Review of Inside Deep Throat (2005) by Wes B — 18 Feb 2005

In Joe Bob Briggs' excellent book Profoundly Disturbing, a chapter is spent on the creation, distribution and influence of the landmark 1972 film [i]Deep Throat[/i]. It's a very informative chapter, one that manages to delve into all of the aspects of the film itself and noting what it did for its' cast and crew without making any dramatic statements about the how the film changed perceptions of sexuality as a whole. As far as I know, if you want to learn about [i]Deep Throat[/i], this is the place to go.

Or you could check out [i]Inside Deep Throat[/i], in which Briggs is a rather odd omission to the parade of talking heads that talk about what the film did for (or to) society. Want to hear what Norman Mailer thinks the tremendous success of the film did for the sexual revolution? It's in there. Sure, some of the interviews are fun (John Waters is always entertaining, and Helen Gurley Brown has a great WTF moment as she describes how cum facials are good for the skin because "it has babies in it"), but for a film focussed around mouth-penis contact, most of the interviewees do a surprising amount of talking out of their asses.

That's not to say that [i]Inside Deep Throat[/i] isn't a perfectly entertaining film. It is. It's quick, it's fun, it uses music cribbed from Boogie Nights' soundtrack, and it certainly provides a fair introduction for new-er-comers to the world of 70's adult cinema. Pretty much all the surviving folks responsible for the film are interviewed, most prominently director Gerard Damiano and Harry Reems (who actually looks better now than he did thirty years ago).

The thing is, there's a lot of stories surround [i]Deep Throat[/i], and directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato want to include all of them, so they end up only skimming the surface most of the time. Much has been made of Linda Lovelace's transformation from worldwide porn icon to feminist revisionist historian, but Barbato and Bailey cast this bizarre change aside in a couple of minutes, underlining it with Damiano's suggestion that Lovelace was overly succeptable to suggestions made by others as to what she should do. He may be right, but the fact that we get little more than just the basic facts about the incidents doesn't do anyone any favors.

(It's this style that makes Barbato and Bailey's films so frustrating. They have great topics, but they leave you wanting to know a lot more than they can offer, spending time on meaningless interviews and cut scenes of sub-Errol Morris footage of courtroom doors closing and the like. Their most satisfying film is probably the original [i]Party Monster[/i], which is a topic that practically demands their frivilous treatment.).

Much of the film talks about [i]Deep Throat[/i]'s influence on how pornography was (and is) judged and censored, and while I'm always for making enemies-of-America Charles Keating and Larry Parrish look like idiots, Harry Reems is really the only one on the side of freedom that comes off looking like he knows what he's talking about. It's certainly an interesting subject, and one that could be tackled with a feature on its' own, but like all of the sub-plots that [i]Inside Deep Throat[/i] is composed of, it doesn't come across as fully developed.

While [i]Inside Deep Throat[/i] has lots of problems, it's still an admirable film, not holding back on the actual deep throating footage (despite the claim that Lovelace claims to have been being raped in these scenes) and it moves brisky enough to keep anyone entertained, even if they already know everything the film puts on display. I can recommend it as a perfectly watchable documentary, but don't expect to learn too much. There's a great documentary (or possibly a whole series of them) to be made from the world of the '70s adult film industry, and this isn't it, but it's worth a look just the same.

(Plus, Annie Sprinkle gets interviewed and only appears once? What the hell? If anyone would have something to say about the industry, it would be her. And no interview with Radley Metzger, but Bill Maher gets put on camera? Bill Maher? I know he's a staunch anti-censorship guy and I like him fine, but what does he have to do with this at all?).