Producers of the most successful porn movie of all time, Deep Throat, have lost a legal battle against the makers of a biopic about its tragic lead, Linda Lovelace.
A New York judge ruled on Monday that Lovelace, the 2013 biographical drama starring Amanda Seyfried as the title character, does not infringe copyright of the infamous 1972 porn film that inspired it.
Deep Throat's producers had argued that three key scenes, two involving oral sex and one in which Lovelace can be seen driving in her Cadillac, "reproduced dialogue word for word, positioned the actors identically or nearly identically, recreated camera angles and lighting, and reproduced costumes and settings".
After viewing both movies Judge Thomas Griesa demurred. "Deep Throat is a pornographic film containing 17 scenes of explicit sexual content," he wrote in his ruling, which was covered by The Hollywood Reporter. "Conversely, Lovelace is a critical biographical film that documents the tragic story of Linda Lovelace and provides a behind-the-scenes perspective on the filming of Deep Throat. It does not contain any nudity."
The decision will presumably cause some relief in Hollywood, which routinely recreates famous scenes for biographical films. Had the ruling gone differently, movies such as My Week With Marilyn, the 2011 film that depicted the shooting of scenes from the 1957 romcom The Prince and the Showgirl, might conceivably have found themselves mired in legal difficulties.
One of the first pornographic films to feature a plot, character development and reasonably high production standards, Deep Throat made a huge impact on its release, though it was banned in the UK and was the subject of a number of obscenity trials in the US. Lovelace, real name Linda Susan Boreman, later denounced the film and its makers, becoming an anti-pornography activist. She said she had been forced into the career – often at gunpoint – by her husband Chuck Traynor, played in Lovelace by Peter Sarsgaard. Boreman died following a car accident in 2002.
Arrow Productions, which owns the Deep Throat copyright, filed its original lawsuit against Lovelace before the film's US release in August last year. Had producers succeeded, it is unlikely the financial rewards would have been spectacular. Lovelace took just $356,000 (£214,000) at the global box office, a markedly worse showing than that of Deep Throat itself. While mechanisms did not exist in 1972 to track the returns of a film that largely played in adult theatres, the movie is reputed to have taken a staggering $600m worldwide. That figure is equivalent to $3.4bn in 2014 dollars, which would make Deep Throat the highest-grossing film of all time when adjusted for inflation.
