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Deep Throat

Director Gerard Damiano discovered Linda in one of her 8mm loops. He owned one-third of the porn production company called Gerard Damiano Film Productions Inc. With money from his father Anthony, Louis "Butchie" Peraino owned two-thirds. Linda starred with Harry Reems in an 8mm cheapie SEX USA, the first movie produced by the Peraino-Damiano partnership.

One day while driving from his apartment to his Manhattan office, Gerard Damiano became inspired. Chuck and Linda sat waiting in his office when he arrived.

"We're going to do a film about a girl who has her clit in her throat," said Gerard. "Linda will be perfect for it. The most amazing thing about Linda is that she still looks sweet and innocent."

Damiano's partner, Butchie didn't agree. He wanted a big breasted blonde such as Carol Connors who appears in Deep Throat as Harry's nurse.

Afraid of losing Linda's $1200 salary for the film, Chuck talked Peraino into allowing Linda to blow him. She sucked him off in a couple of minutes and repeated the procedure over the following months.

Butchie's dad Tony bankrolled the movie for $22,000. "Old Tony dropped in to see his son once in a while," Linda remembers. "He came with his own small army, all wearing dark suits and trenchcoats, looking like they were trying out for an Edward G. Robinson movie."

In his sixties, Tony drove down to Florida with Linda and Chuck. The cast and crew - soundman named Norman, cameraman Harry Flecks [Joao Fernandez], Harry the gaffer, and a couple of others - for the most profitable movie of all time stayed at the Voyager Inn on Biscayne Boulevard in Miami. Though Linda claims Chuck beat her savagely on the first night of the shoot, and that the crew heard her screams, no one else on Deep Throat remembers such an ordeal. Contrary to her claim that they stayed next door, the cast and crew resided several floors away from the Traynors.

Damiano made four sex loops centered around Lovelace and a doctor played by Reems. Back in New York, Gerard shot connecting footage with Harry and Carol Connors before patching the loops into the "movie" Deep Throat. Linda and Carol never appear in a scene together and Harry sports different haircuts.

Deep Throat begins with Linda arriving home to find her friend Ellen (Sharp) sitting on a table while a man licks her vagina. Linda and Ellen talk to each other while the man keeps licking. Ellen asks him if "he minds if she smokes while he's eating?"

Linda says she doesn't enjoy sex. She's never had a bell-ringing orgasm. Ellen suggests they invite some men over so Linda can experiment and possibly find the excitement she seeks. She doesn't.

Linda visits Dr. Young (Harry Reems). After determining that her problem is not caused by childhood trauma, Dr. Young guesses that her problem is physical. An examination proves him right; Linda's clitoris is in her throat. He tells her that the solution is to relax her muscles and take a penis "all the way down." Linda tries fellatio with Dr. Young, taking the entire length of his penis into her mouth. Grateful, Linda offers to marry him and be his slave. Dr. Young rejects her offer because his blonde nurse, Carol Connors, wouldn't like it, but he offers Linda a job making house calls as a psycho-therapist. Her duties include fellatio, vaginal intercourse and anal intercourse. One home consultation ends with the patient sipping Coke from a glass dildo in Linda's vagina, while the soundtrack plays "I'd Like To Teach the World To Screw," a parody of the famous Coca Cola advertising jingle.

Deep Throat opened to the raincoat crowd in June, 1972, at the New World Theater on 49th Street. Raincoaters are men who, according to the stereotype, arrive at adult theaters wearing raincoats to allow access to their genitals while they fantasize about the women on screen.

Over the next few months, millions of Americans for the first time watched explicit sex. Frank Sinatra, Spiro Agnew, Warren Beatty, Truman Capote, Nora Ephron and Bob Woodward (who used "Deepthroat" as the name for his key Watergate source) took in the film on its first run, and eventually more persons saw Deep Throat in theaters than any other porno.

Deep Throat brought hardcore into popular culture, earning at least twice as much money as any other porno in history. It probably ranks among the top ten grossing films of American film history, along with ET, Star Wars, Rocky, etc... Deep Throat played for eight consecutive years at a theater in Hollywood until replaced by Exhausted. Accurate earnings figures are impossible to come by in porn for it is not in the interest of distributors to release accurate figures of sales and rentals, even if they know them. Most business is conducted in cash, to avoid taxes in particular and the government eye in general. Whatever the exact box office, the flick made for $22,000 over six shooting days in Miami became the most profitable film ever and inspired thousands of imitators.

Bill Rotsler: "One of the things I liked best about the film was Linda's obvious delight in what she was doing. It was infectious and made the entire film more palatable… Right now the language of porno cinema is baby talk - but inevitably some of it will become poetry." A quarter of a century later, many porn mavens believe that such a Messiah has yet to arrive.

