Isn't It Luverly?

As threatened, Deep Throat is set to open in the UK in conjunction with Inside Deep Throat, the doc about it. It will be the first time the porn film will have been screened in legitimate British cinemas, beginning at the Everyman in Hampstead on June 10 and 11, and then moving to more UK screens after that. According to The Sun, admission requirements will stop just short of asking for a passport.

Deep Throat is only the second film shown in Britain to be rated R18 because of its content – until now it has only been seen in sex cinemas. In addition to the top rating there is a special procedure to purchase tickets – people have to provide proof of age and address at the cinema 24 hours before the screening.

Six and the City

Here are last weekend's top 10 movies in Singapore:

1. Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith

2. Amityville Horror (NC16)

3. Kingdom Of Heaven (NC16)

4. House Of Wax (NC16)

5. The Jacket (NC16)

6. Inside Deep Throat (R21)

7. The Echo (Tagalog)

8. Are We There Yet?

9. Summer Storm (German)

10. Last Quarter (Japan)

And remember, #6 was not allowed to be shown in the suburbs or advertised on TV or radio.

Reams on Reems

Sunday's London Observer had a long, iilluminating, and very readable story on Deep Throat's reluctant comeback star Harry Reems. "Porn-again Christian" by David Keeps is probably the most complete article on the recovering former porn star since Inside Deep Throat refocused attention on him.

This fellow, born Herbert Streicher in New York City in 1947, sitting here in his bucolic Park City, Utah, mountainside home in a plaid shirt and neatly pressed khakis, has the smile, the voice and the disposition of a breakfast DJ. It is easy to see the ghost of a cocksure rake, the role he played in silly skin flicks with such brio three decades ago, when Harry Reems was one of many noms de porn that stuck. It is even more apparent, however, that he is no longer the firebrand freedom-of-expression spokesperson - and, later, more sadly, the wasted sot - on display in Inside Deep Throat, the wildly entertaining new documentary about the most profitable porno film ever made. It is 15:01 on the celebrity clock for Harry Reems, or, as he puts it, 'I've had my 15 minutes of fame, now I would like my 15 years of retirement.'

Though the film casts him as a tragic hero, Harry isn't the least bit sucked in. 'Nobody under the age of 50,' he says with great joviality, 'even knows who I am.'

Snap!

In Rome, on his way to Greece to be married, Inside Deep Throat's sound designer, Lance Brown, does the Lynnde pose next to the poster for Inside Gola Profonda.

To Russia With Lovelace

Inside Deep Throat had its first international release earlier this month, in Moscow at the Dome Theater, one of several movie houses located in what might be called luxury hotels there. (Click here to see a review of the Dome and other cinemas in the city.) We would have reported this before, but the WOW Report is still trying to get info on the film's reception by Muscovites, and perhaps a review from Pravda's Arts & Leisure section. So far, nyet luck.

Dome Cinema (< click)

A cinema in "Penta Renaissance" hotel. Interesting design of the hall, movies always in original language translated in Russian through headphones. Good quality dolby surround sound. Nice, but slightly overpriced restaurants and cafes in the lobby.



Address: Olimpiski prospekt, #18/1 "Renaissance in Moscow" hotel, tel. 931-9873 (answering)

Area: North Center of Moscow, Prospekt Mira metro (circle). It's better to take a car from the metro for 30 R ($1), say you need "Penta Renaissance" hotel.

Yesterday the film opened in Singapore and, interestingly, it received an R21 rating, not only restricting it to those 21 and older but also prohibiting it from running in suburban theaters and disallowing TV and radio advertising "under all time belts." We can only hope the guidelines for screening the doc will be looser when it opens in the time belts of the UK on June 10 and Australia July 6.

Deep Throat Down Under

The Sydney Film Festival calls Inside Deep Throat "the film event of the year." SEE IT FIRST! says the ad for the fest. At least, we think they're talking about the doc and not the whole festival. It's delightfully confusing. See for yourself. The film screens on June 21 and 24. Harry Reems says "Hi."

