REIHAN SALAM: Hi.
I'm Reihan.
And I'm here in Los Angeles with Vice.
And I'm about to meet Larry Flynt, pornographer, rebel
godless heathen, political activist, and so much more.
Let's go.
Mr. Flynt, thanks so much for inviting us into your office.
It's incredibly generous of you.
LARRY FLYNT: All right.
Thank you.
REIHAN SALAM: I wanted to ask you, was there a moment when
you were a kid when you decided that you were destined
for extraordinary things?
LARRY FLYNT: I was about 10 years old, and I was standing
on a swinging bridge across the river in Eastern Kentucky.
You don't understand, our biggest
industry was jury duty.
You couldn't get a job anywhere.
And I just felt there was more to the world
than where I was living.
I felt I wanted to be wealthy because I was so poor then.
I felt that success was measured by money.
Now I realize that success is not measured
by what you've got.
But it's measured by the obstacles you had to overcome
in order to achieve it.
REIHAN SALAM: Was there a particular person when you
were 10 who inspired you, or someone who came from the
outside world, someone who gave you a bigger sense of the
world outside of Eastern Kentucky?
LARRY FLYNT: My role models were really world leaders and
politicians and people like that, rather than actors.
I was influenced a great deal by President Kennedy.
REIHAN SALAM: Kennedy is a guy who grew up in great privilege
and someone who, I suppose you could say, used that privilege
to go into public service and devote himself to a larger
cause than himself.
But I wonder why it was Kennedy who sparked that
enthusiasm in you, given that he came from a very different
kind of background.
LARRY FLYNT: I don't have a good answer for that, other
than when he would speak, I used to get goose pimples.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: Before this decade is out of landing a man
on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.
LARRY FLYNT: I always thought he was so profound.
REIHAN SALAM: I would love to know, the Obama presidency
began with tremendous enthusiasm.
And I wonder, as someone who is a great devotee of
President Kennedy, do you think that President Obama has
proved to be up to snuff?
LARRY FLYNT: I think President Obama has overperformed.
I know this has become a cliche, but it's so true.
He got handed on his platter when he became president more
than any president in history ever had to deal with.
I'm just amazed he's--
Sure, he hasn't done everything perfect.
He made a few mistakes along the way.
But he did a marvelous job.
REIHAN SALAM: When you say he's overperformed, is there a
particular quality that he has that you think
accounts for that?
LARRY FLYNT: I see him and Jack Kennedy have the same
intellect, in terms of being smart.
That's been his best asset.
But now you don't understand that when he was trying to do
business with the Republicans on the deficit and the debt
ceiling and all that kind of stuff, he was just one man
fighting everybody to try and get a deal.
REIHAN SALAM: Did you ever think that
you'd go into politics?
Did you ever think you'd run for office?
LARRY FLYNT: No.
But I've always been fascinated with politics.
And I actually think that I know more than most people do
about the political status of our nation.
REIHAN SALAM: You recently announced a
challenge, a bounty.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
LARRY FLYNT: Well, in every presidential cycle for the
last 30 years, we've run a full page ad in the Washington
Post where we offer a $1 million reward for anyone that
can provide information on their politicians.
REIHAN SALAM: Have you paid out the $1
million in the past?
LARRY FLYNT: Oh yes.
We've had a number of different--
Sometimes they've had to split it up because there've been
more sources than one.
There is nothing that will change someone's moral outlook
more than cash in large sums.
REIHAN SALAM: Indeed.
LARRY FLYNT: And I don't think that because you pay for
information that it's any less credible.
REIHAN SALAM: You're not just a political activist.
You're also are someone who built a mammoth, innovative
publishing empire.
And I wonder what was the innovation?
What was your key insight?
LARRY FLYNT: I was successful not because of what I did, but
in spite of what I did.
I did not know the publishing business.
I just knew that I read magazines
like Playboy and Penthouse.
I had a chain of clubs in the Midwest.
And somebody said, why don't you do a club
like Playboy did?
So I looked at the magazines, and I just realized, hey, if
they want to know which car to buy,
they'll buy another magazine.
If they want to know how to make some perfect martini,
they can find out from a local bartender.
They really wanted to know about girls, and they want to
see pretty women.
And that's more or less a philosophy that
I applied to Hustler.
It's that if you look at Playboy, it's obvious that
Hefner likes blonds with big boobs, Amazon-type girls.
You look at Hustler, you don't know what I like.
Small, medium, large.
We have brunettes, redheads, blondes, whatever.
It's the girl next door look.
You might see a girl in Hustler who reminds you of a
girl you've seen at the laundromat or something.
REIHAN SALAM: What was the initial inspiration to go into
opening these clubs and sort of basically going into this
business of--
LARRY FLYNT: Well, when I got out of the Navy, I
didn't have a trade.
I didn't have a lot of formal education.
So the easiest business for me to get into would be to go in
the bar and club business.
And that's what I did.
And that's how I get started.
REIHAN SALAM: Where did the original money come from?
Was it just your savings from the Navy?
LARRY FLYNT: I worked in factories, GM factories.
And I saved a little money.
