NOW, ACLU debate puts Flynt movie in different light

Web-posted: Tuesday, February 4, 1997

have to express my gratitude to the National Organization for Women and the American Civil Liberties Union.

They are having a silly but very serious spat over the merits of the movie, "The People vs. Larry Flynt.''

The ladies at NOW, as well as Gloria Steinem and other prominent feminists, despise Flynt because they say that his magazine, Hustler, exploits and glorifies cruelty to women.

So they are upset that the movie shows him in what can be considered a favorable light.

And while they can't prevent people from seeing the movie, just as they can't stop clunks from reading his magazine while their lips move, they have launched a lobbying campaign to prevent the movie from winning any Oscars.

On the other side is the ACLU, which considers Flynt -- a self-described scumbag -- as something of a hero because of his successful legal battles to defend the rights of free speech.

And the ACLU believes that NOW misses the point of the movie and is misguided in trying to discourage people from seeing it.

I'm grateful to both for having this public debate because it hadn't occurred to me to see the movie until I heard about their squabble.

Flynt has never been one of my favorite American folk characters. As for his magazine, I've always exercised my right to ignore it.

Except twice. Early in his publishing career, I looked at his magazine, saw something remarkably offensive (I have forgotten what it was) and wrote a nasty column about him.

Flynt, born and reared a poor hillbilly, never lost his belligerent roots and is not one to turn the other cheek. So he counterpunched by making me his magazine's (anal orifice) of the month, a designation he hands out to people who bug him.

But his presence and alleged influence in our society has never bothered me. As Flynt himself has often said, his single worst offense is being guilty of "bad taste.''

And if we start censoring bad taste, we'd have to shut down most of the TV stations in America. And I don't doubt that some of the stuff that appears in this space would soon vanish.

But when Steinem and NOW get in a spitting match with the ACLU and other liberals, I have to find out what it is that has them all so worked up.

So I slipped into an almost empty movie theater to take in "The People vs. Larry Flynt.''

And I agree with the movie critics, most of whom who gave it rave reviews.

It is one heck of a good movie: intelligent, well acted, funny, sad, and in a crude way, touchingly romantic.

Also, it has no car chase scenes, helicopter crashes, explosions, kung fu, gun battles, earthquakes, dismembered bodies, or graphic sexual acts.

What it does is tell the story of a crude and unread young guy who came out of a dirt-poor background but manages to goofily luck his way into starting a really cruddy magazine and using his canny intelligence and instincts to build it into the foundation of a publishing empire and enormous personal wealth.

In other words, it is an American rags-to-riches business success story.

It also has a surprisingly moving love story about Flynt and his fourth wife, an ex-stripper who died at age 33.

But the main thrust of the movie is about Flynt as an unlikely hero and defender of his and our right to free speech.

Every movie plot needs conflict. And that's the tension in the Flynt story -- his battles with anti-porn crusaders and the justice systems in several states that tried to shut his magazine down and put him in prison.

The movie treats that side of him as somewhat heroic, although he has always admitted he didn't start out as a 1st Amendment defender. He was just trying to get rich and have a good time.

But the movie isn't dishonest when tossing honors Flynt's way. There are constitutional experts who agree that as unworthy a guy as Flynt might be, his successful court battles were important defenses of our free speech rights.

And since when do we demand the purest of backgrounds and motives of those who do something special?

I recall writing about a man who had won the Medal of Honor for single-handedly taking on and defeating a slew of German tanks and soldiers. Sometime later, I bumped into that hero's closest boyhood friend, and he said:

"You missed one important thing about that battle. The night before, his platoon bunked down in a house that had a stash of cognac in the cellar. So when he did all those things, he was drunk as a hoot owl.''

What surely bugs Steinem and the people at NOW most is that the script and Woody Harrelson's portrayal of Flynt let him come off as kind of a tragic figure and, in many ways, a likable guy.

If that's what they fear, I think they're right.

I walked out of the theater with a regard for Flynt that I hadn't had before.

Which might be further proof that I still deserve the dubious honor Flynt once gave me.

© 1996 Chicago Tribune