Deep Throat arrived after the sexual revolution peaked and fewer real girls were easy. Men frustrated by reality could now turn to X-rated movies and find flesh for fantasy, vivid images on a silver screen of beautiful women sucking and f---ing. Sucking was particularly a treat as fewer nice girls gave head in the world before Deep Throat.

"Most people who watch porn fear and mistrust women," says Jim Holliday. "By sheer lack of personality they've become subjugated to the women in their lives. If I was going to write a book, a cute title would be "What Porn is all about: Blowjobs and Losers." The blow job is the one thing the average American guy wants from his woman, but she won't give it to him. So he seeks release in a porno.

"At the extremes are people who fear and hate women, who will never be able to relate to women in real life. But they are not the threat to go out and do the damage. The Pussycat theaters have a fantastic slogan that I'm surprised the anti-porn forces haven't capitalized on. It's like, "For those who never knew and for those who will never forget." Does that not smack of losers and old guys?" (Porn)

While Deep Throat did not originate the "money shot" - sperm ejaculated all over a woman, particularly her face - it gave millions their first sight of it - again and again. Though the initial purpose was to prove that the sex on film was real, pornographer Bill Margold says that the money shot represents vicarious male revenge on women. "Every man has wanted someone he couldn't have. So he harbors revenge. When we come on a woman's face or brutalize her sexually, we're getting even for the man's lost dreams."

Chuck and Linda appeared across the media. Screw got the first in-depth interview due to their early promotion of Deep Throat. Publisher Jim Buckley and Editor Al Goldstein made a sharp contrast, wrote Linda in 1980. "Goldstein was a cheap guy - loud, crude, rude, infantile, obnoxious, and dirty." By contrast, Buckley appeared neat, clean, sensitive and quiet.

Question: "What's the largest cock you've ever sucked? Is it the guy in the film or has there been somebody so large that you couldn't get it in?

Linda: "No, that's never happened. Nobody has ever been too large or too wide or anything."

"Once your throat opens, your esophagus gets large, like a sword-swallower," said Chuck.

Question: "Do you breathe through your nose?"

Linda "You have to breathe through your mouth, so whoever's going in my throat has to work in and out. As they come out, I take a breath.

Question: "Do you come even though your clit isn't being worked on?"

Linda: "Yeah, I have an orgasm every time I get screwed in the throat."

Question: "Do you enjoy the taste of sperm?"

Linda: "I love it. It's caviar to me. I can't understand why other chicks get turned off by it."

When Goldstein asked more questions about blowjobs, Linda gave him a free sample.

"The way Linda practiced oral sex, inhaling any-size erection down to the root, changed the way wives and girlfriends were expected to suck cock. Today, if a porn actress doesn't deepthroat, what good is she?" (AFW)

"I'm an exhibitionist," said Linda in 1972. "I dig doing it. I want everybody to see it. And I make good money.

"I don't have any inhibitions about sex.... I just hope everybody who goes to see the film enjoys it and maybe learns something from it."

Linda and Chuck flew to Los Angeles where Linda did a Playboy pictorial. They visited Hugh Hefner at his Playboy mansion. Hugh said he loved Deep Throat because it was more than straight sex, but also had comedy and a story. But Hefner was more interested in Linda's dog flick.

"That was terrific," Hefner said. "We tried that several times, tried to get a girl and a dog together, but it never worked out."

"That can be tricky," said Chuck. "The chick's gotta know what she's doing."

Chuck and Hugh spent the next couple of hours talking about sex with animals. At Hugh's regular orgies at the Playboy mansion, Chuck pushed Linda on to Hugh, hoping to develop his friendship with the publisher. But when Traynor realized that Hefner would never bring him into his world as a partner, he and Linda left.

During 1973, Lovelace appeared on the cover of Esquire and in a Playboy photospread. Hefner presents her in soft-focus, with gauzy pictures and clever editorial. "She has a shy innocence combined with sexual enthusiasm and an utter absence of inhibitions." Several quotes from Linda follow: "I'm not out to be actress of the year.... Deep Throat is just me, acting naturally." Her sex preferences - "...Depends on my mood...but I'd say now that I like throat, ass, cunt, one, two, three, in that order."

Eager to cash in on the Linda Lovelace phenomenon, pornographers stuck together various loops of Linda to form such awful movies as The Confessions of Linda Lovelace and Linda Lovelace Meets Miss Jones. Lovelace also appeared in several urination loops, a fist loop and a foot insertion loop.

