Class Screenings, week 2 - The People vs Larry Flynt

THE PEOPLE VS LARRY FLYNT

Director - Miloš Forman 

Czechs are very proud of their fellow citizens that manage to make it in the world. Franz Kafka, Tom Stoppard, Miloš Forman … Czechs always make sure their foreign friends know where these geniuses come from originally. You could sense the buzz about this week´s choice of movie among the classmates as well. Very proud to be able to watch a movie by a Czech director in a “cinematography of English speaking countries” class.

                The People vs. Larry Flynt is a movie about the “porn king” who fought for free speech rights in the US, and to this day is called a hero for what he accomplished.  Or did he? His daughter, Tonya Flynt seems to have a very different opinion: "He doesn't give a damn about freedom of speech ...all he cares about is making millions of dollars out of the sexual exploitation of women and children."

                I am “ashamed” to say, I had no idea who Larry Flynt (who actually even played a tiny role in the movie as well) was before the Tuesday class. I remember holding Hustler Magazine once in my hands, back at primary school when one of the more spoiled kids wanted to brag about what kind of literature he reads. And the owner was not what we were looking at, so the fact that Larry Flynt was the man behind all this was very new to me.

                Obviously the movie serves as a kind of biographical film of the successful publisher, shows a bit of his childhood, his rough starts, falling in love etc. etc. up to the point when he became a billionaire. The main part of the film is when Larry Flynt gets in trouble with the law after publishing a parody of the then famous Campari ad, in which a Baptist Reverend, Jerry Falwell is pictured saying that his first (sexual) time was with his mother in an outhouse. Falwell sued Flynt and Hustler for 45 million dollars for emotional distress and invasion of privacy and libel. Flynt brandished the First amendment, and the movie then elaborates the problem, while displaying Flynt consistently mocking the court and the church.

                The whole case goes all the way up to the Supreme court, that finally decides that “public figures, such as Falwell (or how Flynt likes to call him, Fartwell) cannot circumvent the First amendment protections by attempting to recover damages based on emotional distress suffered from parodies.”

                We can talk about whether it was right to include Falwell´s mother into it, but I find this decision crucial for democracy and free press. And was quite surprised the decision was unanimous, since people like Scalia were still there. Imagine a world without media being able to make fun of public persons, or current situations. That would be a very depressing environment to live in.  I am glad I was born into a society that is able to distinguish satire from reality. And laugh along with it. Because I don’t know what I would do if I wasn’t able to watch Saturday Night Live, and Last Week Tonight.

                So from this point, I think of Larry Flynt as a hero. Although we don’t really know whether he did it for free speech rights, or for the money, as his daughter suggests. I don’t really agree with the concept of Hustler, nor do I think Larry Flynt is a particularly a nice person, but we still have to understand how crucial the whole “Larry Flynt thing” was and still is for the world. We must stand up to anyone who questions free speech and free media, wherever it is a Jerry Falwell or ISIS.

                Lastly, I want to appreciate that Miloš Forman didn’t make this into a porn movie about a porn king, and managed to make it decent as possible. Miloš Forman himself said that he does not like Hustler, and that he agrees that it is “tasteless”, which I think is really why the movie is that good. If it was directed by a person, who is a Hustler subscriber and is a porn fan, I believe the final product would have been very different.

                Also, I thought Courtney Love was outstanding in this movie, and I was very disappointed to find out that she did not grab the Academy Award for her performance. Neither did Woody Harrelson or Miloš Forman, but Kolja won that year, so at least something.

                As of now, I think I will be doing my final seminar work on this movie, but I will gladly change my mind, if something better comes up.

Class Screenings, week 1 - Dead Man

"Class Screenings" is a new series I am going to bee publishing here for the course of the whole semester. Each week we watch a movie in class and my assignement is to write a review of it. This will NOT serve as a comprehensive review of the movie though, but more as a page full of my thoughts and ideas.

