WHEN PORN HIT MAINSTREAM.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

YES, THINGS have changed since the 1972 skin flick ``Deep Throat'' somehow made hard-core pornography mainstream - for a minute, anyway.

As someone (it might have been narrator Dennis Hopper) puts it in the zippy new documentary ``Inside Deep Throat,'' we've gone from a day when many American adults wondered about the particulars of oral sex to an era when surveys show that today's teens not only know about it, but don't even consider it sex. (Thanks, President Clinton, who, inexplicably, isn't mentioned in the movie.)

The colorfully entertaining, sexually explicit and occasionally insightful ``Inside Deep Throat'' rounds up the people who made ``Deep Throat'' as well as a usual-suspects list of counterculture types to comment on the effects of the film, past and present. (Author Erica Jong has the best lines, humorously calling into question the supposed feminist credentials of a movie that is a complete male fantasy.)

That the movie's best character is an elderly theater exhibitor's wife, who repeatedly and hilariously berates her husband for speaking on camera, tells you something about the film's intellectual aspirations. Norman Mailer describes ``Deep Throat'' as a giggle, and that's primarily what this documentary is, too - a look back at a strange time when middle-age suburban-types lined up outside porn theaters to see the movie Johnny Carson was joking about in his ``Tonight Show'' monologues.

Of course, for the movie's star, Linda Lovelace, ``Deep Throat'' was no laughing matter. She later claimed that her sex scenes constituted rape, something filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato address by including a clip from the film featuring an obviously bruised Lovelace. (Her husband apparently was a controlling, abusive creep.)

And while Harry Reems, who shed his title (and clothes) as a production assistant and became the primary object of Lovelace's oral abilities, initially enjoyed his celebrity and The New York Times' ``porn chic'' headlines, he found fame fleeting. First, he faced serious jail time in a federal trial simply for acting in the movie. Then, when he couldn't land any mainstream acting jobs, the articulate Reems became an alcoholic.

Bailey and Barbato emphasize the connection between now and then, linking Nixon and Bush in a war against obscenity (and, thus, First Amendment freedoms), ominously noting the three vacancies expected on the Supreme Court during the next four years. What the filmmakers briefly acknowledge - and then promptly forget - is how coarse American pop culture has become in the intervening 33 years.

If there's somebody out there who can make Jenna Jameson and Paris Hilton go away (or at least underground), maybe we could look the other way ... at least for a minute.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

INSIDE DEEP THROAT - Three stars

(NC-17: graphic sexuality, nudity, language)

Directors: Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato.

Running time: 1 hr. 30 min.

Playing: Landmark's NuWilshire in Santa Monica; Laemmle's Sunset 5 in West Hollywood.

In a nutshell: Norman Mailer describes ''Deep Throat'' as a giggle, and that's primarily what this documentary is.