WWW- As hard as this may be to swallow, it’s been over 30 years since the theatrical release of Deep Throat sparked the pornography revolution, defused the sexual revolution, made stars, destroyed lives, divided the left and united the right. But the $25,000- production that ended up grossing more than $600-million (U.S.) can still get it up long enough to incite a little controversy.
Nobody knows this better than the filmmakers of Inside Deep Throat, a fantastic fuckumentary chronicling the before, during and aftermath of the 1972 porn classic – in which Linda Lovelace plays a woman whose happy button is buried in the back of her gullet.
Predictably, Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey have come under fire from blowhard feminists, including Katherine McKinnon, for, among other things, promoting rape, dismissing the tragedy of Lovelace and dissing the women’s movement. Add to that, we’re talking just minutes after they’ve read Manohla Dargis’ New York Times review, which accuses them of “historical reductionism,” and you have two bitchy filmmakers.
“It’s just a muddle-headed wrong review,” says Bailey. “It’s so frustrating that the lens through which some people are looking at this film is so distorted by prejudice, they’re not really seeing the film that’s actually been made.”
Narrated by everyone’s favourite perv Dennis Hopper, the movie that has actually been made is an earnest and ambitious, albeit MTV-paced, attempt at addressing all these contentious issues in a very limited period of time. It should be noted that most reviews have either been rave or at worst, slightly banal criticisms of the campy whiplash editing.
Furthermore, if Bailey and Barbato’s first viewing of the original hardcore fellatio flick was any indication, then the mixed reaction to their tribute should be of no surprise to them.
Barbato takes me back to Christmas Day two years ago. They had invited a bunch of friends for dinner and decided to serve up a screening of the world’s most notorious blow-job movie for dessert. It turns out they should have stuck with the more traditional bread pudding.
“It didn’t go over as well as we thought it would, which is very interesting because our friends are pretty sophisticated urbanites,” Barbato says during a three-way phone interview with his partner. “I mean we all loved the fashion but once the clothes came off, everyone started squirming. We have a big wide-screen TV set, so everything was huge and when it started getting into the genital close-ups, we were all thinking ‘Eww.’ Within 15 minutes people were asking if maybe we should play some poker instead.”
For Barbato, the anticlimactic experience served as an important reminder that sexually explicit imagery in a public setting has become foreign and almost unconscionable. Bailey had a similar reaction – once he got over the sideburns (on both men and women) and the breast sizes (on both the men and women.)
“People were a little bit hairy and out of shape so it was kind of shocking,” says Bailey. “Today, it’s all about being pumped up, smooth with no hair and bronzed. The human body has almost become a fake mechanical item.
“The second thing that struck me was the film itself. It was like, ‘Gee, that’s it? Everybody went to see this film?’ Because by today’s standards, it’s not that good.”
No, it’s no masterpiece – that’s for damn sure. But it’s couched in a fun kind of cornball frivolity and at the time the plot was groundbreaking, if not jaw breaking, in that it was the first film to salute clitoral orgasms! But as Inside Deep Throat points out, it wasn’t until a New York judge put a statewide ban on Deep Throat that it exploded into a nationwide phenomenon. The insatiable appetite for watching Lovelace go down on Harry Reems illustrated there was money to be made in that there hardcore. Thus the 23-year-old small-town girl with the world-class gag reflex control inadvertently triggered the smut factory that is the billion dollar, widespread pornography industry we know and love today. Not surprisingly, many blame the commercial success of Deep Throat for corrupting the sexual revolution – including Barbato.
“The ideals went out the window and I think it’s kind of sad, because that innocent exploration has been replaced by cynical exploitation,” he says. Adds Bailey: “What we’ve accepted is this schizophrenic split where we have unlimited access to hardcore in an extremely private, furtive and shameful fashion, while any grown-up discussion of explicit sex has been completely exiled from the public domain.”
This could explain why the two L.A.-based directors had such a hard time getting the old pornographers to go on camera for their behind-the-scenes look at Deep Throat.
“Whatever did happen during the sexual revolution, a lot of people who participated in it and were pioneers in it are still really shame-faced about it and would sooner not revisit it,” says Bailey.
Eventually though, most of the key players came on board: Deep Throat director Gerard Damiano, who didn’t see a penny of the revenues, and Reems, who’s now Born Again. As well, the usual suspects dumped their load on the subject: John Waters, Larry Flynt and Hugh Hefner. Notable absentees include Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, who both ran to Reems’ aid when Nixon’s posse prosecuted the ‘stached stud for distributing obscenity.
“Oh, we considered having them in the film, and they considered not being in the film, and that’s sort of like a metaphor for the times that we live in and the conflicted ideas people have toward pornography and sex in general,” says Barbato.
Beatty and Nicholson weren’t the only ones. Celebrity endorsements for the sexual revolution began to dwindle right around the time Lovelace (real name Linda Boreman) came out and said that every time someone watches Deep Throat, they’re watching her get “raped.” Coming from the all-American sweetheart, who once championed pornography as the ultimate form of freedom of expression, this revelation was a bit of a mood killer to say the least. But it was also just the ammo the women’s movement needed to further their cause, thus turning the whole issue of the movie, and now its documentary, into a minefield of political correctness.
“We were very careful in making this film,” says the very English Bailey, who seems genuinely gutted by the accusations. “The Linda Lovelace story is a very complicated story. And to be accused of making fun of her or not paying true homage to her pain and suffering is inaccurate and makes one cross.”
At this point in the interview, Bailey and Barbato erupt into a bitch fest and start talking over each other. Their biggest beef, apparently, is that some critics have accused them of blaming censorship in the arts on Gloria Steinem and co.
“That notion is way off base,” says Barbato. “We’re actually giving them props in our movie for foreshadowing the moral dilemma we’re in today. As well, we were trying to illustrate that people’s positions are so immersed in cement that the dialogue doesn’t exist. It’s one thing or another. But guess what: it’s not one thing or another and I think it’s particularly sad when people who are supposed to be on the same side, i.e. socially aware liberals, can’t even discuss the complexity of the issue.”
And to think, all this over a little head.