A Director Voices Pride for His ‘Larry Flynt’

Having given some thought to what has been said by some few but very loud and ubiquitous voices on countless national and local TV and radio programs and in countrywide press articles about the film I directed, “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” I would like to state publicly how proud I am to have made this movie (“The Many People vs. ‘Larry Flynt,’ ” Calendar, March 1).

“Larry Flynt” is meant to be neither a bio-documentary of Flynt nor a tract against his magazine, Hustler, although, as the critics throughout the country in their very appreciative reviews have noted, he is presented with his flaws intact and visible. His ambiguities, extremes and contradictions are magnetic qualities for the art of storytelling.

Really important to my passionate wish to make this film was the opportunity to convey, in an entertaining way, through this wildly colorful, contentious, controversial character, a lesson I had learned in my native country about freedom: A ban on all the dirty magazines in the world is not worth the inevitable, tragic price it exacts later.

I know how easy and how dangerous it is to buckle under the weight of a noble concern to protect the moral fabric of society by opening the door to censorship, if only by a crack. The draft that follows chills every corner of the whole structure.

It was interesting, when I was introduced to the press in London, to hear a journalist theorize that the British had paid with their lives because of the evils of censorship. “How come?” I asked. He explained: Had the legislators and the courts in Germany in the ‘30s not allowed Hitler to muzzle the free press, had all the German people and their neighbors been given the right to be informed, to read, hear and talk about what was occurring all around them, Hitler very probably would not have been able to survive and England might not have been bombed.

Of course, the Communists availed themselves of the same repressive techniques and we know the terrible consequences.

I can see that some people would have liked me to have made a different film, one centering more on the evils of pornography than the evils of censorship. It’s a perfectly good subject and I’m sure some studio will greenlight it if someone comes up with a good script.

But for me, the dangers of pornography are small potatoes compared to the dangers of censorship, whether the censorship is imposed by the government or by pressure groups.

Yes, Larry Flynt won the case for his own small potato, but it was the U.S. Supreme Court that won big for all of us.

I have an additional reason to be grateful to “The People vs. Larry Flynt”: the chance to work with exceptional writers, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, and with an absolute dream team of extraordinary actors and brilliant individualists like Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love and Edward Norton. Making this film was a great journey and a great joy. I shall be proud of it for the rest of my life.

MILOS FORMAN