Odyssey: The Ultimate Trip (Gerard Damiano, 1977)

Abstract

ABSTRACTDespite director Gerard Damiano’s reputation as one of the architects of the sexual revolution, based on his 1972 porno-chic hit Deep Throat, his films are surprisingly conservative in their sexual mores, favouring romance and monogamy over hedonism and promiscuity. One of his most representative yet often neglected works is the 1977 Odyssey: The Ultimate Trip, a triptych of tales alluringly titled ‘The Beginning’, ‘The Middle’, and ‘The End’. The characters, including an unhappily married couple, a female psychiatrist and her woman patients, and a disillusioned model on the last day of her life, all suffer from various forms of dysfunction. By a close examination of these three stories, we can see sexuality in the 1970s as a complicated concept which Damiano, like his audience, is still attempting to decipher. This would be a recurring motif in Damiano’s work, vividly illustrated throughout his adult films well into the 1980s. I will prelude the analysis of Odyssey with a brief discussion of Damiano’s professional and personal background, factors which greatly contributed to his form of sexual storytelling. Each individual segment of Odyssey is examined in depth as both a stand-alone short film and part of a larger artistic statement by Damiano, the greatest east-coast adult film director of the 1970s.