Linda became the best-selling author of Inside Linda Lovelace. Every night for two weeks, she received a list of questions to answer on a tape recorder. The publisher added nude picture of Lovelace and created a best seller. The book's message appeared in the opening chapter. "I live for sex, will never get enough of it, and will continue to try every day to tune my physical mechanism to finer perfection."

During 1973, Linda filmed a sequel to Deep Throat directed by Joe Sarno that received a limited softcore release amidst the confusion following the Supreme Court's Miller ruling on obscenity. Dining at a Malibu restaurant with Playboy movie critic Bruce Williamson, Linda said, "Throat II will be a backward step if they take out the hardcore. I don't want to back away. I'm not looking for a big Hollywood career. I'm a porno star. I just want to be Linda Lovelace."

Linda's arrival in a Rolls limo created a sensation at the Hollywood premier of Last Tango in Paris. She thought the movie "disgusting. The sex scenes weren't believable. Hollywood should stick to comedies and Westerns and stay away from sexy, romantic stories."

Just before Christmas, 1973, Linda appeared in the '50s farce Pajama Tops at the Locust Theater in Philadelphia but the show bombed. On January 31, 1974, Lovelace was arrested in the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas for illegal possession of cocaine and amphetamines.

"After Deep Throat, the business simply passed Linda by," says Eric Edwards. "She wasn't particularly attractive nor could she act. If she'd told the truth about her life her book may not have sold as well as making up a story that claims she was forced to do these disgusting things."

Lovelace eventually left Chuck for producer and choreographer David Winters. They developed two projects, both awful: the movie Linda Lovelace For President and the book The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace. Neither condemns porn, for Linda at this point has yet to be born again.

A heavy drug user through the '70s, frequently combining marijuana with the painkiller Percodan, Linda eventually split from David Winters and married plasterer Larry Marchiano. She gave birth to her first child in 1976 and the next one in 1980.

Linda became friends with Gloria Steinem who introduced her to other feminists. The Deep Throat star then found Jesus and experienced an epiphany. All that f---ing and sucking in her past had been forced on her. She hated it. She was a victim. She wasn't responsible for her behavior. Evil pornographers forced her to do disgusting tricks at the point of a gun.

"When you see the movie Deep Throat, you are watching me being raped," Linda told the 3/20/81 Toronto Sun. "It is a crime that movie is still showing; there was a gun to my head the entire time."

Unable to find mainstream acting work, Linda and her new family lived off welfare until she published Ordeal in 1980 and in 1986, Out of Bondage. Afforded generous media coverage, she became the most frequently offered example of porn's supposed exploitation of women.

On March 6, 1987, Linda received a liver transplant at a Presbyterian hospital in Pittsburgh where she convalesced for two months before returning home to Long Island.

At last word, in the Spring of 1997, a divorced Linda worked at a computer company in Denver. After 20 years of marriage, she left her husband Larry Marchiano. Linda says the breaking point came after he attempted to assault her daughter's friend and injured her (Linda) in the process.

Amidst Linda's notoriety, it's easy to forget the few qualities that made her famous: "The fresh carnality, the air of thoroughly debauched innocence, the sense of a woman exploring the limits of sexual expression and feeling. Linda Lovelace is the girl next door grown up into a shameless...woman." (Sinema p.148)

In 1974, Linda told Variety: "I'm not going to sit here and say I'll never do another hard-core film because I was forced into this one, that I needed the money... I did it because I loved it. It was something I believed in. And if, when I'm 65 years old, they're making an X-rated movie and they need a little old lady to be in it, I'm gonna say, hey, I'm right here."

Though a one-shot wonder, Linda Lovelace became the most famous porn star by giving American men what they wanted most - blowjobs.

In the late 1960s, Peraino and the Colombo family led Cosa Nostra into porn. John "Sonny" Franzese, a Colombo member, began supplying 8-millimeter hardcore stag movies to the coin-operated peep show machines in sex shops around New York's Time Square. The Colombo family soon controlled its own plant for processing 8mm movies - All-State Film Labs in Brooklyn. Anthony Peraino's son, Louis "Butchie" Peraino officially owned the lab. A capo in the Bonnano crime family, Michael Zaffarano aka Mickey Z. ran All-State's porn operations.

Michael Zaffarano and Anthony Peraino dominated distribution of loops to Mafia-controlled outlets in New York City. According to the FBI, they sold their films secretly out of automobile trunks, coffee catering trucks, unmarked warehouses, several restaurants, a chain of meat markets and a Brooklyn candy store.

Anthony's son Louis Peraino entered the legitimate movie business through All-State Film Labs. When he presided over Bryanston Distributors in its Hollywood heyday, a company brochure said it all began in 1965 when "Mr. Peraino combined a hobby and a deep interest in cinema techniques by forming his own motion-picture processing laboratory All-State Film Labs, specializing in processing and editing facilities and high-speed animation..."

