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This documentary is an interesting look at an unlikely crusader for your First Amendment rights.

Opening with a montage of vintage news footage and clips from personal speaking engagements, Joan Brooker-Marks Larry Flynt – The Right To Be Left Alone sets its tone pretty quickly.  The film is obviously geared toward Flynt’s point of view, so don’t expect any sort of fair and balanced portrayal of the man and his history, but what an interesting history it is.

Breezing over the creation of Hustler Magazine as a newsletter for the string of strip clubs Flynt ran, and its evolution into a full fledged magazine, the film is obviously more concerned with Flynt’s high profile legal battles and public theatrics.  Footage of his wife Althea talking about running the magazine is almost immediately followed up by interviews with Ruth Carter (Sister of Jimmy), who briefly brought God into Flynt’s life in 1977, a move he later “got over”. 

An assassination attempt in 1978 left Flynt paralyzed, and his ensuing addiction to pain killers in turn led to Althea’s own addiction and eventual heroin habit.  She contracted AIDS in 1983 and passed away, leaving Flynt without his soulmate, someone he “shared everything with.”  The actual assassination attempt is later found out to be the work of Joseph Paul Franklin, a white supremacist serial killer who was offended by an interracial layout in an issue of Hustler.

Flynt would recover from his addictions and continue to run afoul of the court system, refusing to reveal the source of FBI tapes that he acquired and gave to the news media showing John DeLorean in a sting with the potential to embarrass his organization.  The footage of his smartass behavior while put in a psych ward where he attempted to prove himself crazy in an effort to have them drop the case is quite an interesting watch. He seems to be having something of a good time just messing with them and re-wording various questions and just acting silly.

The film covers the court case brought against Flynt in the late 80’s, in which an ad parody indicating that Jerry Falwell had sexual relations with his own mother obviously drew the ire of the Evangelist himself. Flynt surprisingly won the case and would go on to strike up something of an uneasy friendship with Falwell.

All told, Larry Flynt – The Right To Be Left Alone is an interesting watch, detailing everything about Flynt’s life through archival footage, new interviews and clips taken from public speaking that he’s done, there’s never any sort of narration to lead the viewer from one event to the next, and as the footage is from varying time periods, the subject matter tends to jump around a little bit.  That said, the documentary paints a very interesting picture of a man who is willing to fight for the right to say whatever he pleases, and who has done time for his beliefs and would do so again.  The only criticism I have of the film is that there’s a few brief sequences of editorial meetings among the staff of the magazine, and a fairly unsexy and boring photo shoot that we’re privy to. It feels as though it was just put in to indicate that the magazine is actually a porn magazine and to show off a few fake boobs.  The rest of the documentary is largely free of nudity in spite of being about a pornographer, so the inclusion of the scant few scenes just feels somewhat tacked on.

Larry Flynt – The Right To Be Left Alone sports a few bonus features, including a commentary by the director as well as more interview footage of Flynt that didn’t make the cut for the film, and almost 30 minutes worth of deposition footage from 1984 that makes for interesting viewing indeed.  A large selection of trailers rounds out the disc.

I’d definitely recommend giving this a look if you’re a fan of documentaries, or the man in question.  Love him or hate him, even if he’s just a troublemaker, the man is still willing to go to the wall for his freedoms and yours, which is admirable no matter which side of the argument you might be on.

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