Park City, Utah- James Bond and Harry Reems onscreen and in person the same night — that’s the embodiment of the Sundance Film Festival experience. Decades before Pierce Brosnan as 007 pretended to have sex with a bevy of beauties, Reems received real pleasure in “Deep Throat”, www.xxxdeepthroat.com from Linda Lovelace.
The scandalous 1972 porn movie cost $25,000 to make and earned $600 million, qualifying it as the most successful independent film ever and more than justifying the inclusion of “Inside Deep Throat” — a documentary about the stars and the impact of their work on the sexual revolution — in Park City’s annual orgy of indies. Reems, originally a production assistant, was elevated to the role of the doctor because, as director Gerard Damiano explains, “Harry could get (aroused) at the sound of the camera rolling.” When the government went after “Deep Throat,” Reems became the scapegoat and was convicted of obscenity (a ruling later overturned).
As the documentary shows, Reems was befriended by Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, watched his dream of crossing over to mainstream movies dashed because of his notoriety, turned to drugs and alcohol, was reduced to panhandling, underwent a religious conversion, got clean and sober and — deep breath — now sells real estate in Park City. Reems, who’s become a local big shot, looked the height of respectability when, before a sold-out audience Friday night, he thanked documentary filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”) for “letting me tell a story not just about sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and nudity but a lot more serious things, too, that I’ve never had a chance to say before.”
“Inside Deep Throat,” opening in the Bay Area on Feb. 11, in time for Valentine’s Day, allows a lot of people to have their say. “Scream” director Wes Craven talks about getting his start making hard-core porn. “That was sort of the entry-level job for many of us.”
Someone in the Sundance audience asked why Monica Lewinsky didn’t rate a mention in “Inside Deep Throat.” “We didn’t have enough time,” Bailey replied, “but she’s an implied backdrop. There’s something about (oral sex) in America that drives people crazy.” The audience was asked to raise their hand if they’d ever tried it. Slowly but surely almost every hand went up.