Law enforcement investigators consider Louis, along with his older brother Joseph S. Peraino, a Colombo family "associate" rather than a "made" member. One veteran investigator echoes the consensus among his peers when he says of Louis, "His grandfather was in organized crime, his father is in it, his uncle is in it, his brother is in it, so he's in it. That's the way it is. You don't get out."

That "You don't get out" theme flows through the romantic Godfather saga, the book and movie that defines the Mafia in the minds of millions. "A scene right out of The Godfather" was a common refrain amongst those who talked about Louis to the LA Times for its 1982 piece on the Perainos. Many described Louis as a Michael Corleone figure - the brightest of the Peraino men who's driven by a desire for respectability. Actor Al Pacino portrays Michael, the college-educated favorite son of Mafia boss Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), in Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather movies. Michael wants no part of the family business but gets sucked in after his father is shot and ultimately becomes the godfather.

"There is nothing ominous about Butchie Peraino," movie producer Frank Avianca told the 6/13/82 LA Times. "He's a big teddy bear." Peraino financed and distributed Avianca's 1975 movie The Human Factor, and Sandy Howard's The Devil's Rain and Echoes of Summer. "Lou wanted to make an image for himself as a decent man," says Howard. "He tried to build a legitimate business."

Linda Lovelace gives a different picture of Butchie in her 1980 bestseller Ordeal. Louis was "heavy and sloppy... What I remember most about him was his loud mouth. He was always yelling at somebody about something. And he never went anywhere without his bodyguard, Vinnie."

Louis Peraino founded Arrow Productions in New York City in 1971. The company shoots and releases Deep Throat in 1972 and the movie proceeded to gross over $100 million. In 1974, Arrow made Deep Throat: The Sequel in two versions, explicit and softcore. The master copy of the X-rated version disappeared from an Arrow Films vault in NYC in 1975 and is never recovered. The X-rated version is never released while the R-rated version flopped. The same year Linda Lovelace appeared in the R-rated Linda Lovelace For President.

In 1976 Arrow released the compilation tape The Confessions of Linda Lovelace which consists of scenes from the original Deep Throat, a scene from the later Linda Lovelace film Lovewitch, and original scenes with a Linda Lovelace lookalike who wears a curly wig.

In 1978 Lovelace begins her passionate public attack on the porn industry. In 1980 she publishes her autobiography Ordeal, and in 1986 Out of Bondage.

Arrow released Gerard Damiano's Deep Throat II in 1987. DPIII appears in 1990, DTIV in '91, and so forth.

In 1996, Louis Peraino was acquitted of obscenity charges in a Federal District Court in Las Vegas, Nevada. He sold Arrow to Raymond Pistol. In 1997, Pistol spent tens of thousands of dollars marketing the 25th anniversary of Deep Throat. His company Arrow sponsored regional deep throat contests throughout the US. The winner of the national contest will receive $10,000, a starring role in the upcoming Deep Throat: The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary, and a performance contract with Arrow.

"We originally intended the contests to provide material for a gonzo line called Deep Throat: The Quest," Pistol told the 1-98 AVN, "which would have ended with us finding our deep throat champion. We decided instead to make The Quest a series of features with actual storylines and characters, with the contests and the crowning of our champion as a backdrop."

Pistol produces under the name Ray Gunn.

From the 9/97 AVN:

On the last day of the April 1997 Erotica LA show, Arrow Productions sponsored a "deep throat" contest. Most of the attendees gathered around the stage for the display of expert sword swallowing. Contestants had the choice of deep throating either a banana or a dildo, and their performances were gauged by audience reaction. The two semifinalists were porn star Jacklyn Lick and stripper Hayley Huntington. A mini-riot almost broke out when show organizer Alisa Miller thought Lick and John Decker were about to go all the way.

"All John did was unzip his pants. He didn't even take anything out," Lick told AVN. "I buried my head in his crotch and started moving it back and forth. It was fake."

Miller freaked. "She came up behind me. All of the sudden, I felt nails scrape my entire back. I don't think she meant to, but she ended up grabbing my g-string and yanking it up between my legs."

Huntington won the event.

Pistol told the 11/2/97 Las Vegas Review-Journal that he considers porn the last outpost of "unbridled entrepreneurship," though he admits his efforts are "a twist on what the Las Vegas Chamber [of Commerce] has in mind in wanting to bring film companies to Las Vegas."

Journal: "But the laid-back Texan is also proud of his work. Bucking the gonzo trend of new videos that reduce porn to its plotless, voyeuristic essence, Pistol shares the big dreams of the "Boogie Nights" director played by Burt Reynolds. In a speech setting the movie's underdog tone, Reynolds aspires to make a film "that is true and right and demanding…where they can't leave until they find out how the story ends."

