Stung by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt's criticism of his claim that the adult entertainment industry has proffered little or no help toward his legal battle, Extreme Associates chief Robert Zicari, better known as Rob Black, has retorted that "porn's elder statesman" has gone from Flynt the freedom fighter to Flynt the businessman.
And Zicari also insisted that he is pushing the envelope no further than Flynt himself did after launching Hustler in 1974.
"You taunted the Reagan administration with every move you made. You even offered a bounty for any dirt on administration members," Zicari said, in an open letter to Flynt he made available to AVN.com. "You brought heat to your entire men’s magazine business… [President] Bush and [Attorney General John] Ashcroft decided in 2000, long before I was even a speck on their radar, that the porn business was going to face a crackdown. If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else."
Zicari's open letter was provoked by comments Flynt made to AVN.com following the publication of "Xtreme Measures," the cover story in the May issue of libertarian opinion/investigative reporting magazine Reason, which centers largely around the Extreme Associates legal battle in light of a promised federal porn crackdown. Zicari and his wife, Janet Romano (Lizzy Borden), were indicted last August on 10 counts of violating obscenity law, facing maximum 50-year sentences and $2.5 million fines.
"[O]ne who lives in glass houses should not throw stones. Your entire foundation is set in glass," Zicari said in the letter, "and now you have foregone the stones and instead use the boulders. You should be standing and fighting with me instead of against me. It is apparent that you are now part of a somewhat growing group in the business I can only categorize as Right Wing Pornographers. Ironic as it may be for others in the business, I can only call your membership in this group to be hypocritical. And, as porn’s elder statesman, you are spewing dangerous sounding conservatism."
Zicari in the Reason article said he had approached what writer Greg Beato called "some of his better-funded peers" in adult entertainment, including Flynt, but got little if any response." After being shown the Reason article Flynt confirmed to AVN.com April 7 that he had been approached by Extreme Associates to contribute to their legal defense fund but discovered other adult content producers with whom he discussed the matter "just echoed my feelings; we've got a guy who's bringing a lot of heat on the industry."
Flynt also said he doesn't believe the federal government singled out Zicari, Romano, and Extreme, but did "the logical thing to go after the worst first." But Flynt did agree that if Zicari and Romano are convicted, "we're next. And he's right. We are next. But it's something [Zicari] created."
Zicari said the issue of federal porn prosecutions was nothing he created or contributed to. "The only thing I created," he said, "was myself as [a] target. The article in Reason outlined clear as day that pornography prosecution has and will continue to be an issue for any Republican administration.
"When [former president Bill] Clinton took office, for eight years our business continued to grow and grow," Zicari continued in the open letter. "Had the tragedy of 9/11 not occurred, the Bush administration would have come after the business sooner." He also said that as the presidential election season approached, Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft were pressured by Christian right interest groups who began asking the two "where the delivery on their promises" to fight porn had gone.
"In 2001, when Bush and Ashcroft vowed to take on the industry, porn was no longer under the radar, you were no longer under the radar, but I still was," Zicari said. "It was not until the Frontline [television news] piece in 2002 that, even according to the indictment, the federal government was aware of who I was." He insisted, too, that Bush and Ashcroft did not make their porn-fighting promises based on Extreme Associates alone. "Even the search warrant and indictment stated that the Federal Government 'discovered' Extreme" only after the Frontline segment aired.
Flynt said Zicari's and "all forms of expression" deserve First Amendment protection, but he questioned whether Zicari matched responsibility to First Amendment protection. "What we're talking about here is an industry that everybody is doing very well in," the Hustler publisher said. "Everyone is following certain guidelines. Not just what they produce but where they ship them to, where they're being sold from. And as a result, this industry has grown from a $600 million industry in the early 1970s to an $11 billion industry today. But it's because, you know, we have businessmen running it, not people that wanted to see how kinky or weird they could get."
Flynt also said you could count on one hand adult directors "bent on doing, you know, things that are real demeaning toward women… You don't want a jury of at least half women sitting there seeing this. It's cutting your own throat. This has nothing to do with the First Amendment, it takes an idiot to create a product that he knows he can't defend in court that's going to send him to prison."
