A film that goes for the 'Throat'

By turns funny and sobering, sweeping and intimate, the consistently entertaining "Inside Deep Throat" plays like a giddy prance through the minefield of the last three decades of American sex and politics. It's a timeless story, really. Bawdy, can-do upstarts raise the vengeful ire of the cynically pious. Swap the X-rated 1972 comedy with a clever 18th century foundling and you'd have "Tom Jones." Minus the happy ending, of course.

"Inside Deep Throat" was produced by Brian Grazer, whose introduction to the once outrageous, now rather quaint blue blockbuster came, fittingly, via his grandmother. It was directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato ("The Eyes of Tammy Faye," "Monica in Black and White"), who have a nose for sniffing out consequence in the outwardly ridiculous. The documentary doesn't plumb the depths of the movie that inspired it (there are none) so much as it explores the uses to which it was put by interests as diverse and contradictory as the Nixon administration, a newly politically active Christian right, the mob, lefty feminist activists and the then-burgeoning porn industry. It examines "Deep Throat's" lasting cultural effect and finds it to be not unlike the fertile crescent of the modern culture wars. Both the current zeal to legislate "moral values" and the cynical modern porn industry can be traced to the same event -- the release and unlikely success of what must be the pluckiest and dumbest, in a cute way, porn movie ever made.

An essay constructed from interviews, vintage television footage, movie scenes and cultural ephemera, much of the story is told through the oral histories of people who were involved in the making of "Deep Throat," the prosecuting of "Deep Throat" and the talking about "Deep Throat" when it was chic to do so. Prominent cultural figures of the era, including Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Hugh Hefner, John Waters, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Alan Dershowitz and Erica Jong, reminisce about the days when the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy could be seen queuing up for a screening of "I Am Curious: Yellow." Also, the movie's rather more bewildered director, Gerard "Jerry" Damiano, and his cast and crew (the hilariously debauched production manager, Ron "I approached those films like I was Luc Godard" Wertheim; potty-mouthed location manager, Lenny Camp; and male lead Harry Reems) puzzle over what happened to their lives and careers in the aftermath of the movie's success. Famed fellatist Linda Lovelace appears only in found television footage; talking to reporters after the smash success of the movie, appearing on Phil Donohue alongside new best friend Gloria Steinem.