"Like the Reynolds character, Pistol believes that someday the porn industry is "is going to meet Hollywood somewhere around NC-17." To that end, he claims to have invested $50,000 in his next feature, Tarnished Night…"

Raymond plans to spend $600,000 on a World War II period piece that will "show you how X-rated movieswould be done by mainstream Hollywood."

Las Vegas has a long connection with some of porn's biggest names points out the Journal:

"Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace was arrested for drug possession at the Dunes in 1974, but the charges were later dismissed. She returned in 1976 for an ill-fated venture into dinner theater comedy: "My Daughter's Rated X" played for only a week at the Aladdin.

"Lovelace's ex-husband Chuck Traynor became controversial when Lovelace's book Ordeal claimed he brutalized her and forced her to make Deep Throat at gunpoint. After their divorce, Traynor married porn star Marilyn Chambers. The two lived here throughout the 1980s, affiliating themselves with an indoor shooting range.

"Jane Hamilton became the University of Nevada, Las Vegas theater department's worst-kept, best-kept" secret as a former UNLV official used to categorize it, when she employed her acting talents as porn star Veronica Hart.

"By the early '90s, another former UNLV student had emerged as a major porn star using the stage name Ashlyn Gere. She came back to participate in a play called "Hot Tomatos" on campus at the Black Box Theatre in 1993. She lives in Los Angeles and has slowed down her adult video work, though she still tours as an exotic dancer.

"Jenna Jameson, who acquaintances say grew up in Boulder City and attended schools in Las Vegas, is likely the biggest name currently in porn, thanks to publicity on Howard Stern's radio show and a nude appearance in his movie Private Parts.

"Porn stars are seldom arrested under prostitution laws anymore; free speech rulings have overturned cases that used to be prosecuted as pandering. But Duvall says it's the "side effects" of adult video that are illegal. "Wherever pornography is distributed it increases things like prostitution. When these businesses go in, these crimes go up. There's a direction correlation.

"The entire area around both Pistol's shops are infested with prostitutes. There's all kinds of robberies and drug deals around there.""

In February of 1998, Pistol offered Monica Lewinsky and President Clinton $2.5 million each to perform sex in an Arrow remake of Deep Throat. "This is a dead serious offer," said Pistol. "The checks are on my desk already made out to President Clinton and to Monica. All they have to do is give me a call. They are each being offered the same amount because we pride ourselves as being equal opportunity pornographers. We don't discriminate against Presidents or their lovers… It's clear that Monica possesses all the natural talents needed to be the new Linda Lovelace - if she can keep the President of the United States happy for this long with oral sex alone, obviously she knows exactly what she is doing. And with the President's reputation for being a ladies' man, I don't think he'll have any problem performing live in front of the camera with Monica. With all the talk of impeachment and resignation going on around the country it's possible that President Clinton will soon be unemployed and in search of a job. We have a job here for him, one that pays well, that he will enjoy, and that based on his reputation, he will be very good at."

Arrow's offer tops the Penthouse bid to have Lewinsky bare all for $2 million. "Just having Monica take her clothes off by herself would be ripping off the public. The President didn't keep her around to see her naked, he kept her around because she knew how to please him orally. That's what the public wants to see, and that's the offer we are making to Monica and Bill - to tell their story in words, pictures and action," says Pistol. "The President is obviously worried about his place in history, and we can't think of him doing anything more historic than being the first President of the United States to star in a porn movie. No will ever forget his name then."

In early 1997, Ron Howard announced plans to make a movie based on Lovelace's hysterical autobiography Ordeal. In late June, a riot broke out on stage during one of the Deep Throat contests and several people including Jacklyn Lick were injured. In early January 1998, Las Vegas stripper Hayley Huntington almost choked to death on a ripe banana at a Deep Throat contest in a topless club. In late February, Arrow kicked off its 25th Anniversary celebration of the mainstream release of Deep Throat with a week of porn festivities in Denver, Colorado. Two Deep Throat girls were arrested on obscenity charges. Denver resident Linda Lovelace did not respond to Arrow's invitation to join the fun.

Arrow communications director Marc Medoff says Deep Throat has grossed over $250 million, making it the most successful independent film of all time.

Arrow is online at www.xxxdeepthroat.com

800-762-4624

Arrow Productions

631 Las Vegas Boulevard South

Las Vegas, NV, 89101

New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote 1-21-73 under the headline "What Are We To Think of Deep Throat?"

