The distressing Mr. Flynt

[David Casseres]

Mike Brehm sez

>...I take issue with the fact that Larry Flynt is *nothing more* than a
>sleazy pornographer (yes, he is that). However, remember Grenada and
>Ronnie's little invasion? Journalists were blocked by the Defense Department
>from accompanying the invading forces and a 2-day press block was
>established in which the only news given out was the gospel according to
>Ronnie and Caspar (Weinberger). Do you think news organizations got pissed
>off? Of course they did. Did they do anything about it? Fuck no. Larry did
>though--he sued the government claiming that the 1st Amendment guarantees
>the media right-of-access in combat areas as long as media presence poses no
>imminent security risks. He also showed tapes of John DeLorean to 60 Minutes
>in which DeLorean declared that he didn't want any part of the coke deal
>that the Feds set him up for.

I had forgotten that episode, and yes, Flynt gets some credit for that.

>Yeah, Larry's a little sleazy and the movie makes him out to be more saintly
>than he probably is; IMHO he's just like a little kid who does whatever he
>wants to get his way and prove his point. But hey! The point's important,
>because if you don't let Flynt talk, pretty soon you're on to not letting
>others talk as well.

Absolutely.  But if Milos Forman wanted to make a movie about a 
free-speech hero, there are thousands of candidates who did much more for 
free speech than Flynt did.  And yes, it's important to make the point 
that even the scummiest pornographer has to be defended in order to 
protect free speech.  Now, the way *I* would have done it is make a movie 
about a heroic civil-liberties activist lawyer who defends a scummy 
pornographer and thus saves the First Amendment -- but I wouldn't weaken 
my point by portraying the scummy pornographer as a Freedom Fighter.  On 
the contrary, I would portray him as a scummy pornographer.

Or on the other hand, if I wanted to make a movie about a pornographer 
who was maybe not so scummy and really did do something for freedom of 
speech, maybe I'd make a movie about Maurice Girodias, (hope I got that 
name right), who published James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence when no one 
else would, and also published scads and scads of "dirty little books" to 
finance his more literary ventures.


Cheers,
David