Review of Inside Deep Throat (2005) by Anthony S — 23 May 2005

This is one of those movies that could have slipped through the cracks--an indie I was interested in watching, with a very limited window to catch it (I hadn't even thought it would play here, in [i]Singapore[/i], at all!), but I wasn't intrigued enough to have blocked out a spot on my calendar just to see it. So I had the impulse to get out of the office today and watch something (anything!)... and since I've already seen [i]Sith[/i], I figured, why not this?

While watching [b]Inside Deep Throat [/b]hasn't hit me like a sack of bricks and made me glad that I managed to catch it, because really it's rather a pedestrian documentary at its very core, there's definitely some good in here, with interesting moments (hearing the story of [i]Deep Throat[/i] and catching snippets of it was cool, though I'd have appreciated it if a movie exploring the boundaries of censorship wasn't--you guessed it--censored) peppered through an amazing backstory. If you didn't know it all before, it's pretty fascinating stuff: basically, [b]Inside Deep Throat[/b] shows us how the movie got made, from its director former hairstylist Gerard Damiano getting mob money for financing, through to its tragic, widespread repercussions in the life of naive star Linda Lovelace a.k.a Linda Boreman and male lead Harry Reems' conviction in a court of law under an obscenity charge, for acting in a movie that was deemed socially deviant.

Question: was the United States government ever this morally pugnacious? In this film, and I'm not inclined to disagree, the answer is a horrifying yes. The movie, with its decidely liberal leanings, spells it out not with subtlety but with a sledgehammer blow or six: it's all here, with interviewees obligingly relating how Reems would have gone to jail if the Republicans had gotten another turn at bat. Even better was an interview with the decidely conservative prosecutor for Reems' case, Larry Parrish, whom an FBI agent identifies as one of the finest men he's ever known (how's that for a set-up!) and initially appears perfectly normal in explaining that he was going strictly by the enforcement of the law (or lack thereof), which is a fair enough basis to be going on when you're on the government's payroll. But soon we have disturbing footage of Parrish being incapable of recalling any particular damaging moment from a movie he deems to be so evil when asked. He also chirpily rounds off the documentary by proclaiming that he believes there's enough support for these tough obscenity laws (they're still on the books, folks!) for them to really be enforced now. Ouch.

I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, and allowing myself to segue into a criticism of censorship policies, which is partly what the movie was aiming for, I suppose. At least, if nothing else, the movie did make me think a little more on these issues--how the sexual revolution of the 70s seemed about ready to hit its peak (hey, the movie punned on this constantly, cut me some slack), with Damiano convinced that mainstream Hollywood and hardcore porn movies would soon merge and hit a happier balance, only for it to regress. Sure, our society now treats sexuality in a much more blase fashion, but there are still things that are taboo in Hollywood movies--and there isn't even a Hays Code around anymore for people to adhere to! Of course, the question of how much the government should intervene in the media and arts scene is always a thorny issue, and here we've got archival footage of a young, scruffy Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty mumbling hippie support for Reems.

Linda Lovelace's story was sad from start to finish too--having seen her sunny and fresh-faced and revelling in the media attention she was getting for starring in such a surprise hit, it was a real shocker to see her shrink into herself and start to publicly repudiate her past (her testimony to Congress, saying that everytime someone watched [i]Deep Throat[/i] they were watching her get raped--that was pretty scary), only to return to her porn star roots in her 50s because... well, she needed the cash.

So why only a 6? Well... much as the documentary was amusing (a highlight interviewee would be film distributor Arthur Sommer, who is constantly harangued by his wife Terry in the background throughout his attempt to tell his story) and quite revealing (the original movie's impact on the porn industry is clear from this movie), sometimes its effect on the political scene at the time is overplayed. And some of the interviews were woefully thin: Larry Flynt appears for a grand total of five seconds, probably, and says nothing of substance (or I couldn't decipher him the second time, whatever). Why wasn't there [i]more[/i] from Hugh Hefner too? The random celebrities like Bill Maher and Dick Cavett, while rather funny, don't add to the movie--what do they know? They're just talking heads explaining the impact the movie had on them. Um, okay.

It's really the documentary's clever editing-together of archival footage and tongue-in-cheek feel (the inclusion of the Arthur/Terry relationship, even giving them a send-off in the final reel) helps [b]Inside Deep Throat[/b] stay fresh and funny... although it might not be the most profound, realistic of documentaries.