Trying to write honestly about pornographic films is like trying to tie one's shoe while walking: it's practically impossible without sacrificing stride and balance and a certain amount of ordinary dignity, the sort one uses with bank tellers who question a signature. Almost any attitude the writer adopts will whirl around and hit him from the other side. The haughty approach ("It's boring") has long-since been suspected as evidence of a mixture of embarrassment and arousal. The golly-gee-whiz style ("They've gone as far as they can go!") is patently untrue, while to make fun of pornography is to avoid facing the subject at all. To call it a healthy development is another vast oversimplification that refuses to acknowledge that it may be fine for some people, and quite upsetting for others.

Then too, to suggest that pornography degrades the audience as well as the performers assumes a familiarity with all of the members of all audiences that I, for one, do not have. It even ignores what little evidence I do have about the production of the films. Not long ago, a director of several porno films, a seriously bearded young man with an interest in Cinema, told me he was never aware of any of his performers feeling degraded. "They do it because they enjoy it and because it's an easy way to make money - I think in that order. They're also exhibitionists. The camera turns them on. The women as well as the men. Sometimes, at the end of the day, they don't want to stop."

It's difficult to write honestly about pornographic films, but it's getting easier, largely, I think, as a result of all the publicity given to Deep Throat, including the recent, widely covered Criminal Court trial here to determine whether or not the film is obscene. With an early assist ("The very best porn film ever made") from Al Goldstein, the editor of Screw Magazine who isn't exactly stingy with his superlatives (a few months later he was quoted as saying that "Bijou" tops "Deep Throat"), Deep Throat bas become the most financially successful hardcore pornographic film ever to play New York. According to Variety, which now regularly reviews porno films as a service to the film trade and gives weekly box office reports on their business, Deep Throat made in Florida on a budget of $25,000, has grossed more than $850,000 at the New Mature World Theater here since it opened last June. (The New Mature World Theater is, incidentally, the former World Theater, on 49th Street near Seventh Avenue, which, in its old immature days, used to play films like Open City and Shoe Shine.)

For reasons that still baffle me, Deep Throat became the one porno film in New York chic to see and to be seen at, even before the court case, even before Earl Wilson wrote about it.

When I went to see it last summer, mostly because of the Goldstein review, I was so convinced of its junkiness that I didn't bother writing about it. Still uncertain, I went back to see it again last Sunday. The large afternoon crowd sat through what seemed like at least a half hour of porno trailers (which may be better pornography than narrative features since they're nothing but climaxes). Plus Paul Bartel's fairly amusing, non-porno short, The Naughty Nurse, as well as an old Paramount cartoon, a G-rated, absolutely straight, violence-without-sex-cat-and-mouse thing, in order to experience the dubious achievements of Deep Throat, which runs 62 minutes. Although the audience last Sunday was a good deal more cheerful and less furtive than the one with which I first saw it, the film itself remains junk, at best only a souvenir of a time and place. I'm sure that if Deep Throat hadn't caught the public's fancy at this point in history, some other porno film, no better and maybe no worse, would have.

As for Deep Throat, its pleasures - its powers to arouse - are not inexhaustible, or, at least, they are are very exhausted once one gets over the wonder and surprise at the accomplishments of its heroine, Linda Lovelace. The frame of the film - Linda's search for sexual fulfillment once she learns that fellatio is her thing - provides little room for the kind of satire that some critics have professed to see in the movie. Its few dumb gags, not including a rather funny title song, cannot disguise the straight porno intent of what has been reported to be the film's "seven acts of fellatio and four of cunnilingus."

At the risk of sounding like the usual bored critic (which I certainly wasn't the first time around), I must say Deep Throat is much less erotica than technically amazing. How does she do it? The film has less to do with the manifold pleasures of sex than with physical engineering.

It's possible - but only if one really tries - to make Deep Throat sound more significant than it is. You can argue that Linda in her way is a kind of liberated woman, using men as sex objects the way men in most porno films are supposed to use women. But that's straining to make a point that is very debatable. You can also argue, as Arthur Knight did at the trial here, that Linda and her friends show us that there's more than one way to have sex. It's almost as if he saw the film in the position of a missionary.

All of these arguments can be made - and, I suppose, they should be made - to defend the film against censorship laws that are, academically speaking, wrong. I say academically because I'm about to put myself in a corner that can't be reasonably defended: the laws are wrong but the film isn't worth fighting for. The necessity to prove a film totally without redeeming social value in order to get an obscenity conviction is, to my way of thinking, absurd. Everything created in this era - good, bad and pornographic - is or will be of social interest (my definition of social value), hence it's rather idiotic to have adults arguing this point back and forth in court. Expert witnesses, who defended Deep Throat against the charges made possible by fuzzy laws, wind up, in effect, by acknowledging the validity of the laws. In defending the film the way they do, they become parties to the foolishness of the established order.

