The People Vs. Larry Flynt

Distributed by
Columbia TriStar Films (UK)

Viewed at Manchester Showcase Cinemas.
Telephone 0161 220 8765 for programme information

Cert: 18

Running time: 130 minutes

Year: 1996

Released: 11th April 1997

Widescreen Ratio : 2.35:1

Director:

Milos Forman (Amadeus, Hair, Valmont, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

Producers:

Oliver Stone, Janet Yang and Michael Hausman

Screenplay:

Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski

Cast:

Larry Flynt: Woody Harrelson (Natural Born Killers, Kingpin, Indecent Proposal)
Althea Leasure : Courtney Love
Isaacman : Edward Norton (Primal Fear)
Jimmy Flynt : Brett Harrelson
Ruth Carter Stapleton : Donna Hanover
Charles Keating : James Cromwell (Babe, Eraser)
Arlo : Crispin Glover (Back To The Future 1 and 2, The Doors)
Chester : Vincent Schiavelli (Ghost, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)
Judge Morrissey (Cincinatti Court) : Larry Flynt

T he People Vs. Larry Flynt tells the story of the the founder of Hustler magazine, a soft-porn magazine filled with naked ladies, and articles on cars...

The film begins with Larry, aged 10, and his brother Jimmy, aged 8, trying to make a few dollars by selling people what they want, in this case, a stolen keg of alcohol to an old man. When the action moves on to 1972, Larry is running his own Hustler strip club, where men come to spend their evenings...

Larry hits upon the idea of selling a newsletter to accompany the club, and to drum up trade. Like many things in life, some people loved what he did, and some deplored it. During the next chapter of his life, as they go into production with a magazine dedicated to Hustler, Larry meets Althea Leasure, played superbly by Hole's lead singer, and widow of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love.

The film neatly gels together Larry Flynt's struggles to get the magazine off the ground, to overcome the hatred from the Christian religion-loving community who think that his magazine is vile and should be banned, despite Playboy being widely available, hence him trying to get the wife of the then-President Jimmy Carter, Ruth Carter Stapleton, to believe that he has seen the light and been converter too, and especially his attempt to rebuild his life after being the target of an assassination attempt by a mystery sniper.

The cast and crew of the film is a top-notch collaboration too. Director Milos Forman has previously been well renowned for films of varying categories from Amadeus to Valmont, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to Hair. One of the film's three producers is the ubiquitous Oliver Stone who, in 1994, worked together with Woody Harrelson on the controversial Natural Born Killers which has recently been released in the US in a widescreen Director's Cut with over 150 essential snippets put back in.

The lead actor, Woody Harrelson, shows why he is one of Hollywood's rising stars, managing to pull off a real-life character starting as a cock-sure entrepreneur to a man with paralysis from the waist down after almost being assassinated. After first seeing him as dim barman Woody in the TV series, Cheers, I never would've thought that we'd see him either as a love interest in Indecent Proposal or a man who lives for murder in Natural Born Killers.

The rest of the cast fills out with Edward Norton, last seen on the other side of the law in Primal Fear. As Larry Flynt's lawyer, trying to get him out of all his predicaments, such as the time when he shoots his mouth off once too often in court, and gets gagged to shut him up, Norton shows that he is a name to look out for in the near future.

Brett Harrelson, the real-life brother of Woody, plays Larry's brother Jimmy. Two of Larry's co-workers are played by Crispin Glover (seen being weird in Back to the Future as Michael J Fox's father, and as Andy Warhol in Oliver Stone's The Doors), and Vincent Schiavelli (seen as the old ghost who teaches Patrick Swayze to kick a tin can in Ghost, and joining the mentally-challenged in Milos Forman's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

One of the triumphs in the cast is of Courtney Love. I thought beforehand that she would just become another singer-turned-actress, but she excels as Larry's lover and, later on in life, his wife, sharing his passion for excessive drug taking and all the other pleasures of the flesh.

Overall, I would thoroughly recommend this film to anyone who wants to see a well-told story with excellent acting, and established direction. Woody Harrelson was given an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the self-made millionaire and it would have been nice to see Courtney Love get some form of recognition too.

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1997.