They've made documentaries about Monica Lewinsky, Gay Republicans and Party Monster Michael Alig. Now Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato have turned their attention to the story behind porn classic Deep Throat, and its impact on America in the 70s.

What is your personal memory of Deep Throat?

Fenton Bailey (FB): We actually saw the film for the first time together at Christmas. We thought it would be fun to watch with some friends and it was quite a revealing moment. After about 15 minutes we had to turn the film off because we were all quite embarrassed. Even though our friends are all quite metrosexual, it felt so unusual to be watching explicit sex together. So we turned it off and watched Lilo And Stitch instead.

What do you think of it as a movie?

FB: It is a big disappointment. But Inside Deep Throat is about the impact the movie had rather than the movie itself. It's a bit like Pet Rock - millions of people bought one but it wasn't that the rock or the box itself had intrinsic value, but it was the concept and the idea behind it that connected with the audience. We were interested in why Deep Throat resonated the way it did with the audience.

And why do you think it did have resonance?

FB: The idea of Linda being on this quest for sexual satisfaction makes her a kind of Everyman - a genderless symbol, really - of everyone trying to find their own sexual DNA, their own sexual identity. That's a very subversive message because it goes against the idea of sexual normalcy. It's saying, basically, everyone's a sexual pervert and there's nothing wrong with that. That idea is fundamentally counter to the American position which is that there are good, heterosexual, married people, who have sex for the purpose of having children.

Lovelace later claimed that she was forced to perform at gunpoint. What do you make of this? You don't give it much time in the documentary.

FB: There was no gun! Chuck Traynor was her husband and she was in a classic domestic-abuse relationship. He beat her up, and maybe the gun was more metaphorical than actual, but it doesn't matter really, does it?

She was pretty specific about the gun, though. So you think she made it up?

FB: I think it's how you interpret it. Her husband was her manager, so in a way it was against her will. But at the same time Gerard Damiano [the director of Deep Throat] says, and we believe him, that she enjoyed doing it. Eric Edwards, who was her first co-star, said she enjoyed it. So I think it's quite possible, actually, to enjoy making sex films while also being abused in a domestic relationship. It just takes a little bit of mental sophistication to understand that, rather than the normal knee-jerk feminist reaction of she was raped, therefore to see her doing this is to condone rape. [Feminist writer] Catherine McKinnon says that our film, Inside Deep Throat, is promoting rape. It's just not.

She said that?

Randy Barbato: Oh yes, she's gone on record to attack us. But I think you're looking for us to tell you what really happened with Linda Lovelace. Guess what? We don't know. Nobody knows. And so many people have spent their lifetimes putting words in Linda Lovelace's mouth that in our film we tried to include footage of Linda Lovelace herself speaking. We've tried to find archive material at different stages of her life, and we're letting people draw their own conclusion.

In the documentary you don't speak to Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson or any of the other celebrities who supported Deep Throat when it and its male lead, Harry Reems, came under attack from the government. Why not?

FB: In the intervening years, the idea of porn being chic has sort of changed into something where porn is now shameful and sleazy. So those people have sought to distance themselves from the sexual revolution in which they were pioneers. So everybody you see in the film is there because they want to be. And you can safely assume that anyone who isn't in the film didn't want to be there, because we left no stone unturned. There was no one we didn't approach.

The censorship battle that we see raging around Deep Throat in the 70s mirrors the culture wars that are taking place in America today. Was this something that you set out to show from the beginning?

FB: At the beginning we thought we were making a film about 1972 and the 70s, and then events started to overtake us. Nipplegate happened, Bush got re-elected and America is engaged in this problematic, controversial, overseas engagement. At the same time there's this emerging new emphasis on moral values, which is supposedly the issue that won the election for Bush - it feels like we've gone a long way backwards.

RB: The thing right now is there's so much hypocrisy in America that sex becomes the perfect weapon of mass distraction. So like with Vietnam, when things were going on that shouldn't have been going on, that's when you had your last big campaign against pornography. Today, there's Iraq. And today there's a number of questionable things happening in Washington. So it's the perfect time to attack sex; to attack Spongebob Squarepants as being gay. The most bizarre attacks are going on in terms of sex in America right now, and it's the perfect way to distract us from what's really going on.

Inside Deep Throat is released in UK cinemas on Thursday 10th June 2005.