Flynt Doesn’t Deserve Heroic Film Treatment

What a brilliant, compelling movie is Milos Forman’s “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” Fast-paced, witty, with breathtaking cinematography and phenomenal performances. And yet I can’t remember the last time I left a theater feeling so sad.

The reason is simple: I miss decency. I miss the time in our culture when movies were about heroes. In a bygone era, Flynt wouldn’t be the hero of a movie. He’d be a villain--if he were on the screen at all.

The same Larry Flynt who ran the notorious depictions of a woman run through a meat grinder and turned into hamburger, and of a woman strapped to the hood of a Jeep after a hunting trip, now comes before us as a symbol of what is right with America. He stood up for the 1st Amendment, the movie seems to be saying.

No, he didn’t. The 1st Amendment stood up for him.

I actually felt bad for televangelist Jerry Falwell. What did he do to deserve the role of straight man to a fellow like Flynt, first in real life and again 12 years later in this movie? I have little use for religious leaders who cross over into politics, but of all our nationally known preachers, Falwell’s behavior is probably the straightest. I covered him in 1980 when I worked at CBS News, and I found no dirt in his background then and haven’t heard of any since.

I remember a story a criminal law professor of mine at Columbia told our class. Apparently the same Miranda whose criminal case led to the “Miranda rights” was later killed in an Arizona bar fight. When the professor told his mother, she shook her head sadly and said, “What a shame. After all that man did for his country.”

Flynt is in the same category. He lowered the standards simply because our Constitution tolerates people who lower standards. We’re currently engaged in a society-wide race to the bottom. Lots of people, myself included, enjoy some of the cultural fruits of low standards. But I guess what bothers me is that we don’t think about the consequences of a culture devoid of standards. Our society, paradoxically, offers a high degree of civil liberties and a low amount of civil behavior.

One of the most telling moments in “The People vs. Larry Flynt” comes after Flynt’s religious conversion. He tells his staff that he wants to do a sexually explicit pictorial of Adam and Eve and then do a shoot with “a lot of naked women on crosses.” Courtney Love, playing his wife, patiently explains, “People don’t want their pornography and religion mixed together. They want them one at a time.”

It’s also a great irony that Flynt’s attorney is treated with such ambivalence in the film. On the one hand, we’re asked to admire him because he’s courageous enough to take Flynt on as a client; he believes in civil liberties. On the other hand, we end up thinking he lacks the courage to renounce Flynt as a client. Why? Not because of Flynt’s publications. Rather, because Flynt continues to make a mockery of the very court system that ultimately vindicated his right to publish trash.

I understand why Flynt matters so much to people like Oliver Stone, who produced the movie. If Flynt can get away with anything, so can any creative artist. I myself am a writer and a reader, and I don’t want anyone--judge, jury or legislator--telling me what I can and cannot write or read. But I just wish that more movies were about heroes, not about morally bankrupt businessmen with good attorneys.

Isn’t there anyone else they could make a movie about? Someone out there displaying some courage, someone to emulate? Doesn’t it bother anyone else that we’re getting our religion and our pornography mixed together? I didn’t find the nudity or the sex in the film offensive. Rather, I found it sad that Flynt, of all people, merits such amiable treatment on the screen.