Lovelace

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 8/9/13 at 11:50pm

I caught Amanda Seyfried's take on Linda Lovelace tonight and feel mixed about the movie. Based on the trailer I was expected to have a Valley of the Dolls lite experience, and for the first half the movie basically delivered. Things were fun, breezy, slightly if not overtly campy and it all ended with James Franco showing up in a cameo role as Hugh Hefner.

Then at the halfway point the movie jumped 6 years ahead to a framing device that went back and told the story of Deep Throat according to how it really happened in Lovelace's memoir, "Ordeal."

It was an interesting concept: show the porn world for the happy, sexy, fun product it delivers, and then show the seedy underbelly of drugs, abuse and rape that go on behind the scenes. The shift in tone is jarring though and the second half is such a downer after the silly first half that it just didn't work for me. I think they should have infused the two halves together and told the story straight from the start.

Seyfried does a nice job, but often looks so goofy in her assortment of wigs and costumes as her character hurtles through the years.

I admit that I've never actually seen Deep Throat, but Lovelace made me want to check it out. The dialogue was hilarious! She went to a doctor because her clit was in the back of her throat? LOL. Did anyone go see the movie when it first came out? Did people really go see it like they were going to a regular movie or did only play the porn houses? (Lovelace made it seem like everyone in America had seen the movie.)

Updated On: 8/10/13 at 11:50 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 12:21am

Many, many, many people who were there don't believe that the "Ordeal" story and it certainly is FILLED with Linda Marchiano's heroine worship of the awful Andrea Dworkin and the odious Katherine "Kitty" McKinnon. Dworkin was an anti-male pot stirrer whose book "Intercourse" posits that all sex involving penetration is rape. All.

McKinnon and Dworkin and medal of freedom winner Gloria Steinem used Marchiano as their poster girl as they aligned themselves with anti-woman right wing politicians to stomp all over the Constitution in a futile attempt to eliminate erotic films and magazines. ALL of it. They actually made inroads in Canada. It's all very sad because of course when they had used her for their purposes, all three of these women (who gave her scripts about her abuse survival as detailed and prompted as the scripts Chuck Traynor gave her about how much she loved sex and performing on camera) abandoned her by the time she released her rehash book "Out of Bondage."

Used up and with terrible health, she ended up posing for nudie mags again before dying in a car crash. When she needed a liver transplant (which she blamed on toxic implants she claimed she was forced to get), Harry Reems, whom she labeled her rapist in her anti-porn testimonials, donated money for the operation.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 12:39am

Wow, Namo. Thanks for that. It was definitely NOT covered in Lovelace; there isn't a shred of doubt that everything in "Ordeal" isn't gospel.

Sarah Jessica Parker had filmed some scenes as Steinem, but they were all cut from the film. Linda goes from getting the book published, seemingly all on her own as a passion project to tell the truth, and then appearing on Donahue to vindicate herself.

It sounds like there was a more interesting story to tell here, but Lovelace was not the movie to tell it.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 12:55am

Oh no no no no. There were so many times in her story where she would write "I couldn't BELIEVE Gloria Steinem thought what I had to say was important" and the like. If you follow the through line of her life, she drifted to anybody who paid any attention to her. She wasn't particularly bright. I'm sure when you get out of an awful marriage to the lowlife you ran away from home to be with, you have to find a frame to tell yourself your own story. So, you know, she had made a short loop where she had sex with a dog. How can she possibly explain this to her new husband and their children. Why, she was forced at gunpoint. Porn star Eric Edwards was there (they were both rookies) and he said that was absolutely not true. But we have to find a way to make our stories palatable to ourselves and those we tell them to. Marchiano's strategy was to be absolutely powerless, to always be victimized. I imagine it got too draining even for Gloria Steinem. McKinnon and Dworkin were just using her and discarded her when they were done with her.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 12:55am

Does Thora Birch play the nurse?

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 1:06am

She made a short with a dog?! Ok, that was somehow skipped over...



Slight SPOILER******

Traynor does sell her off at gunpoint to a hotel room of six guys who rape her, which is the catalyst for her to finally leave him.

END slight SPOILER********


I wonder why they didn't try to present a more complex picture of Linda. It sounds like it could have been a really meaty role for an actress (and a fine task for a writer to craft a screenplay out of her story).

Was Deep Throat really the sensation that Lovelace presented it to be? Did everyone know about it/talk about it/see it?

Debi Mazar plays the nurse.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 1:06am

That would be perfect but then her father would have wanted to play himself.

ETA: Yes, it was a HUGE sensation. It became THE thing to see among the hoi polloi. The title was so familiar in the popular vernacular that Bernstein and Woodward used it as their code name for their Watergate source. Deep Throat references were everywhere, and so it became a flashpoint for zealous prosecutors to go after anyone associated with it.

The documentary "Inside Deep Throat" goes into the whole phenomenon. Linda used the prosecution of Harry Reems, which set a really dangerous precedent before his conviction was overturned, to begin her "It wasn't my fault! I hated every minute of it! I didn't want to do any of it! Look at the bruises on my leg in Deep Throat!" to escape the glare of prosecution.

Then she rode THAT all the way to the bank, getting a pile of money for her victim tale which she somehow blew, and then told it all again for the second book.

The directors probably bought the rights to the book and thought they were telling a "balanced" story in the construction of the movie.

Updated On: 8/10/13 at 01:06 AM

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 1:28am

Thanks. Just looked up Inside Deep Throat and I think I'll check it out.

In Lovelace Harry Reems is presented as a very nice guy and someone she wants to be friends with. There was no mention of any lawsuit or anything like that.

