SOURCE: Forman, Milos, and Richard Porton. “Porn Again: The People vs. Larry Flynt.” Cineaste 22, no. 4 (fall 1996): 28-32.

[In the following interview, Forman discusses his views on censorship and his film The People vs. Larry Flynt.]

The controversy inspired by Milos Forman's The People vs. Larry Flynt has focused attention on America's most notorious pornographer and Hustler magazine's virulent misogyny. Unfortunately, this ongoing debate has yielded considerably more heat than political or moral illumination. Distinctions between Hustler's frequently vile brand of porn, First-Amendment issues, and Flynt's personal life have become hopelessly blurred. Gloria Steinem, for example, points out that Hustler's fondness for simulated rape and torture—a truly peculiar notion of erotica—is unquestionably degrading to women. Yet her understandable impatience with attempts to brand Flynt a “free speech hero” does not negate the fact that the smut peddler's censorship battles have, however unwittingly, helped to safeguard the rights of his opponents, whether antipornography feminists or right-wing fundamentalists.

From an equally problematic perspective, Laura Kipnis (a Marxist as well as a feminist), hailed Hustler as the most class-conscious mass circulation publication in the United States and expressed a surprising admiration for its “Rabelaisian” humor. Nevertheless, her generally incisive critique of Hustler's “maddeningly incoherent” preoccupations either ignores—or subtly apologizes for—most of the repellent images usually cited by the magazine's detractors: in her view, Flynt's obvious contempt for Church and State takes precedence over his penchant for depicting women as naked trophies.

These polemics at least raise complicated, and often disturbing, issues. The People vs. Larry Flynt, an enjoyable and well-crafted entertainment, skillfully avoids confronting most of them. Affirming its status as an archetypal Hollywood product, the film airbrushes the contents of Hustler—a perverse, rags-to-riches saga commemorating a country bumpkin's triumph over the forces of repression and sanctimoniousness is more palatable fare for a mass audience. Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski's witty script (more a skillful series of interwoven vignettes than a traditional biopic) and Forman's unerringly empathetic direction of his cast (Flynt is played with intelligent restraint by Woody Harrelson, while Courtney Love gives an astonishingly convincing performance as his fourth wife, Althea Leasure) prevents Larry Flynt from being nothing more than a static panegyric to the First Amendment.

Of course, a certain queasiness is unavoidable if viewers pause long enough to compare the film's Teddy Bear-like protagonist with the considerably more ambiguous, real-life prototype. The svelte, devilishly charming publisher played by Harrelson contrasts sharply with the portrait of a paranoid, vengeful (and, of, course, chronically overweight) individual painted by his former associates. Flynt emerges as yet another incarnation of Schweik, the antiauthoritarian hero of Czech novelist Juroslav Hasek's comic masterpiece (The Good Soldier Schweik), whose shade can also be discerned in other Forman films such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus. Forman's wishful thinking converts a cynical entrepreneur into an earnest sexual libertarian: Flynt emerges as a hillbilly version of Wilhelm Reich, even though he might be more accurately described as a pop-culture descendant of the Marquis de Sade.

While the image of Flynt as a likably goofy crusader for press freedom that the film promotes may be as inaccurate as the heterosexual Cole Porter depicted in Night and Day or the homespun naif honored in Young Mr. Lincoln, the pleasures of this irreverent tribute to a self-styled “scumbag” reside in a series of lovingly evoked picaresque comic details. For most of its duration, Larry Flynt is imbued with a screwball ambience that is rare indeed in an era when film comedy tends to consist of either inept imitations of Capra or Sturges or simple-minded high jinks designed for the teenage market.

The film opens with ironic verve as the young Larry proves his resourcefulness as a purveyor of moonshine (we are spared, perhaps mercifully, the future pornmeister's sexual initiation with a chicken). Soon after, Forman segues to the near-clueless Flynt's early career as an amateur publisher (a befuddled printer has to explain the meaning of “slick paper” to him). Originally conceived as a newsletter to publicize his chain of strip clubs, Hustler's early success seems to surprise even the newly-rich Flynt. When our putative hero finally achieves notoriety as a hard-core press lord, the narrative's giddy absurdism proves irresistibly appealing. A Hustler editorial meeting debating the merits of an X-Rated cartoon homage to The Wizard of Oz (the tin man is revealed as a priapic stud) and quasisurreal sequences chronicling Flynt's ‘born again’ determination to combine sex and religion in hilariously unpalatable ways will surely be remembered as seminal Nineties film moments.

