Forty years since “Deep Throat” rocked the nation, and Linda Lovelace showed off her particular talent, it’s hard to believe that how far we’ve…uh…come. Blowjobs as a subject are now practically mainstream, and hell, a few errant Google searches can bring you the kind of material in the comfort of your own home that decades ago you could only see in the pervy privacy of your local skinema joint. Whether or not this has been good or bad for culture we’ll let a future CNN special discussion decide, but for now, the start of that journey hits the big screen with “Lovelace.”
The first trailer is here, with Amanda Seyfried in the lead of the biopic tracking America’s most notorious porn star. Depending on who you ask, Linda Lovelace was either forced into doing porn, did it willingly or did so at first, before being coerced by her husband Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard). The film from Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman seems to lean on the latter scenario, in a picture that soaks in its ’70s setting and even enlists James Franco to play Hugh Hefner, because it somehow makes some oddball sense.
The movie really details the abuse Lovelance experienced, and as we wrote in our review from Berlin, we came away “a little deadened from the experience and knowing precious little more than before about the person who inhabited the body, the life, and the throat of Linda Lovelace.” Nonetheless, Seyfried apparently really goes for it in the part, and it looks like an interesting little time capsule.
“Lovelace” opens up on August 9th. [Blackfilm]