Harry Reems Inside Deep Throat,
EX-PORN STAR REEMS OPENS UP.
EXCLUSIVE Harry Reems/Inside Deep Throat, Deep Throat
Interview by Paul Fischer at the Sundance Film Festival.
33 years ago Harry Reems became an unwilling legend of an era that
reinforced sexual liberalisation. The most famous male porn star of all
time, Reems became the darling of a new sexual and Cultural Revolution, but
when push came to shove, Reems, after being arrested and used as a pawn in
the conservative 1970s political arena, Hollywood’s establishment eventually
abandoned him. For almost two decades, Reems would be forgotten, an
alcoholic and homeless. Now, as Deep Throat has taken on a whole new
meaning, Reems is alcohol-free, married and a highly successful real estate
broker in, of all places, Park City, Utah, home of the annual Sundance Film
Festival. Interest in Reems has resurfaced, thanks to the much acclaimed
documentary Inside Deep Throat, which chronicles the highs and lows of a
film and industry that changed the course of sexuality and American
politics. Avoiding the spotlight for over 20 years, Reems spent some time
detailing a life that is at times funny, tragic and ultimately uplifting, as
Paul Fischer discovered when he spent some time chatting to the once
infamous actor about a life less ordinary.
The trademark moustache is gone, and Harry Reems, now 56, is at the Sundance
Film Festival to reflect on a life marred with alcohol, sex and renewed
faith and optimism. He was at Sundance to attend the world premiere of
Inside Deep Throat, marking the first time in over 20 years that Reems, star
of over a hundred porn films, would talk openly about the film that made him
an unlikely celebrity. Sitting in a small hotel room n Park City, Reems, who
was starting to lose his voice at this point, recalled a youth defined by
religion and repression. "My grandparents were orthodox Jews from the old
country, but my parents kind of broke that barrier and ate ham, fish and
lobster as well as played golf on the Sabbath," Reems recalls, smilingly.
"They never really taught us very much about Judaism, although my brother
and I were bar-mitzvahed, but after that we never even went to synagogue."
Harry was born Herbert Streicher in New York’s Manhattan “and lived my first
five years in the Bronx. Then we moved up to Westchester County to a town
called Harrison”, Reems recalls. Reems joined the military and left the
Marine Corps in 1967. Initially intent on being an actor, Harry studied
acting with Lee Strasberg and was a founding member of the experimental
theatre company, Café la Mama. From such lofty beginnings, Harry Reems was
surprisingly born. "I needed to supplement the income, because this was off,
off Broadway and so a fellow actor said: I know where you can make 100 bucks
and get laid at the same time," he says, laughingly.
It was the late 60s and the adult world of porn, was still in its infancy
and not an industry. Reems recalls when he first started making adult films,
it was all very much under the counter, and "little 8mm, 10-minute epics,
which would be shown in private homes." With changes in the obscenity laws
in 1968, Reems says that "these little filmmakers who were doing the small
films started to do bigger films, all with the pretence that there was an
educational value to and social redeeming value." It was during this period,
that Reems donned a white coat, and played various versions of the doctor
that audiences would see in Deep Throat. "I wore that white coat in
hundreds of films before Deep Throat, and stayed very anonymous, as a very
small group of people frequented adult films."
By 1972, Harry had already appeared in close to a dozen, underground films
and was already getting bored with acting. Then in 1972, Harry was asked to
fly to Florida as a lighting cameraman for what he assumed was going to be
another small, anonymous film. The movie was Deep Throat, its director,
Gerard Damiano. "I had acted for this director before, so when the actor
that was supposed to play this doctor couldn’t act, he threw the white coat
on me and said, ‘One more time, and have fun with it. Go crazy.’ I think
there was a six-page script." Nobody thought they were making history, but
Reems was ready to act one last time. He remembers the fun times he had on
that set, and scowls when we come to the inevitable mention of star Linda
Lovelace. Reems says he had "made movies with Linda prior to Deep Throat,
and Linda was never forced at gunpoint to do anything," remerging, angrily,
that Lovelace had willingly appeared in “some films that I would never even
think of being in”, including early bestiality movies. "The name Linda
Lovelace was invented, as was the name Harry Reems, and then she tried to
catch a train to fame and it didn’t work." Reems recalls that Lovelace
"wasn’t articulate, couldn’t act, and so she went to all the Hollywood
parties. So eventually to make money she joined the women’s movement,
anti-porn ‘I was forced at gunpoint’ and of course that lasted for a
while, but when she couldn’t make money doing that anymore, or when she
wasn’t a good interview anymore, she went right back to porn, or back to
nudity. She was doing nude photographs at the end of her life and films
with nudity. " As for Lovelace’s literary account of that period in her now
infamous book, Ordeal, "it was a total lie. But, she was a nice enough
woman and sexually she was fun and when you look at the film you see this
big smile, and I was on every set because I was the lighting director, not
just the scenes I did, and nobody ever forced her to do anything."