Flynt did not use the word "garbage" in the comment, but Zicari did in his rejoinder. "[Y]our remark about standing in court and believing that what I produce is garbage? Does it even have to be argued that one man's garbage is another man's art and that without a doubt, each of the movies I am indicted for carry either artistic merit or social commentary?
"For heaven’s sake Larry, you were put on the map for pussy shots and having plastered the pages of your magazine with secretly taken naked photos of our most beloved First Lady," Zicari continued, referring to Hustler's notorious publication of nude photos of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. "I know it’s not a fictional rape scene in a movie based on the Richard Ramirez murders, but to American society in the early ‘70s, that was extreme, bold, shocking, and I’m sure many considered it PURE GARBAGE with no redeeming social value or commentary or artistic merit."
Zicari also said Flynt may have pushed the envelope in 1974, but that he, Zicari, is guilty of nothing worse than "push[ing] the porn envelope no further than what you were doing in your time period. In 1974, showing a close up of a woman’s open vagina was undeniably extreme… I welcome any director, producer, or company owner to watch any of [my] movies and then engage in a discussion with me on what I did that brought the heat down on the industry."
Zicari also questioned Flynt's comment that "everyone" in the adult business is doing very well. He said that below the "top tier," in which he included companies like Vivid, AVN, Hustler, and "a few other players," there was a middle tier, "your Evil Angels, Anabolics, and Red Lights," who "are not hurting, but the owners are not flying on private jets or making [$60 million] cable deals"; and, a lower tier, "companies who are struggling to move 2,000 pieces out the door and trying to get… a good word for them at Playboy so they can make $15,000 for their cable versions. The average company is either struggling or getting by, not raking in the dough."
Zicari suggested Flynt has graduated from fighting and arguing that adult material was protected speech even as it got more extreme to "choos[ing] to censor.
"…And in terms of following the guidelines for shipping… [I]f I recall, if you were not able to purchase a copy of Hustler in a certain town, you would send one of your people into the store, defy the police to come and arrest the person selling it, and then have them go to jail," Zicari continued. "All of that to fight for the right for someone in that town to be able to buy the magazine that you felt was their God given First Amendment right to purchase. Your life story was out there for us all to see on the big screen, but it seems now that Larry the Freedom Fighter is dead and Larry the Business Man is alive and apparently very well.
"The industry now being run by businessmen is not the major change here. It is Larry Flynt being a businessman over a man who stands on principle and takes a 'holier-than-thou' moral high ground approach. But I can't fault him for that. I never would. Unless he was throwing boulders from his glass house."
Returning to a theme of "one man's garbage is another man's art," Zicari said that, to many in government and society in general, the woman is being demeaned "unless a man and woman are having what appears to be consensual, missionary, condom-protected sex… [M]ost companies out there are extreme. And, if you think Ashcroft finds what I put on video to be demeaning to women, but what you put on video to be 'acceptable,' then you are out of touch with the government of today.
"Yes, I spoke the loudest," Zicari continued, "but you and the other studios don't have the right to say that what I do is demeaning to women but you are all about class and respect. How degraded does [Los Angeles Lakers star] Kobe Bryant's accuser feel when told about [Tobey Bryon's Backcourt Violation, a Hustler Video release]? And how did women in general feel when you put a naked woman upside down in a meat grinder on Hustler?… with all the heat that is already on me by the industry, I think that if I pulled any of the plays out of your book, I would be considered insane and never be able to follow in your footsteps receiving freedom fighting and free speech awards."
The Reason article's author, Greg Beato, observed that questions abound as to why porn is held to a higher standard than other pop culture genres. "Are the two amateurishly simulated murders in Forced Entry somehow more offensive than the dozens of expertly simulated murders in Freddy vs. Jason or Gangs of New York?" he wrote. "Is the difference between eating semen-spattered dog food in a porn movie and eating raw pig rectums on Fear Factor really so pronounced that the former deserves a jail sentence while the latter becomes a prime-time major network staple?"
That may be one reason why Zicari feels "extremely confident" that, Flynt's suggestion to the contrary, he can defend his work in court and win. "It is disheartening," Zicari wrote, "that you are not where you should be, right next to me in this fight. Instead, you are helping to convict me, giving the government ammo to say, 'See, this Zicari guy is out of the norm in his industry'.' You forgot where you came from. You forgot what got you to the dance."
