Larry Flynt's Blog, page 8

FROM BLOOMBERG TV: HUSTLER Magazine’s Days Are Numbered: Larry Flynt

July 28 (Bloomberg) –- Hustler Magazine Owner Larry Flynt discusses his magazine turning 40, the company’s presence on internet and cable TV platforms and the importance of free speech. He speaks on “Market Makers.” (Source: Bloomberg)

FROM HUFFPOST LIVE: HUSTLER’s Larry Flynt LIVE

Larry Flynt, widely considered to be the most powerful man in porn, joins us to celebrate Hustler magazine’s 40th anniversary.

FROM OKLAHOMA GAZETTE: American Hustler

Larry Flynt has made a career (and a lot of money) out of defending the First Amendment.

Larry Flynt, with his raspy, bullfrog voice, has always had his work cut out for him. Villified in the media, he continually has to overcome the image of him as a lecherous smut peddler.

Flynt is the name and legend behind Larry Flynt Publications (LFP), the increasingly diverse business that got its start publishing Hustlermagazine. Geared toward working-class men, it is the raunchier, riskier Playboy. The magazine has pushed the boundaries of not only good taste but legality. The multi-million-dollar publishing house also produces several other magazines, includingBarely Legal, which is devoted exclusively to pictorials of women ages 18-23. LFP produces online gambling games and adult videos, as well.

Its broadcast television reaches 67 countries worldwide.

In 1998, LFP branched out further into the retail business with a chain of upscale adult boutiques in West Hollywood. On June 12th, Hustler Hollywood quietly opened its 13th location right here in Oklahoma City, at 500 S. Meridian Ave. With the slogan, “Relax — it’s just sex!” they hope to bring a new kind of shopping experience to the reddest of the red states.

On the phone in the early morning from Los Angeles, Flynt sounds particularly hoarse and tired. The expectation is that he will say something raunchy or perverse — this is a man who once put a woman being fed into a meat grinder on the cover of his magazine. His courtly manners are a surprise.

(To read full article, click here.)

FROM THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: Larry Flynt Unveils New Hustler Website (Exclusive)

Foreseeing a day when the print edition exists no more, the publishing legend revamps the property’s digital imprint.

Hustler has unveiled a soup-to-nuts rehaul of its website, a digital revamp that comes as Larry Flynt‘s porn empire celebrates its 40th anniversary.

To lure potential paid subscribers to the all-new HustlerMagazine.com – which, rest assured, remains as workplace-unfriendly as ever – Flynt is offering up an archive of every issue in the magazine’s history. Annual subscriptions are priced at $5.99 per month, while month-to-month access will cost $9.99.

“We’ve known for 25 years that the Internet was going to take a toll on publishing,” Flynt, 71, tells The Hollywood Reporter of the reasoning behind the shift to online. “Not just to my genre, but I was reading the other day that Conde Nast and Time Inc. both are down about 30 percent in the last three years.”

Flynt, who admits to being something of a “dinosaur” when it comes to his own media-consumption habits, says he foresees a day when he will have to shut down production on Hustler‘s print operations completely. But he’s hoping to hold that moment off for as long as possible: “In 30 years, we’ve lost about 80 percent of our circulation,” he says. “But we’re very careful about how we publish. We run a very tight ship and the magazine is still profitable.”

(To read full article, click here.)

FROM NATIONAL JOURNAL: Why Every Member of Congress Gets a Monthly Porn Delivery

Congressional offices have a porn problem, but it’s not exactly what you think.

Since 1983, Larry Flynt has sent the monthly magazine he founded, Hustler, to each and every member of Congress.

The dirty mag comes in a plain manila envelope, fairly undetectable to the poor intern or staffer tasked with opening the mail. And every month, there it is: Hustler, featuring dozens of naked or scantly dressed women, vulgar comics, and articles, some satirical, on politics, society, and sex.

It’s not like members of Congress haven’t tried to stop the magazines from coming. They just can’t stop it legally.