DEAD MAN (1995) 

Director - Jim Jarmusch

                The movie we watched the first week is considered to be a “cult classic” in the movie industry which was why I was very excited to see it. Jim Jarmusch isn´t really my cup of tea, I always considered him to be a bit too “arty” for me, I half hated, half loved his Cofee and Cigrarettes series, but I was willing to give him another shot.

                Before the film started we were told that there would be references to William Blake. I knew of course, who he was, but didn’t poses any relevant information about him that could help me with understanding the movie better, so I was a bit worried. Although throughout the movie there were a couple of shout outs to his work, I didn’t feel like it was necessary for enjoying the movie as a whole since the name of the famous poet served only as a part of a much bigger point.

                The movie started off very slowly, with virtually nothing happening in the first 15 minutes, but one of the very first lines in the movie “Why is it that the landscape is moving, but the boat is still?”  is a line worthy to come back to at the end of this review.

                When William meets Thel, the beautiful rose-selling woman, I was worried that the film would be an attempt of an arty western. Because westerns usually do have that love triangle situation in them as well. That turned out not to be true even when Thel´s fiancé entered the picture. Here I also laughed at the scene when Bill discovers Thel´s revolver and asks her why she has it. She replies: “This is America, everyone has guns.” Now, I´m not sure whether this was intentional and that Jarmusch was really trying to expose the ridiculousness of the 2^nd amendment, but I found it pertinent.

                After Bill meets Nobody, the Indian, I started paying a bit more attention. The wonderfully haunting soundtrack by Neil Young didn’t let me do anything else. While Nobody is looking through Bill´s stuff he asks whether Bill has any tobacco, to which he simply replies: “I don’t smoke”. This is the first of many instances where we hear the memorable line, and just as Bill we don’t really think much of the question. I really enjoyed the way the movie pictures the wilderness in the times of the Frontier. You see how completely different it is to the Vinnetou movies, and I dare to say, more accurate. Complete isolation, solely fighting to survive. I also found interesting, that even though it seemed that Nobody healed Bill at first, we really see that Bill is still dying. Get the joke? Nobody healed, but nobody actually healed Bill. This play on words is visible in other scenes throughout the movie.

                Nobody is the only person in the movie to mistake Bill for William Blake, which already sounds absurd since he is an Indian. He even cites a few lines of Blake´s most famous poem Auguries of Innocence. Nobody finds funny that Bill doesn’t know his own poetry and tells him that "Your poetry will now be written in blood." And indeed it will.

                Throughout the movie I felt that Nobody guiding Bill to death was a very familiar theme to me. When I got back home, I googled whether there was any connection between this movie and Dante´s Divine Comedy, because the resemblance was obvious. And indeed, in 1827 William Blake had been working on a new version of Dante´s book, so that might have been an inspiration to Jarmusch as well. Another reference I discovered later at home while reading the above mentioned Auguries of Innocence was the line “The Lamb misused breeds Public Strife, And yet forgives the Butchers knife”, which could possibly be why Johnny Depp was lying next to that dead lamb in the movie.

                The cast was another thing that surprised me a lot in this movie. Although I have never heard of Dead Man before, I knew virtually every actor in it. Having so many brilliant actors (may John Hurt rest in peace) even though most of them lasted only a couple of minutes shows how well respected Jarmusch is.

                We get to hear the tobacco line on and on from each of the characters and the reply didn´t change. William didn´t understand that they weren´t asking because they fancied a fag, the were asking because tobacco was the currency in the Wild West. This on-going joke served as a way to show the miscommunication that the people had. It was just another of many things that showed, that Blake didn’t belong in this world. He was a dead man from the beginning. Hence the line from the train at the beginning.

                All in all, I would say that Jim Jarmusch continues not to be my “cup of tea”, but I did enjoy this movie a little bit more than Cofee and Cigarettes. There were so many hidden references and jokes, that I´m sure that if I watched it again, I´d find something more. And I like that.