The controversial work, said to have been a box office disappointment for Sony Pictures Entertainment, dealt with the life and times of the Hustler magazine's publisher. Gloria Steinem quickly critiqued the film as too kind to Flynt who, she argues, showed, in his magazine, utter contempt for women. If other groups had been denigrated with such intensity and such persistence, there would have been a hue and cry, believes Ms. Steinem. An anonymous ad said to have been paid for by female Hollywood professionals, women who feared job loss were they identified, showcased Steinem's opinions on the film.

Ms. Steinem's arguments, according to filmmaker Forman, are much misdirected. The Flynt film does not, he insists, glorify Hustler's publisher, nor does it glorify pornography. It is ridiculous to insinuate that it does this, he laughs. To say this is like saying 'Romeo and Juliet' glorifies teen-age suicide. The film is about free speech and the price we pay for it."

Steinem denounces the film for failing to highlight Flynt's treatments of women being tortured, placed into erotic situations with animals, or forced into sexual slavery.

Her opinions were published first in the New York Times. Ten days later, during Academy Award nominations, a time when major movie studios routinely take out ads to boost the chances of their productions, Ms. Steinem's article was re-published as an ad in Daily Variety. Asked who paid for it, she declined to say, except that it had been placed by film-industry women who feared retribution from male bosses were they to become known. These women did not, however, pay for the ad. No one is certain who did.

Forman, in turn, tells how Nazis and Communists imprisoned and killed his family, and how, then, they'd declared their first war on "pornographers" and "perverts." Forman was long ago dumfounded, he said, because ordinary citizens too readily applaud porn police saying, "Who wants perverts running through the streets, anyway?" But then, suddenly, other social variants began to get targeted as "perverts" because, according to Forman, politicians know the citizenry's inner flare-points, and ambitious politicos use these to victimize other non-conformist groups.