..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Pornacopia!

Fussing about just prior to the start of a screening of Inside Deep Throat, a couple of colleagues sitting nearby confessed to having never seen the seminal film that was the inspiration for the documentary. Both were old enough to remember the phenomenon, lived in areas where it was shown and had valid Ids to gain admission. One even claimed to never having seen a "hard core" movie - not out of indignation but simply lack of interest.

In the seconds before the lights dimmed a thousand memories relating to the XXX era flashed through my mind (several passed on orally). Notwithstanding porno chic, I somehow managed to see the original Deep Throat along with its sister successes The Devil in Miss Jones and Behind the Green Door and dozens of other scandalous and banal efforts if not in a timely fashion at least within shouting distance of their notoriety.

I don't ever recall using the films as a sexual aid. On the time line it would pre-date the arrival of the VCR by about seven years. I was neither aficionado nor advocate but fascinated by the movie evolution from clinical documentaries to titillating educational fare, Russ Meyer romps and I Am Curious (Yellow).

It should also be mentioned that at the time I lived in presumably liberal Canada. Despite that perception, the only place where one could buy a ticket for Deep Throat and its ilk was Vancouver. The other nine provincial film classification boards opted to contain the desire for this material to soft core variations on the theme. The local theater that played those racy movies was where I caught up to the critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated Dutch film Turkish Delight that launched the careers of Rutger Hauer and director Paul Verhoeven.

Prior to the theatrical diminution and eventual demise of the X, I would periodically be called upon as an expert witness at pornography trials. While some might have viewed this as a stain on their reputation, it was no more than a day's work for a working film critic at the local daily newspaper. It in no way related to having had fleeting social intercourse with either Linda Lovelace or Marilyn Chambers.

In retrospect the arrival of graphic sexual activity on screen was explosive. The early ripples of cinematic nudity were comparatively chaste and it seems almost laughable now when one recalls the seismic response to a bare breast in The Pawnbroker or the brief glimpse of full frontal female nudity in Blow Up. But that was the social context of the times.

Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey's recollection of the time, the film and the people in Inside Deep Throat is a bit like an acid flashback in snapshot form. The specifics and generalities are on display and some components are well explored while others are superficially observed. It's a daunting and massive undertaking that to its credit is entertaining, informative and an apt starting point for a broader dialogue.

When Deep Throat became a sensation and unleashed a torrent of imitators in the early 1970s it seemed only logical that in time there would be a crossover into the mainstream. There were a couple of manifestations of its effect in tamer, provocative imports from abroad such as Emmanuelle but the momentum soon dissipated. In one respect it dovetailed with the mood of the times when social and political issues from women's liberation to Vietnam were hot button topics.

However, the sexual revolution could never accommodate the diverse perspectives of Germaine Greer, Hugh Hefner and Screw magazine's Abe Goldstein. The films were provocative in the context of the moment and had an additional asset not fully appreciated in the new film. They were generally funny and glib and the forthright, irreverent nature of these generally crudely produced movies allowed them a brief, conspicuous entry into an environment that had long swept carnality under the carpet.

There were factions that decried the new pornography on moral grounds and a long list of court battles focused on the balance between community standards and first amendment rights. The decisions rendered rarely reflected the evidence presented or established legal precedent but indicated the whim and prevailing social climate at a precise venue. They were also smoke screens for other concerns, particularly the stranglehold organized crime had on this highly profitable sliver of the film industry.

There were a couple of "purveyors of smut" who actually wanted to make the films better such as Radley Metzger. Others such as Francis Coppola used them as training exercises. The people controlling the purse strings and the theaters simply saw an enormously fatted calf and could find no good reason to divert a single penny away from profit and into production values.

When Oh, Calcutta! (another shocker of the era) was revived on Broadway back in the early 1980s, I went to a performance with Bob Sickenger a veteran of the Chicago theater scene who gave, among others, David Mamet his professional start. Bob had moved to New York and had made a very good American independent film called Love in a Taxi that had been a festival favorite. He was hopeful it would launch more ambitious movie projects.

After the show we repaired to a restaurant for pasta and in the course of talking about the play he made reference to employing the same bawdy source as the vignette A Man and His Maid for a movie. At first I presumed he was talking about a trial balloon and then blurted out: "You directed The Naughty Victorians!" He was obviously surprised I knew let alone had seen the movie and quick to point out that he used a nom de screen. Who knows how many other credible people were involved in such efforts using aliases.

Regardless, the movies didn't get better. Their commercial appeal was on the wane and might have completely sputtered out were it not for the timely arrival of home video. The easy availability of viewing pornography in the privacy of one's home was the bedrock for a burgeoning ancillary movie market. The small screen was more forgiving of XXX's technical impressions and while the reigns of that industry had largely been wrested from the crime czars, the new bosses were no less penurious about production budgets.

The porn movie industry began to go underground in the late 1970s and the VCR pretty much cemented its exit from the front page. Even the trade papers had stopped tracking box office or writing stories about the sector. It had been relegated to clandestine status despite the enormous money and profits generated from the crude capers.

There were from time to time lurid exposes and scandals like the revelation that starlet Traci Lords' first erotic screen adventures occurred when she was an underage minor. Nonetheless they were brief flurries set beside the continuing fascination the mainstream press accorded the arena in its early years. The revelation that Chambers had been a model for Ivory Snow was all part of the fodder that made her and Lovelace celebrities.

The film makes mention that Throat's Harry Reems was hired to play a role in the film version of Grease by producer Alan Carr and then quietly dismissed when Paramount executives got wind of it. Lovelace's efforts at a crossover were quashed and Chambers got closest when David Cronenberg cast her in Rabid in 1977. Her work failed to elicit other above ground offers.

The stigma attached to porno films came quickly and decisively. In the mid-1970s the Cannes film market was brimming with screenings of XXX movies from America, France, Germany and various Asian countries. I recall seeing a French film titled Spermula in the market that playfully combined the vampire myth with the eternal qualities of blood being replaced by another bodily fluid.

Lovelace was accorded red carpet treatment in 1974 at Cannes when she arrived to promote Linda Lovelace for President. That year Francis Coppola won the festival's top prize for The Conversation and by dint of a friendship with actor Alan Garfield, I became part of that entourage.

After the closing night celebrations and dinner the group wound up at the casino. Four of us - Coppola, French filmmaker Jean Eustache, Bay Area businessman George Gund and myself - sat down at a table to play vingt-et-un (unrelated to its literal American equivalent 21). Lovelace and her then current handler David Winters, a former dancer turned porn filmmaker, filled the other two seats. Only Eustache knew how to play the game but the headiness of the moment and the convivial banter erased any need to understand the rules.

The seating arrangement was in a U-shape with Lovelace seated beside me and Coppola directly opposite her. He joked about tossing a chip down her cleavage as one would sink a basketball through a hope. Lovelace laughed and said, "go ahead" but he declined because he was afraid he might throw too hard and hurt her. She was charming, funny and gracious and had a quality of innocence one associates with a newcomer to the industry. She also appeared to be slightly constrained by Winters who periodically asserted a possessory claim one assumes others wielded over her during the few years she was a star and money earner.

In the rear view mirror the memory is tinged with sadness, particularly given the outward giddiness of the moment. Inside Deep Throat brought back those mixed emotions and an odd sense of nostalgia not only for the overtly risqué fare of that era but for all the feisty brood of young filmmakers that included Scorsese, Spielberg, DePalma, Milius and Malick. It was a time for mavericks and indulgence was better tolerated but one group evaporated and the other went mainstream and both paid a price for the passage.

- by Leonard Klady