![]() And those differing viewpoints became the centerpiece of the 2013 movie Lovelaceĭeep Throat remains one of the most successful independent films of all time, produced for a mere $47,500 and grossing either $600 million (according to the mob-connected producers) or $100 million (according to Bill Kelly at the FBI) or somewhere between $30 million and $50 million ( according to a 2005 Los Angeles Times article). Hollywood personalities rallied to Reems defense, fearing that if the FBI succeeded in killing Deep Throat it would leverage that into charging overly violent or sexual Hollywood movies with obscenity, which, as it turns out, is exactly what some at the FBI wanted to do. Linda Lovelace turned state’s evidence and testified against her co-star Harry Reems as did the film’s director Gerard Damiano. The Feds tried to arrest anyone and everyone connected to Deep Throat, including its stars, charging them with obscenity. So, it was appalling to the FBI to see Deep Throat selling out everywhere it played, grossing at least $100 million and perhaps as high as $600 million (more on that in a minute). Here’s how it worked: The Perainos, deeply connected to the Colombo crime family, bankrolled Deep Throat’s sub-$50K budget, and strong-armed theaters into giving them an unfair cut of ticket sales, threatening physical violence and burning a theater or two down for non-compliance. Naturally, the FBI wanted to kill it, ostensibly for the sake of public decency but really because the mob was the money behind the movie. It challenged our notions of free speech and forced a re-examination of our obscenity laws. Heck, Johnny Carson kept making jokes about it on The Tonight Show. Was this porn? Art? Pure trash? A natural extension of the sexual revolution of the 60s? Moreover, was it even socially acceptable to go see it in a theater? Celebrities seemed to have no problem with it. Popular culture didn’t know how to react. ![]() This was an actual movie – cheaply made, poorly directed and acted, but a movie nonetheless – that also featured hardcore sex. This wasn’t an 8-minute loop nor an explicit documentary about sexual practices around the world. Released in 1972, Deep Throat was in some ways the natural next step forward in that evolution, but it wasn’t so much a single step as it was a quantum leap. In fact, the way porn rose in New York in the 1960s into the 70s oddly mimics the early history of film itself – originally viewed in short segments via peep machines, evolved into longer-form via documentaries and then actual narrative storytelling, ended up playing in legitimate theaters and making the kind of money that brought unwanted attention from the mob. ![]() Dirty movies are almost as old as film itself, from short clips of a woman undressing in the early 1900s to the nudist documentaries of the 1950s and 60s. However, to truly understand how Deep Throat gave us The Texas Chain Saw Massacre you must first understand why exactly Deep Throat was so popular. It really all comes down to the Mob’s money laundering. ![]() What? What does one have to do with the other? Without Linda Lovelace there would be no Leatherface. This article expands on one item from a list (“ 10 Little Known Stories from the Golden Age of Porn”) I wrote for. ![]()
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