American Publisher
Larry Flynt
Interview
Coming soon!
Notes from Evan Smith
"Attention, PBS viewers. Do not adjust your television sets. Today's guest is indeed the world-class smut peddler Larry Flynt -- but there are perfectly high-minded and morally upright reasons for him to be here.
Born into poverty in rural Kentucky, 62-year-old Flynt has had more lives than a cat. After serving in both the Army and Navy before age 20, he opened a strip club in Dayton, Ohio, in 1964 and then, ten years later, founded Hustler magazine, which had the singular distinction of publishing pictures that would make Hugh Hefner blush.
In 1978, Flynt was shot outside a courtoom in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and was paralyzed from the waist down. Improbable as it sounds, he also dipped a toe into politics and public policy. In 1996 he was the subject of an Oliver Stone film, the People vs. Larry Flynt, that chronicled his many years fighting local law enforcement and the U.S. courts over his First Amendment right to free speech in its many forms, some of them admittedly distasteful.
In 1998, in the midst of the impeachment investigation of Bill Clinton, he made headlines by offering a million-dollar reward for evidence of adultery by Republican lawmakers and forcing the resignation of incoming House speaker Bob Livingston. And in 2003, proving that old adage about truth being stranger than fiction, Flynt ran for governor of California during the Golden State's famous recall election, finishing seventh in a field of 135. In the words of the first-place finisher: He'll be back." - Evan Smith, Texas Monthly Talks, Broadcast 9.9.04
