Porn Valley- The documentary Inside Deep Throat contains a number of choice nuggets provided you’re willing to peel the layers to find them. There’s a little piece about Deep Throat’s, www.arrowfreedom.com trial in Tucson with the observation that it was the first attempt to stop Deep Throat on grounds of interstate transportation of obscene materials.
Annie Sprinkle is among those interviewed as well as director Gerard Damiano. Sprinkle was working at the Rialto Theater in Tucson at the time making $5 bucks an hour. Sprinkle explains how she got there, that she fell in love at the age of 17 and went with her boyfriend on his motorcycle to Tucson.
“I didn’t know what to do in life,” says Sprinkle. “But I never imagined working in a porn theater or working in porn movies.”
Sprinkle remembers being taught how to make popcorn and sold tons and tons of it. Sprinkle also says she knew the soundtrack of Deep Throat by heart and that Harry Reem’s dick looked like it was 1.000 feet tall on the big screen.
“I wanted to be like Linda Lovelace,” she says. Sprinkle’s other recollection is the fact that Deep Throat brought in tons of money. And John Jacobs, the theater’s manager, agreed.
“I was young; I was bold and it never occurred to me that there’d be any legal ramifications,” Jacobs says.
Robert McNeil, a retired FBI agent who was on the case, says he went to the US Attorney and got a search warrant looking for indications that the movie had traveled interstate. Jacobs states that the theater’s existing print had worn out and so went to the airport to pick up another print from a freight forwarder. That’s when the FBI had its case and Deep Throat went to trial. Sprinkle was subpoenaed and talks about how she met Damiano and was instantly enthralled by him.
There’s no indication what the outcome of the trial was other than the fact that Sprinkle makes no bones about fucking Damiano in his motel room. [Would this have been grounds for a mistrial?]
“I was very attracted to him,” she confesses. “He was very Italian and made funny, sick jokes. I went back to his hotel and he got me.” For his part, Damiano says he got Sprinkle set up in New York with an apartment afterwards.
“To this day I love her,” he says.