It is only when Larry Flynt focuses on its hero's numerous entanglements with the law that comic acuity becomes diluted by liberal flag-waving. Falwell's lawyer Alan Isaacman (Flynt's attorney in his Supreme Court battle against Reverend Jerry Falwell, played with boyish elan by Edward Norton, is designed as a composite figure who stands in for all the porn magnate's previous lawyers) functions as the film's moral center: a white knight in a respectable dark suit who possesses the well-scrubbed altruism of a high-school civics teacher. To a certain extent, Isaacman's paean to the First Amendment is the castor oil that the audience must swallow after enjoying the wacky hedonism that has come before. Yet, even if the film's conclusion threatens to become cloyingly life-affirming (The New Republic derisively dubbed the movie “Mr. Juggs Goes to Washington”), commentators like the law professor Cass Sunstein who complain that Flynt is a mere pornographer, not a political dissident, seem to be missing the point that Forman and his screenwriters are—however heavyhandedly—making.

It is easy to see why critics carped that Flynt and his magazine are unrecognizably ‘sanitized’ by the filmmakers, but antiporn legal scholars such as Sunstein conveniently overlook the historian Lynn Hunt's conclusion that, since the French Revolution, it has become impossible to make artificial distinctions between political protest and pornography. Hunt informs us that “politically motivated pornography undermined the legitimacy of the ancien regime.” Similarly, the cartoons and layouts in Hustler, however offensive and jejune, blend scatology with satire that is, more often than not, ‘politically motivated.’

Some years ago, Forman remarked that “all that is significant in contemporary art … concerns itself with injuries and injustices perpetrated against the individual.” The Czech emigre (who famously endured the injuries and injustices of both Nazism and Stalinism) has always had a soft spot for antiheroes, outcasts, and countercultural eccentrics, and the bizarre communal bonhomie of Flynt and his associates resembles the surrogate families formed by the mental patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the hippies in Hair. It must be admitted that, with the exception of Taking Off and Cuckoo's Nest, Forman's American films lack the tragicomic flair of his early Czech features. Nonetheless, Forman has always made a principled attempt to blend the demands of mass entertainment with social commentary and construct a bridge between rarefied art films and unadulterated Hollywood commerce.

Cineaste interviewed Forman in November 1996, a little over a month after The People vs. Larry Flynt's premiere at the 1996 New York Film Festival and a month before its commercial release. Pausing periodically to puff on his cigar, the director, obviously happy about the advance praise for his first film since 1989's Valmont, talked passionately about his fondness for improvisation, the travails of casting a film, and the evils of censorship.

[Porton]: Did Oliver Stone originally plan to direct The People vs. Larry Flynt?

[Forman]: The authors told me they had a bad experience with Columbia Pictures during Ed Wood. They said to themselves, “Let's first present it to Columbia. They'll certainly turn it down, but we'll learn the art of presenting. Then we'll go somewhere else.” They were so sure that Columbia would turn them down that they simultaneously sent it to Oliver Stone. To their amazement, Columbia said yes. Meanwhile, Oliver said, “I don't want to direct it, but I'll produce it.” Columbia and Stone then joined forces as producers.

Was it a relief to work on a film which was not an adaptation of a novel or play, given the fact that critics and audiences often compare these movies to the original source and authors feel possessive about their work? For example, didn't Ken Kesey give you a hard time during the filming of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

I never met Ken Kesey, but I respected him very much. When I joined the project, the producers and Kesey were no longer on speaking terms. As much as I admired Kesey, I think he was wrong. I read a script that he wanted filmed. It was not really a screenplay, but another version of the book. From what I was told, Kesey not only wanted to write the screenplay but also wanted to direct the film and play McMurphy. I was a little confused.

