 |
| Images courtesy of Arrow Video |
Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski started out as a
screenwriting duo behind the Problem Child films before veering into bad
filmmaking legend Ed Wood by Tim Burton.
With their respective careers on the rise following the Edward D. Wood, Jr.
biopic, they attracted the attention of two-time Academy Award winning Czechoslovakian
director Miloš Forman who himself hadn’t made a feature in seven years since the
romantic drama Valmont in 1989.
Together with Forman they devised a most unorthodox, controversial but
no less important American epic which both predates Boogie Nights by one
year while also being a free-speech advocation spoken of the same breath and
energy as co-producer Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July with The
People vs. Larry Flynt.
An immediate critical and commercial hit that drew as much
controversy as the subject himself did in reality, hailed by journalists as a reflection
on challenges to the First Amendment while also drawing consternation from
feminists who felt the film glorified Larry Flynt and his Hustler pornography
magazine by sugar coating many of the more inadmissible elements of his evil
empire. Despite this, the film
nevertheless garnered $43 million at the box office and garnered two Academy
Award nominations for Best Director and Best Actor Woody Harrelson in one of
his finest performances. It also went on
to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and continues to pose
important questions about the gulf between free speech, exploitation and our
right to choose whether or not to look at something offensive.
Beginning in 1972, Cincinnati, Larry Flynt (Woody Harrelson)
and his brother Jimmy (Brett Harrelson) run a scrappy on the fringes strip club. Sensing their operation is on its death
throes, they start a newsletter called Hustler which features the nude
strippers on display. Eventually
developing into a magazine, sales explode when a nude photo of Jackie O. is
published and he becomes embroiled in a tumultuous relationship with underage
dancer Althea (Courtney Love) as well as anti-porn activists who grow steadily
more violent and dangerous towards Flynt.
His antics also attract the attention of one of his unlikeliest allies
with criminal defense attorney Alan Isaacman (Edward Norton) who sees in Flynt’s
case a bigger more implacable slippery slope of the battle over the First
Amendment.
In and out of jail and courtrooms over pornography charges
amid efforts to try and clean his bad boy image by cozying up to Christian
activist Ruth Stapleton (Donna Hanover) until one fateful day he and his
attorney Isaacman are gunned down by an unknown assailant. Both survive the attack but Flynt is left
paralyzed from the waist down and wheelchair bound. His problems worsen when he grows addicted to
painkillers and renounces his faith before undergoing spinal surgery and
kicking the painkillers for good while Althea spirals further into morphine
abuse. Finding himself in court again
for leaking videos related to John DeLorean and for publishing an offensive
parody of Reverend Jerry Falwell who sues for libel and emotional distress,
Flynt for awhile becomes a basket case of circus theater antics in the
courtroom which threatens to bring further jailtime and censorship upon himself. Its up to his attorney Isaacman to reel the
madman back down to Earth and put their joint causes together for something
more important than themselves.
A star-studded murderer’s row featuring numerous character
actors and unexpected bit parts such as Crispin Glover, James Cromwell, Vincent
Schiavelli, James Carville and even a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance from
Norm Macdonald, The People vs. Larry Flynt is a major masterpiece of
engrossing biographical courtroom drama storytelling that further cements Miloš Forman’s reputation as one of the
most important anti-establishment artists in American cinema. From Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest to Tom Hulce in Amadeus, there’s a countercultural
troublemaking hero at the epicenter driving the saga forward and the
increasingly outlandish courtroom scenes of Woody Harrelson dressing up in a
diaper of the American flag or wearing a combat helmet serve as a harbinger of
things to come with Forman’s next film Man on the Moon. Harrelson, Love and Norton form a kind of
unholy unity of good and bad together vying for a cause beyond their own petty
day-to-day problems. Larry and Althea
are damaged messy goods which plays very well off of Norton’s clean cut straight-laced
attorney trying to defend his client who keeps pulling the rug out from under
him counterproductively.
From American Beauty composer Thomas Newman’s
evocative score to Philippe Rousselot’s mannered and low-key scope Panavision
cinematography, The People vs. Larry Flynt was initially released home
video released rereleased again in 2019 by Sony Pictures in more or less the
same edition. Arrow Video, well aware of
the mishandling of Forman’s epic, have taken it upon themselves to right this
unjustly wronged masterpiece with a two-disc special edition 4K UHD edition. Featuring the film remastered with lossless
as well as discrete audio options and devoted an entire second disc to the
extras, some of which include archival as well as newly rendered featurettes,
the boutique label features a new interview with Woody Harrelson, former
Columbia Pictures president Lisa Henson and producer Janet Yang and a newly
filmed interview with screenwriters Alexander and Karaszewski.
For a film that continues to be divisive for theoretically
defending the devil, Arrow has put together the definitive home video release
for this still polar, powerful saga. While
some will argue over where this ranks in Forman’s canon, in a way it serves as
a continuation of the anti-establishment antiheroic myth started by One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest followed by Amadeus before concluding with
this and Man on the Moon. Most of
all, it somehow manages to humanize and even empathize with one of the porn
industry’s slimiest villains, rallying behind him as a cult hero for freedom of
speech. With the slovenly Jabba the Hutt
figure and repellent personality who makes a sneaky cameo onscreen as a judge
who sentences Flynt, the film gives you every reason to hate him while also
stressing the importance of still allowing him to speak for good or for
ill. Larry Flynt might be a sleazebag
but he himself involved in one of the country’s most important legal fights
whose final verdict and overarching message of freedom of expression couldn’t
be more timely if it tried.
--Andrew Kotwicki
