Porn Again: Sadness of “Deep Throat” Revisited
February 22, 2005
By Debbie Schlussel

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What’s the most significant event in U.S. history?  The Declaration of Independence or  victory over the Nazis, you might answer.

What’s the greatest event in pop culture?  The 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey victory over the Soviets in the Lake Placid Semi-finals, you might say.

Well, you would be wrong.  At least, according to “8 Mile” and “24” producer Brian Grazer and his co-horts in the production of “Inside ‘Deep Throat’”.

To them, “Deep Throat,” the notorious porno flick about oral sex, is the greatest moment in U.S. history.  At least, you’d think so, if you saw this absurd “documentary” about the making of DT and the “impact” it had on America. 

Maybe that’s no surprise, since the other makers of this “documentary” also made a pro-Monica Lewinsky documentary for HBO.  How nice that they’ve come full circle in their documentary repertoire on oral sex.  Only in America.

The “film” parades a coterie of sagging, mostly-now-irrelevant lefties (Gore Vidal, anyone?) from the ‘70s, throughout its fawning celluloid troll down “Deep Throat” memory lane. 

Author Erica Jong, lecturing us about oral sex, hardly comes off as a worldly feminist, when you can’t pay attention to a single annoying pronouncement she utters.  How could you, with a giant painting of a naked fat chick sitting spread-eagle, looming obtrusively behind on her office wall?  This is feminism?  You’ve regressed a long way baby.

Norman Mailer, Dr. Ruth, Jong, Vidal, and the always annoying self-promoter Alan Dershowitz—all of them lecture us about the great free speech service “Deep Throat”  performed by showing a giant, in your face Monica-&-Bill-esque servicing scene. 

Puh-leeze.  You don’t have to be a Constitutional scholar to know this is not what the Founding Fathers were concerned with when they authored the First Amendment. 

Uncoincidentally, on the same day this documentary was released, “civil rights” attorney Lynne Stewart was convicted of helping her convicted terrorist client, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (a conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing).  While Stewart is not known for representing pornographers, many of her fellow self-anointed “civil rights” bar colleagues, are.  Several of those, who in the age of “Deep Throat” were representing the “civil rights” of porn kings, now represent the “civil rights” of Islamic terrorists.

If terrorism and depraved, stupid porn flicks about oral sex are the best examples of free speech worth fighting for, let’s just give up now.

You don’t have to be a prude or moral crusader to get creeped out by this documentary lauding this low-life porn film.  The makers of “Deep Throat” were creepy, then.  But in old age, they’re not just creepy.  They’re sad.  They are old and decrepit, without a penny to their names from this porno flick that made $600 million and was distributed by mobsters.  The aged producers can barely walk, let alone keep their Sansabelt pants up (for no reason having anything to do with sex).

The endings of all those associated with “Deep Throat” are depressing, fitting rewards for their “contribution” to society.

There’s “filmmaker” Gerard Damiano.  He was a sleazy hairdresser with a bad goatee and a bouffant hairdo, when he made “Deep Throat” in 1972.  Today, his thinning hair is not so bouffant-ish, and his uneven goatee?  The beatnik-era called, and it wants its badly done facial hair back.  This pathetic old man can do nothing more than lament that he’s basically broke (the mob made the money on his “investment,” not him).  And bitch and moan about how bummed he is that hard-core porn never became a regular basic of general family movie viewing coming out of Hollywood.  Gee, whatta tragedy.

“Inside ‘Deep Throat’” footage of Damiano and the other old farts who made the porn “film” gets cheap laughs by showing them swearing.  Old men swearing . . . .  that might be funny once when they’re comedic actors in a Touchstone film, not real-life, washed-up porn-makers.  Here, it’s just a lame crutch for guys whose depressing lives are now spent in G-d’s waiting room and they don’t have much to show for it, except being sleaze bags.  Damiano’s granddaughter is a silly fire-dancer, the kind who’d be on Letterman’s “Stupid Human Tricks.”

Nice epitaph:  Made a graphic oral sex porno, died penniless (while the film made $600 mill), progeny dances with fire in spandex outfit.

The only man associated with “Deep Throat” who is happy, successful, and alive, today, is Harry Reems, the movie’s co-star.  That’s because he’s now Herb Streicher, a born-again Christian in Utah who is selling a positive product in America—real estate.

Linda Lovelace, the film’s star, is dead.  She died broke and shriveled in 2002 in a car accident.  After first making a “film” in which she has sex with dogs, then starring in “Deep Throat” and assorted other porn flicks, she claimed she’d been forced to make “Deep Throat” at gunpoint—hardly believable.  A failed single mother, she got fired from every job, and could barely raise her two kids.  Her surviving daughter was offered the starring role in “Deep Throat 7.”  A proud legacy. 

A Miami theater operator’s wife fears for him during his on-screen interview, believing that 33 years later the flick’s mafia distributors will put a hit out on them.

The rest of “Deep Throat’s” “alumni” met equal misfortune and destitution as a result of  their production of this cinematic piece of dung.

But does “Inside ‘Deep Throat’” ask, Gee, why are all of  the people associated with this film, broke, depressed, dead, or all three (except the one who found religion)?

No.

Does “Inside ‘Deep Throat’” show us the advent of AIDS and other deadly diseases and cancers brought on by the rampant, joyless behavior spawned by the industry “Deep Throat” helped unleash?  Does it mention all the porn stars who’ve been diagnosed with AIDS, some of whom died?  The addicts porn created and the families it destroyed?

No.

Instead, the message is:  How sad that porn never became part of our mainstream Academy Award-style movies.  How sad that porn doesn’t have “clever” plots like the “clever” plot of “Deep Throat” (because that’s why porn patrons watch porn, for the “plot,” right?). 

The message is:  How sad that at the annual porn industry convention in Vegas, today’s porn stars don’t know who Linda Lovelace is.  We’re supposed to be outraged by this, as if it’s the same as a tenth grader not being able to name a Founding Father.

The real sadness is that some tenth graders can’t name a Founding Father of this country, but most know the name Ron Jeremy, a founding father and big name in the world of pornography.

The real sadness is that with such a shortage of good things coming out of Hollywood, they choose make a servile documentary about “Deep Throat.”