Following the complaints from 264 congressional offices in 1984, the U.S. Postal Service asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to block the mailings. But that request failed when the court ruled two years later that the delivery of the magazine could not be stopped. The court wrote:

Receiving Hustler once each month would not unduly burden a Member of Congress. Members are not forced to read the magazine or other of the mail they receive in volume. We cannot imagine that Congressional offices all lack wastebaskets.

For Hustler, it was a First Amendment issue. This was Flynt’s right to petition the government, he argued, and the court agreed. Or as Flynt told The Hill in 2011, “Moses freed the Jews, Lincoln freed the slaves, and I just wanted to free all the neurotics.”

(To read full article, click here.)

FROM MYFOXDETROIT.COM: Porn-Apocalypse: The business of porn is going out of business

LOS ANGELES (WJBK) – Porn is everywhere, except in the porn capital, Los Angeles. Pornographers try to stay relevant at a time when the internet is giving it away for free.

The saturation of free porn on the internet means “The Valley” is losing its once very profitable industry. Throw the condom law into the mix and they’re really in trouble. Who wants to buy a DVD or order a movie on their cable system when they can call up porn on their computer free of charge?

Charlie LeDuff talks to industry insiders Ron Jeremy, Larry Flynt and Steve Hirsch about the future of porn. Play the video in the player to see a full report in this edition of The Americans with Charlie LeDuff.

Porn has gone mainstream. Estimates say there are as many as 4-million internet sites dedicated to porn. One study says as many as 90% of young American men and 60% of young American women have watched porn. It’s a billion dollar industry, that’s why people make it. But with small town ‘Scorsese’s” giving it away for free on the internet, Los Angeles based porn executives, like Vivid Entertainment’s Steve Hirsch are trying to adjust.

(For full article, click here.)

FROM AMERICAN THINKER: In Thirty Years, Flynt Hasn’t Moved — the Public Has

left to right:  Falwell’s attorney Jeffrey Daichman, renowned First Amendment attorney

Floyd Abrams, Mr. Flynt and Forum Director Thane Rosenbaum

After interviews with the infamous trial babies Casey Anthony and OJ Simpson, Fordham Law’s provocative Forum on Law, Culture & Society, Trials & Errors, has offered up for the public’s titillation and sniggering Larry Flynt, infamous for milestone cases dealing with freedom of speech, most prominently including the 1988 US Supreme Court case, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell.

The series is helmed by the deft and articulate Fordham legal scholar [John Whelan Distinguished Lecturer in Law], acclaimed author and interlocutor Thane Rosenbaum; it focuses on high-profile trials that have captured the public imagination, and oozed beyond the courtroom into wider public dialogue and debate. It takes for its bailiwick the ‘big ideas of the day,’ particularly those that present a nexus between law, justice, human rights, and civil society. Under the popular management of the Law School, series producer Joel Seidemann and program producer Beth Karas, the series has brought together public intellectuals, government leaders and influential artists in evenings that, like them or no, present a rich ambrosia of intellectual challenge.

(For full article, click here.)

FROM IMUS IN THE MORNING: Larry Flynt on his career, death penalty

Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com

Publisher Larry Flynt on his life, career and the death penalty.

FROM BLOOMBERG TV: Larry Flynt vs. The Death Penalty

Larry Flynt Publications President Larry Flynt discusses why he is against capital punishment, what he wants to be remembered for and what he thinks of Edward Snowden. He speaks with Stephanie Ruhle on Bloomberg Television’s “Taking Stock.”

FROM FOLCS.ORG: Trials and Error-HUSTLER Magazine and Larry Flynt V. Jerry Falwell

“Jon Stewart can do what he does because of my case,” proclaims Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler Magazine. That case, Hustler Magazine and Larry Flynt v. Jerry Falwell, was decided more than a quarter of a century ago by the United States Supreme Court. The unanimous decision in favor of Flynt’s ad parody of Falwell ended a four year battle between the two who, ironically, went on to have a cordial relationship. Flynt first published Hustler in 1974 and spent the next two decades fighting obscenity laws that criminalized its sale. Forty years later he looks back on his battle for what he calls the “right to be left alone.”

(To watch full video on folcs.org, click here)