A few months ago, I mentioned an intended blog post I have yet to write about the conflicting narratives of Linda Lovelace with regard to her experiences making Deep Throat:

This story involves Linda Lovelace, famous to oldsters like me for her uninhibited performance in the now-vintage porn movie Deep Throat. At some point after she had long been retired from the business, she partnered up with anti-porn activists and a book was released in her name detailing her negative experiences during her porn career. Without going into too much detail, I just want to say that it’s a struggle to reconcile her post-porn account of her coercive experiences with the scenes actually visible on 16mm film. Some of her contemporaries from the production, interviewed about her modern account of negative experiences, seem to struggle likewise. But again, who am I to call her account into question? That’s why my post about Linda Lovelace is the blog post that’s gone unwritten longer (by at least a decade) than any other partially-formed posting notion that’s ever passed through my head.

…

I’m not old enough to have seen Deep Throat in a movie theater, but I’m old enough to have stumbled over a 1970s dirty book on a paperback swap rack. That book, too, had Linda Lovelace’s name on it. And that narrative was upbeat and empowered. The positive tone of the narrative voice in that book matched Linda’s performative presentation in her movies.

Who am I to call her account into question? You can’t ask that question without also asking: which account? They can’t both be true!

I still haven’t written that blog post. But I did just stumble over a 1982 interview with Harry Reems in Porn Stars magazine where he brought up the conflicting Lovelace narratives. At first it seems to have been a joke, but when the interviewer pursued the topic, he gave what appear to be serious answers:

At least now I know my ancient memory of her upbeat 1974 book is real!

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