Deep Throat would emerge as more than just a porn film, a theme explored in
the Inside Deep Throat documentary. Reems says that nothing could have
prepared him for the effect that little film would have on America’s
burgeoning sexual revolution. "I was totally shocked, and I think I now know
the reason," says Reems. "Deep Throat was the first film to say that it held
no social redeeming value; we are going for straight out burlesque comedy,
and just have fun. Of course it caught the attention of a few celebrities,
the word of mouth spread and the government started to prosecute it because
it was becoming famous, which only led to more people going to the theatres.
So, the Justice Department basically made the film succeed."
And succeed it did, raking in the money and turning pornography into a
virtual legitimate and almost respectable art form. While Deep Throat would
emerge as the most profitable film of all time, life for Harry Reems would
also undergo a dramatic change. Initially, the world post-Deep Throat was
still his oyster. "After Deep Throat’s fame I did a few more porno movies,
but instead of getting 100 bucks like all of the others I was getting 3, 4,
5-thousand a day. They just wanted my name n the, on the poster and theatre
marquees". Reems even got offered adult films in Europe, "so I made several
films in Germany which were shoot-em-ups or gangster movies" Then, Reems’
world began to slowly unravel. "I came home for a couple of weeks to do my
laundry, say hello to friends, before I started another movie in Rome and I
got arrested for Deep Throat. The FBI came to my door in the middle of the
night, handcuffed me, and took me to the New York courts."
While much of this is discussed in the documentary, hearing the actor’s
recounting of this entire incident, remains an eye-opener, with the whole
Deep Throat case emerging as one of the most damaging trials of the 1980s.
"They told me to waive extradition, that I’m going to Memphis, Tennessee to
stand trial for distributing a movie," recalls an emotional Reems, who
understand why he was going on trial for distributing the movie, referring
to it as a conspiracy. "If you have knowledge of a crime in the United
States and you don’t legally disavow and destroy that crime you’re held
responsible for it. So, I knew the film was in distribution, but what I
didn’t know was that there was going to be eight members of the Columbo
organized crime family, that I was on trial with. I think the prosecutor
was trying to do nothing more than get some press and bring his trial to the
attention of the public and maybe build up his name. What he didn’t realise
was I went and got more press. This was the first time an artist acting of any kind was being prosecuted by the federal
government. There were new laws and new obscenity statutes in 1981 and they
went back to the ’76 statutes, and then the broadest use of the conspiracy
laws in the history of the United States." Tearfully, Reems recounts going
through this trial, every day listening about murders, "about money going in
suitcases and the street fights between two families over the proceeds." It
was then, that Reems began drinking heavily, as the trial began to bear its
tole.
"I was told by Alan Dershowitz, who is a law professor up at Harvard, that
if the republicans were re-elected I’m going to jail but if the democrats
get into office I’d be Scott-free. Of course, Dershowitz knows a lot of
people in Washington so I got calls from Ramsey Clark, who is a past
Attorney General from the ‘60s, during the Kennedy era. I got calls from
Eugene McCarthy saying, ‘Harry, don’t worry, if we take the White House
we’re letting you go’, because I’d be crying to Dershowitz because I was
scared. I mean, I didn’t commit any of those murders. I didn’t steal that
money. I didn’t do those things to those people. I didn’t even know it was
obscene. It was nothing more than to try to take attention away from his
Watergate fiasco."
Reems did not go to jail, but his life was a shambles. "I became a real
low-bottom drunk and stopped doing movies." He tried to segue into straight
acting, was offered the role of the coach in Grease, but the stigma
associated with his past, put a stop to that weeks prior to filming. Reems’
old Hollywood pals Nicholson and Beatty had deserted him, and all he had,
was the solace of the bottle. "I was getting worse and worse as a drunk and
was in a hospital in New York city for 32 days, and over the 32 days some
friends came by to visit and all of them said ‘I don’t want to see you
again. You look like your 90 years old and you look like you’re going to
die, and that’s a shame, Harry, you’re too nice a person, too good a person.
You need to stop drinking’. When they released me from the hospital, I had
asked for quarters for the telephone from my friends, but I went and bought
a bottle of vodka. I woke up six or seven days later in Los Angeles County
jail with excrement in my pants and sleeping in my vomit, and had no idea
how I got from New York to L.A. I had no money, I was panhandling in the
streets and so I went to a meeting, a program of recovery. I went to a
12-step meeting where I’m told other alcoholics learn how not to drink."
