UPDATE: The people behind the re-release announced more details Wednesday. A 16mm screening will take place June 10 at the Roxy Cinema Tribeca in New York, along with “a post-screening panel discussion comprised of notable Porn Stars from the era and historians.” Two days later, also in New York, The Slipper Room will screen the 4K restored version of Deep Throat, along with a Burlesque show. And the Museum of Sex will feature Deep Throat memorabilia through June, as part of the Porno Chic to sex positivity exhibit. Locations are to be announced for showings in several other cities.
Deep Throat is quite possibly the most famous pornographic movie of all time. It was a cultural phenomenon in the 1970s. It’s been called, somewhat dubiously, the most profitable film of all time. It even inspired the naming of the deep background source for Bob Woodward during Watergate, leading to the fall of a president and pop culture immortality.
It was announced earlier this month that for the occasion of Deep Throat‘s 50th anniversary this year Damiano Films, an entity controlled by the children of Deep Throat‘s late director Gerard Damiano Sr., will host a “Global Cinema Return” for the film, which includes a new 4K transfer.
The press release is light on details, not listing any specifically scheduled screenings of the film, while listing a “sneak preview” in New York on June 10, although it’s not clear if that’s a showing of the film, a press conference, or something else.
Multiple Roadblocks
There’s an email address listed for booking the film, but it’s not clear what type of venues would host such screenings ― multiplexes are likely out, but arthouse cinemas may be a possibility, provided they’re willing to exhibit full-on hardcore pornography.
Porn theaters, of course, are out, since there are barely any of them anymore. When Deep Throat was first released, there was a national network of such theaters, many of them controlled by organized crime, but those are long gone.
Aside from exhibition concerns, there are a few reasons why this is kind of a questionable venture
Aside from exhibition concerns, there are a few reasons why this is kind of a questionable venture. For one thing, the film’s star, Linda Lovelace ― who later was known as Linda Marchiano ― revealed years later that she was coerced into appearing in the film by her then-husband, and that “when you see Deep Throat, you are watching me being raped.” I once saw Marchiano speak in the 1990s, a few years before she died in a car accident, although it bears noting that Marchiano aligned herself with anti-porn activists, both on the Christian and feminist wings of the movement.
The story of Deep Throat has been told quite a bit over the years. There was the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat, as well as Lovelace, the 2013 biopic in which Amanda Seyfried played Linda Lovelace ― which was produced, ironically, by The Weinstein Company. Then there was Deeper Throat, a truly bizarre Showtime reality show from 2012 about a modern-day pornographer’s attempts to remake the movie.
Deep Throat, even beyond its established connections to the mob, has frequently been the subject of litigation, including a long fight over ownership of the film, and a separate suit against the makers of the Seyfriend Lovelace film.
Rise of the Internet
The other matter is that porn is very different now than how it was in 1972, both the product itself and the way it’s distributed. I won’t be providing a link, but perhaps it’s not a surprise that Deep Throat is available to stream, in its entirety and with relative ease, in various corners of the Internet.
And finally, with many conservative politicians taking postures about sex and popular culture that increasingly resemble those of the Moral Majority era ― and even some on the progressive side taking their own puritanical stances on on-screen sex ― there’s a good chance any plan to publicly exhibit Deep Throat in 2022 will be met with resistance.
I’m not saying the Deep Throat revival won’t happen, but it’s clear that various forces are likely aligned against it.