Documentarians Bailey and Barbato to plumb Deep Throat

Variety reports that out documentarians Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Party Monster) will make a feature documentary on the lasting cultural impact of the 1972 porn movie Deep Throat. Produced for just $25,000, Deep Throat is still considered the most profitable film ever made, with grosses of around $600 million. The film will be produced for Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment, and Grazer says he chose Bailey and Barbato partially based on their work for the six-part Channel 4 documentary Pornography: The Secret History of Civilization. "You might say that Deep Throat was the film that started the independent film movement," said Bailey. "It sparked a brief period when porn looked like it would be going from the backstreet raincoat brigade to mainstream." Bailey and Barbato's narrative feature debut, Party Monster (based on their documentary of the same name), is scheduled to premiere later in January at the Sundance Film Festival.