Leave it to Czech director Milos Forman (One Flew Over to Cuckoo's Nest) to make the most entertaining and offbeat celebration of the American Constitution that the movies have ever given us. You think the First Amendment was designed to protect you from offensive speech? Think again. The real glory of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights--as brought to life in this splendidly quirky and alternately reverent and irreverent comedy--is that it ensures everyone's freedom by protecting a whole range of expression, from the banal to the outrageous. Scripted by the writers of Ed Wood (another affectionately twisted biography of a disreputably eccentric entertainment figure), The People vs. Larry Flynt applies a similar sort of exaggerated and telescoped editorial-cartoon sensibility to the wild life and times of Hustler skin-magazine publisher Larry Flynt. It's the great (and fictionalized-but-true) American story of how smut-peddler Flynt--the poor man's redneck Hugh Hefner--ended up appealing a libel case (brought by televangelist Jerry Falwell) to the Supreme Court and winning a major legal victory that affects us all. Terrific performances by Woody Harrelson as Flynt, grunge-star-turned-glamour-puss Courtney Love as his wife Althea, and Edward Norton as their lawyer (a composite character). --Jim Emerson
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
Acclaimed drama based on the controversial life of Larry Flynt. Nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Actor in a Leading Role - Woody Harrelson, Best Director - Milos Forman) and won two 1997 Golden Globes (Best Director - Motion Picture, Milos Forman; Best Screenplay - Motion Picture). Commentaries with Milos Forman and writer Larry Karaszewski, and with Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love and Ed Norton.
