Quirky, Seamy Slice Of Life

Sun Herald

Sunday November 13, 2005

Rob Lowing

INSIDE DEEP THROAT

Rated: R

With: Linda Lovelace, Hugh Hefner, Camille Paglia, Norman Mailer.

Critic's warning: Explicit sex scenes, references, language.

Critic's rating: 8/10

IN 1972, the adult sex film Deep Throat opened in New York. Made for less than $US25,000, it went on to make more than $US600,000. Hailed as the first mainstream pornographic movie, it symbolised an emerging cultural revolution which filmmakers hoped would connect movies, art and sexually explicit subject matter.

What happened, of course, was the opposite: tougher censorship and previously good-natured pornography turned, as one commentator noted, into hard-core "yukky".

The story of Deep Throat and its repercussions is entertainingly recorded in the new documentary Inside Deep Throat. This 90-minute feature is plainly structured but vibrantly detailed, with frank comments ("it is not a good movie," says Deep Throat's director) and a wonderful pop soundtrack to evoke the times.

The interviewees are so colourful, so amusingly seedy, that this becomes a study of the characters (and characters they are) embroiled in the movie business, from the fake Italian count to the hairdresser turned porn moviemaker and the squabbling pensioners still worried about being whacked by the film's mobster backers, three decades later.

Media-savvy commentators include men's magazine publisher Hefner, authors Erica Jong, Mailer and Paglia and director John Waters. They note the way the film polarised America, from those politicians who thought it was a "feast of decadence" to the well-dressed middle-aged woman who defended "my right to see a dirty picture if I want to".

The bizarre 1970s attitude to female sexuality (that it didn't exist) is epitomised by the male judge in the ensuing obscenity trial who wasn't aware of female erogenous zones.

Filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato underscore the laughs with reminders of the film's historic significance: Nixon was re-elected on moral values, and the film's star Harry Reems was charged with conspiracy to transport obscenity across state lines (a legal first) and faced five years in jail. Co-star Lovelace, meanwhile, endured a tragic life with few rewards from the movie and, in the ultimate irony, is unrecognised by contemporary adult movie stars interviewed here.

© 2005 Sun Herald

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