Inside Deep Throat (2005)

Okay, so we're all familiar with Deep Throat right? No? Okay, well Deep Throat is probably the most successful Porn film of all time, both in terms of profit and exposure. It was released just at a time when Porn was becoming a hot political issue... again... and when America was going through cultural change.

This documentary looks at Deep Throat and examines the cultural and political events that surrounded the production and the aftermath of the release, being banned state to state, with phenomenal demand still there for the film. It looks at the ways that the film affected the people who starred in it, made it, and those who were affected in other ways too.

I think I was drawn to this film because a film like this could go two ways, it could either be gratuitous for gratuity's sake, or it could serve a purpose. I firmly believe that it is the latter, and I think the agenda it is trying to serve is to point out that as a nation too much importance is put on the immorality of pornography. In the film they discuss a scientific paper that was commissioned by the Nixon administration into the effect that pornography had on a person. This scientific study found that pornography had no detrimental effect on those who viewed it. This not being what they wanted to hear the report was basically ignored and Nixon went after the adult film industry in a big way. Cut to the eighties and Reagan and once again porn is an issue. Reagan is smart so he issues an unscientific study which relied on personal testimony rather than trials, and through selecting who you interview it was found that porn was dangerous, so a moral crusade was launched.

The point of all this is that the government in America, at the time at least, seemed far too concerned with the worries of a right wing Christian fringe group that was pushing this agenda than say, improving American healthcare. It was populist rather than a serious issue. But this film isn't a glowing appraisal of the porn industry. For those of you who've seen Boogie Nights (if not then why not?) there is a strong case to be made that the lead actor from Deep Throat was one of the inspirations for Dirk Diggler. Also interviewed are Linda Lovelace's sister, a harsh critic of the film and the industry; and these people are not shown up or victimised, they are respected and listened to.

I enjoyed this film, it was a strong documentary and I feel like I know more having seen it, it's a fairly tough topic to get people to open up about, but they do a fine job here and create a really interesting piece of film.