Watching the new documentary Inside Deep Throat, I was struck by the idea that in the early ‘70s the best way to get into the legitimate film industry was through porn. In the film, director Wes Craven (Scream) talks about having to start his career in adult films and work his way up. If Craven was a newbie in the film industry today it seems likely that he would find his foothold in a much less sexy medium: the documentary.
With the expansion of cable television and the popularity of made-for-TV documentaries, work in the genre is quickly becoming an entry-level position. Any hack with a camera, iMovie and a decent budget from HBO or the History Channel can make a film. The real trick is picking the subject matter, and with Inside Deep Throat writer/directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato have chosen the most profitable subject of them all: sex. The two aren’t exactly hacks-both have impressive resumes of TV work and worked on the popular, if dreadful, Michael Alig documentary Party Monster (2003)-but it is clear that Inside Deep Throat succeeds due to a fascinating story and not the skill of the directors.
Filmed in 1972 for $25,000, the legendary skin flick Deep Throat became both the highest grossing movie of all time and the focal point of a government crackdown on pornography. The concept of the movie was that Linda Lovelace’s clitoris was in her throat. The film’s title stems from Lovelace’s impressive skill at fellatio, a rather shocking scene of which is included in Inside Deep Throat (it is rated NC-17, after all).
The story behind Deep Throat is really quite depressing. The star, Lovelace, claimed she was forced into performing in the movie and became an anti-porn crusader, but was eventually forced back into the world of smut due to poverty. Her male counterpart, Harry Reems, was made a scapegoat in the government campaign against the film and became the first actor ever prosecuted for playing a role in a movie. Because of mafia involvement, none of the movie’s actors or crew ever saw any of the $600 million in profits from the movie. As the documentary traces their stories, especially those of the eloquent Reems and the often bizarre crew members, one can develop a real sympathy for their plight and the effect working on Deep Throat had on their lives.
The movie founders when it steps away from the characters and delves more into the mafia backing of the film, especially the entirely unnecessary discussion of distribution patterns. The directors managed to assemble an impressive group of talking heads to comment on the popularization of pornography, with everyone from Gore Vidal to the outrageous Helen Gurley Brown throwing in their two cents. A few of these breaks are interesting, but Bailey and Barbato are more interested in catching a quick sound bite than really having the celebrities flesh out their ideas.
The strongest segments come at the end, alternating archival footage of Reems defending his participation in Deep Throat and a modern day interview with Larry Parrish, the U.S. prosecutor who attempted to have Reems thrown in prison. The fact that the laws that allowed for the infringement of Reems’s civil liberties are still in effect is blood-chilling, as is Parrish’s persistent commitment to censorship and prosecuting pornographers.
Of course, the threat of Parrish and like-minded religious conservatives seems rather anachronistic in today’s sea of cheap internet pornography. Deep Throat director Gerard Damiano decries the decline in the quality of pornography as the industry became more interested with flooding the markets than making truly erotic pornography.
Much the same could be said for the documentary form. Inside Deep Throat feels like an overgrown TV special, with fewer commercials and more sex (not a bad trade, really). It’s frequently misguided, badly edited and poorly scripted.
There are still great documentaries being made; Erroll Morris (The Thin Blue Line) had his greatest success last year with The Fog of War, which was insightful, intriguing, and ultimately a much more effective political statement than anything Michael Moore has ever produced. Inside Deep Throat isn’t much more than sensationalist, shoddy and, well, masturbatory.
