Op-Ed—CNN Ignores One of the '70s Top Grossing Films: Deep Throat

TVLAND—In a precedent-setting move for CNN, in early July, the channel began running a new series titled simply "The Movies," a six-part look at some of the greatest Hollywood productions of all time. Interestingly, though, the first two-hour episode dealt with the 1980s, Part 2 covered the '90s, and Part 3 dealt with productions from 2000 on. However, Part 4, which aired last week, went retro and was all about the 1970s—and the reason that time sequence was strange was because it was clear that some of the best movies of the last 70 or 80 years were made during that decade—but the show had at least one important omission, one that signaled the birth of the sexual cinematic industry. Of course, some of CNN's '70s classics included The Godfather, Shaft, Annie Hall, Lenny, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, M*A*S*H, Network, The Exorcist, All That Jazz, Star Wars and A Clockwork Orange, but several were of particular interest because of how they attempted to deal with sexual subjects: Taxi Driver, whose second lead (Jodie Foster) is a hooker; Cabaret, with Liza Minelli as a nightclub dancer in 1931 Berlin, and one of whose plotlines involves gay sex; Shampoo, within which star Warren Beatty's character gets blown under a table by co-star Julie Christie and he later fucks her on the kitchen floor; Carrie, where star Sissy Spacek gets her period—nude!—in the high school shower(!) and all the "good girls" throw tampons at her; and Grease, where at least a couple of the "Pink Ladies" are sexually liberated, and Olivia Newton-John decides she has to "slut it up" to land John Travolta. A few '70s films, though, went a bit further and covered movies with some more overt sexual themes, like Animal House, with John Belushi famously peeping in windows in the girls' dorm, Sarah Holcomb getting devirginated at the frat and Mary Louise Weller getting her clothes ripped off during the big parade; Saturday Night Fever, where "loose women" continually throw themselves at "stud" John Travolta; American Graffiti, where "loose woman" Candy Clark spends most of the movie seducing "nerd" Charles Martin Smith—and, of course, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which glorifies transvestism and sexual exploration—and after nearly 40 years, still plays weekly at midnight shows in venues across the country. But two '70s classics deserve special mention. First, there's Carnal Knowledge, the sexual "coming of age" dramedy that got busted for "obscenity" in Georgia in 1972. The manager of the theater where it was shown was actually convicted, and the conviction was upheld by the Georgia Supreme Court until it eventually was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, which wrote, "Our own viewing of the film satisfies us that Carnal Knowledge could not be found … to depict sexual conduct in a patently offensive way. Nothing in the movie falls within … material which may constitutionally be found … 'patently offensive' … While the subject matter of the picture is, in a broader sense, sex... There is no exhibition whatever of the actors' genitals, lewd or otherwise, during these scenes. There are occasional scenes of nudity, but nudity alone is not enough to make material legally obscene…" And then there's Rocky, the world-famous boxing drama starring Sylvester Stallone, a statue of whom still graces the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania—pretty impressive, considering that Stallone began his film career in 1970's The Party at Kitty and Stud's, a softcore porn film later re-edited and renamed Italian Stallion and now no longer available, but that apparently had Stallone "seeing naked women wherever he goes." But guess what? Somehow, CNN didn't manage to cover the one '70s film that was mass-distributed to, and played for weeks in, otherwise mainstream theaters, one that pretty much every adult in the world knows about, and that many millions have seen, often more than once: Deep Throat. Deep Throat premiered at the World Theater in Times Square on June 12, 1972, and played off and on in that area for more than 20 years, even though Judge Joel J. Tyler found the movie to be obscene less than a year later, on March 1, 1973. (We can't say the judge was religiously motivated, but he did describe the film as "this feast of carrion and squalor," "a nadir of decadence" and "a Sodom and Gomorrah gone wild before the fire.") Nevertheless, the public was enthralled by the film, depositing $1 million in the theater's coffers in just the first seven weeks after it opened, and another $2 million by the end of six months. Altogether, that's about $18 million in 2019 dollars, making it one of the ten top-grossing films of all time up to that point. Since then, between theatrical and videotape/DVD sales, the film has earned at least $100 million, according to the FBI, though other knowledgeable sources put the figure as high as $600 million ($3.6 billion in 2019 dollars), and Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey, writers/directors of the documentary Inside Deep Throat, suggest the figure could be even higher. In terms of historical significance, Deep Throat was the first hardcore movie to play multiple mainstream venues in major cities throughout the country, and is consistently either at or close to the top of nearly every list of the top sexually explicit movies of all time, though placing #28 in the (very mainstream) Internet Movie Database's list, and is the first film mentioned in the documentary X-Rated: The Greatest Adult Movies of All Time. In terms of cultural significance, consider this partial list of celebrities and other famous people who acknowledge having seen the film: Roger Ebert, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Truman Capote, Jack Nicholson, Johnny Carson, Barbara Walters, Doris Day, Warren Beatty, Richard Dreyfuss, Spiro Agnew, Nora Ephron, Pauline Kael, former Gov. (and current presidential candidate) John Hickenlooper (who took his mom also), Brian Grazer, John Waters, Hugh Hefner, Gore Vidal, Bill Maher, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Larry Flynt, Erica Jong, Xaviera Hollander, Dick Cavett, Helen Gurley Brown, Camille Paglia, Norman Mailer—the list goes on. But perhaps most importantly, Bob Woodward, half of the reporting team that covered the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post, has also seen it, and may have been the one who suggested to FBI agent W. Mark Felt that he use "Deep Throat" as his cover name when providing Woodward and partner Carl Bernstein with inside information about how the Watergate investigation was going. Besides Inside Deep Throat, the movie also inspired the stage play The Deep Throat Sex Scandal, which played for about 10 weeks in Los Angeles, and featured several adult stars in the cast during that run. So, there's no question that CNN missed a bet by not including this blockbuster in its greatest '70s films episode—but you know who else has missed that same bet? The National Film Registry—and that problem is continuing. See, each year, the National Film Registry inducts 25 films that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant," and Deep Throat (as well as several other XXX films) easily meet those criteria, as well as being more than ten years old, another requirement. The FAQ for the Registry also states, "These films are not selected as the 'best' American films of all time, but rather as works of enduring importance to American culture. They reflect who we are as a people and as a nation." Well, according to an article on Medium.com, "The porn industry makes ... close to $15 billion in profit ... more money than Major League Baseball, The NFL and The NBA combined." Seems to us that clearly "reflect[s] who we are as a people and as a nation"—and Deep Throat is the best-known example of that. Fact is, the National Film Registry doesn't have a single XXX movie in its list—not one out of the 1,000 films that have been added to the Registry since it began in 1989. But the deadline for nominating films for inclusion in 2019 is September 15, and this author's list of 2019 nominees has already been submitted: On the nomination form, it asks nominators to "tell [the Registry] more about the films you've nominated today." This response was given: "Can't help but notice that there is not a single sexually explicit film nominated for or already inducted into the Registry, and some of those such as Deep Throat, The Devil In Miss Jones, Behind the Green Door and Debbie Does Dallas are well-known to the majority of the American (if not the world) public, are still popular after more than 45 years of existence, and are clearly culturally and historically (and possibly even aesthetically, since tastes vary) significant. Hell, the FBI source in the Watergate hearings was called 'Deep Throat'!" One person saying such things might not make that much of a difference ... but 100,000 or a million porn fans writing similar thoughts just might! And the number of eligible and worthwhile XXX films from the era is hardly exhausted by the above list. The home page for the National Film Registry can be found here.