She
was paid $1,250 for a film that reportedly grossed $600,000,000 and that paltry
sum was entirely pocketed by her husband-manager. That might sound like the deals musicians
usually get, but she was the original porn star, whose cautionary tale is told
in Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman’s Lovelace
(clip
here), screening
today as part of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
Linda
Boreman had the profound misfortune of marrying Chuck Traynor, an aspiring
pornographer who could turn on the disingenuous charm when he wanted to. Submissive by nature, Boreman, under the stage-name
Linda Lovelace, was forced to perform in explicit films, including Deep Throat, which surely everyone
reading this only knows as the inspiration for the code name of Woodward &
Bernstein’s Watergate source. However,
at the time it was quite zeitgeisty, becoming a major pop culture phenomenon of
the 1970’s.
Initially,
Epstein & Friedman portray the dirty movie business relatively benignly,
but in the second half of the film they reveal the physical and emotional abuse
Traynor employed to bend her to his will.
Much has been made of the decision to cut Sarah Jessica Parker’s
appearance as Gloria Steinem, implying the film ignores Lovelace’s later anti-porn
activism (like say ending Schindler’s
List when the German industrialist decided to open a factory exploiting
camp labor), but this really is not the case.
Frankly,
cutting SJP as Steinem, sounds like a perfectly defensible call from multiple standpoints. Regardless, the film clearly casts Lovelace
as the victim of Traynor and culminates with a cathartic media appearance in
which she tells all. Hardly another Boogie Nights, porn is bad in this film,
plain and simple.
It
is hard to tell from her Wikipedia page, but the brunetted Amanda Seyfried
looks like an okay but not uncanny likeness for the tragic Lovelace. She radiates vulnerability, almost suggesting
Lovelace was mired in a state of arrested development. Peter Sarsgaard’s Traynor might just the most
unsettling white trash figure seen on film in years. With his mullet and tank tops going on, he
might be the least pleasant to look at too.
However,
much of the ensemble seems to think they are in some groovy period piece, such
as James Franco’s blink-and-you-miss-him appearance as Hugh Hefner. Hard on the heels of About Cherry, Franco also produced two other Sundance selections
this year: kink and Interior. Leather Bar. Hmm, don’t you wonder what he collects? Still, T2’s
Robert Patrick has some fine moments as Lovelace’s confused ex-cop
father. Conversely, though quite
unrecognizable, Sharon Stone is still way over the top as her shrewish
caricature of a mother.
