Hollywood flesh peddlers

Full frontal flesh peddler: Judd Apatow

Back when he was producing “Freaks and Geeks” on network TV, who could have predicted that Apatow would go on to become one of mainstream cinema’s leading utilizers of full frontal male nudity? But witness the evidence on display in Apatow productions such as “Walk Hard” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” or even the teen comedy “Superbad,” which featured the most creative penis drawings ever committed to celluloid. What was once the avant-garde limit of explicit cinema has been embraced by the mall movie crowd.  (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Bad boy flesh peddler: Joe Francis

Through his blockbuster series of “Girls Gone Wild” videos, Francis combines the old school charm of a San Fernando Valley pornographer with the mainstream acceptance of Hugh Hefner, with just a dash of Ron Popeil’s flair for late-night commercials thrown in for good measure. Fresh from his stint in a Nevada jail, Francis immediately put out an offer to have former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s prostitute pose nude for his new magazine, only to learn that he already had drunken party footage of her from years before. It’s proof that Francis was a forward-thinking visionary eager to exploit the old school truism that bad things come to girls who get naked on spring break.  (Neilson Barnard / Getty Images)

Political flesh peddler: Larry Flynt

Not content to run just a simple skin magazine, Flynt has used his position atop a successful publishing empire to run for public office a number of times as well as offer a cash reward for evidence of sexual misdeeds by Republican lawmakers during the Bill Clinton impeachment hearings in 1998. During the 2003 California recall election, Flynt ran for governor, calling himself a “smut peddler who cares.”  (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

Clothed flesh peddler: Dov Charney

The ads for Charney’s company, American Apparel, look like amateur porn, but it’s only on closer inspection that you realize it’s not the flesh he’s selling, it’s the clothes. Sneaky man that Charney. Controversy about his personal habits aside, Charney has figured out a way to play both sides of the fence. Those models may look like exploited teens, but he could always argue that without his clothes, they’d be completely nude. A few years back he earned the wrath of director Woody Allen, who sued Charney’s American Apparel for $10 million after it used a still of Allen from “Annie Hall” in billboard and online ads. Allen later settled for $5 million.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Reality flesh peddler: Janice Dickinson

As star and host of “Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency,” the Oxygen channel reality series, Dickinson regularly expects her aspiring models to strip to their birthday suits in order to further their modeling careers. Like the queen bee of the sorority, she’s all about getting her underlings to humiliate themselves as much as possible before they get to join the club.  (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

Stealth flesh peddlers: New York magazine publishers

Everyone knows you can pick up a skin mag such as Hustler, Perfect 10 or Playboy to get a dose of nudity. But who knew New York Magazine would get in on the game? The runaway success of their naked Lindsay-Lohan-as-Marilyn-Monroe pics will no doubt bring an onslaught of other young actresses getting naked in older actress homages in the pages of stuffy Manhattan publications. Look for Seth Rogen to recreate Burt Reynolds’ famous Cosmopolitan nude shoot in the pages of the New Yorker any day now.  (Bert Stern / Associated Press)