Inside Deep Throat

There are a lot of things people can accuse me of: stealing pickled eggs, chasing ducks in Hoskinson Park and taking a dump on Joseph in the Arvada Nativity Scene. Hey, I had to go and I wasn't gonna crap on Jesus. Who ever looks at Joseph? Besides, if they didn't want me shitting on it, the City shouldn't have put it across the street from the Tavern and left it there until February. I didn't crap on Joseph in December; you can put that on my tombstone. Other than the Joseph incident, you won't get me to confess to anything (secret hint: I did wrestle the ducks. Oh, and I stole the eggs, but I did not paint the Anarchy A followed by "nercky" on the pottery studio at Miller Cottages--let the ladies make pots in peace, and nobody takes a revolution seriously if you can't even spell the ideology it's rooted in).

But for all the things I may be accused of, nobody can say I don't know how to have a good time. I do. even by myself. Even by myself crying. Even by myself crying so hard I can't read the instructions on the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese my wife left for me because she's going to a "crafts party" and I'm so fucking hungry, why the hell can't they print this shit larger? I mean, most of the other adults eating this must be crying too. Point is, I know how to get a little crazy, and that's why I took the Denver RTD 52 to the 0 to metropolitan Denver on Friday night with a big, icy cold bottle of cough syrup tucked inside my jacket. Well, not my jacket, Mrs. Filthy's. I lost mine playing dice. You're not supposed to eat or drink on our city buses, but I find the drivers leave you alone if you have cough syrup, occasionally hack loudly and say, "I'm bleeding."

My destination was the Landmark Mayan, a once-grand movie house now chopped into one semi-grand theater and two unbelievably painful and shitty little ones. But they show the artsy movies that pretentious assholes in big cities are drawn to like Born-again Christians to SUVs. The lovely Ms. Robitussin and I were headed to see a new documentary about the making and aftermath of the really crappy, but wildly profitable 70s porno Deep Throat.

Sadly, Inside Deep Throat tells you a lot more about how many ways a documentary maker with too big a budget can fuck up a movie than it does about porn. Deep Throat benefited largely from its release in the sexual-revolution of the early 70s and the publicity generated by its being banned in some major cities. The movie is about a hairy woman (Linda Lovelace) whose clitoris is in the back of her throat, so the only way she could orgasm is by deep-throating cocks of equally hairy men in static scenes with bad lighting. It's a pretty uninteresting and badly acted porn, but they do show parts of it in this documentary.

Inside Deep Throat is a brief and flashy look at a lot of the issues surrounding the movie, featuring way too many irrelevant talking heads and far too little depth on all of the interesting details. Its star later denounced porn and claimed that she was forced into it by the filmmakers and her Svengali boyfriend. And then, she later turned back to porn for money before being killed in a car crash. The male lead, Harry Reems, was prosecuted on obscenity charges, was cleared, tried to make a name for himself in Hollywood and became a desperate drunk and drug addict panhandling on Sunset Boulevard. The mob controlled the movie's distribution, forced the director (Gerard Damiano) out of profit sharing and had an intricate scheme for collecting their money from theaters and nudging out anyone making too much off it. Damiano was a hairstylist who was also apparently a swinger who became a well-known porn director. The movie was at the center of many First Amendment battles and used as a prop by Nixon to appease conservatives. It was also the focus of a women's lib assault on porn for degrading women.

Any one of these topics would make for a fascinating movie. But Inside Deep Throat does a half-assed job with all of them, leaving more questions than answers. Some of its conclusions--that porn is no longer art but mass-marketed shit, that porn survived the legal attacks and changed our society--are as old and tired as a Canal Street whore at seven a.m. Throughout the movie, a present-day Reems recounts his story while sitting in his huge, fancy house. But nobody bothers to say when or how he got his shit together and afforded such a damn nice hunk of property. The movie hardly focuses on Lovelace other than to praise her for being able to suppress her gag reflex and looking like the girl next door. Was she really forced into porn? Did she really mean it when she renounced porn, or when she got back into it? What about the mob tie to porn, and does it still exist? To what lengths did they go to control porn?

The movie doesn't offer answers. Directors Terry Barbato and Fenton Bailey are more interested in jamming twelve pounds of dazzling shit into a ten-pound bag. No interview can proceed without hyperactive jump cuts to tangentially relevant footage or airplanes, cars or food. New footage is forged to look vintage. I swear, the directors think the MTV generation is their audience. There are also way too many irrelevant talking heads waxing poetic about the meaning of the movie. Who gives a goat's ass about Norm Mailer and Gore Vidal? Let the two of them bicker and buttfuck in their own movie. When was the last time Dr. Ruth was relevant? And all I know about Erica Jong is that some erotic bullshit she wrote was in the first Playboy I ever saw. Even as a twelve-year old I knew it was crap. Dick Cavett is here, talking about how he didn't even see Deep Throat. Thanks, Dick. These people are famous, but not enlightening. A gratuitous shot of Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty with Harry Reems only confirms Inside Deep Throat's starfucking interest at the expense of thoroughness.

The movie also makes the mistake of raising the makers of the movie up on their shoulders as some sort of First Amendment champions. That's total bullshit. In hindsight it can appear that their struggle was part of something more ideological, but all those old men and the mob cared about was protecting their profits. To pretend they were fighting for the rights of all of us is pure garbage. It also brings up, but doesn't explore, the issue of whether porn is degrading and hurtful to women. You'd think that would be worth discussing since they claim this movie opened the porn floodgates. A bigger question is how did the women's movement go from condemning porn to now when lesbian professors teach porn in universities and claim it's liberating to watch? I rarely hear women complain about porn nowadays, so is that awful plastic shit they make now somehow less offensive?

Inside Deep Throat also keeps referring to Deep Throat as art, which is clearly isn't. It's a crappy, low-budget porno. So is porn now, but in different ways. Saying one was better than the other is like complaining that your bowel movements are as good as they used to be. Bailey and Barbato ask modern porn stars if they've ever seen the movie and all say no. I think we're supposed to feel sad. But why? It was a shitty movie. Better to ask them if they've seen Raging Bull because that has a hell of a lot more to do with making good movies than Deep Throat.

The whole process of watching this movie was all the more brutal because Robitussin now apparently makes an alcohol-free cough syrup which I bought. The Mayan's upstairs theaters have shitty sound, uncomfortable seats, a very steep pitch and less legroom than the economy section of United Airlines. My knees were in the ears of the person ahead of me. And worst of all, the people who see movies at the Mayan are consistently the most pretentious and self-impressed cocksucking motherfuckers in the world. They talk back to the screen throughout the movie to show everyone how fucking enlightened and liberal they are. Shut the fuck up, you losers. Shut the fuck up and watch the movie. I don't give a syphilitic sore how much you agree with the porn stars on screen, or how little you like the conservative prosecutors. Shut the fuck up and let me watch. Two Fingers for Inside Deep Throat. Don't bother to see it, and don't rent its subject matter movie. At least not while Candy Bottoms is a sexy 54-years old and still cranking out porn that matters.