Porn Valley- Buying Deep Throat may have been the best business deal Ray Pistol, www.arrowfreedom.com ever made. Pistol, now the owner of Deep Throat is featured in a Linda Lovelace tribute contained in the documentary Inside Deep Throat.
It’s noted that Deep Throat, as highly successful as it was, was a millstone around the neck of its owner Butchie Peraino. Pistol refers to a past conversation with Peraino who said to him that ever since he made the groundbreaking porn film, Peraino was either in prison, on parole or under indictment.
“They’re never going to let me go as long as I stay in this business and I’m not getting any younger,” Peraino supposedly told Pistol. “The last years of my life I want to be able to live in freedom. I said this is really a terrible thing to be the guy who owns deep Throat. That sounds kind of cool.” In 1996, the Perainos sold their interest in Deep Throat and it’s sequel to Pistol, a Vietnam vet, for $500,000.
“I feel that I’m doing more today to help my country than I ever did in a race paddy in Vietnam,” Pistol states. “We decided if you don’t honor your own history than your history will not be. And so this is our way of honoring the history of our business. We got together and decided to call it Legends of Erotica.”
Pistol’s comment segues into a piece about the annual Legends of Erotica event held at Pistol’s Show Girls in Las Vegas every year to coincide with the AEE. Footage shows Linda Lovelace being honored with Bill Margold hosting the show.
“The whole purpose is to remember who came before us and who led you out of the wilderness,” says Margold in his speech. “Linda Lovelace was the most important female of the first generation industry because it was Deep Throat that literally broke down the barriers and became the first sociologically acceptable adult entertainment product. So in memory of Linda Lovelace we are inducting her into The Legends of Erotica.” Eric Edwards comes on to say a few words.
“Linda was my first first fuck in this industry,” muses Edwards. “She twisted my arm. She held a gun to my head and forced me to have sex.” Edward’s comments are a reference to remarks Lovelace would make later in her life that she was forced at gunpoint to make porn.
“I was there in those days, I was with her in those days,” Edwards says. “And as far as I’m concerned she was a cool girl. I had a good time with her.” Lovelace’s daughter also comments and notes how she keeps her mother’s ashes in a pill box which she wears on herself everywhere she goes. She also remembers how Janis Joplin music was played at her mother’s funeral, Joplin being one of Lovelace’s favorite artists.