The first license--
All I had was only a beer bar.
You couldn't even serve liquor.
REIHAN SALAM: And this was in Dayton?
LARRY FLYNT: Yeah.
And then I continued to expand into other cities in Ohio.
REIHAN SALAM: So in recent years, obviously the rise of
the internet and internet pornography has been a huge
challenge to a lot of those
established publishing empires.
And I wonder, have you ever felt under siege by it?
Have you ever felt like this world you had built was really
being shaken up?
LARRY FLYNT: I first took notice in the '70s, when VHS
and Betamax came along.
I felt that that definitely was going to take adult movies
into the home.
And then in the '80s, as the internet started becoming the
focus, I felt the industry's changing, and I
better change with it.
So I put up my first website in the early '90s.
REIHAN SALAM: Do you ever miss that world of '70s, back
before VHS and Betamax, and adult movies
came into the home?
Do you ever miss that world where people had to go to
movie theaters and go to the red light district?
LARRY FLYNT: Yeah, I miss it because it
was a lot more simple.
People think the world is simple today because you have
all the gadgetry and the internet and everything.
But life was much more simple then.
And there's a certain yearning.
REIHAN SALAM: Was there a camaraderie there in those
clubs in Dayton and everywhere else that you were building
up, where people were going to peep shows and going to adult
movie theaters?
Was there a spirit that you miss in those places?
Or is that an [INAUDIBLE]?
LARRY FLYNT: I definitely do.
Those are my fondest memories, the early years with Hustler
and building Hustler up.
But then as I was saying, but I continued to diversify.
I went into the gaming business.
We have probably one of the most successful casinos in
California, about half an hour south of LA, which is very
profitable.
REIHAN SALAM: There are a lot of people who fret a lot about
how accessible pornography is and how the easy availability
of pornography has really changed relations
between men and women.
Do you worry about that all?
Do you think that it's changed things for the worse, or do
you think it's changed things for the better?
LARRY FLYNT: I think it changes it for the better.
One thing that pornography does that people don't realize
is it desensitizes people.
Because one of the biggest problems in relationships now
is premature ejaculation on behalf of the man.
Well if I'm viewing pornography and being exposed
to pornography, it takes that immediate impulse away.
And you're not as apt to be so quick.
REIHAN SALAM: Although I wonder, when you were growing
up in eastern Kentucky, say when you were in your early
teens, was there an excitement around forming those early
attachments, those early relationships with girls that
isn't necessarily there for today's teenagers?
LARRY FLYNT: Possibly they may be a little bit more
promiscuous today then it was then, as the religious right
would try to get you to believe.
They attribute this to my pornography.
REIHAN SALAM: But it's also true that there are a lot of
folks, a lot of feminists, who've given you a pretty hard
time, and who've been very hostile.
And I wonder, do you think that they just have it wrong?
LARRY FLYNT: When they would criticize me about
pornography, they'd say I was exploiting women, what I was
doing was demeaning to women.
That's like saying that Sports Illustrated exploits sports.
That's what I was selling.
I've never, ever had a woman pose for the magazine and say
that she was coerced into doing it or that she felt she
was being exploited.
That's just the feminists coming up
with their own brand.
REIHAN SALAM: There was a moment in the late '70s when
the evangelical movement was really on the rise.
And there were a lot of people, who had never been a
part of it, really got drawn into it.
And my understanding is that in the late '70s, there was a
moment when you yourself embraced religion.
Do you remember that?
And what was it that led you there?
LARRY FLYNT: I got over that.
REIHAN SALAM: What was it though back then?
Because you were already a pretty successful entrepreneur
at the time.
LARRY FLYNT: I did have a very profound religious experience.
And most people, when they have this born-again type
experience, the average person has nobody to talk to.
They don't want to go to the doctor because they don't want
to be perceived as being mentally ill.
So the only thing they can do is talk to a member of their
family or neighbor or something.
And they're directed to start going to church.
So that way, you're already caught up in
the religious sect.
But I sought out a psychiatrist immediately after
it happened to me.
REIHAN SALAM: It's funny that it led you to the doctor,
because most people when they feel that warmth, they would
welcome it rather than go to the doctor.
LARRY FLYNT: My psychiatrist simply told me--
He said, we know nothing about the brain.
He said, even brain surgeons don't know anything about it.
He says, this is largely thought to be because of a
iodine deficiency in your diet.
REIHAN SALAM: Do you think that more devoutly religious
Americans would be less devoutly religious if they
just ate more salt?
LARRY FLYNT: He showed me a whole map of the world.
It shows where stronger iodine deposits were in the salts.
And there was always a higher degree of manic depressive
people that lived in those particular areas.
So he says there's definitely a correlation between the
iodine in the salt and the manic depressive and the use
of lithium as treatment.
REIHAN SALAM: How did that change things, that experience
of having faced death?
LARRY FLYNT: Somebody asked me once, they said, what's it
like to be in a wheelchair all these years?
I said, I don't know.
I never thought about it until you asked me.
I don't dwell on things I can't do anything about.
So that in a nutshell tells you about the
type of person I am.
I don't waste time dealing with things
that I can't solve.