THE PEOPLE
vs. LARRY FLYNT

Starring Woody Harrelson and Courtney Love Directed by Milos Forman Rated R, with profanity, nudity, sex, violence and drug use; running time 130 minutes With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a 10

(Jan. 9, 1997) -- In A Man for All Seasons, the Oscar-winning 1966 film about Saint Thomas More and Henry VIII, a pious young do-gooder argues that he would "cut down every law in England" to get at the devil.

But More responds, "Oh, and when the last law is down and the devil turns round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?

"Yes," More adds, "I give the devil the benefit of law, for my own safety's sake."

That philosophy is put to the test in The People vs. Larry Flynt, Milos Forman's equally brilliant, if less poetic, new film about the obscenity trials of the outrageously slimy publisher of Hustler magazine. In it, Flynt (Woody Harrelson) responds to a Supreme Court ruling by saying, "If they'll protect a scum bag like me, then they'll protect all of you."

Never before has a film so effectively -- and entertainingly -- argued that the fight for our Constitutional rights puts us all in bed with some pretty despicable characters. As a tag line on posters for the film so perfectly puts it: "Free speech has its price."

The People vs. Larry Flynt stars Harrelson as the controversial pornographer, a grade school dropout and Kentucky backwoods bootlegger who parlayed a string of Ohio strip joints into a media empire.

Though he began by publishing a cheap newsletter for strip bar patrons, Flynt hit pay dirt when he converted it into a glossy magazine that ignored the self-imposed, air-brush standards of Playboy, going instead for far more raunchy photography and dirty text.

After publishing nude paparazzi photos of Jackie Onassis -- and taking on Moral Majority czar, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, in a parody advertisement -- Flynt and his magazine became more and more successful. He and his entourage moved into a 24-room Beverly Hills mansion. Joining him is his lover, a former teen stripper named Althea (poignantly played by singer-turned-actress Courtney Love).

But with the fame came a more and more intense legal campaign by self-appointed community watchdogs to silence Flynt and shut down his sleazy magazine. The latter part of Flynt's life has become a seemingly endless parade of court appearances, rulings, appeals, suits and countersuits. And through it all, Flynt has remained as outrageous as ever, testing the patience of judges, district attorneys and his own lawyers.

In the film, Flynt's various lawyers are presented, for dramatic purposes, as one very frustrated but resourceful young man, Alan Isaacman, well-played by Edward Norton. As Isaacman champions the cause of the incorrigible Flynt, he at least gives us somebody decent to root for. (Flynt himself appears in a cameo as the judge in the publisher's first obscenity trial.)

The People vs. Larry Flynt has been written for the screen by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who previously detailed the life of another eccentric original, Ed Wood, for director Tim Burton. Once again, they demonstrate a sharp eye for defining moments and quirky characteristics.

The film opens, for example, with a portrait of Flynt the boy, making moonshine with his brother in the Kentucky woods and then slugging his father because he drinks away the profits.

Much also is made of the relationship between strip club owner Flynt and the street-smart young stripper, Althea, who becomes a major force as he formulates his publishing schemes, his outlandish publicity campaigns and his courtroom strategies.

And, after they move West, they become decadent upscale Beverly Hillbillies, complete with group sexcapades and heavy drug use. And the script explores further complications, first when evangelist and Presidential sister Ruth Carter Stapleton (Donna Hanover) briefly converts Flynt into the strangest, most sex-obsessed born-again Christian you'll ever see; and second, when a would-be assassin shoots Flynt, with more permanent consequence, leaving him in a wheelchair.

Director Milos Forman (of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus) is a native of Czechoslovakia and has experienced repressed rights under both the Nazis and the Communists. So you can be sure his film makes cogent arguments for the right to free speech.

But he's also a skilled filmmaker, and he never forgets to entertain. The People Vs. Larry Flynt is frequently very funny, though its position on Constitutional rights is never diluted.

Both Harrelson and Love are fabulous. Harrelson's Flynt is an amoral buffoon, but he also becomes increasingly combative and even a little proud when he stumbles into a new role as a champion of First Amendment rights. And Love is perfectly cast as Althea, especially in later sequences in which the character's drug dependence mirrors similar on-the-record moments in Love's own life.

Don't worry, The People vs. Larry Flynt won't try to convert you to a Larry Flynt fan. He says, "All I'm guilty of is bad taste;" by the film's end you're still free to disagree.

But as A Man for All Seasons argued 30 years ago, the law has to give everyone his due.

Even the devil.