“Larry Flynt: The Right to Be Left Alone” chronicles Flynt’s impassioned belief in the 1st Amendment and the heavy price he’s paid defending those unalienable rights. First time director Brooker-Marks began shooting the film in October 2005, after her husband, a personal friend of Flynt’s, introduced them.
“I wanted to touch on the seminal events in his life," Brooker-Marks told The Hollywood Reporter, “but also wanted to really, really concentrate on his court battles on behalf of the 1st Amendment. Personally, I think the 1st Amendment is unequivocal, and Larry's efforts have been significant — particularly for writers and satirists, even though they have been minimized because he is a pornographer.”
While much of the film depicts Flynt’s crusade to preserve the tenets of the 1st Amendment, the documentary covers some events that were dramatized in Milos Forman’s film “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” including his 1977 conviction for pandering, his court appearances in 1983 during the John DeLorean surveillance case and the 1978 shooting that left him paralyzed.
The film takes its title from Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis’ contention that the 4th Amendment’s right to privacy includes “the right to be left alone.”
The 80-minute documentary is being screened as part of the Arclight’s International Documentary Association’s DocuWeek. Tickets can be purchased here.