I was also a little nervous with Larry Flynt, because little changes are made when the actors come in and the locations are found. I am not trying to rebuild reality so it fits the screenplay. If the screenplay doesn't fit reality, I want to rebuild the screenplay. I was afraid about the authors' reaction, but they were very open to changes.

Unlike many scripts, it reads very well on its own.

The script is wonderful. When I joined the project and learned how much material the writers had gathered, I realized it could have been ten movies—a whole life. To sift through it and find a structure was a challenge. It's not an ordinary, boring biopic, stuttering from one episode to another. They really built an ingenious structure. Even if I changed the names and it was not about Larry Flynt, it would still be a wonderful screenplay.

How did your collaboration with the screenwriters shape the final film?

It was a wonderful collaboration and they felt that I genuinely liked their work. They didn't consider me an enemy. We worked first on cutting it down to a reasonable length. The script was good, but it was overwritten. That's fine, because you have something to work with. So we worked together on the final structure, shrinking the story slightly. The whole script would have been a three-hour film.

Before I start shooting, I always like to act out the whole script with myself and somebody else playing all the parts. The writers played this ping pong with me. We went through the script so we could say aloud the lines and hear if they sounded right and rang true.

Even during the shooting, I discovered that Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love, and Edward Norton all had this rare talent for improvisation. After they learned the lines by heart, I started to encourage improvisations. I respected the writers so much that I always called them and told them what was happening and how improvisation affected the scene. This helped convince them that the writers and the director are a team, coauthors and not adversaries.

Perhaps it helped that you were originally a screenwriter yourself.

That's correct. I have enormous respect for writers because I started as a screenwriter and I know how it feels when you spend weeks and weeks on something and then, without much responsible stream of thought, somebody else starts changing things around and then blames the author if it doesn't work.

According to what I read, your major disagreement with the authors concerned an elaborate fantasy sequence which featured Flynt's ‘born again’ conversion.

Yes. If you told me that you had a vision and that you converted to God, I would believe you, although perhaps with reservations. But if you start telling me something that is totally beyond my imagination—how Jesus Christ appeared to you, as well as Lenny Bruce and some other characters—then I'd think that you were on some kind of acid trip. That's why I suggested that they try to give hints of this conversion in some visual way, without trying to convince the audience that Larry Flynt really saw Jesus Christ and Lenny Bruce and other characters. So that was one thing. The other thing was probably a lesson I learned when dodging the censors in Communist countries. I learned not to put labels on the characters by saying, “This is a good guy, this is a bad guy”—the socialist realist approach. Together, we just toned down the extremes, so the characters would become more nuanced.

How much of the script was shot and then discarded?

There are certain scenes which were shot but are not in the film because of dramatic structure. The character of Dick Gregory just didn't contribute anything to the narrative, for example, so it didn't make any sense to keep him or the scenes featuring Larry Flynt running for President. Those scenes were shot and I liked them very much, they're very funny, but all the antics Larry Flynt performed paled in comparison to the fact that he was running for President. It didn't have any payoff. Audiences would have assumed that this was the nitty gritty of the comedy or tragedy, and nothing really happened—it fizzled. Those scenes went out, because they made the film stutter and made it long. That was very disappointing when I was putting the film together, but it was entirely my decision, not because of pressure from the studio.

I gather that you've been improvising with actors since you first started making films in Czechoslovakia. Are you continuing the techniques you pioneered with those early films?

It worked for me then, and that's why I'm trying to make it work for me here. And it already has—certain parts of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest were improvised, like the first meeting with the superintendent and McMurphy. Since it worked wonderfully, I felt encouraged to try it again. Courtney, Woody, and Edward showed incredible talent. It's not very often that an actor can, with the same credibility, memorize the lines from the script and then improvise—not as an actor, not as Woody or Courtney or Ed—but as the character.

Valmont, on the other hand, seemed to employ a very tight script which allowed little room for improvisation.

Yes, this film was very different from Valmont or Amadeus, although even in those films I tried to make the language more comfortable to today's ear. Still, the language is slightly different. It was eighteenth-century language and that's very difficult for anybody to improvise.

That brings us to the casting of the film, something you always seem to regard as a very important task.

Casting is the most important element because, after all, that's what the audience sees on the screen, and these are the people I'm asking the audience to believe. To cast right is, for me, ninety percent of directing. If I cast right, I can work less.

