Penetrating Questions and Inside-ful Answers from Directors Fenton Bail and Randy Barbato

(Continued from January 19th)

QUESTION:  Talk about the mob.

FENTON BAILEY:  Well, the mob produced and owned Deep Throat.  But Lou Peraino Sr., the producer, was so much more than a mobster.  He had a vision. With the money he made from Deep Throat he set up Bryanston Pictures, a legitimate distribution and production company and quickly scored with a succession of genre hits:  Enter The Dragon, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, John Carpenter's Dark Star, and Andy Warhol's Dracula and Frankenstein. Martial arts, horror, science fiction, and art house - they had all the genres covered.  It was a sort of a prequel to Miramax. People said they exploited their actors, screwed their partners, and threatened their associates. Just another day in Hollywood, and certainly nothing that would be of interest to the FBI - unless your last name happens to be Peraino.  Ultimately, Bryanston went bankrupt. Whatever you may think of the Perainos, they simply weren't able to run Byranston and defend themselves in Memphis in addition to many other multiple cases all across the states. It must have been very draining.  Sadly, none of this is in the film because no one - not one single person - would tell us any of it on camera.  All of those who worked at Bryanston who still work in Hollywood today (and there are many) either don't want to be reminded of the connection or are too frightened to talk. And even Lou's surviving relatives don't particularly want to be identified either.  

RANDY BARBATO: But Deep Throat really is the quintessential independent film. Not just because it was made outside of the studio system but also because it was independently distributed. Potentially illegal indie film couldn't officially be distributed by any recognized distribution system.  Instead the Perainos built their own distribution network from scratch, a truly remarkable system of checkers and sweepers who would fly all over the country and hand-deliver prints to theaters, as well as collect the box-office take on a daily basis.

FENTON BAILEY: But it was all completely underground. The FBI for one didn't recognize the legitimacy of this entrepreneurial activity; they called it money-laundering. You can be sure proper tax returns weren't being filed!  And because everything in this unofficial distribution system was in cash, everybody was skimming, taking a bit here and taking a bit there. So in the end the money just evaporated.  Still, in a way, the success of Deep Throat is the quintessence of the American dream and embodies the entrepreneurial spirit.

QUESTION: So where did all the money go? 

Well it certainly didn't go into Damiano's pocket, and it didn't go into Harry Ream's or Linda Lovelace's pocket.  Even many of the mobsters died penniless. It all just disappeared. Fatal subtraction - another Hollywoodism!

QUESTION:  Did these guys know what they were doing?

RANDY BARBATO:  No.  Add it all together and you've got the gang that couldn't shoot straight. They were all nuts, though I say that filled with love and admiration, because they were doing something they genuinely believed in.

FENTON BAILEY: The craziest amongst us are really the best, because they don't care what people think, and they are just going to do their thing. And when they do, everything changes.  And had they been more sensible, they might not have made this film.  They would have seen the risks and wouldn't have wanted to stick their necks out and risk their lives and livelihoods to do it. So if they had been more sensible, it simply wouldn't have happened. 

QUESTION:  So what did you learn?

RANDY BARBATO: We learned a lot about liberal ideology.  I think that the liberals that existed in the late '60s and the early '70s are very hard to find today. They're still alive, but they've changed their stripes and wear more conservative colors.  The same people who pioneered the sexual revolution have very conflicted feelings about sex and sexuality today.

FENTON BAILEY: We learned a lot more than we thought we would.  Everybody knew Deep Throat, everybody heard of Linda Lovelace, but the real story remained completely hidden from view. Although plenty of books have been written about the '60s and '70s, this aspect of the culture hasn't really been documented. So for us it was like digging up the bones of some dinosaur, or excavating an ancient civilization - even though it was just 30 years ago instead of thousands of years ago.

RANDY BARBATO: It felt like we were investigating not so much a conspiracy but an entire episode that the culture just wanted covered by the sands of time. A lot of people are reluctant for us to go digging that up again. Sure, there was the whole mob aspect, and people were still very frightened of their power and influence. But above all and most perplexingly, there was a sense that the freedom and the experimentation of the '60s and '70s was something people were ashamed and embarrassed about, and would just as soon not talk about. For example, a lot of Hollywood filmmakers got their start making adult films, but they did not want that documented.

FENTON BAILEY: And, you know, we couldn't really hide that this was a film about Deep Throat. You had to sort of come out with it sooner or later. And there was always a slight, let's call it a bump, I guess, that people had to get over. And some people never did get over it, alas. Because the one thing Deep Throat is saying is that there's nothing to be ashamed of, and I think in making our film we ran into people who were ashamed. And that was sad.

RANDY BARBATO: And intriguing. It might us wonder why.

QUESTION:  So tell me. Why?

RANDY BARBATO: We think it was the commercial success of Deep Throat. It changed everything. Before it, people thought and acted ideologically; they were pioneers, campaigning for freedom. After it, people began to be swayed by the potential of how they could profit from it. When they saw how much money there was to be made, ideology was passed over in favor of the bottom line.

FENTON BAILEY: Deep Throat was a turning point in terms of the commodification and objectification of our bodies and sexuality that's just become the norm today.

RANDY BARBATO: There was a fork in the road: Go with the money or stick with the ideology. And basically they all went with the money. And so that's where we are today, in this completely consumer capitalist society. It's more than ironic that Deep Throat, a film that has all these subversive ideas in it, would instead end up seeding this multi-billion-dollar adult porn industry. It's not what that film set out to do. But that's the effect it had.  Like so many of the creative endeavors of the '60s and '70s that ended up losing their ideology and just becoming hugely commercial instead.

FENTON BAILEY: The film's message was to do your thing and find yourself. But you can't watch any of the 12,000 adult titles released last year and find in any of them any trace of that ideology. So porn today is a very different experience to the porn of yesterday.

RANDY BARBATO: And today many of those hippies and sexual revolutionaries are all grown up, extremely rich, and have teenage kids. They are all for freedom of speech and freedom of sexual expression. But they also feel very conflicted about the sexually charged and saturated world that we live in today. It's a hard thing for them to stand up and cheer for because it feels divorced from intimacy and love. So it presents a dilemma for people. That's where we end up, with this contemporary moral dilemma we're all faced with.

FENTON BAILEY: Erica Jong says that the release of the '60s and '70s has created the biggest backlash ever. And their true legacy is shame, embarrassment, and the crazy fervor of today's moral crusades.  We thought perhaps she was being a bit overdramatic when we heard it, butŠ

(TO BE CONTINUED)