The Deep

Deep Throat, that seminal porn film, will finally be shown in mainstream British cinemas, not just the sex houses. Previously available only on video and DVD, it's now been given the proper certificate, and will be playing on the bill with Inside Deep Throat in some theaters.

The Duke of York's Picture House in Brighton has lined up late-night weekend screenings and a number of City Screen's cinemas, including those in Liverpool, Edinburgh and Cambridge, are hoping to show it. Jason Wood, a film programmer for the City Screen chain, said this would not start a trend for screening porn films. "Our Brighton cinema is a very on-the-edge, experimental cinema and we show a lot of outré films. We're not going to go down the route of continually playing hardcore films.

"I would say there is no artistic reason for us showing Deep Throat. It is really as a companion piece. Inside Deep Throat does have artistic value and explores some very interesting things, not so much the hardcore pornography but the fact that it later emerged that Linda Lovelace was in a 'slavery' situation."

(Contact Music, The Independent)


Time Out London has 180 free tickets to see a preview of Inside Deep Throat at the Vue West End on June 7. Click here for details.

Meanwhile, back in the States, Deep Throat and Inside Deep Throat are spurring debate on college campi. The little Hoff theater at the University of Maryland got surprised.

The movie was advertised by the Hoff as being shown for educational purposes, and we admit we were skeptical the showing and subsequent academic activities would turn out to be just a spectacle under the guise of academia.

But last night, we were proven mostly wrong when about 150 students attended and participated in a panel discussion with three female scholars who discussed the philosophy and morals of the porn industry after the audience watched a documentary, Inside Deep Throat, about the significance of the film. This was a far greater ratio of students than we expected to turn out for the academic side of the pornographic screening, especially considering the drastic disintegration of a panel last year with Porn Star Ron Jeremy and a feminist that quickly became a way for college guys to holler questions at Jeremy about how many women he had actually slept with or how well endowed he was.

(Diamondback Online)

April Is the Horniest Month

In the latest issue of Time, film critic Richard Corliss says that his last "That Old Feeling" column, When Porno Was Chic, for the magazine's online edition, was Time's most popular April read, receiving the most hits, and was the most downloaded and linked. "That's right," he says. "Porn beat the Pope —both of them."

The column was inspired by a film and a book. Inside Deep Throat, directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, is a documentary on the making and impact of the 1972 porn comedy Deep Throat, which starred Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems and was written and directed by Gerard Damiano —porn icons all. The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, by Legs McNeil, Jennifer Osborne and Peter Pavia, is an expert weaving of testimony by porn actors, directors and producers, and of their nemeses-promoters in federal and local law enforcement. I wrapped reportage on the documentary and the book around my memories as a film critic and appraiser of early-70s triple-X movies.

(Continue reading)

Oral Test

"If the men of College Park want some oral sex this weekend, they need only go to the Hoff Theater," says Brendan Lowe in a piece running in Diamondback, the University of Maryland student newspaper. Mollie Wander, the general manager of the Hoff movie theater and a senior criminology major at UM, found Deep Throat "eye-popping" after watching only 10 minutes of it and arranged for it to be shown in conjunction with Inside Deep Throat and organized a panel knowledgeable on women's topics – and exotic dance – to lead a discussion after.

(Full story)

OMG, Where Are We?

You'll say "Ahhh" as
Inside
Deep
Throat
opens
even
wider.

Fine Arts
Asheville, North Carolina

Athens
Athens, Ohio

Alamo Drafthouse
Austin, Texas

Goodrich Novi Town
Novi, Michigan

Screenland
Kansas City, Missouri

Supermax
Sedona, Arizona

Gulfbreeze
Gulfbreeze, Florida

Bytown
Ottawa, Ontario

Bloor
Toronto, Ontario