Narrative“50 Years of ‘Deep Throat’ Porn” (1/6). In 1972, a former hairdresser from New York produced, under almost amateur conditions, “Deep Throat”, in French “Gorge profunde”, the first pornographic film seen by millions of spectators and whose success stretched over ten years.
“Valuable people are those who take themselves very seriously” used to say Gerard Damiano. The filmmaker nevertheless released, exactly fifty years ago, a film that did not necessarily evoke the qualifier “serious”. It is Deep Throatin French ” Deep Throat “. On June 12, 1972, New York hosted the premiere of the film in the Times Square district – because yes, there were previews for pornographic films then and yes, the atmosphere was quite different in the heart of Manhattan . The guests do not know it, but they will discover the work which will become the most mythical of porn cinema. If the film is released on a single screen, its theatrical career stretches for a decade over dozens of others.
Gerard Damiano (1928-2008) says that nothing, if not an early passion for cinema, predestined him to become the first director of world famous porn movies. Fatherless at the age of 6, raised by a dancer mother, who was often absent, he came to directing late in life while running a hair salon in Queens, New York. For one afternoon, he begins by shooting short films, pornographic and silent, shown on a loop (loops in VO) in the viewers of the Times Square district. According to him, it is not to rinse the eye, nor to flee the family framework, that Damiano skims these interloping productions but because it is the only way of access to his dream, namely to work a day on “real movies”. He has no training, he does not have his card in any show business union, but he aspires to shoot much more than family super-8s.
A life is small, as many readers of Philip Roth and Milan Kundera will tell you, and according to Damiano, his life takes a turn when he finds himself assistant to a “director” barely more experienced than him but who has the absurd idea of asking his producer for a raise. The rest can easily be guessed: the said producer offers Damiano to replace the ungrateful at short notice and, all spirit of camaraderie forgotten, the latter accepts. After multiple loops and other longer but largely forgotten footage (Changes, Teenie Tulip), he becomes the official director of a man named Butchie Peraino and his father, the very strict Anthony Peraino, whose colleagues are named Colombo, or Gambino, two of the five mafia families reigning in New York.
A clitoris at the back of the throat
It’s Damiano’s Faustian pact. And it is under these conditions that the adventure of Deep Throat when one fine day, a couple comes to him, young people, well especially her, with a hippie look and very counter-culture. Her name is Linda Boreman and he is Chuck Traynor. It was Damiano who had the idea of renaming her Linda Lovelace (ie, roughly speaking, “Linda Lingerie”). And it is for her that, according to the legend, he is going to write the time of a weekend the script of Deep Throat. According to its author, this one is imbued with a feminist bias, inspired by his years as a hairdresser for ladies, all more prompt than the others to confide their dissatisfaction to him. Feminist or not, the plot of the film is based on the initiatory journey of a young woman learning, somewhat taken aback, that her clitoris is located at the back of her throat. Once this diagnosis has been made, it is only possible to stimulate this erogenous zone by means of a specific sexual practice. So deep throat. CQFD. Spectators around the world will discover the talent of Linda Boreman, who dumbfounded Damiano. It was he who coined this term, which has since entered the dictionary.
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