer, Susan Brownmiller, Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, Camille Paglia, Erica Jong, John Waters, Bill Maher, Alan Dershowitz, and Dr. Ruth. Some have a connection to "Deep Throat" (Dershowitz defended Reems against those obscenity charges); some just want to talk about it. The movie often feels like an episode of VH-1's "Best Week Ever" circa 30 years ago.
The movie tumbles forth in patchily edited sequences that obscure any sort of provocative momentum, and the opening third is awash in '70s Time-Life cant ("As the sexual revolution was taking the country by storm. . ."). Many of the original "Deep Throat" players, who are interviewed, come off as jokey and utterly delighted that someone still wants to put a camera on them. Only when the film's content is deconstructed does a ray of insight appear.
Like the specials Bailey and Barbato produce, the frissons and frills are fun. (Jong, for instance, who's among the least grotesque people in the film, dispels the myth of the vaginal orgasm.) But an attempt to say something about the zeitgeist of an era has to go somewhere, and this film doesn't. "Inside Deep Throat" doesn't want to be arch or insensitive. A lot of its material is played straight, but twitches of tabloid and camp afflict the film's tone like a nasty tic.
For instance, the documentary is neither mature enough to cut an interview with Dick Cavett -- who admits to never having seen "Deep Throat" -- nor patient enough to devote more time to the sad story of Lovelace, who died three years ago at 53. She was used by her director, her abusive boyfriend, and, to an extent, by some feminists who took up her cause. Later in life, with nowhere else to turn for an income, she exploited herself, posing for adult magazines. Bailey and Barbato appear to recognize Lovelace's human tragedy, but like any decent pornographers, they seem to prefer a bared bottom to a bared soul.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.
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