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t speaks volumes about America’s conflicted attitudes toward sex that the country’s most profitable film tells the story of a woman whose clitoris is lodged in her throat. Produced in 1972 for $25,000, Deep Throat has since grossed more than $600 million — proof that the only better publicity than public controversy is an actual obscenity trial.
When Deep Throat was released, it was the first mainstream film to feature hardcore sex. While hundreds of thousands of Americans waited in line in broad daylight to see star Linda Lovelace practice her considerable talents, the Nixon administration used outrage against the film to distract from the war in Vietnam. Sound familiar?
As the forthcoming documentary Inside Deep Throat illustrates, Deep Throat didn’t just spawn an industry, but a culture war that still rages. After teasing apart the skein of reactions — titillation, disgust, and nostalgia — from 800 hours of footage, directors Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey (Party Monster) told us how they did it. — Justin Clark This is the first NC-17 movie released by Universal since 1990, an accomplishment in itself. Whom did you have to fellate?
Bailey: Brian Grazer, the producer, is the one that made that happen. He has a lot of weight at Universal.
Barbato: There was never any discussion about what could or couldn’t be in the film. They were very cool. You mention in the press notes that the first time you saw Deep Throat, you were so bored you turned it off.
Bailey: We weren’t bored, we were mortified. It was surprising because we could sit around watching incredibly violent movies, but watching sex was something we couldn’t handle as a group. Was it difficult to comprehend the spirit of a more sexually naïve age?
Bailey: We took our marching orders from the original movie. There’s an aspect of documentary about it, because Linda Lovelace was a real person who could do this amazing thing.
You’ve said Deep Throat succeeded because it was a comedy, so that people felt comfortable talking about it. Do mainstream filmmakers still need an excuse to put sex in a film?
Barbato: Hollywood made a choice back in the ’70s to go for violence over sex. I don’t think filmmakers need an excuse, but sex by and large isn’t what we expect from the movie industry, it’s become a privatized experience.
Bailey: Sex is such an integral part of our lives, whatever people say. It’s odd it has been so taken out of cinema. It should be more noteworthy when sex isn’t in the movie than when it is. The director of Deep Throat, Jerry Damiano, wasn’t trying to be the founding father of the adult movie biz. He was just trying to introduce sex into mainstream movies.
You mention that a lot of acclaimed filmmakers started out making porn movies. What influence has porn had on recent mainstream film?
Barbato: I think back then, there were more people behind the scenes who graduated to the mainstream, directors like Wes Craven and Coppola. Now we see more people in front of the cameras graduating. Today it’s Jenna Jameson and Paris Hilton. What about its influence on reality TV?
Bailey: It has everything to do with reality TV. Linda Lovelace can be seen as an early example of a reality star. She’s an ordinary person with the kind of challenge you might see on Fear Factor. Instead of eating a bug, you now have to swallow this. It’s also interesting that 1972, when the movie came out, was the first time surveillance cameras were put up in Times Square, though they were taken down within a year because of protests. Also, the Loud family was put on PBS [in the series An American Family], and that was the prototype of a documentary reality series. You draw a connection between the opening of Deep Throat in June 1972 and Nixon’s landslide re-election five months later, but the movie was ultimately vindicated, despite the attacks against it. Should the forces of sexual liberation today take heart?
Barbato: The forces of sexual liberation today are so bogged down with the commercialism of sex. There was a hope in the 1970′s that today has become so cynical that it gets confused. Largely because of the huge commercial success of Deep Throat, the role sex plays in selling everything creates a moral dilemma in terms of people’s need for sexual liberation. Sex is everywhere but nowhere. It’s everywhere we look, but our dialogue exists behind closed doors. Add that to the role sex plays in the commercial world and it’s very complex and confusing, even thirty years after the Pill.
Bailey: I don’t think there is much hope, because the battle has shifted. Thirty years ago the government was the monster. Today it is ourselves. Even while they’re providing pornography on hotel televisions, corporations will publicly freak out about it. There’s an ever-increasing divide between what people get publicly and privately. Your movie doesn’t focus much on Chuck Traynor, Linda Lovelace’s husband and manager, whom Lovelace later publicly accused of brutalizing her and forcing her to do porn at gunpoint. What conclusions did you draw about Lovelace and Traynor’s relationship while making the documentary?
Barbato: Linda was definitely a victim, though based on people we talked to, it doesn’t seem like there was a gun to her head. That’s not to belittle what it meant to be the victim of spousal abuse, especially back then, before the concept entered the zeitgeist. Chuck Traynor went on to be with Marilyn Chambers, who also learned how to perform deep throat via hypnosis techniques. But her stories of life with Chuck are very different. n° Inside Deep Throat opens in select cities February 11.