They've been co-opted, which is, I understand, the only way to fight the laws, but I think they might have second thoughts about attempting to prove their points by citing Deep Throat as "more professional, more cleverly written" than others. Professor Knight even went on about "the clarity and lack of grain" in the photography.

We are living on the other side of the looking glass. Bad films are correctly defended for the wrong reasons. Deep Throat is described in terms that would not demean Henry Miller.

What may be worse, the film is prompting a whole new flood of inexpert, very biased writing about pornography, including this piece and other rather tortured article elsewhere. The New York Review of Books Review headed its recent contribution "Hard to Swallow," and at least two writers I've read have made bad puns on the fact that while most people are curious about porno films, they're too yellow to see them, in reference, of course, to the Swedish film of 1969 that a lot of hysterical people said was pornographic and went as far as films could go. Both claims turned out to be false.

The only possible way to write about porno films, I suspect, is to be so autobiographical that the reader gets a fair idea of the sexual orientation of the writer, of his each little quiver during the showing of the film. This, however, makes necessary a kind of journalism that few of us are equipped to practice well. When it isn't practiced well, we are apt to get the dopey film critic-confessionals that reverse the usual way of doing things. They intrude the critic's privacy upon the public.

Daily Variety 2/7/73:

If it were possible for the film trade to raise its eyebrows even higher over Deep Throat, it happened last week when that "porn chic" attraction opened at the Trans-Lux 85th St. Theatre day and date with the midtown World house where it's been running since last June. The class upper East Side booking at a traditionally non-porno site further dispels resistance to hardcore material as theatrical fare in "respectable" situations.

Pic's distrib, Terry Levene of Aquarius Releasing, said the Trans-Lux booking adds to the "pedigree and prestige" of the feature, contributes to its "future welfare" in domestic theatres and solidifies its "celeb status" for a whole new porno audience developed since Deep Throat became the target of Mayor John V. Lindsay.

Hardcore features have played some major circuit houses in the suburbs, but it remains an unusual occurrence in Manhattan. Levene reports that over the past six weeks he has gotten solid offers to book the film from every major circuit operating in the exchange (with one exception). The Trans-Lux site was chosen, claims Levene, because of its uptown east side location which, he feels, will not compete with the continuing run at the West Side Midtown World where pic has been playing to capacity crowds.

At a press conference in Boston last week, Walter Reade Jr, who runs one of the prime NY chains and who once said he would never play an X-rated film, said he would certainly book Deep Throat because of the status it has achieved. Queried in NY, Cinema 5's Donald Rugoff, whose Manhattan theatres are among the most prestigious firstrun locations, would not rule out a Throat booking (he hasn't seen the pic) and said his decisions would be made on the basis of quality, not content.

The Trans-Lux booking is thought to have bristled the management of the World who are currently awaiting Judge Joel Tyler's decision in the obscenity trial. In addition to the possible b.o. impact, and the day-and-date is bound to affect World crowds, management appears especially miffed at the advertising heralding the Trans-Lux booking. Ads for Throat at the World have never capitalized on the obscenity trial, remaining uncluttered and relatively simple. The Trans-Lux opening however was trumpeted with large ads calling "Throat"… "the film that has become the symbol of freedom of the screen"… "One of the most talked-about motion pictures of the decade"…"A 'must" by many experts, a 'no-no' by others, a personal decision for you"…etc. Those at the World who will be personally affected by the upcoming obscenity decision feel the ads could anger Judge Tyler, but Levene pooh-poohs that line, claiming his lawyers felt the come-ons were innocuous.

Daily Variety 6/12/74:

PARIS: Linda Lovelace of the US oral sex film Deep Throat, which is estimated at a $20 million take for a budget of $28,000, came late to the recent Cannes Film Fest. She said that despite her "fame" she received only $1200 in compensation.

She was not bitter for it did make her a "star" and led to two books. She also gives lectures and appears on tv shows, though admittedly there is hesitancy in allowing her on top shows by wary broadcasters and advertisers. She was even refused an appearance on a benefit show for retarded children.

She has appeared in several film court actions because of the film and always found herself being besieged for autographs by the very people prosecuting the film. She smiles that many judges and district attorneys view Deep Throat several times. Lovelace's own credo is that he oral sex film is against outmoded sexual taboos.

Lovelace states she has had letters from many couples who say she has helped their sex lives and saved their marriages. (The first showing of Deep Throat at the Cannes Fest had a record turnout with people fighting to get in.)

Lovelace arrived at the festival with Jimmy Vaughan, London based distrib of Andy Warhol, who declares he would like to produce a film with Lovelace in London. The "plot" would have a porno film star coming into contact with British society.

