Word: damianos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Every once in a while, an artist gets an inspiration that changes pop culture. Even if he's a slop artist, and the inspiration is a movie about a woman with a clitoris in her throat. Such a one was Gerard Rocco Damiano, aka Jerry Gerard, who died this weekend in Fort Myers, Fla., at 80, from complications after a stroke. With Deep Throat and his second film, Devil in Miss Jones, Damiano launched the 1970s movie craze of porno chic...
...comics, Damiano's film was a grail: a Buttofuoco- or Lewinsky-like solid laugh line. "This is kinda strange country, isn't it?" asked Johnny Carson at the time when the movie was challenging Watergate as the topic du jour. "Judges can see Deep Throat but they can't listen to those [Nixon] tapes." Bob Hope said, "I went to see Deep Throat cause I'm fond of animal pictures. I thought it was about giraffes." When Bob Hope makes a joke about your porno movie, you've arrived...
...around a sideshow freak stunt (Lovelace's bedroom trick of controlling her gag reflex so she could perform glottal fellatio - a glo-job). "You had to be there," he said in Inside Deep Throat. "I'm thrilled that I was there. And I thank God I had a camera." Damiano gave this movie the tone of a mildly bright comedy, with an underscoring full of broadly ironic pop music, including a version of Mickey and Sylvia's "Love Is Strange" with naughtier lyrics. The movie, for which Lovelace was paid $1,200, and Reems $250, made both of them famous/notorious...
...Lovelace, who died at age 53 in 2002 after a car crash, later claimed she performed under duress, telling a 1986 Congressional committee that "virtually every time someone watches that movie, they're watching me being raped." (These claims were widely disputed.) But Damiano did his best to make his leading lady look good. He gave her an alliterative, movie-star name and devised costumes, lighting tricks and cagey camera angles to hide her abdominal scar, a memento from an earlier car wreck. Linda was no goddess, but neither was she your standard porno skank; she was slim and freckled...
...Deep Throat millions never got to Damiano - how does a director put muscle on the Mafia? - but it did allow him to pursue his dream of being a respected film auteur, though still in hardcore. Most directors with a left-field mega-hit would instantly crank out another picture in the same genre. Not Damiano. He used his cash, and cachet, from his silly porno comedy to make a super-serioso drama: Devil in Miss Jones. And this time under his own name. Reading the script, Reems told his friend: "Gerry, it's a steal. This is No Exit...