My main problem with the film is that it is so steeped in the usual Baby Boomer bullshit about the supposed "Sexual Revolution," and how that generation chooses to look back on "The 70s" from its utterly self-excusing perspective, that it feels more like reading a back issue of Rolling Stone than watching a movie. It's narrated by Dennis Hopper, for Christ's sake. Baby Boomers love to congratulate themselves on breaking barriers, but they never own up to the consequences. They went and saw porn in the theater, and made it chic! Right, and that helped fuel an exploitative, multibillion-dollar industry that feeds on human shame. They embraced free love! Great, now it's my generation and the ones after who have to deal with the ensuing diseases. How many more babies need to be born addicted to gonnorhea?! So while I wanted some kind of new spin on the Deep Throat mythos, what I got was not too far beyond what I could have seen on The History Channel. In fact, Inside Deep Throat is arguably more of a 1970s artifact than the original film … I mean, does it lend credibility to anything these days for Norman Mailer put his two cents in? I want to see someone interview Norman Mailer about, like, recent porn, not have him rehash the same tape-loop about Deep Throat that's been playing in his head since 1975. Other interviewees who help to provide the "cultural context" for Deep Throat include Larry Flynt, Hugh Hefner, Camille Paglia, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Erica Jong, John Waters, and, yes, Carl Bernstein. Yawwwwwwwwn. These people are so canonized in the ongoing Baby Boomer sex mythology, they pack about the same punch talking about "taboos" as Shelby Foote does talking about the Civil War, or Sir George Martin does talking about The Beatles. Why couldn't they have included interviews with, like, a bunch of teenage perverts who just like to jack off to Deep Throat? When the film sticks to interviews with the actual participants in the creation of Deep Throat, it succeeds most. The insight into Mob film distribution tactics is interesting, as is some of the commentary on the legal problems the movie and its stars faced (Harry Reems comes off particularly sympathetically). One giant flaw is the barely-veiled attempt to discredit Linda Lovelace as a victim in the story—she is treated with bogus sympathy at best and outright contempt at worst – but this is in some ways not even surprising, given the tacit hostility toward feminism that has always characterized the Baby Boomer ruling class. Ultimately, Inside Deep Throat is for people for whom sex is an entirely intellectual experience. To me, it was about as sexy and engaging as, say, Norman Mailer's scaly, über-flaccid pee-spout.
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