JAMES Franco and Amanda Seyfried in “Lovelace”
LOS ANGELES—“Sex isn’t scary,” declared Amanda Seyfried midway through an interview about “Lovelace,” where she portrays the star of “Deep Throat,” the 1972 breakthrough porn film. “Sex shouldn’t be scary. It shouldn’t have a stigma attached to it. It shouldn’t be taboo. I don’t know why people still aren’t talking about it in households. I don’t know why my parents didn’t talk to me about it. I was made to feel like it was wrong.”
Amanda, whose acceptance of the Linda Lovelace role is part of her continuing transition toward more mature roles, added, “I am really proud of myself for having figured out that sex is not that big a deal. It’s human and we’re all doing it, right? So why is it such a big deal?”
Still, the actress clarified that she’s “not a big fan of porn… Certain things should be left to the imagination.”
In “Deep Throat,” the first porn film to cross over to mainstream audiences and which featured Linda’s skill for a specific sex act that was implied by the title, the actress said, “I saw about 10 to 15 minutes and quickly grew tired of it. I got bored because I knew what she was really going through at the time when she was filming it. I get it though, why it was big. It was the first time that people were able to sit and share it with an audience full of people. It was a phenomenon—unheard of.”
A novelty
Amanda pointed out, “It was very vanilla compared to what is going on right now on the Internet. It was a feature length porno—a novelty—so I get it. And it grossed over $600 million, which was insane.”
“Lovelace,” directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, attempts to show how Linda was used by the porn industry and coerced by her abusive husband, Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard), until she gained control of her life. She found some stability with her second husband, Larry Marchiano (David Gueriera). Also in the cast are Sharon Stone, Chris North, Bobby Cannavale, Hank Azaria, James Franco, Adam Brody and Chloe Sevigny, among others.
Two feminists, Gloria Steinem and Catharine MacKinnon, are among the film’s advisers. They met Linda around 1980 and worked together as antiporn campaigners.
Asked what she found remarkable about Linda in her research for the role, Amanda replied, “That all she really wanted was a [home with a] white picket fence, some kids and a loving husband. She got it. She absolutely caught a break with that. She married a man named Larry Marchiano, had two beautiful kids. But what also surprised me was that she was really just escaping her repressed family life. She ended making the wrong decision. She made one major wrong decision. That ended up defining her for her entire life.
Speaking up
“What also surprised me and what also made her special was that she struggled throughout her entire career. She spent only 17 days in the porno industry but that defined her. Through all the abuse, everything, she was treated like a dog. She found the strength to find a voice. She was brave enough to actually go out and speak publicly against pornography, bring to life all the issues of domestic violence. She worked tirelessly to share her story. She wrote books. No one wanted to listen to her. So much opposition! She had this whole story. Many people just wither away; she didn’t. She stood up for herself.”
Speaking some more with fervor about the porn star turned activist who died in 2002, Amanda said, “I think she was just made to feel like she was a monkey, made to feel like there was no chance of escape from her husband’s grip. I did read her books, ‘Ordeal’ and ‘Out of Bondage.’ It’s the same voice. It’s really disturbing—her accounts. We left a lot of that out of the movie for a lot of reasons. But I think at one point she saw herself as a failure, after she realized she was going to be defined forever as this adult film star. Then she finally did realize she was abused. She spoke out as an abused woman against domestic violence and brought it to light. But unfortunately, people are cynics.”
Contradictions
Amanda noted the contradictions in Linda’s life. “I think she enjoyed the private plane, hanging out with Sammy Davis Jr. and Hugh Hefner because all that attention was positive for her,” she said. “They fawned over her. She got to wear beautiful outfits. She thought she was going to be an actress. She went on the radio. She walked the red carpet. She had her photographs taken—all these glamorous things. But behind that, they were just using her. She didn’t know that at the time.”
According to Amanda, who had done erotic scenes in an earlier film, “Chloe,” her decision to accept the “Lovelace” project was a no-brainer. “Funny enough, nobody in my camp, not even my mother, thought it was the wrong thing to do. My mother thought that ‘Chloe’ was absolutely the wrong choice to make but I did it anyway. I believed in it and I loved that movie. I loved making it. It was my first time with that kind of content.”
Taking risks
“Now, I feel like it was time again,” she stressed. “I got this opportunity to play Linda Lovelace. Yes, she’s a sexual icon. That’s terrifying in a way but because of the script, I wasn’t nervous. I was hesitant on certain levels but the script was clearly her story. The backdrop was porn so that didn’t scare me as much because I knew that Jeffrey (Friedman) and Rob (Epstein) weren’t going to take it in a direction that was going to be damaging to me or my career. I was willing to take those risks for something I believe in. It spoke to me clearly. It speaks to a lot of young women and I would never take it back.”
Evolving
At 27, Amanda, just last year an ingénue singing in “Les Miserables” and known for her wholesome roles in “Mamma Mia!” and “Dear John,” is clearly no longer a girl but a woman ready to take on more mature parts. “It must have been a couple of years ago when I have definitely noticed a change,” she cited. “I am not afraid of my own shadow. I am not afraid of my own voice. I am not afraid of what I need. I am still vulnerable in certain ways but I don’t let people take advantage of that anymore. So maybe that means I am evolving finally.”
She emphasized how different she is from Linda. “I am so aware of what is going on in the dynamics of my relationships. I am so right off the bat, like I can tell if it’s going to be something unhealthy for me. Linda was escaping a place so what did she know? She was so naïve. She knew nothing about what she deserved. I think that comes from her upbringing. It’s so different for me. I am so lucky—my parents were wonderful. They were together and they loved me and supported me. They are open with me. I am so lucky because I know how I deserve to be treated. She didn’t.”
Amanda went on: “A lot of people I know don’t know how to be treated. They keep getting into terrible relationships. They get stuck because they love these people. They think they can change them. You can’t change somebody. Linda loved him (Chuck). She made a bad decision in love and she paid for it in her entire life.”
(E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com. Follow him at https://twitter.com/nepalesruben.)