Inside Deep Throat
If you measure success in terms of pure profit, then Deep Throat may indeed be the most successful movie of all time. At a cost of $25,000 with grosses of around $600 million (almost all of which went back into the pockets of the film's mafia financiers), even the original Star Wars can't claim that kind of profit margin. If you measure success in terms of cultural impact and defense of civil liberties, the producers of Inside Deep Throat would have you believe Deep Throat's importance is on par with Thomas Paine's Common Sense. That's hardly the case no matter how many people thumbed their noses at authority and bought a ticket to a porn movie.
And therein lies the difference. Deep Throat is no work of art (believe me) or direct challenge to absurd obscenity laws. It became an accidental poster child for a cause it never had any intention of fighting. That is the source of the documentary's two most interesting stories: the irony of how prosecutors' crackdown on Deep Throat only fueled the popularity and profits of what they were trying to stop (an irony that still seems lost on those people in their interviews), and the impact it had on the lives of those involved in the production.
The troubled life of Linda Lovelace ends up taking a backseat to the saga of her co-star, Harry Reams, who was the only person actually prosecuted for his role in the movie, for which he was paid $800. He became a cause celebre for First Amendment rights (and rightly so), but the battle took a huge toll on a guy who never had any desire to pick a fight with the federal government.
Inside Deep Throat covers every conceivable angle of the
events surrounding the movie's jaunt through the annals of U.S.
history. While the directors seem hellbent on lending more impact to
the movie than it probably had on anything, their overzealous
reflection never interferes with the personal stories behind the
scenes, which give the documentary its greatest impact.
- June 5, 2009
DVD Extras
Lots of deleted segments and mini-profiles of some of the film's interview subjects and more in-depth looks at the hubbub surrounding the film's release across the country.