Other Titles • The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) • Larry Flynt
Synopses for The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996)
1.
If the title sounds a bit dry and grim, don't worry--this movie is anything but. How could it be, with a cast that includes Woody Harrelson as Larry Flynt, Courtney Love as his bisexual junkie wife Althea, and Edward Norton as a composite of their lawyers? Director Milos Forman brings his trademark offbeat humor and affection for vividly defined, marginal characters to a biography of the notorious founder of the Hustler magazine empire. Unlike Hugh Hefner at Playboy, or even Bob Guccione at Penthouse, Flynt had no upscale pretensions. He made Hustler as raunchy, tasteless, and offensive as he could, and America both bought the publication and despised him for it. Although presented as a kind of live-action political cartoon, the movie presents the incredible true story of how a backwards backwoods Kentucky boy made a fortune selling smut in the American heartland, was repeatedly jailed for obscenity, paralyzed by a sniper's bullet, got zonked out of his mind on painkillers, and yet wound up with a landmark freedom of speech case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Forman, who left the political repression of his native Czechoslovakia in 1968 after the Soviet invasion, has described his ebullient (but serious) American comedy as a celebration of the First Amendment, and you can feel his perverse delight shining through in every scene. He convinces us that any constitution that protects the rights of a vulgar pariah like Flynt isn't a failure; it is a cause for rejoicing. Flynt represents the price of freedom, and it is a price well worth paying. The screenplay by Ed Wood writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who seem to excel at creating ambivalent portraits of disreputable figures, entertainingly explores the contradictory emotions and complex moral dilemmas that the Bill of Rights was meant to inspire--as if Frank Capra had been a card-carrying member of the ACLU. --Jim Emerson
2.
In THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT, Milos Forman expertly directs the viewer's sympathy toward Larry Flynt (Woody Harrelson in a superb performance): smut peddler, misogynist, and Editor in Chief of the infamous Hustler magazine. Born in the back woods of Appalachia, the young Flynt--in an opening scene that immediately grabs and amuses--is seen selling moonshine as a child to alcoholic hermits. Flash forward to the 1960s, and he's running a go-go club where he meets the wild (and strangely loveable) Althea Leasure (Courtney Love) who becomes his soul mate and wife. Life is not as sweet as it first seems for the porn king who finds a massive readership for his magazine (the first to show crotch shots). He soon finds himself in the middle of several Supreme Court law suits, and also as an assassin's target. While Flynt's various outrageous meetings with self-righteous Reverend Jerry Falwell (Richard Paul) and devout Christian Ruth Carter Stapleton (President Jimmy Carter's sister, played by Rudolph Giuliani's ex-wife Donna Hanover) are hilarious and smartly pointed, it is perhaps the touching, and ultimately tragic, love story between him and Althea that make him very human, and very interesting to watch.
3.
Two-time Oscar™ winner Milos Forman (Amadeus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) directs Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love and Edward Norton in this "smart, funny, shamelessly entertaining" film called "a blazing triumph" by the New York Times. Based on the true story of the notorious Hustler publisher who was sued by the Religious Right and paralyzed by a fanatic's bullet, THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT is a stranger-than-fiction comedy about one man's outrageous public persona and eccentric private life. Chronicling Flynt's raunchy business savvy, his wildly unconventional marriage and his infamous courtroom antics, THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT is "the most scintillating and outrageous message movie of the decade. An ultrapop masterpiece!" PLAYBOY MAGAZINE
4.
You may not like what he does, but are you prepared to give up his right to do it?
Based on a true story of the notorious Hustler publisher who was sued by the Religious Right and paralyzed by a fanatic's bullet, THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT is a stranger-than-fiction comedy about one man's outrageous public persona and eccentric private life. The film chronicles Flint's raunchy business savvy, his wildly unconventional marriage and his infamous courtroom antics.
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