Yes, we’re on dangerous territory here. Make no mistake, this movie is about pornography, a pornographer, and his motley band of acolytes. Seemingly not the sort of movie you would want to take your mother to, but surprisingly, she wouldn’t have to be too broadminded to find a lot of enjoyment in this film. The pedigree is all class – Milos Foreman, Woody Harrelson, Edward Norton and Oliver Stone lend their talents and credibility to this enterprise. When we first meet Larry Flynt he is the hillbilly child of a moonshiner in the hills of Kentucky. By the time the end titles roll by he is the publisher of a vast magazine empire, his name emblazoned on the front of a Los Angeles skyscraper. The confessions of a life in between these unlikely bookends is the plot to this movie. As a young entrepreneur in Cincinnati, Flynt is the promoter of a sleazy strip show who entices a series of beauties to share his office couch, one of them a nearly underage stripper, Althea Leasure, who quickly becomes the true love of his life. This is not your typical prospective bride - when they decide to marry, she is shocked that he might want her to be monogamous as part of the deal! Flynt gets it into his head to publish a publicity "newsletter" (he thinks Playboy is too upmarket for his tastes) – when he approaches a Cincinnati printer he is informed, to his chagrin, that "you’ve got to have text". Soon the newsletter evolves into the magazine "Hustler", which promptly secures a sensational scoop that makes everyone sit up and take notice – nude photos of Jackie Onassis! It’s not long before Larry’s magazine gets him into hot water – and so begins another lifelong relationship, with a lawyer! Alan Isaacman is fresh out of law school, and as Larry later points out, has a client made in heaven in the Southern pornographer – Larry generates enough work to keep his lawyer in clover, and tells Isaacman, "I’m your dream client. I’m fun, I’m rich and I’m always in trouble". Like Larry, Isaacman knows how to get along by his wits, and the two form a partnership against the censorship laws that take them from one writ to another, through jurisdictions large and small. There are more triumphs and hurdles along the way – Flynt is paralysed in a shooting by one of his many enemies, succumbs to drug addiction, and watches his outrageous wife fall desperately ill. But there are redemptions as well, including a conversion to Christian principles (later repudiated) by the evangelist sister of President Carter and a halt to his prolific drug intake. But it is his legal battle with the Moral Majority and its leader Jerry Falwell that is the centrepiece of this movie. It ends with a journey to the highest jurisdiction in the land, the Supreme Court of the United States, where constitutional freedom (and not girlie pictures) is the subject of the day. There’s no moralising here – Larry would be the first to call himself a pornographer, slaking the carnal tastes of men whilst amassing a fortune. It’s all business to Larry, and to its credit the movie makes no attempt to excuse his often abhorrent behaviour. Okay, so Larry and Althea are not Carol and Mike Brady. But there’s something quite touching in their relationship, which survives through addiction, illness and physical trauma. They are clearly in love, and at times it’s easy to forget that this relationship is founded on promiscuity and excess, with as much time spent in the hot tub (with friends) as most couples spend in front of the television. Once you know that the director Milos Forman was a refugee from Nazism there is an added significance to this movie. The director has taken a life experience and applied it with a subtlety that would probably have been lost on an American film maker. The issue is freedom of speech, and he makes the hero of this film the Supreme Court of the United States. It’s always a problem with a biopic of a long and convoluted life – there’s too much to cram into a couple of fast-paced hours. So we don’t really know how Larry got from the Kentucky hills to a Cincinnati strip club; or how Ruth Carter Stapleton convinced him to accept Jesus; or how the magazine is run during his years of addiction. There’s no real explanation of the legal point of the court cases – read our analysis to get that! Rev. Jerry Falwell (leader of the Moral Majority) sues Larry Flynt for $40m for defamation, the result of a jokey Smirnoff advertisement that is a parody of Falwell’s Christian advocacy/decency group, and was certainly in very questionable taste. This case ended up in the Supreme Court because it related to a constitutional issue – free speech as decreed by the Constitution in the First Amendment – and the right to be offensive into the bargain. This was not a dispute limited to Hustler, as it also set a precedent for other publications to be permitted to lampoon public officials. As Larry says following the case, "if they’ll protect a scumbag like me, they’ll protect all of you". There is a serious issue here, of course – in America, does freedom of speech equally protect the detestable as well as the brave or provocative? Let’s take a look at the First Amendment:
So what does this mean? Are you allowed to say whatever you like in America? Well, this is not straightforward. Years after the Flynt case, the Supreme Court continues to hear cases with serious First Amendment issues (8 in 1996-7), in which there are real questions of violations of free-speech. So this is shifting ground, especially when a claimant cannot show that they have suffered any injury because of the violation of their First Amendment rights. In the case of Larry Flynt shown in the movie, the Supreme Court is willing to uphold the publisher’s right to freedom of expression because a prohibition might lead to more serious problems, including a restriction on the media’s ability to speak freely about public figures. The Supreme Court took no issue with the fact that contents of Hustler were objectionable, or that it was in very poor taste for the Rev. Jerry Falwell to be portrayed in dubious sexual circumstances. But the court case was about the right of Flynt to satirise Falwell, a public figure, and not about pornography. It is the ultimate irony that this movie, whose subject is censorship, should have its advertising poster banned in America (interestingly it was seen everywhere in Australia). The poster had Harrelson superimposed on the pelvis of a model in a crucifixion pose, clad only in shorts made from the American flag. The poster was rejected by the Motion Picture Association of America. Milos Forman directed this movie. It follows some spectacular successes, including "Amadeus", "Hair", and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest", all invested with his trademark style inherited from a European background and previously rewarded with two Academy Awards for Best Director. Forman was born in Caslav near Prague, where at the age of nine his parents were taken by Nazis to perish in a death camp. He took a degree in film making at the University of Prague, where his first short film was noticed at international film festivals. He left Prague after the Soviet take-over in 1968, and in 1973, at the urging of producer Michael Douglas, made "One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest", which won every major category in the Academy Awards of 1975 (Including Best Picture). He collected even more Academy Awards for "Amadeus", a quirky biopic of Mozart. Oliver Stone is the producer. Stone has the distinction of having won Academy Awards in three different categories: Best Director, Screenwriter and Producer (his films have received a total of 37 Academy Award nominations). His films as director include "Salvador", "Nixon", "Platoon", "Wall Street", "Talk Radio", "Natural Born Killers", "The Doors", "Heaven and Earth", and "Born on the Fourth of July". Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander’s excellent screenplay is pivotal to the success of this movie. Their last dual effort was the wonderfully offbeat "Ed Wood", directed by the brilliant Tim "Batman" Burton, the biopic of the man reputed to be the worst director in the history of cinema. Their first produced screenplay was for the lightweight "Problem Child" (and its sequel). Woody Harrelson is Larry Flynt. It’s a long way from "Cheers" to "The People vs. Larry Flynt". He is one of the very few actors to successfully make the jump from television to the big screen, quite improbably if you were an aficionado of the long-running sitcom set in a Boston bar. Harrelson won an Emmy as the gleeful bartender Woody Boyd for "Cheers"; he was nominated for an Academy Award for this movie. He’s been in some high profile movies, including the mega-hyped "Indecent Proposal" with Robert Redford and Demi Moore and the controversial Oliver Stone drama "Natural Born Killers". Courtney Love is Althea Leasure. You mightn’t know much about her if you’re under thirty, but Love has shown a talent for a lot more than acting. This is her major motion picture debut, but previously she was the founder and leader of the celebrated rock group Hole, once named by Rolling Stone magazine as the critics’ choice for Group of the Year. She was married to rock icon Kurt Cobain, lead singer of the group Nirvana, until his suicide. Edward Norton is Alan Isaacman, Flynt’s lawyer. You may have seen his riveting performance in the legal thriller "Primal Fear" with Richard Gere, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. He was also featured in Woody Allen’s musical "Everyone Says I Love You", opposite Goldie Hawn and Drew Barrymore. Brett Harrelson is Jimmy Flynt. He is Woody’s brother in real life as well, the youngest of the three Harrelson brothers. He’s guest starred in a few television series, including "Remington Steele" and "Family Ties". He is a mountain bike enthusiast who also teaches health and nutrition. Harrelson is first class in his role as the enigmatic Flynt. With this movie Woody has well and truly graduated from his duties behind the bar at "Cheers". Flynt was all the extremes of character rolled into one, and Harrelson gets it exactly right. He’s whimsical and terrifying, devotedly loyal and promiscuous, profane and religious, astute and profligate. You’re never sure what Larry will do next, or whether there is a method in his madness, and Harrelson refuses to play the role for sympathy – in his characterisation we do not admire Larry as some kind of larrikin hero, and this is largely due to Harrelson’s tightrope performance. It’s no mean feat for Harrelson to convince us that a man who is stupendously promiscuous can be in a loving and emotionally monogamous relationship with his wife. The casting of Courtney Love is a masterstroke. Heaven knows how Forman was able to take a chance on an unknown actress who had a real life biography that would alarm the most courageous film maker! But she is a revelation, especially in her portrayal of an essentially good hearted woman in the grip of addiction and disease. It is Love’s triumph that we come to love her in all her grungy decadence. Edward Norton has sounded a bugle call to a stunning future. Like Harrelson, he walks a fine line between admiration and detestation of his celebrated (and sometimes daft) client. His oration before the Supreme Court would be worthy of the finest advocate. This is a movie that highlights excess in all its terrible glory, and it is hard to deny what a fascinating sight it is. It is an American story, as in "it could only happen in America". As Larry Flynt says, "(in America) everyone gets their shot, even a pig". It is the rise and rise of an American capitalist, brought to life by a master craftsman, director Milos Forman, himself a refugee from tyranny and the beneficiary of the system that allowed Larry Flynt to flourish. It is from this perspective that Forman fashions a love story to the cause of freedom, based on a life of exploitation, an artistic achievement of no small feat. The casting of rock star Courtney Love is both daring and inspired. Woody Harrelson is marvelous, and Edward Norton continues to impress. The portrait of Flynt is unflinching, sometimes painfully abrasive, and so avoids the hypocrisy that permeates so many American films (perhaps because of its European director). In fact the script fairly revels in Flynt’s misbehaviour, to the extent that we sometimes forget there is a serious point to be made. Here at Law in the Lounge we might have appreciated more in the court rooms, but of course we’re a bunch of lawyers! Still, Forman manages to inject the proceedings with enough gravity to make us think about the meaning of free speech, and the price that we have to pay to protect it. It is in his role as a protector of society’s fundamental privileges that Larry is at his most entertaining – clearly he is as much surprised as anyone to find himself doing something that is useful! Larry is a driven man, whether he’s chasing dollars or legal redress, and the movie makes it clear that there's not a lot of difference between the two. It is not the issue of freedom of speech – the central theme of the movie – that precedes Larry to his heroic finale, but Larry’s combative nature. Forman has called the film a "love letter to the Supreme Court", and that is as it should be, because this movie does what we hope will sometimes be achieved by a popular art form – it illuminates. You can walk away from this movie satisfied at having seen a good story – and reassured that the Constitution of a great Western democracy will tolerate a mischievous and at time abhorrent individual to preserve a greater freedom. This is the wonderful ambiguity that permeates this movie. As Forman has pointedly observed, would Hitler and Stalin have flourished hamstrung by a free press? Surely the smutty Larry Flynts of the world are a small price to pay.
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