But first she expects to make a film in Hollywood "Linda Lovelace For President" which David Winter and Chuck Stroud will produce. Arthur Marks will direct.

Lovelace was repeatedly interviewed while in Cannes. This was her first time in Europe.

Bruce Handy writes in the 11/17/97 Time:

THE ARTS: SPECTATOR: YE OLDE SMUT SHOPPE POP CULTURE IS AWASH WITH "PORNSTALGIA." IS YESTERDAY'S FILTHY TODAY'S QUAINT?

These days, nostalgia's queasy longing attaches itself to any

artifact older than Dharma & Greg. So why not porno films? "Ah,

the good old days," one writer recently opined, "when the words

'shot on video' were unheard of, and they actually had budgets

to shoot an adult movie. <sigh>...Heck, they even were known to

have occasional rehearsals."

The passage was taken from a Website devoted to the so-called

Golden Age of Porn, which the author (a smut-loving emoticon

user?!) considers to have ranged from 1977 to '82. Maybe you

didn't know that porn had a golden age, but among aficionados it

is common wisdom that the genre's best days are behind it. This

is the very same argument made by Boogie Nights, the recently

released mainstream film about porn, which has received some of

the year's best reviews. Despite its epic length, the movie has

only one real villain: videotape, which in the early 1980s

transformed dirty movies to an even greater degree than talkies

did mainstream filmmaking. This dawning sense of temps perdu has

also inspired prominent Hollywood producers to initiate projects

based on the lives of real '70s pornographers like Linda

Lovelace and the Mitchell brothers. All of which hints at an

interesting aesthetic question: Can nostalgia blunt

pornography's ugly power? Can filth become quaint?

"You can really see a strong and distinctive line between '70s

and '80s porn, not just in quality but in the spirit behind it,"

claims Paul Thomas Anderson, 27, the writer and director of

Boogie Nights. For one thing, he says, the ease and cheapness of

videotape obviated the discipline of shooting on film, of having

to think through and craft even something as rudimentary as a

sex scene. And given the reality of fast-forward buttons, most

videomakers have chucked narrative (i.e., clothed) interludes,

intensifying the genitally drawn gaze. Not that hard core hasn't

always been an industrial-strength product designed to meet a

very specific need. But with nearly 8,000 new videos saturating

the market last year, porn, like the rest of American culture,

is a marketing-driven business selling to demographic--or in

this case fetishistic--niches, as a few recent video titles

suggest: Awesome Asians, Granny Bangers, I Can't Believe I Did

the Whole Team!

We have surely come a long way from the era of "porno chic,"

that brief moment in the early 1970s when hard-core films first

flourished on the national scene. Perhaps because of the

novelty, intellectuals chose to take them seriously, and

middle-class couples flocked to Deep Throat and The Devil in

Miss Jones as if they were pretentious corn like The English

Patient. The movies' formal crudeness wasn't necessarily a

drawback in a day that still took Andy Warhol verite seriously

and made hits out of the sloppy likes of Easy Rider and Billy

Jack. From today's perspective, it's more than just sideburns

and poochier bodies that date '70s porn--it's the lingering

hippie notions of free love and liberating sensuality that

inform the films, the idea that indiscriminately "getting it on"

served some kind of social good. In 1997 this has quaint charm

indeed.

That is also the case with Tijuana Bibles, Simon & Schuster's

recently published coffee-table collection of the dirty--and

then illegal--comic books that flourished from the 1930s through

the 1950s and featured American icons ranging from Mickey and

Minnie Mouse to Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers copulating

every bit as explicitly as any seasoned loop performer. At their

best, with a cheerful, any-port-in-a-storm ethos prevailing, the

comics have the bratty, anarchic wit of the real funnies; the

spirit is perhaps best captured, for a family magazine, by the

title of one comic: Myrna Loy and William Powell in "Nuts to

Will Hayes!" a reference to the famous censor. But for all their

insouciance, Tijuana Bibles can be wearying in extended

servings--as even the collection's editor admits.

It's hard to get past all the plumbing, which in pornography is

always both the problem and the point. The brute ability of

graphic sex to arouse, shock or bore ultimately bludgeons any

secondary claims on our attention. Or to put it another way,

Georgina Spelvin, star of The Devil in Miss Jones, is widely

considered to be the greatest actress in the history of dirty

movies, and even she couldn't help breaking character when being

sodomized; the reality of sex always trumps the art.

BRUCE HANDY, THE ARTS: SPECTATOR: YE OLDE SMUT SHOPPE POP CULTURE IS AWASH WITH "PORNSTALGIA." IS YESTERDAY'S FILTHY TODAY'S QUAINT?., TIME, 11-17-1997, pp 111.

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