Reems pauses, sighing at the memory. "I walked in the building and got
arrested by the police officers. It was in city hall where the police
department was, and the meeting was taking place in the same building and I
got arrested. It seems I had three or four warrants out for me. I got to
Park City in ’86 and I didn’t get sober until ’89. I guess there was
vagrancy and lewdness, breaking and entering, you know I’d walk into
somebody’s door and sleep on their living room couch. I didn’t know who
they were. They’d wake up and see this person and they’d call the police.
So, the police officer very kindly said, ‘Go to that meeting, you need it,
but come out of that meeting and come right back here because I’ve got four
warrants out for your arrest. Do you promise me you’ll come back here?’,
and I said ‘Yes, I just wanna go see what these people do, how this things
works’. And, I walked back out after the meeting and he put the handcuffs
on me and we… our jail is up at the County seat about twenty minutes away,
and this officer, said to me, ‘Harry, if you could only get sober, if you
could only fix this problem, you have no idea how many people you could
help, how many lives you can save, how valuable your life could become’, and
nobody had ever told me I could be of any value. I spent that week in the
jail, I paid my fines. I got sober. I went to 20 or 30 meetings a week in
Park City and Salt Lake."
Reems was finally determined to put the past behind him. "It took a long
time for me to learn how to sleep again, have bowel movements, to keep food
down, because I was the kind of alcoholic that seizured and had DT’s, and
eventually it went away. Eventually that program taught me how to love
myself, how to be a help to others, how to find God in my life, and I found
God in those rooms. Today I live a very honest and loving life." The former
Jewish kid from Manhattan is now a born again Christian, living a quiet, but
successful life in Park City. "I have a wonderful marriage, a beautiful
home, a very successful business, and I still go to those rooms and still go
to those meetings."
Reems would have been more than happy to go about his business and let the
past take care of itself. Until recently, Harry had never discussed his
past, declined all interview requests and preferred to live the life of an
entrepreneur in this ski resort. Then he was contracted about a new film
being made, a documentary on a time that he would rather forget. "I was
ready to say no. Over the twenty years since I had done my last film, and
living here in Park City, I have 3, 4, 5 times a week somebody wanting to do
an interview with me, or would I come out and do this talk show, or you
know, let’s do your life story as a movie of the week...lots of comedy, sex,
drugs, rock and roll...and I had been through this horrible experience, so I
never wanted to tell that story. When I met directors Fenton Bailey and
Randy Barbato and they were out here at Sundance three or four years ago, we
sat down and we met and they said ‘what’s your fix’. I mean, I had refused
to do interviews. I had refused to do anything. But, when he mentioned
Brian Grazer’s name it perked my ears and I wanted to know what direction
the film is going in." The directors’ response was ‘we won’t know until we
get the footage shot’. But, they saw it as taking Deep Throat and using it
as a thread to show the social, cultural change in America that took place
in the last 60’s and the 70’s and 80’s, and they were going to tie that all
together. "I said ‘well, do you know about me being a drunk’ and they said
‘it’s a wonderful story of redemption’. I said THAT’S the story I’d be
willing to tell, and so I agreed to cooperative, to be in the film, and I’m
very impressed with the final product"
Surprisingly, Reems insists, watching the documentary for the first time at
Sundance, did not bring back any unwanted memories. "I have a new life now.
They flew my wife and I out to L.A. about two weeks ago to see a rough cut
and to ask if I would participate in a promotion and I said, well, let me
see the film and, I was quite pleased. I mean, they had things in the movie
that I didn’t even know about." Reems says the film didn’t touch the surface
but it what it set out to do. "I mean, they didn’t go into any great depth
about the mafia, they didn’t go into great depth about my journey, but they
did go into depth about the sexual revolution that took place in America in
the 60’s, and I was right in the middle of it all - in the East Village, a
hippie, in the late 60’s, Mama Cass, Jimi Hendrix, all of them, Janis
Joplin, the bell bottoms and the crazy hair and the free love, and I came
from such a repressed Jewish background. You bet I became a hippie – even
though I got caught up in it and the next thing you know I’m a voice. But
this movie is factual, accurate, in-depth and it really captures the world
as it was, that world as it really was, and I’m proud to be a part of it, I
really am. I never thought I’d come out the hero, or that they would use me
as the redemptive sort of angle in the movie."
For Reems, Inside Deep Throat remains but a memory, the glare of the
spotlight has once again dimmed, and Harry Reems says that he looks forward
to returning to reality. "On Tuesday morning I have a listing appointment to
list a house." Reems is more than happy being a real estate broker, finally
saying, laughingly, "if you love your work you’re not working."
Charles Dickens once wrote, ‘They were the best of times, they were the
worst of times.’ It’s a fitting prologue to the life and times of Harry
Reems, actor, porn star, alcoholic and gentleman capitalist. He hopes the
documentary and the recently announced re-release of that original porn
classic, will remind us of an era that forged a revolution and the beginning
of one of the more unique film industries in Hollywood history.
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