You've continued the practice of mixing professionals with nonprofessionals that you began with your Czech films.

Yes, especially in this case. I always try to cast people who I think will bring some sort of electricity to the set which helps everybody else. For example, when we have Donna Hanover Giuliani, New York City's First Lady, playing Ruth Carter Stapleton, everybody is excited. “That's Mrs. Giuliani, that's great.” Everybody works better. The same thing was true with James Carville and D'Army Bailey, the legendary judge from Memphis. It was also very exciting for people to have Larry Flynt playing a judge. That was one of the reasons to opt for nonprofessional actors.

Does this interest in using nonprofessionals come from your early interest in neorealist films such as Il Posto?

In Czechoslovakia, we weren't reacting to the films made by Hollywood directors such as Ford and Wilder. We were responding to the stupid and phony films that the Communist Party was asking for. This thirst for credibility was a response to that phoniness.

Is it true that Czech President Vaclav Havel was instrumental in choosing Courtney Love for the role or Althea Leasure?

Well, I wouldn't say instrumental. Now, after the fact, everything seems to have been easy. I go through insecurities and doubts when I'm making these decisions, so what I like to do, when I confront crucial questions like casting the main characters, is to make screen tests and then show them to my closest friends and ask for their opinions. In the case of Althea Leasure, I had three candidates, three young ladies who were equally wonderful and each very different. Although, my heart was already going for Courtney Love—Rachel Griffiths and Georgina Cates were the others—I was not sure that I was making the right decision, that maybe I was seduced by her personality, not her professional ability. I showed these screen tests to a few people, including Havel, and I was very happy that he enthusiastically voted for Courtney Love.

Although she didn't have much experience as an actress, she apparently immersed herself in the role and greatly identified with this character.

Courtney is probably the most fascinating young lady I ever worked with. It's not just that she imposed her own personality on the script, she also did an incredible amount of homework, and it shows. She saw every single TV clip of Althea ever shot. She met with many people who knew Althea when she was alive. Her personality blends and is transformed by Althea's so perfectly that you don't see the seams.

One noteworthy thing about this film is the cinematography by Philippe Rousselot, while many of your previous films, both in the U.S. and Czechoslovakia, were shot by Miroslav Ondricek. What was the look you were aiming for?

When I was preparing this film, Ondricek was already signed to do another film, so I couldn't use him. I didn't know that the man who shot A River Runs Through It was a French guy. I just liked the look of that film, the simplicity, tastefulness, and cinematic vision.

I only require two things from a cameraman: the colors must be right—black must really be black and not gray—and human flesh must look like human flesh. The faces should not be red or yellow. It's not very easy for a cameraman to achieve that, but everything falls into place if he does. Something you can't really discuss very precisely is the fact that the cameraman has to know at every moment what you are trying to convey to the audience. It's difficult to tell him how to light, but it's very important that he knows that one scene is supposed to be dramatic and others are supposed to be funny or lyrical. Philippe was very sensitive to all of these things. The whole film suffers when you don't have a good relationship with a cameraman. The actors subconsciously feel the tension.

It's intriguing that, although Larry Flynt is a well-known figure, he almost becomes something like a fictional antihero—not unlike, say, McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I would rather compare him to Mozart in Amadeus, because that film had the same sort of surprises and problems. In the case of Mozart, I knew only half of his personality, which was very boring. All I learned about Mozart at school was that he was an obedient little boy, a prodigy at school, composing this divine music and being well above the nastiness of human character: a role model put on a pedestal garbed in marble. This made him so boring that even his music became less interesting. Suddenly, when I read the play, I asked Peter Shaffer—“Is this true?” And he said, “Read Mozart's letters.” Then I discovered that this genius had a second half that was much less admirable, but was much more flamboyant and childlike, even vulgar and obnoxious. The fact that the sale of classical music records rose one thousand per cent all over the world after the film was released proves that showing this man not as a one-dimensional angel, but as a full-blooded human being with all his pros and cons, helped enormously to popularize what's good about Mozart—his music.

