February 10, 2005

Citizen Linda?

Richard Knight Jr, in the Windy City Times, turns on, tunes in, and drops trou for Inside Deep Throat, calling it the documentary equivalent of Citizen Kane.  And we're right back at him. 
 

But with Inside Deep Throat, their new film, the duo may have made their own documentary equivalent of Citizen Kane, so perfectly does the subject matter match up with the particular gifts of this talented duo. This movie about how America's covert dual passion and repulsion for pornography temporarily broke into the mainstream and ignited a culture war via the extraordinary success of the first "legitimate" adult film is thoroughly unsettling, thought-provoking, funny, and immensely entertaining.
And he was really listening. 
Also, because it's a Barbato-Bailey doc, in addition to the heavy doses of humor (is it prejudicial of me to point out their unerring gay sensibility in this area?) the film has a soundtrack that's ramped up to underscore narrative points often made through musical montages. The movie's use of '70s pop and disco songs like Melanie's "Brand New Key" is distinctly reminiscent of the fictional Boogie Nights. Unlike the ironic, mixed message of that terrific film's oddly affecting theme of creating family where you find it, however, Inside Deep Throat instead traces how the movie's huge financial success simultaneously kick started both the moral backlash and the adult film industry into high gear and left no one unsullied along the way. Both ends of the spectrum cut a very wide swath.
(Here, read it yourself)