Larry Flynt’s Wild Life: Porn, Politics and Penile Implants
by Stephen Galloway
Frank W. Ockenfels 3
25 years after his landmark Supreme Court win over Jerry Falwell, the Hustler magnate opens up about plans to out a closeted GOP congressman, his sex life at 70 and the future of his empire.
Larry Flynt sits by the window of his sleek, black-and-gold G4 jet, with the letters “LFP” (for Larry Flynt Publications) painted on the tail, gazing out on the world 41,000 feet below, lost in thought.
Just getting here has been a mammoth task. Earlier, Flynt’s black Bentley (with a vanity license plate that reads “HUSTLR”) pulled up beside the plane at an airport in Van Nuys, Calif.; two pilots and a bodyguard eased the 70-year-old out of the car and into a specially designed, miniature wheelchair, before lifting him up the stairs (with a gold-plated ramp) and into his seat, while his regular, $17,000 gold-plated wheelchair was placed in the hold.
Despite running his empire with an iron grip, he went through all this without a word of complaint or irritation, keeping that, like so much else, to himself.
PHOTOS: Larry Flynt: The Inner Life of a Dirty Old Man
The self-described “smut peddler”; former jailbird, amphetamine addict and bootlegger; nemesis of feminists like Gloria Steinem (who called him “the Goebbels of the war against women”); multimillionaire; thorn in the side of the arch-right; and historic defender of free speech has a lot to think about.
It has been 25 years almost to the day since the Supreme Court made “this old pornographer,” as he calls himself, part of history when it handed down a key First Amendment verdict.