I went through the same process, but in reverse, with Larry Flynt. I knew only the sleazy side of Flynt, but I knew nothing else about him. When I finally read the script, my first question to the authors was also, “Is it true?” They said it was, and this was confirmed when I started to read articles about him. So all I did was to add the other half to this personality who lived only in a sleazy world. I discovered there was a second half to his personality that was admirable, almost noble, and that's what makes him interesting.

You've often said that you're more interested in characters who are ambiguous, neither heroes nor villains.

If someone is a clear-cut angel or a clear-cut devil, what else can you add that is interesting? But if you learn that this angel has a devil's hoof, that really arouses your interest and curiosity and confusion. It's interesting to deal with such a character, because if you discover that the devil is growing at least one angel's wing, it's suddenly so confusing that it's fascinating.

How extensive was Flynt's cooperation with the project?

He didn't have the right to veto anything in the script or interfere with the production. But I wanted to meet with Larry Flynt. First of all, as a courtesy, because I'm making a film about him. If someone was making a film about you, you'd want to know the details. Secondly, I wanted him to tell me all the factual mistakes that might have been in the script—places, dates, things like that, because I didn't want, in case the film should anger him, to give him any reason to attack us by saying something wasn't true.

We had a long, eight-hour script conference to which he came prepared as I never saw any actor prepared. Every page had meticulous notes. He didn't try to influence anything, even though he said that there was a lot in the script that was very embarrassing for him. But I said, “Well, if it's true, what can I say?” And he said to me, “Even if there are things in the script that I didn't say, if I could have said them, I have no objection at all. I'll object only if I think that I never would have said that.” What happened after that was more amazing. He occasionally said to me, “I wouldn't say it like that.” But when I'd insist that what was included in the script was better, more to the point or funnier, he'd reply, “You're the director, it's your responsibility, you do want you want.” That was a great attitude.

Were you attracted to the project because of your own experience with censorship under a Stalinist regime?

Definitely, because I lived for a long time in a society where censorship was strong. And I know the devastating effect it has on the quality of life, not only for artists but for the entire society. With censorship, as I experienced it, life becomes very boring and society very cruel. There is no way you can talk about anything which the government doesn't want you to discuss.

Why do you think authoritarian regimes are so nervous about pornography? What is the threat?

They are not nervous at all, believe me. They are just using it to gain the trust of the population. It's not a threat, they know that. What's important is that to fight pornography will open the door for them, because nobody is against fighting pornography and prostitution. Once they have their foot planted firmly in the door of your home, it never stops there. What has to be recognized is that a censorship commission is not judging anything according to the law, but according to their taste. Whatever doesn't conform to the censor's taste is banned, and taste is so vague and indefinable. Suddenly, you find out the space inhabited by the ‘pervert’ has become bigger.

If the Communists say that pornography and prostitution are poisoning the health of young people and exposing them to immorality, the same Communists can declare religion the opium of mankind. So Jesus Christ becomes a pervert, and because Beethoven wrote the “Missa Solemnis,” he is a pervert. Then they discover there is a lot in Shakespeare that is inspiring dissent, so he is a pervert, too, because he talked badly about people who should be revered. That's poisoning the people's trust in the government, it's perverse, and it has to be banned. Finally, whoever doesn't conform to official government policy is called a pervert. So it starts with fighting pornography. Everyone applauds, and that only encourages the government to further the cleansing process and make it stronger.

Do you see parallels between the former Communist government's policies and Falwell's antipornography campaign?

Yes, absolutely. They are all calling for censorship—Charles Keating, as well. Look, if you think that this is something that can't happen here today, on television a few days ago, Bork, a man who almost ended up on the Supreme Court, called for censorship and suggested changing the Constitution and the First Amendment. The Founding Fathers were so wise in the way they formulated the First Amendment. There will be no law abridging freedom of speech and freedom of expression. It's so clean and simple. If they wanted to add some loopholes, it would have been very easy, but obviously they knew why they formulated it the way they did.

Of course, its part of the comedy of your film that the people who are upholding civic virtue turn out to be a lot sleazier than Larry Flynt.

Don't use the word ‘sleazier,’ because that's again a question of taste. They are being hypocrites, because they're asking other people not to do things which they themselves are secretly indulging in. Keating is known for having archives of pornographic magazines and videotapes.

