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 tinseltown: inside deep throat
This week, Jade goes deep. I live down the street from the Hustler store. That’s Hustler as in Larry Flynt’s magazine, which launched in the 70s as the raw and raunchy anti-Playboy rag. Today the namesake store is full of sorority girls squealing over pink sex toys and couples standing hand in hand, choosing a nice, wholesome porn DVD. Even the window displays - full of compromising poses involving swings, boas and a kind of flexibility not usually found in mannequins - don’t turn heads. In 1972, of course, it was a whole different story. That’s when Deep Throat, the first blue film to go mainstream, was released. Shot for under $25,000, it ended up grossing over $600m. After it became the target of an obscenity trial, public figures took it up as a cause célèbre and porn-watching started to move away from guilty, sticky-floored secret theatres, into the realm of acceptability. Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, the guys behind 2003’s clubland murder pic Party Monster, explore the ways that Deep Throat shaped America’s relationship with porn in what has become the must-see documentary of 2005, Inside Deep Throat (out in the UK, 03 June). Park City, Hollywood and New York screenings have all been surprisingly star-studded (and studded with surprising stars – Claire Danes?), with a mix of serious post-film discussion between panellists like lawyer Alan Dershowitz (who defended Deep Throat’s star during the 70s trial) and lots of speculation over the, um, technique made famous by the film. If you’d like to pick up a few pointers you don’t even have to wait for the re-release of Deep Throat – all the tastiest footage is included in the documentary, for scholarly purposes, of course.
Jade Chang
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