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You may have heard the reports that the 1972 porno film “Deep Throat,” currently the subject of a documentary, was possibly “the most profitable film of all time: made for $25,000, it has to date grossed $600 million).”
Michael Hiltzik debunks this:
What to think of these claims: Baloney.
Leaving aside that “Deep Throat” was financed by mobsters and that therefore any figures are suspect, logic and arithmetic alone are enough to tell you that its box-office gross could not remotely have approached $600 million.
We’re talking about a movie that was released in 1972, banned in half the country and generally exhibited in one theater at a time even in the biggest cities, such as New York and Los Angeles.
The average U.S. ticket price in 1972, according to the Motion Picture Assn. of America, was $2.05. By 1980, when the “Deep Throat” phenomenon was way played out, the average was still only $2.69.
For the movie to have made $600 million at the box office, in other words, it would have had to sell tickets to enough customers to populate the entire United States one and a half times over.
The No. 1 mainstream movie of the 1970s, by the way, was “Star Wars.” To date, its domestic theatrical gross is $461 million. You want to tell me that “Deep Throat” has sold more tickets than “Star Wars”?
Hiltzik talks about how readily these absurd numbers have been accepted and widely reported by MSM:
It should surprise no connoisseur of journalistic indolence to know that the press has accepted the $600-million figure as gospel for years. My newspaper database turned up no fewer than 200 references dating back to 1980. The majority have appeared in recent months, thanks to Universal’s publicity machine.
Not a single story attributes the figure to an authoritative source. Indeed, it’s always accompanied by weasel words such as “by some accounts,” “reportedly,” “said to be,” etc.
Have our reporters, editors and critics become so mathematically ignorant that a patently inflated figure like this no longer leaps out and demands authentication?
#1
It may or may not have grossed $600 million, but I think Michael Hiltzik's analysis is flawed. Deep Throat was been re-released theatrically many times (or at least it ran at the X3 theater a number of times over a period of years). Average ticket prices don't mean much, because adult businesses don't charge average prices. In any case, it was released on video many years ago, so the gross doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how many theater tickets were sold.
All that said, I don't buy the $600 million either.