The People Vs Larry Flynt on DVD

• Cat.no: CDR 94760
• Cert: 18
• Running time: 124 minutes
• Year: 1997
• Pressing: 1998
• Region(s): 2, PAL
• Chapters: 20 plus extras
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Surround
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: English, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew.
• Widescreen: 2.35:1
• 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
• Macrovision: Yes
• Price: £19.99
• Extras : Scene index, Columbia TriStar trailer (clips of many films coming to DVD).

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Director:

Milos Forman

(A Blonde In Love, Amadeus, The Fireman’s Ball, Hair, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Valmont)

Producers:

Screenplay:

Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski

Music:

Cast:

Larry Flynt: Woody Harrelson (Doc Hollywood, Indecent Proposal, Kingpin, Money Train, Natural Born Killers, Palmetto, Welcome To Sarajevo, White Men Can’t Jump, TV: “Cheers”)
Althea Leasure: Courtney Love (Basquiat, Feeling Minnesota, Sid And Nancy)
Alan Isaacman: Edward Norton (Primal Fear)
Jimmy Flynt: Brett Harrelson
Ruth Carter Stapleton: Donna Hanover
Charles Keating: James Cromwell (Babe, Deep Impact, Eraser, Star Trek: First Contact, TV: “Star Trek: The Next Generation”)
Arlo: Crispin Glover (Back To The Future 1 and 2, The Doors, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, Friday The 13th Part 4, Little Noises, Wild At Heart)
Chester: Vincent Schiavelli (Ghost, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Tomorrow Never Dies)
Judge Morrissey (Cincinatti Court): Larry Flynt

T he People Vs. Larry Flynt tells the story of the the founder of Hustler magazine, a soft-porn magazine filled with naked ladies, and articles on cars…

The film begins with Larry, aged 10, and his brother Jimmy, aged 8, trying to make a few dollars by selling people what they want, in this case, a stolen keg of alcohol to an old man. When the action moves on to 1972, Larry is running his own Hustler strip club, where men come to spend their evenings…

Larry hits upon the idea of selling a newsletter to accompany the club, and to drum up trade. Like many things in life, some people loved what he did, and some deplored it. During the next chapter of his life, as they go into production with a magazine dedicated to Hustler, Larry meets Althea Leasure, played superbly by Hole’s lead singer, and widow of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love.

The film neatly gels together Larry Flynt’s struggles to get the magazine off the ground, to overcome the hatred from the Christian religion-loving community who think that his magazine is vile and should be banned, despite Playboy being widely available, hence him trying to get the wife of the then-President Jimmy Carter, Ruth Carter Stapleton, to believe that he has seen the light and been converted too, and especially his attempt to rebuild his life after being the target of an assassination attempt by a mystery sniper.

The cast and crew of the film is a top-notch collaboration too. Director Milos Forman has previously been well renowned for films of varying categories from Amadeus to Valmont, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to Hair. One of the film’s three producers is the ubiquitous Oliver Stone who, in 1994, worked together with Woody Harrelson on the controversial Natural Born Killers which has recently been released in the US in a widescreen Director’s Cut with over 150 essential snippets put back in. The original version still awaits a UK video release since Warner Home Video declined against it following the Dunblane massacre which came after the BBFC’s approval of an 18-certificate for home viewing.

The lead actor, Woody Harrelson, shows why he is one of Hollywood’s rising stars, managing to pull off a real-life character starting as a cock-sure entrepreneur to a man with paralysis from the waist down after almost being assassinated. After first seeing him as dim barman Woody in the TV series, Cheers, I never would’ve thought that we’d see him either as a love interest in Indecent Proposal or a man who lives for murder in Natural Born Killers.

The rest of the cast fills out with Edward Norton, last seen on the other side of the law in Primal Fear. As Larry Flynt’s lawyer, trying to get him out of all his predicaments, such as the time when he shoots his mouth off once too often in court, and gets gagged to shut him up, Norton shows that he is a name to look out for in the near future.

Brett Harrelson, the real-life brother of Woody, plays Larry’s brother Jimmy. Two of Larry’s co-workers are played by Crispin Glover (seen being weird in Back to the Future as Michael J Fox’s father, and as Andy Warhol in Oliver Stone’s The Doors), and Vincent Schiavelli (seen as the old ghost who teaches Patrick Swayze to kick a tin can in Ghost, and joining the mentally-challenged in Milos Forman’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

One of the triumphs in the cast is of Courtney Love. I thought beforehand that she would just become another singer-turned-actress, but she excels as Larry’s lover and, later on in life, his wife, sharing his passion for excessive drug taking and all the other pleasures of the flesh.

The picture quality is very good, save for some small artifacts fairly often, but these are only really noticeable in the browns, greys and black areas. Most people won’t catch sight of them though as they won’t be sitting as close as me unless the subject matter demands it…

The film is presented in its original widescreen ratio of 2.35:1, is enhanced for 16:9 widescreen televisions – thus allowing for higher resolution – and the average bitrate is 3.79 Mb/s which could do with being raised a little.

The sound comes in Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Surround formats, the former available to those with suitable decoders. For those without, the sound will downmix to Dolby Surround anyway. The sound quality is excellent, not only being used for dialogue and ambience, but also for a plethora of hits from the seventies. I wasn’t able to check the DD 5.1 sound as I do not have such an amplifier.

Extras :

Chapters/Columbia TriStar Trailer : There are 20 chapters spread throughout the 124 mins of the film although it could use more.

It’s confusing that the main menu has a “Play DVD trailer” option as you’d expect it to be the trailer for this particular film, but it’s not. It’s a collection of clips from various Columbia TriStar films coming soon to DVD.

Languages/Subtitles :

There’s just the one language on this disc – English – plus subtitles in English, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Russian, Arabic, Hindi and Hebrew.

Menu :

The interactive menu is excellent and just dragging the mouse pointer over an option highlights it. The main menu appears after the Columbia TriStar logo. The copyright info appears when you start the movie.

Overall, I would thoroughly recommend this film to anyone who wants to see a well-told story with excellent acting, and established direction. Woody Harrelson was given an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the self-made millionaire and it would have been nice to see Courtney Love get some form of recognition too.

FILM : ****½ PICTURE QUALITY: **** SOUND QUALITY: ***** EXTRAS: *½ ——————————- OVERALL: ****

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1998.