c. 1997 Religion News Service
CLEVELAND _ Of all the events occurring in Cleveland on an ordinary winter day, this, surely, is the oddest: Larry Flynt taping an appearance on”The Morning Exchange”and chatting politely with host Fred Griffith.
Never mind that Flynt’s Elvis-like entourage _ his brother-executive assistant, his fiancee-nurse, a publicist and two square-jawed, trench-coated bodyguards, one of them wearing sunglasses indoors _ doesn’t exactly fit in with the suburban family-room set of the TV show. Or that Flynt’s 14-karat-gold-plated wheelchair clashes ever so slightly with the chintz drapes.
This mismatch goes way beyond matters of style. This scene qualifies as a Major Culture Clash.
What could Larry Flynt, the millionaire pornography king and publisher of Hustler _ a skin magazine so single-minded, so explicit in its coverage (or uncoverage), it might prove of greater interest to gynecologists than to its intended readership of hard hats and bikers _ possibly have to discuss with that nice man Fred Griffith? Recipes? The soaps?
As a matter of fact, the conversation included topics that could be discussed at any White House state dinner: books, movies and First Amendment law.
The book in question is Flynt’s autobiography,”An Unseemly Man: My Life as Pornographer, Pundit and Social Outcast,”published by Dove Books, the house most famous, until now, for publishing Faye Resnick’s”Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted.” The movie is”The People vs. Larry Flynt,”directed by Milos Forman and on the short list for a Best Picture Oscar nomination. Woody Harrelson stars as Flynt, and punk-rocker Courtney Love plays his fourth wife, stripper Althea Leasure.
And the First Amendment case is the one Flynt took to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1988 unanimously ruled in his _ and all satirists’ _ favor. The court overturned a lower-court ruling that had awarded $200,000 to the Rev. Jerry Falwell for the”emotional distress”he suffered when Hustler ran an ad parody about him.
The Supreme Court decision figures as the dramatic end of both the movie and the book, and the three have suddenly brought Flynt the sort of mainstream attention no Hustler reader would ever have expected. So Flynt, like countless authors before him, is seizing the moment for a promotional tour, flying from city to city in his personal jet, going from drive-time radio shows to bookstore autograph sessions to each town’s”Morning Exchange.” Where, as it happens, he turns out to be an unexpectedly mild guest. He answers Griffith’s questions with short, stock phrases. (“Not by any means a scintillating interview,”Griffith says a few days later.)”Interesting title, `An Unseemly Man,'”Griffith says, wrapping it up early.”Why did you call it that?””Well,”Flynt says in his soft Kentucky hill-country drawl.”Because I’m not what I seem.” Indeed. Settled into a suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, scanning The New York Times through reading glasses and puffing on a fat cigar, he does not look at all like the”dirty old man in the basement of a building grinding out pornography”that he says people imagine him to be.
His paralysis after being shot in 1978 has subdued him; though he is stocky, the general impression he conveys is of fatigue and vulnerability. He has been described as a lewd Horatio Alger, a go-getter who recognized that no one went broke underestimating the taste of the American public, and went for it.”I started out just wanting to make money and have fun,”he says.
But on meeting him, the character he more closely resembles is Faust: Slumped in his gold wheelchair, surrounded by attendants, he looks like a man who bartered his soul with the devil and lived to witness the end of the bargain.
He began his career in what he cheerfully calls smut at age 24, in Dayton, Ohio, where he opened his first Hustler go-go clubs. Eventually, there were eight clubs in Ohio, and Flynt started a newsletter to promote them. The newsletter turned into a slick magazine and in 1975, Hustler was born.
So was Flynt the pornographer: He was the first publisher to expose female genitalia in a mass-circulation magazine. That somewhat dubious breakthrough led to a 1977 obscenity trial in Cincinnati, the first of many courtroom appearances Flynt would make.
Now, at 54, the great exposer is finally exposing himself to the American public. His willingness does not, however, mean that he is unembarrassed.
He admits to some trepidation about the whole world seeing the scenes in”The People vs. Larry Flynt”that show his outrageous antics in various courtrooms: appearing wrapped in a diaper made of the American flag, throwing an orange at a judge, screaming profanities, getting gagged and sentenced for contempt.”What people don’t understand, and I don’t think the movie really makes clear, is that after I was shot, I was in so much pain, I truly didn’t care about anything,”he says.”It was like standing in scalding water, and it was constant. I mean, if you’ve never felt pain like that, you can’t begin to understand it. I didn’t care if I lived or died. I really just did not care.” That he had saturated himself with painkillers had, no doubt, a contributing effect to his wild-man act. The drugs also contributed to what he says is his one regret in life: Leasure, the only woman he claims ever to have loved, began taking drugs when he did. While he was able to go cold turkey as soon as surgery ended his pain, she became hooked and contracted AIDS. She died in 1987, drowning in a bathtub after an overdose of heroin.
The movie never blinks in showing such sordid episodes in Flynt’s life.”There’s a reason most bio-pics are about dead people,”he says,”but I didn’t veto anything.” Curiously, Flynt was worried about the opposite effect _ that the movie wouldn’t show everything. Thus, the book.”Movies only show the highlights,”he says.”I knew a lot would be left out.” For instance, though the movie shows his battles with the so-called religious right and the Moral Majority, he wishes it had also taken note of his ongoing debate with feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Gloria Steinem, who recently wrote a New York Times opinion piece lamenting Hollywood’s bad judgment in making Flynt a hero.”They say pornography is exploitive and demeaning, and treats women as sex symbols,”he drawls, repeating what has obviously become a sound bite for him.”But, look, women are at their most glorious in their birthday suits, and that’s the way men want to see them. And that’s human nature.” (STORY MAY END HERE – OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)
He denies that Hustler portrays violence against women in its pictorials, as Steinem charged.”The problem is that at the front of the magazine, we do a lot of satire and parodies and things of this nature, and some of them may very well depict violence. But it’s intended as humor.” Where does he draw the line? Is there anything Larry Flynt will not publish?”Child pornography,”he says.”It’s violating the rights of someone who is not old enough to speak for themselves.” Is that it?”Well, years ago, a friend of mine published a book called `The Anarchist’s Cookbook,’ and it essentially gave directions for making bombs and Molotov cocktails. I said at the time, and I still say, I thought my friend was wrong. I would never publish that book.” He defends, however, the right to publish both child pornography and bomb-making instructions. He just wishes more people, particularly mainstream journalists, would defend his right to publish pornography and outrageous parodies. He figures he has spent between $50 million and $60 million on legal fees, defending that right for everyone.”I find that when people call me names like sleazebag, scumbag, pervert, it’s really that they’re just trying to look for words to attack me for what I do,”he says.”I don’t care. I’m not looking for respect. I’m just looking for a little recognition.”
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