Word: damianos
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...Gerard Damiano, who went by the name Jerry Gerard, effectively launched the 1970s porn-movie craze with his first feature, Deep Throat, in which the leading lady had a special talent all her own. Despite producer worries that the term was too obscure, Damiano replied, "Deep Throat will become a household word." With a budget of about $25,000 (provided by the son of a mobster) and a six-day shooting schedule, the film went on to earn tens of millions of dollars and a notorious spot in film history...
...slits her wrists in a bathtub. After dying a virgin, she tells a gatekeeper to eternity that she wants to live out her sexual urges, to be "filled, engulfed, consumed by lust." She briefly gets that wish - which includes intimate contact with bananas and grapes, a snake and (Damiano's favorite marital aid) a water tube. With plenty of boy/girl, girl/girl and orgy "action," Devil still takes itself solemnly enough to risk being laughable. But heaven knows it's intense, and an honorable attempt to blur the line between porn and "real" films. As for Spelvin...
...Damiano said that after the success of Deep Throat, "If people wanted to interview me because I was a porno filmmaker, I just was not interested in talking to them." There had been gifted directors - Radley Metzger, Russ Meyer - making softcore in the '60s, but Damiano had higher ambitions. He wanted to be Ingmar F---in' Bergman...
...made a couple more ambitious porn films: the psychodrama ghost story Memories Within Miss Aggie (1974) and the dreamy, Marienbadesque The Story of Joanna (1975). But by then, porno was an industry, and it relied less on artistic pretension than on grinding out product. In the next 20 years, Damiano put his name on another three dozen or so hardcore movies, none of which made much of an impact. Like silent-film director D.W. Griffith in the talkie era, Damiano was a pioneer whom new trends left behind. According to the local News-Press, he "lived out his final years...
...This maker of indecent films was, by all accounts, a decent man. "He was...always very charming and dapper and suave," writes News-Press columnist Stephanie Davis, "always there with a kiss and a 'Hello, Gorgeous.'" In a 2005 interview, Damiano described himself as "just a nice guy, which is why I think I did pretty well. I mean, I'd meet an actress and have to say, 'Sit down, take your clothes off - I'm going to ask you to do some nasty things.' You have to be pretty nice." On his 80th birthday, adult-film stars flew...