A superb court drama about an anti-hero who suddenly becomes a defender of civil liberties, albeit out of self-interest. The film does not have a standard saying “based on real events”. This is a case where the reality of events for viewers was self-evident. In addition, the film was shot shortly after the last events shown in the film. The original title of the film is presented as the standard designation of the trial "plaintiff vs. defendant". For the needs of the drama, some events were arranged, some were omitted, and others were emphasized.
Cinema transports us to those harsh times when the attitude of American society towards nudity and sexuality changed. If in the first half of the twentieth century there were strict laws on “obscenity”, according to which it was possible to sit down for a long time for the dissemination of images of not very dressed women (to say nothing more). Enthusiasts like Margaret Sanger have been prosecuted since the 1910s for even distributing medical information about sexuality. But when Larry Flint was making money off his strip clubs, the sexual revolution had already begun. However, there were many who wanted to roll back, to go back to the good old days of the Victorian order. In the ’70s and ’80s, serious and now quite forgotten passions were boiling, in which even the Reagan administration participated, preparing an initiative to ban pornography nationwide. Such a new dry law, only more spicy. But faced with public reactions and lacking the support of Congress and the Supreme Court, the Reagan administration threw the idea on the far shelf to the great displeasure of religious conservatives.
Larry Flint was a bad fit for the role of a public hero fighting for the right cause. Poorly educated, vulgar, scandalous, with dubious business. He is at the center of a debate about the limits of free speech. This is one of the main advantages of the film. It is easy to take the side of someone who is sympathetic. It is much more difficult to take the side of an unpleasant person when principles demand it. The idea of the film is transparent and presented brilliantly. Everything comes at a price, and so does freedom of speech. Freedom of speech seems like a wonderful thing when we imagine how it will be used to spread information about how to make the world a better place... so that everyone will feel good, angels will sing from the sky, pink unicorns will luxuriate in the courtyard, and everyone will be given happiness in cars. But freedom of speech also means being able to say things that are extremely unpleasant to us. Otherwise, any information about how we can get unicorns with all the other baggage can be limited under any honest or hypocritical pretext.
The People vs. Larry Flint is a feature film by Milos Forman. With characteristic conflict and messages. And characteristically well staged. The subject of Foreman was obviously close as a native of their socialist countries, where these freedoms were treated strictly negatively.
Contrary to what is reported in the film, the man who shot Larry Flint was arrested and convicted. He was a strange man with no other occupation. He has committed several racially motivated murders. He disliked the relationship between whites and blacks so much that he killed interracial couples. In Flint, he shot because Hustler magazine published pictures of sex between whites and blacks. He was executed for murder in 2013. Flint spoke out against the death penalty.