Movie Reviews (such as they are)

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Inside Deep Throat


Never having seen Deep Throat, I nonetheless threw myself in to watch Inside Deep Throat, which is a documentary about the making, impact, and legacy of that seminal porn movie. The film is narrated by Dennis Hopper and was made for HBO, so how bad could it be?

Truth is, it's not a bad movie. Indeed, it's good enough that you want it to be a bit longer than its 90 minute running time; but at the same time, the reason you want it longer (ooh er, missus) is because it's a bit lacking in substance. So, something of a dilemma, then.

Of course, while the film is, on the surface, about a porn movie, it's really about breaking social taboos and fighting censorship in general. It's about the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. So there really was plenty of scope to make something of an epic documentary here. A lost opportunity perhaps.

Still, there's a bunch of talking heads of varying degrees of interest, including Norman Mailer, Bill Maher, Larry Flynt, and Hugh Hefner.

A couple of standout scenes for me were:

(1) porn actresses at a recent Adult Video Awards ceremony being asked if they'd seen Deep Throat. They all replied that they hadn't, with one asking, "Oh, isn't that with that woman who died? I forget her name." This is a bugbear for me, and so commonplace these days: that people have no idea of their history, not even within their chosen professions, whether porn, "respectable" film-making, or the music industry. Get aware, people.

(2) the idiot prosecutor who prosecuted Deep Throat way back when. He said something to the effect of how he was looking forward to getting the world rid of terrorists and heavily implied that then we would be able to get on with the real work of fighting immorality such as porn. Fucking dumb cunt.

So, the scores on the doors for this: 60 points -- not all it could have been, but not bad.

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