BOSTON, MA – David Bertolino, owner of Boston Costume, is being chased out of his longtime location by skyrocketing rents and says this will be his shop’s final Halloween. Bertolino is not getting out of the costume business altogether, though, and he has a new project in mind that is bound to raise as many eyebrows as any Halloween fright mask ever sold out of his Kneeland Street shop.Bertolino aims to bring Deep Throat to the stage.
Perhaps more accurately, the play Bertolino wants to stage is based on the lives of the major players involved in the making of the porn classic, which may include recreation of some of the film’s key scenes and intends to use the Deep Throat name in connection with the production.
While he sold the rights to his Spooky World theme park business earlier this year, Bertolino remains the national sales manager for Charades LLC, a wholesale costume company based in California.
It was through Charades, according to the Boston Herald, that Bertolino first became interested in Deep Throat and began creating costumes based on the wardrobes of characters in the film.
While displaying some of Charades’ more revealing costumes at a lingerie show, Bertolino was approached by a representative of the company that owns the rights to Deep Throat. Following that conversation, Charades started making costumes based on the nurse’s outfit worn by Linda Lovelace in the movie, as well as a doctor’s costume to match that of Dr. Young, the character played by Harry Reems. The costumes are now sold in lingerie shops across the country, according to the Herald.
Along the line, Bertolino sat down and wrote a play based on the lives of Lovelace, Reems and Deep Throat director Gerard Damiano, and purchased the rights to bring his vision to the stage.
According to the Herald, Bertolino is in talks with two Boston theaters about staging his production, which he hopes to open in May of 2007.
Bertolino told the Herald that the theaters needed a little lobbying to get them to loosen certain “restrictions.”
“There’s a little bit of controversy linked to it, obviously, because of the subject matter,” Bertolino said.
After the opening in Boston next May, Bertolino hopes to take his show to New York, according to the Herald.
