The People vs. Larry Flynt

with Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love, Edward Norton
Written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karazwski
Directed by Milos Foreman
(Columbia/Phoenix)
by William Ham & Mark Phinney

The story of Larry Flynt, perhaps the most notorious name in American sleaze, is an amazing one, full of triumph, tragedy, controversy, sex, God, and great big slashes of utter absurdity. It is a quintessentially American story. And like too many great American stories, it takes a foreigner to tell it right. Milos Forman, the Oscar-winning Czech exile responsible for such cinematic milestones as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, now turns an epic eye to the twisted tale of the redneck media mogul, publisher of Hustler magazine and unlikely First Amendment hero, producing a work as provocative as its subject. Forman takes us from Flynt’s humble beginnings as a Kentucky moonshine smuggler through the strip-club newsletter that grew into this country’s sickest mainstream publication, gliding through thirty years with a stealth and flow comparable to Scorsese’s GoodFellas (not to mention the ugliest fashion scheme this side of Robert DeNiro’s lime-green leisure suits in Casino).

Hustler is most notable for tossing aside the air-brushed, relatively high-class pornography of Hefner and Guccione and opening up (so to speak) a new and highly questionable way of presenting sex to the masses, an approach that, combined with Flynt’s natural instincts for bizarre PR, produced a monster that even fans of erotica find hard to stomach. The question at the bottom of The People Vs. Larry Flynt is a loaded one: Can you defend the rights of a man who embodies values you despise?

Think about that seriously; it’s an important point. Forman has pointed out that every totalitarian regime goes after the perverts and pornographers first as the opening wedge to chip away the rights of the rest of us, and in Larry Flynt lies a Constitutional litmus test. He’s everything that mainstream America hates: A deeply and profoundly tasteless man who loves to hammer away at everyone’s buttons and will not allow you to ignore him. You’d be more than justified in considering what he is and does as utterly repugnant, but should he be stopped? The major (excuse me) thrust of the story hinges on his multiple obscenity trials, leading up to Rev. Jerry Falwell (Richard Paul) ‘s character-defamation suit (regarding a Hustler ad parody in which he describes losing his virginity to his mother in an outhouse) which brought Flynt all the way to the Supreme Court to defend his right to disgust. (The courtroom proved a forum for outrage in ways that even Lenny Bruce wouldn’t have dared – he may be the first freedom-of-speech hero to pelt judges with oranges while wearing a stars-and-stripes diaper.)

That story alone would make a worthy film, but that’s not the half of it. Flynt’s fleeting conversion to God (shepherded by President Carter’s sister, no less) is also covered, as is the 1978 assassination attempt that left him paralyzed from the waist down (irony!) and in excruciating pain, furthering a spiral into insanity and making his public provocations even wilder. Forman and co-producer Oliver Stone (no mean provocateur himself) also distinguish themselves with some typically inspired casting, including Woody Harrelson as Flynt (quite a fine actor when he’s not chasing subway trains), Edward Norton as attorney Alan Isaacman (another stepping stone on this newcomer’s path to fame), and appearances by James Carville, Crispin Glover, Norm MacDonald, and Flynt himself (as the judge presiding over his own first trial).

But it’s Courtney Love, as Flynt’s doomed stripper/junkie wife Althea Leasure, who steals the show and burns a hole (so to speak) in the screen. It’s the most audacious stroke in a movie full of them, not so much because Love was born to play the role; more like Althea was born to have Courtney play her. Love’s previous film work has been restricted to a handful of mostly forgettable cameos, but her formidable turn here cinches it – the woman is an actress. As she descends from the lusty queen of the Flynt empire to a painkiller-addicted, AIDS-ridden wraith, she is the wild, throbbing heart at the center of this tale.

Larry Flynt does not court your sympathy, and perhaps he doesn’t deserve it. But regardless of your opinion of the man, The People Vs. Larry Flynt is a movie experience of the highest order. It’ll get you thinking about the place of raw, unpopular thought in the public arena and of the high price that freedom exacts. See this film. Feel it. Argue about it. It’s your right.