The original publicity artwork drove home the point, depicting a crucified Flynt superimposed over a naked woman's genitals—a publicity campaign that was cancelled in the face of the ensuing predictable uproar. The film cast the character of Flynt, played by actor Woody Harrelson, as a mischievous yet charming and intelligent scamp, following the "rapscallion tradition of Huckleberry Finn," according to co-producer Oliver Stone. Although the film characterizes Flynt as suffering from incidental drug addiction and more than his share of arrogance, the tone is one of sympathy due to Flynt's sacrifices to the First Amendment cause.
Perhaps so as not to burden the audience with evidence of Flynt's unsavoriness, the film's depiction of him as a poor young boy in rural Kentucky omits what Flynt's own autobiography catalogs as an important formative event: when he deflowered a hen. Enticed by the promise of the bird's yolk sack, which he heard was "hot as a girl's p***y" but better, since chickens "wiggled around a lot more," Flynt proceeded to "thrust away." When he was finished, Flynt worried that his grandmother would notice the hen "staggering, squawking and bleeding," so he snapped the bird's neck and threw it in a creek.
Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard noted many other omissions and inconsistencies in the film:
- Flynt's amphetamine habit that began in the 1960s, though the film
made it seem as though he needed to control the pain after he was shot.
- Flynt's association with organized crime in order to distribute
his magazine.
- Flynt's discharge from theNavy because he had "shown much
evidence of emotional instability in the past" and was judged to have
a "characteristic sociopathic personality."
- Flynt's role as pimp to a number of prostitutes out of his Dayton,
Ohio, bar, as well as selling amphetamines to local truckers. Police
familiar with him at the time recount an occasion when Flynt shot a
black man in the foot for not taking his hat off while hanging out at
his bar. "They were pimping my girls," he said, meaning trying to
take over his criminal operation.
- The allegation by Flynt's daughter Tonya (by second wife Peggy)
that he molested her repeatedly between the ages of 10 and 18. Tonya
claims that Flynt's sexual abuse made her psychotic and dependent on
antidepressants. Still, she says, "He's the one portraying cut-off
body parts and severed nipples and clitorises with fishhooks in them
[in the pages of Hustler]. Who's got the mental problem
here?" When Flynt learned Tonya intended to write an unflattering
book about him detailing her abuse allegations, he twice threatened to
kill her in a manner that might stifle her free speech rights.
- Flynt's marriage proposal to his stepdaughter Judy (also Peggy's
daughter) at a time when she still believed him to be her biological
father.
- Flynt's stormy relationship with his fourth wife, Althea, a
sexually promiscuous drug addict who eventually died of AIDS. Flynt
cuffed and beat her, and once fired a .38 Smith & Wesson at her. Flynt
also filed for divorce, and she left him on several times, despite
the film's illusion of loyalty between the two. When Althea died, a
nurse—not Flynt—discovered her body drowned in her bathtub. Flynt
was bedridden and in a drug haze at the time. Flynt secured a
mail-order bride three months after Althea's death.
- An audio tape made by Althea documenting that Flynt asked his 13-year-old daughter Theresa to take her panties off so he could see her naked.
And on, and on...
In 1992, Laura Kipnis, a film studies professor at Northwestern University, published "(Male) Desire and (Female) Disgust: Reading Hustler," a paper in which she hails Flynt as "a one-man bug up the nation's ass" for having championed "those narratives exiled from sanctioned speech and mainstream political discourse." According to Kipnis, Hustler's "transgressive" subject matter—dismemberment, deformity, gang rapes, "assholes, monstrous and gigantic sexual organs," and "anything that exudes from the body: piss, s***, semen, menstrual blood... and especially farts"—represents rage at being unable to penetrate privileged classes, not necessarily rage at being unable to penetrate women. Even Flynt's gaping, unretouched crotch shots should be interpreted as political statements, undermining bourgeois conventions of privacy in the bedroom and the Oval Office alike: "The veiled 'private' body is analogous to the hidden government (the Iran-Contra scandal was a shining moment for Hustler), analogous to the hidden sources of wealth of the ruling classes, which secretly the rest of us are paying for through our labor."
Ms. Kipnis also later objected that the film by Milos Forman and Oliver Stone glossed over the truly transgressive and shocking nature of Hustler's content. Kipnis later shifted her attention to other interests: presidential adultry and "the problem of Bill Clinton's thighs."
[Ed.: Following the film's release, the American Lung Association presented an award to actor Woody Harrelson for portraying Flynt as a positive nonsmoking character. In the film, Flynt discourages his wife from smoking, yet both characters are depicted as heavily addicted to drugs and indifferent to sharing needles to inject them.
During 1998's impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, Flynt was credited with leaking allegations of adultery that forced House Speaker Bob Livingston to resign after a brief tenure.]