That was probably true of the Czech apparatchiks as well.

Listen, nothing was more vilified in the culture during the Communist era than American movies. The only movies that the Communist President and his cronies screened at night at their castle were American movies like Gilda. Hypocrisy is endemic to this kind of climate.

That kind of hypocrisy is featured in the movie when copies of Hustler are passed out by Charles Keating at the “Citizens for Decent Literature” meeting and the audience is obviously sneaking a peek.

Of course, in Czechoslovakia we were very happy about that kind of hypocrisy because it allowed us to see American movies. Since we were friends with the projectionists, after the Communist leaders had seen the Hollywood film and gone home, we would sneak in after midnight and the projectionist would screen the film for us.

There were cracks in the system.

Right.

Could you explain the controversy with the original Larry Flynt poster which depicted Woody Harrelson—clad in an American flag loincloth—crucified upon a woman's crotch?

That was the decision of the MPAA. I don't like it, but I respect it. That was one of the ironies of this film, even if it's not very important. I like the new poster we have. But it's ironic that we were making this film about how dangerous and devastating censorship is, and how we must all fight it, and the first thing that happens is that our own organization—the MPAA—censors us. I talked to Jack Valenti, whom I respect and whom I admire for many things he does for the movie industry. He explained his objections, which I still don't agree with. In order to protect freedom for our films, he said, let's not provoke them with a poster. What is important is to keep freedom of expression for the actual movies. There is enormous pressure in the Senate and the Congress from the right wing to establish some kind of censorship for films, television, and records.

Would you ever consider going back to Czechoslovakia to make a film?

No. This is the best country in the world to make a film and I'm spoiled. To go back there and visit friends, yes; to work, no.

You remarked once that you never could have directed The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

I was offered that film, but in those times it was impossible to shoot a film in Prague. This is such a funny idiosyncrasy. I could shoot a Swedish story in Afghanistan or an American story in Australia. But I could never bring myself to shoot a Czech story outside of Czechoslovakia because I would suffer at every step and think to myself, “This is not real. This is not Prague, these people don't look like Czech people, it's all fake.”

Are you still in touch with Milan Kundera? What was he like as a teacher?

I see him from time to time, but he's becoming a more reclusive man, a strange bird. He was a wonderful teacher, the one who really excited us about reading books, and that's always important for a professor to do—to inspire the students to read, to actually look at a book. Reading is still enormously important, especially during this period when visual media are bombarding us all the time. He was the one who introduced me to Laclos, to Les Liaisons Dangereuses, when I was eighteen or nineteen years old. I fell in love with that book, and even then I thought of making a movie of it.

Why do you think there was such an explosion of talent in Czechoslovakia during the Sixties?

I finished film school in 1955. Before the war, Czech cinema was producing thirty or forty full-length features, a lot for a country of ten million people. In the Fifties and early Sixties, when the film school was producing new graduates, there was no work for us for several years because production dwindled to two or three full-length features a year. When Khrushchev denounced Stalin and produced the famous thaw, the door suddenly opened a crack. There were so many people standing before that crack that we just burst in, and it took an invasion of Russian soldiers to crush this rejuvenation of Czech society. I did not believe it was possible to reform Communism and have socialism with a human face. But we could at least use a certain relaxation and we did.

You were already here in the U.S., weren't you, when the Soviet invasion took place?

At that moment I was in Paris, but I was already, with the permission of my government, working on Taking Off, my first American project. I couldn't really function as a writer in a language I don't fully understand. I like that film, but I understand why the audience really didn't like it. It was a very European film, an open-ended story. The American audience wanted to know what it was all about.

Your current film seems to have contributed to the rehabilitation of Larry Flynt's reputation.

I already explained to various people that if they have a different opinion of Larry Flynt after seeing the film, I don't necessarily want them to have a different opinion of Hustler magazine. I never bought a copy of Hustler in my life. I don't particularly like it. I think it's tasteless. But it's very important for him to be able to publish it, and for whoever who wants to read it to have the opportunity to buy it. It shouldn't be banned. That's censorship, and once that starts you never know where it will end.