The critics of my film know that it is not possible to legislate taste, therefore they argue that pornography results in acts of violence. Well, I don't know whether studies have proved this assertion. I did not want to make pornography the focus of this talk. It is a digression. I did so because the same few critics are trying to convince the public that the goals and themes of my film are identical to those of Hustler.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
My film is not, and never was intended to be, about pornography, pro or con. That's why the film's climax is the case Larry Flynt and his lawyers brought before the Supreme Court. And this case itself is not about pornography. The case is about our right to satirize, to be irreverent in newspaper columns, in political cartoons, in books and theatres and movies. There has been a concerted attempt to trivialize this victory for the First Amendment, to sneer at it as insignificant.