Gerard Damiano

The Associated Press today reports on the death of Gerard Damiano, described by AP writer Sarah Larimer as the director of a "pioneering pornographic film":

Damiano's "Deep Throat" was a mainstream box-office success and helped launch the modern hardcore adult-entertainment industry. Shot in six days for just $25,000, the 1972 flick became a cultural must-see for Americans who had just lived through the sexual liberation of the 1960s.

Mainstream box-office success?  A cultural must-see?  Not as I recall.  In a 2005 Los Angeles Times piece disputing claims of how much money was made by "Deep Throat," Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Michael Hiltzik noted that the movie was "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."