Porn Valley- When you hear the behind the scenes story, you wonder how Deep Throat, www.xxxdeepthroat.com ever made it back on to the silver screen in 2005. Much less the first time in 1972. But after 33 years and something of a bureaucratic nightmare, only topped by Linda Lovelace’s variety of hairdos, porn’s all-time classic makes a return engagement starting Thursday night

It re-premieres 10 pm in Los Angeles at the West Hollywood Laemmle, Sunset 5 located at 8000 Sunset Blvd. Industry talent are more than cordially invited to attend the event and join a growing list that includes Lexington Steele, Anita Cannibal, Laurie Holmes, Seymore Butts, Cousine Stevie and Jesse Jane.

Anyone who works within the adult industry should call Freedom Distributors, 818-830-4919, or e-mail [email protected].

“You wouldn’t believe the hassle we’ve gone through to get the movie back on screen,” says Joey Strange of Freedom Distributors. “Deep Throat is on a re-mastered 35mm print. This isn’t a DVD showing. Going through the film labs in LA, we had one lab pick it up. This had to be done on an all-volunteer basis, besides. But because there was penetration and hardcore, somebody walked by the bay at night, saw that it was adult, went to the VP and had us thrown out of the lab halfway through the job.

“I’m not mentioning any names,” Strange continues, “Then it got picked up by another lab. A VP saw it and pulled it out of the machine immediately and sat it on his desk. We finally found a lab to do some of the prints that we needed at $900 more than they charge mainstream. Like the original quote to us was $1100 per reel. Once it got through all the way to the end we’re paying something like $2000 per reel. $2100 actually. It gets better. Now for the rest of the prints we need, we need to go out of state to Oregon to get it done. Apparently all those Free Speech fights didn’t mean dick. We explained to the people, this has already been to the Supreme freakin’ Court and they called it not obscene. But it comes down to the fact that they’re allowed to refuse service to anybody they want to. And to the entire porn industry, they are refusing service to, regardless of the cost.”

Paul Interlandi, who re-mastered the Deep Throat print for the DVD edition, tells me he’s been to three different labs to get this job done. “One lab worked on it two and half days and then dumped all my stuff out of their computers and handed me back my tapes and tell me I had to go elsewhere,” says Interlandi.

After he got done developing the negative at another lab, Interlandi was waiting to do the audio tracks and sync it up to make prints. “During the night while the sound was being developed they decided just to hand me everything back before they completed any of that work.

“We’re using a special process,” continues Interlandi. “In the United States, the only thing we had on Deep Throat was print that was rejected. It had flaws on it. When I did the DVD of Deep Throat I cleaned up a lot of the flaws. But the problem about making a print from that print is that you lose three generations by the time you get to a final print. The other thing is that you also copy, three times, all the dirt and dust and scratches that have happened to that print. Instead of doing that, what was advised to me by a number of the labs, is that it would be better to uses the Telecine that I did and make film from that.

“At least a lot of the dust and scratches had been removed. Plus we spent a lot of time color balancing and re-timing the scenes so they look good. But what’s happening to all film especially film made in the Sixties and Seventies is that it’s color shifting now. We fixed that problem as much as possible in the Telecine. And so making prints of it would have only copied the flaws that we had. So we did this film process which was very expensive. It probably added $12,000 to $15,000 to the cost of this but Ray Pistol wants to do the best job we can possibly do to save the film. Unfortunately nobody else in Los Angeles feels the same way – that the film’s worth saving. Whether or not it’s an historical film or has importance to society in general, it doesn’t seem to matter. They’re not willing to make copies of it.”

So far Interlandi has been able to have five prints struck with another five scheduled. “Depending how this weekend goes we’re going to maybe need another five on top of that,” he says. ” And if Inside Deep Throat gets picked up to a wider release, then we may need a lot more.”