‘You may not like what he does, but are you prepared to give up his right to do it?” That is the tag line on Milos Forman’s 1996 movie The People vs Larry Flynt, which tells the story of how the bellicose founder of Hustler magazine defended his first amendment rights in courts across the United States. If they made a movie about local porn king Joe Theron, the tag line wouldn’t be much different.
A hypothetical movie might open something like this: In 1993 Theron figures he needs to get into sex magazines. He has debts to pay. Telkom has just shut down his 087 business, where he has been running “clean lines” on weather and horseracing. He owes the bank on the R14-million he has invested in equipment. Pornography seems like the thing to do because, as he sees it, “the guys in the sex lines are making a killing” and he has experience in publishing, having launched the Top 40 music magazine in 1984.
So on a trip to the US Theron hunts down Flynt.
“It took me three weeks to get an appointment with Larry Flynt,” Theron explains. “I stood in his lobby every day until he agreed to see me. Eventually I got in. I told him my life story and that South Africa needed Hustler. I left with the rights.”
In the middle of the movie, to heighten the dramatic tension, cut to the scene back home where Theron takes on the Publications Control Board: “At the time the board was this untouchable hierarchy on a hill that nobody challenged. I thought, ‘Who are they, can I meet with them?’ So we met. Myself and a lawyer and [board chairperson] Braam Coetzee and his lawyer. I asked, ‘Why do you not want the average South African adult to read Hustler?’ Braam answered, ‘Because it depraves and corrupts.’ Then I said, ‘Braam, you must be the most scared man in South Africa. You have 86 staff members, and all they do all day is read pornography.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘my people are trained so that it does not corrupt them.'”
The movie might end with Theron successfully defending his right to publish Hustler in the Constitutional Court, or maybe with Coetzee phoning Theron to thank him for facilitating an early retirement. The plot could include scenes from Theron’s other legal battles, like the defamation actions brought by famous South African figures that were named “Arsehole of the Month” in the local Hustler‘s no-holds-barred front section.
“We’ve never lost a legal case on any front,” says Theron, “whether it be the publications board or any of the defamation cases. But we have spent a fortune on legal fees. In the early years, when we were in the Constitutional Court, our entire profit was spent on legal fees, sometimes in the region of R1-million a month.”
Movie or not, that kind of publicity is hard to repeat. According to Theron, it is what got Hustler up to about 200 000 sales in 1996. Today, both the circulation and the revenue on the magazine have dropped dramatically. It is now selling only 40 000 copies, and that is across two versions — the “hardcore” version, launched in 1998, which is only available in adult stores, and the softer version available in standard retailers.
“The Internet has had a huge impact on our sales,” admits Theron. “But then again, the controls on the Net are not there. There’s no control on what kids see. All the moral issues we fought over have been blown out the water.”
Theron is also taking a bit of a hammering on the video and DVD rights Flynt gave him for exclusive South African distribution. “There’s way too much piracy in the adult market,” he says. “It’s taking millions out of the industry’s legitimate turnover. Just open the classified sections of the newspapers and see how many guys are offering cheap videos. It’s all pirated stuff. If the authorities could close them down, this industry would be a lot bigger.”
So it is hardly surprising that pornography is no longer Theron’s core focus. A few years ago he sold the Hustler adult stores to raise money for the musical Umoja, a celebration of indigenous South African music that the United Kingdom’s Evening Standard newspaper has called “the hottest show in London”. The musical is presented by his Sting Music record label, which also produces Mean Mr. Mustard and Claire Johnson. “This is where my real interests lie,” says Theron.
Like Flynt, who ran (unsuccessfully) for governor of California last year, Theron is diversifying. But no matter how big he becomes as a “clean” entertainment boss, the South African public is likely to remember him as the man that single-handedly brought down the publications board and proved the veracity of the Constitution. If they made a movie about Theron, that is what they’d show.
Kevin Bloom is editor of The Media magazine