Inside Deep Throat 
Directed & Written by: Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato
Produced by: Brian Grazer
Country: USA

           

Four and a half First Amendments

Reviewed by Hal Gray

And the Rocket's Red Glare.

There was a time not long ago that the term ‘blow job' wouldn't be uttered in polite society. Now that polite society no longer exists anywhere on the planet, we can mouth this epithet with impunity even around the dinner table. (Need I say, to our shame. I'm largely in favour of polite society since it now seems to be the overwhelming underdog.) How did we come to this state of affaires?

Yes, yes, there was Bill Clinton and his hijinx in the Oral Office that were beamed into living rooms around the globe, but before that there was Deep Throat, and I'm not talking about Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate snitch. No, the progenitor Deep Throat is a porn film first aired in June, 1972. A porn film with a plot mind you—a stupid, nonsensical plot, but a plot nonetheless: a woman is orgasmically unfulfilled until she discovers her clitoris is at the base of her throat. Only oral sex will set her free. The film changed the porn industry in more ways than one, but it also set mainstream America on its ear.

A prudent critic should hesitate before pronouncing a film ‘important', but I think Inside Deep Throat fits the bill. Wonderfully inventive, slavish to detail and evocative, it operates on several different levels: from the deeply personal, to the societal, from the salacious, to the altruistic. Who would think that something as elemental as fellatio could be so complex? But it is.

Deep Throat may have been a one-shot wonder if Richard Nixon in 1972 hadn't been fighting for his political life shortly afterwards. By the time the film had spread across America in ‘legitimate' theatres, the Watergate investigations were underway. So the Republicans did what they always do when they're screwing the nation, either by skimming from the pork barrel, or playing fast and loose with the U.S. Constitution, or invading lesser nations, or in this case, criminally sabotaging their political opponents. They jumped on an anti-smut crusade so no one would notice their skullduggery. (Michael Moore may be right that Americans are the dumbest people on the planet, because this ruse works every time: Nixon and the smut-peddling Communists in the ‘fifties; Nixon and Deep Throat in the ‘seventies; Ronald Reagan passing anti-pornography legislation in the ‘eighties while he's ducking the Iran-Contra scandal; and, look out, here comes George II about to revive Reagan's legislation. We don't have to ask what he's ducking.)

That Inside Deep Throat is able to succinctly capture this subtext is laudatory. However, its vision of how a dirty, poorly-made film made over thirty years ago is now influencing United States Government policy today is but one thing it looks at. The sexual revolution, the women's movement and the Mafia all come under examination. And, of course, there's the personal stories.

Deep Throat was produced by small-time hairdresser Gerard Damiano. It starred Harry Reems, who was phallically well endowed and Linda Lovelace who could swallow large objects. This simple ability was what inspired Damiano to write the script. Reems was paid $250. And Lovelace $1,200. (The film reportedly made $600 million, most of it collected by its Mafia backers.) What happened to these three principals as a result of the one week shoot changed their lives forever. One could call it an American tragedy.

I find the classic approach to documentary filmmaking Inside Deep Throat refreshing after Michael Moore's spate of docs where he's in front of the camera becoming the story. Directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato stay in the background where they should and let their bias be known through the editorial process. Also, to their credit, they look for a disparate range of opinion. What may be a criticism of Inside Deep Throat—a foundation of talking heads—is obviated by their entertainment value and numbers. Among them are Hugh Hefner, Dick Cavett, Erica Jong, John Waters, Norman Mailer, Camille Paglia, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Al Goldstein, Tony Bill, Helen Gurley Brown, Larry Flynt and various defense attorneys and prosecutors of the day.

One has to ask themselves why the film so outraged the political and religious right despite their need for a whipping boy in politically troubled times. My guess is that if Reems hadn't waved that dinky little U.S. flag around on a stick while he was counselling Lovelace on the clitoral function, and that she didn't see the rocket's red glare when she finally orgasms, none of this would be history.

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