Porn in the multiplex: How the X-rated ‘Deep Throat’ became the box office hit of 1972
Today, the gap between the grindhouse and the multiplex is thinner than ever. Exploitation horror movies can make hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. Science fiction has graduated into one of the biggest movie genres around. However, the lone holdout remains porn.
There still isn’t a culture on this planet that’s normal about sex. However, even the most decadent, sex-positive libertine would have to concede that the porn industry hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory over the years. Even if it’s covered itself in basically everything else. No, at best it’s the Wild West, a lawless place where anything and everything goes and at worst, it’s sickening. A parade of the worst, most exploitative elements of humanity doing depraved, degrading things to vulnerable people, almost always women.
That’s not to say that no one’s ever tried to make blockbusters out of porn, though. After all, movie-making is a business. Anything goes when there’s money to be made, and porn (used to) make a hell of a lot of money. By the late 1960s, the bottom had fallen out of the classical Hollywood approach to movie-making, and the most exciting, lucrative voices in the medium were people taking edgy stories from the underground into the mainstream.
At the time, there was no reason why those edgy stories from the underground couldn’t involve stories whose primary purpose was to titillate. Especially when people went to porn theatres regularly. It was just sex, and we were all about free love a few years ago, so why not legitimise the medium, and everyone goes home rich?
Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie was the first to attempt this, but the first real hit was Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris. While the former was an art movie and the latter was an erotic drama film starring Marlon Brando, neither of them were genuine porn flicks.
The first genuine, bona fide porn film to make it in the mainstream would arrive (hur-hur) in 1972 in the form of Deep Throat.
Directed by Gerard Damiano and starring Linda Lovelace as herself, the fact that Deep Throat was a huge hit is truly bizarre. However, its ability to whip up a stir is less of a surprise – it’s easy to cause controversy, and people saw a porn film at the multiplex as a concrete sign of societal decay. No, Deep Throat wasn’t just controversial, it was a hit. A big one. Despite the fact that it was made for just under $50,000, a budget only big enough for porn films of the time, it made a whole lot more than that.
Things get weirder when you get into the actual story of the piece. Lovelace discovers that the reason she’s been sexually unsatisfied all her life is the fact that her clitoris is actually in her throat, meaning that the only way she can achieve orgasm is… well, you can connect the dots, I’m sure. Despite the kinda gross premise, this picture made around $30-50million at the box office, making it one of the most profitable films of all time, similar in stature to the likes of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.
Yet, Deep Throat leaves behind a complicated legacy. While other films followed in its footsteps, porn never became a mainstay of the multiplex, and Lovelace later disowned the film. She said that she’d been violently coerced into making it by her abusive husband at the time. So, were people really clamouring for porn to be considered art? Not really, instead, it seems that another iron rule of showbiz had been invoked.
People like to see what weird shit is going on. Deep Throat wasn’t porn becoming art, it was a novelty. Nothing more, nothing less.