Was Lindsay Lohan supposed to have a Linda Lovelace movie coming out this year too? I admit that I thought of her several times while watching the movie. After seeing Liz & Dick I don't know if she could pull it together enough, but she would make for interesting casting.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 1:34am

Sounds like it tells a complicated tale in a way that isn't particularly comprehensive.

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 1:44am

I believe that Lohan was originally courted for this film before she went off the deep end.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 1:54am

Yup, Lohan even made the publicity photos but I was not sure if it was for this Lovelace or the one Malin Akerman is now in that will be out at some point. Honestly, even if The Canyons will go down considered a trainwreck to watch for critics (though many did think she was good), I think that is a more interesting choice for Lohan to do (with a typically reliable director of scripted material- sounds like Epstein and Friedman should stick to docs) than do mimicry of a public figure considered widely tragic.

People all the way back at Sundance in the winter thought this was a dud and nothing to write home about with the exception of Sharon Stone's surprise appearance.

Oh, Dworkin and aMcKinnon. I took one WGS course in my life (in my defense, it was related movies and Molly Haskell was on the syllabus). That was enough to get the general gist. I had to read MacKinnon but one of my good college friends was a WGS major (She cool, she into Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler) and just always made fun of MacKinnon and ironically wore the Dworkin signature overalls to class after she was called a radical feminist. She thought Dworkin was definitely overboard, as Namo notes in passing. Basically Dworkin sort of set ablaze the 'femi-nazi' imagery that often puts off women from ever considering themselves feminist. Though my friend and I still came to conclusion that Camille Paglia annoyed us the most.

Updated On: 8/10/13 at 01:54 AM

[SNAFU]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 3:46am

In the 70's these porn flicks like Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones and The Stewardesses (in 3-D no less) where considered part of the porn chic. They were art films and people would indeed go to see them as they would a mainstream movie.
This was the same era that Oh! Calcutta! and Let My People Come were gracing the stage.
New York was vibrant back then!

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 10:52am

It may shock people who weren't around then to know that there was once an adult culture in this country. Not saying the porno chic era was "grown up," in particular, but that there was once a sort of mysterious and enticing segment of life that a person couldn't access until adulthood.

ETA strummer: we have the same take on those writers. I once saw Dworkin sitting on a curb outside a NYC shop with a melting ice cream cone in both hands and the scowl on her face. Overalls, too, it goes without saying.

Updated On: 8/10/13 at 10:52 AM

[strummergirl]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 11:39am

Namo: My friend was basically my spirit guide when it got to second-wave and modern feminism (do not get her started on the third-wave) since my only in before taking a class was knowing the Feminine Mystique. She actually did some research with a WGS Professor, she has worked with the UN and several NGOs for global women and gender equality, who was once a radical lesbian separatist who when speaking about that part of her life basically cops to, 'Well, it was the 70s.'

[Hank]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 1:25pm

The 1970's saw the growth of suburban highway multi-screen cinemas and a huge decline in attendance at the old downtown movie houses, many of which resorted to showing porn. They were just about everywhere. I remember seeing Deep Throat and a few of those other classic, I think it was at the old Queen Ann Theatre in Teaneck, NJ. It was mostly guys in the audience, and a few couples as well.
Eventually, with the growth of home videos, and of course the internet, these places all closed down one by one.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 5:49pm

I enjoyed the film as a film but it missed out so so much. The film however is well shot and acted. I was really intresred in this as me and my co writer have been working on a stage play about Harry and Deep Throat but more the fall out from the film. This though is just covering Linda during her meeting her husband and then the 2 versions of the story during filming and after release. It does it's job we'll but there is do much to tell with just her story alone that it could never fit in one movie.

I never expected it to be a Valley of the Dolls type film, I don't know why anyone would if I'm honest. And the second version (Linda's version) wasn't a downer it was just heavy material, something I'm pleased about, I didn't want a campy film. Nobody will know for sure what happened (she did after all pass a lie detector yet years later posed for Playboy) but the material isn't campy and shouldn't be.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 5:52pm

It wasn't even Playboy. It was some down market mag called "Leg Show."

[strummergirl]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 6:00pm

Even after reading positive word (particularly by non-critic Jezebel Overlord and Heiress to Dworkin's Overalls-j/k but she annoys me so- Lindy West whose site seems to think the dog incident was true), I am beginning to think this is exactly what film critic Amy Nicholson, who has read all of the contradictory Linda Lovelace autobiographies (there are FOUR!!!!), called the movie. Just one part of a Rashomon story stretched out into an entire movie.

Updated On: 8/10/13 at 06:00 PM

[StockardFan]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 6:09pm

I was just a kid when all of this happened, but I wouldn't mind seeing the movie just for entertainment reasons. Who plays her mom again? I read it but can't remember.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 6:18pm

Sharon Stone plays the mom. She got some good buzz, but frankly I though she had some of the campier moments in the film. She kind of has a Margaret White type role in the film, which know can lend itself very easily to camp!

[StockardFan]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 6:18pm

Thank you! I knew it was someone famous, but completely blanked.

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 8:19pm

@ Hank ~ The (now defunct) Queen Anne Theater was technically in Bogota, NJ not Teaneck.

[Hank]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 9:59pm

Thanks Carlos. I don't want to besmearsh the good name of Teaneck, a nice town. Glad to know it was Bogota, Lonnegan's home town. Wonder if he was there too.

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 8/10/13 at 10:26pm

Well, the Queen Anne Theater became a porn house in the late 70s - 80s, before that it played kiddie and mainstream films.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 8/11/13 at 9:54am

Again I don't think Stone was campy or her material was campy, maybe we have different definitions of campy. I thought Stone did a great job with the mother.