The People Versus Larry Flynt

Milos Forman, USA 1996, 130 minutes

Born to a poor family in Kentucky, Larry Flynt (Woody Harrelson) was running a string of strip clubs in Ohio by the time he was a young man. He decided there was a market for an `adult' magazine that dispensed with the pretensions of Playboy (of course people bought it for the articles) and just gave the punters what they wanted. Initially intended as publicity for his clubs, Flynt saw potential big money and launched `Hustler' magazine nationwide. It wasn't an initial success, and he was in danger of running out of money, but when pictures of Jacqueline Onassis sunbathing nude in the Mediterranean were printed, sales rocketed and financial success was certain.

Flynt married Althea Leasure (Courtney Love), a dancer at one of his clubs, and the pair settled into a rather unusual (and very open) marriage. Then everything went wrong. Local anti-porn campaigners Simon Leis and Charles Keating Jr went after Flynt, and in 1976 he was arrested on obscenity charges. Flynt started a one-man battle against the rising tide of censorship and right-wing religious radicals. He was shunned by both sides of the political spectrum - who in politics wants to support a pornographer? He battled the courts, always bringing the full eye of the media to view the proceedings.

Flynt had many supporters, but also had many enemies, and he was shot by a sniper on the steps of a Georgia courthouse. Although he was paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair, he wasn't stopped, and if anything it made him more determined to fight for his right to free speech. His greatest battle came when Jerry Falwell the leader of the `moral majority' was parodied in Hustler, and promptly sued. Flynt was cleared of libel but ordered to pay for causing `emotional distress'. Not deterred, he appealed to the supreme court, and won a unanimous, precedent-setting decision for the right to free speech.

PvsLF is a movie with a basic message - that the freedom of speech is something that is worth fighting over, even if it means that people might say things that are offensive to others. Larry Flynt seems an unlikely hero, but it is hard to come away from the film without some respect for the man, portrayed with a crazed enthusiasm by Woody Harrelson (hard to believe this is the same guy who was the dimwitted barman in TV's `Cheers'). Supporting roles are also strong, especially Edward Norton as Flynt's long-suffering lawyer, and Courtney Love, who spirals down into drug-dependent oblivion with alarming believability - remember all the drugs rumors surrounding Love during her marriage to Kurt Cobain?

The script by Ed Wood authors Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski is tight and blackly funny, moving along at a brisk pace, as there is a large amount of story to pack into the two hour running time. In a world of movie sequels and big-budget explosionfests, it makes a welcome change to see a movie with something to say.

Review by Jonathan M Caryl
Taken from EUFS Programme 1997-98