People Who Try to Put a Lid on ‘People’

“Larry Flynt the Movie is even more cynical than Larry Flynt the Man.”

With that remarkable declaration, feminist Gloria Steinem began her assault on Milos Forman’s “The People vs. Larry Flynt” in an op-ed article published Jan. 7 in the New York Times.

The article went on to accuse director Forman of glorifying the founder of Hustler while ignoring the depths of his depravity. Nowhere in the movie, Steinem wrote, do we see the images sold in Hustler of women in bondage or being raped, brutalized and mutilated.

Steinem, who was the subject of one of those tasteless cartoon mutilations herself, has reason to loathe Flynt. The same reason most human beings of breeding and taste have. Whatever contribution he inadvertently made fighting for the right to publish Hustler, it’s jolting to see his name and “hero” in the same sentence.

The question is, does “The People vs. Larry Flynt” really elevate the pornographer to hero status? Or are Steinem and the feminist soldiers and friends who fell in line behind her so colored by their biases that no film with hopes of finding a broad audience could possibly be a film they’d approve?

Certainly, the arguments leveled at Forman, one of the most respected and intelligent filmmakers of our generation, have bordered on hysteria. Steinem later compared “The People vs. Larry Flynt” to someone doing a biography of Hitler without mentioning the Holocaust. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert called Forman “a coward” for not showing the actual images in Hustler of women being dehumanized, ignoring the fact that to show those images would mean an unacceptable NC-17 rating. And in a Counterpunch in The Times’ Calendar section Feb. 10, screenwriter Robin Swicord (“Little Women”) wrote an amusing but irrelevant parody comparing Flynt’s right to degrade women in Hustler to a plantation owner’s right to rape and beat his slaves.

The seemingly organized attack on Forman’s film, which opened Dec. 27, reached its peak on Jan. 17, when, in the middle of the Oscar nominations voting period, someone ran an anonymous ad in Daily Variety, reprinting in full Steinem’s New York Times piece and offering it to readers “for your consideration.”

The National Organization for Women has denied buying the ad, but Anne Cheney, the president of NOW’s New York chapter, said a week later on CNN’s “Crossfire” that though her organization does not want to censor the movie, it is saying, “Don’t honor this film with an Academy Award.” In other words, don’t vote for it, no matter how deserving it might be.

Did the appeal for jury nullification work? Here are some notes and numbers:

* After opening to rave reviews in New York and Los Angeles, the film posted strong grosses as it expanded from 16 to 1,233 theaters in three weeks. But between the third and fifth weeks in release, with the Steinem/NOW campaign in full swing, the weekly box-office receipts dropped from an average of $4,311 on 1,233 screens to $1,705. Last weekend, “Larry Flynt” made an average of $1,201 in just 500 theaters. It’s dead. Mission, apparently, accomplished.

* Once regarded as a leading contender for across-the-board awards, “Flynt” was virtually ignored by the guilds. Woody Harrelson received a Screen Actors Guild nomination, but there were no others, while Forman was left off the Directors Guild ballot and Golden Globe winners Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander were overlooked by their colleagues in the Writers Guild.

* Final Academy Award nomination tally: two (Forman for best director, Harrelson for best actor).

The protest wasn’t the only thing that hurt “Larry Flynt.” Whoever thought to invite Larry Flynt himself to the Golden Globes can take some credit. His presence there, grinning like Jabba the Hutt and throwing his arms around winners Karaszewski and Alexander, seemed to belie the filmmakers’ denials that the movie glorifies him. He looked glorified on television.

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The only thing that hasn’t entered into the debate is that there is no evidence of Hustler’s disgraceful tastes leading to anyone’s actual harm. And what was at risk if “The People vs. Larry Flynt” had won a dozen Oscar nominations and made a bundle at the box office? No one has suggested that it would have lowered the tastes and IQs of those exposed to it or even raised the subscription base for Hustler. What’s the problem?

In the end, it seems that an opportunity was presented for activists to grab the media spotlight, and they did. More power to them. The misogyny issue raised by Flynt, and--inadvertently, one assumes from Steinem’s argument--by the film itself is an important one, and it’s good to use the movie as a wedge into a national discussion of it.

Even the effort to discourage people from seeing the picture is in the grand tradition of free dissent. It is, in fact, that tradition of free speech that brought Forman here from communist Czechoslovakia in 1968, made a naturalized patriot of him and set him up for criticism from people on his side of the political spectrum. Anti-censors all.

“Milos is in deep shock, depression and disillusionment,” says Sherlee Lantz, a former New York theatrical casting agent and a longtime friend of Forman’s. “There is not a more patriotic person in this country, and he is in a situation where the very thing he loves about it, his freedom of expression, is being attacked.”

Contacted after hearing of the nominations Tuesday, Forman said he was surprised and pleased that his fellow directors nominated him but is still reeling from the battering he’s taken.

“It is depressing to have them attack my integrity, and the integrity of the film, and to state publicly that they’ll do everything they can to hurt the business of the film,” he said. “I don’t know how to argue with these people.”

* READERS RESPOND

Writer’s “movie” substituting slavery for pornography rights causes stir, F3.