When Linda Boreman’s father retired from the N.Y. Police Department the family moved to Davie, Florida to catch some sun. Three years later Linda also caught the wrath of her strict Catholic parents when she had a child out of wedlock which they had whisked away straight after birth and had adopted. Linda was still living at home and although she was kept on a tight leash by her parents she still managed to fall in with a rather fast crowd. Her new good-looking beau Chuck charmed the pants of her and her parents too even though most of the time he hit the bottle hard and introduced the smitten and somewhat innocent Linda to some heavy drugs too.
Marriage to Chuck was Linda’s escape route from her austere family home, but it didn’t take her long to discover she was still ‘trapped’ as Chuck was broke and had no intention of getting a real job. He had discovered that the sexually naive Linda was a quick learner and had a natural talent for pleasuring him. So he whisked her up to N.Y. and made her demonstrate her new talents to some very shady contacts of his so that they would offer her a movie deal to provide them with some income.
The movie they film in Florida, is of course ‘Deep Throat’ and it became the first pornographic film that crossed over to a mainstream audience and it went on to make a cool $100 million at the box office. I wonder how much they would have made in this day in age when porn and sexual content is even more rampant and prevalent thanks to many sites like https://www.tubev.sex/?hl=fr all around the internet.
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It brings the newly named Linda Lovelace fame, but not fortune, and she gets to move to LA and hangout with celebrities culminating with a command performance for Hugh Hefner. By this time Chuck’s voracious appetite for booze and drugs is out of control and far exceeds the couples limited income, and so to pay for it, he pimps Linda out and forces her into prostitution. It is the beginning of the end, especially as she is adamant she will not make another porn movie, and he is totally unable to re-pay the huge loan he got from the Mob.
Oscar award winning filmmaking duo Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have created an almost magical feel and somewhat wholesome look with their narrative on the very first porn superstar. They don’t shirk from showing the despicable violence she suffered at the hands at Chuck, but somehow they make the rest of the story sunny, and funny, without dwelling on any of the sleaze a minute more than they have too.
They were aided and abetted by a first rate sterling cast which made the whole movie zing. Amanda Seyfried shocked me into appreciating that not only can she act after all (did you catch her in Les Mis?), but she actually is damn good. The ever wonderful Peter Sarsgaard made the slimy Chuck very much his own part. And there was an amazing supporting cast which included Chris Noth, Bobby Cannavale, Juno Temple, Chloe Sevigny, Wes Bentley, Hank Azaria, Adam Brody, Robert Patrick plus James Franco as Hugh Hefner. The major surprise when the credits role was to discover that Linda’s stern mother was played by none other than an excellent Sharon Stone.
Epstein & Friedman have created a wonderful period piece that revels in the good times of the ’70’s … and a shout out here to Karyn Wagner the costume designer in particular for the stunning authentic outfits she clothed the men in. Also to composer Stephen Trask for the music which so took me back.
It is clearly a work of fiction re-enforced by the final statements on the screen that Linda Lovelace was only in the porn industry for 17 days (she had in fact gone on to make the ill-fated and badly received ‘Deep Throat 2’) but why let too many facts spoil such a very entertaining movie?
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Labels: 2013, biopic, dramatized reallife, Sundance
