Linda Lovelace for President!

The idea sounds a bit wacky at first, but after you think about it awhile--sleep on it, as it were--it has a certain bizarre logic. A third-party convention, attended by delegates from every conceivable antiestablishment political faction in the country, is deadlocked over its choice of a Presidential candidate. What one person could possibly appeal to a conglomeration that includes in its ranks vegetarians, Nazis, gays, Indians, Legionnaires, women's liberationists, proponents of group marriage, the A.M.A. and the Suicide for Fun Committee? Why, Linda Lovelace, of course. To know her, especially in the Biblical sense, is to love her. The knowledge imparted by her latest picture, Linda Lovelace for President, is considerably less carnal than that dished up by Deep Throat, the film that made her famous. Linda doesn't actually perform her well-known sword-swallowing act onscreen this time, but, she observes, that shouldn't be necessary--"because people will fantasize about it, get off on it in their imaginations." Since the film was scheduled to be released within a week of this issue's hitting the newsstands, it's anyone's guess now whether Linda Lovelace for President will fare better than the R-rated Deep Throat II, which also left a lot to the imagination. But Linda--with others who worked on the film--sees no comparison. "I expected Deep Throat II to bomb," she says frankly. "It was a disaster, amateurish, haphazardly thrown together. I haven't seen it myself, and I have no desire to." L. L. for President has a lot more going for it in the way of production values; a budget in excess of $600,000, compared with the original Throat's $25,000, for one thing. "And Deep Throat was shot in eight days with a crew of eight or ten," Linda remarks. "This movie was shot in four weeks with a crew of 40 or 50." It also boasts a cast whose names are familiar to fans of rock, television and improvisational theater as well as motion pictures--among them, (text concluded on page 166) Linda Lovelace (continued from page 82) comics Joey Forman, Joe E. Ross and Louis Quinn, impressionist Vaughn (The First Family) Meader, ex-Monkee Micky Dolenz, Marty (I'm Dickens . . . He's Fenster) Ingels, The Committee's Gary Goodrow and Morgan Upton, Chuck McCann, who played the title role in the critically acclaimed film The Projectionist, and Skip Burton--whose wife, incidentally, is actress Karen Black.

"Working with all those people was a lot of fun, even though the hours were sometimes pretty crazy," Linda recalls. "I remember one night, working till three A.M. and having to get up again at seven to start the next day's shooting. But the whole thing was fascinating, and I learned a lot about film making." She might, she admitted, even consider directing someday.

At that, the switch from sex goddess to movie director would not be as drastic as the changes in Linda's personal life since her Deep Throat performance as a fellatrice who makes house calls. Some of the changes are detailed in her second book, The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace, published in paperback late last fall by Pinnacle Books. Diary is, as the title suggests, partly an account of Linda's experiences--sexual and otherwise--with various people, some of them unnamed but easily identifiable celebrities. It is also a denunciation of her ex-husband, Chuck Traynor, who played a sort of porn Svengali to the early Linda's Trilby, and a tribute to her present business partner, David Winters (upon whose idea Linda Lovelace for President is based). And it contains a selection of letters to Linda Lovelace, answered in the style of a sexually irrepressible Ann Landers--a lady with whom Linda once jousted verbally on a television talk show. Ann is well known for her one-liners, but she would be hard pressed to top Linda's advice to an easily excitable male: "A stiff cock is nothing to be ashamed of."

"This new book is better than the first one was," says Linda, asserting that Inside Linda Lovelace contained more of Chuck's ideas than her own. "To me, sex is beautiful; to him, it was crude, a bad trip. I think he's really a hater of sex. I was supposed to be sexually liberated and free, and yet here he was, a man telling me what to do, trying to interject his thoughts through me. Now I really am free, being my own person. Like wearing my hair the way it really is, long and straight, instead of in all those tight curls he liked."

What's next for Linda? "I'm reading a script for a film called Kate, about a family who set up a roadside inn along the Osage Trail in Kansas in 1872. It's based on a true incident, and playing the character Kate will be very demanding. She's a self-proclaimed healer, a seductress--and a murderess. The role would give me a chance to develop greater dimensions as an actress and I hope to be working on it by the time this is published." Eventually, she intends to develop that night-club act she started to work on some time ago. "Right now, I'm busy studying--jazz, tap and ballet dancing, acting and singing."

Still, with all her activities, Linda finds time to enjoy life. Like the stars of more conventional films, she's often besieged by autograph hunters: "People come up to me even in small towns in Kansas, where we went to shoot some scenes of Linda Lovelace for President. But I don't mind. It will bother me when they stop asking."