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22 CINEMONTAGE / Q3 2016 to a psychiatric prison facility for throwing oranges and spitting at the federal judge whose orders he defied. The writers regarded him as "a charming, soft-spoken man" — still in a wheelchair due to the 1978 sniper's attack that severed his spinal cord. As they completed their revisions with the publisher, Forman recalled, "I mustered up my courage and asked, 'Larry, don't you mind that you do not really look like a hero in some of these scenes?' Flynt grunted, 'Yes, I do mind, but what can I do about it when it's true?'" In December 1995, Columbia joined with Mike Medavoy's Phoenix Pictures to finance the movie. Michael Hausman, who had worked on four of Forman's films, would produce along with Stone and Yang. Meanwhile, Forman had assembled a mix of experienced actors and non- professionals with fitting backgrounds to heighten the movie's sense of reality, confirming Phoenix executive Nasatir's view that "Miloš is one of the great casting people in the world." The director was set on Woody Harrelson to play Flynt "from the moment I met the guy." The Texas-born Harrelson acknowledged, "Poor white trash, that's me all the way." Appropriately, Harrelson's younger brother Brett was cast as Flynt's brother Jimmy. Determined to work with Forman, Edward Norton pursued the role of civil liberties attorney Alan Isaacman so earnestly that he was a natural choice. Political strategist James Carville played an anti- porn prosecutor and WNYW-TV news reporter and anchor Donna Hanover (and wife of then New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani) played evangelist Ruth Carter Stapleton (sister of Jimmy Carter). Lawyers played lawyers and US marshals played themselves, as did Flynt's personal bodyguard and personal physician. Flynt himself took on the role of the judge presiding over his first obscenity trial in Cincinnati. The most problematic casting choice was rock singer Courtney Love, brought in by casting director Francine Maisler, to play the part of Althea Leasure Flynt. Not yet two years since Love's husband, Kurt Cobain of the band Nirvana, committed suicide, her own life had been nearly as troubled and indulgent as Leasure's. Forman offered her the role only if she would stay off drugs and agree to regular drug testing, but the insurance company refused to cover her. Yang negotiated a separate non-refundable $750,000 insurance policy. Columbia and Medavoy refused to pay for it and the cost was split among Stone, Yang, Hausman, Forman, Harrelson and Love. Flynt told Premiere magazine that what got the singer through production "was having the good fortune of having Miloš Forman as a director and getting involved with Edward Norton during the filming." More than that, Love fully committed to the part and provided a real emotional grounding to a complex human being. Early in the shoot, she captured respect in key scenes with Harrelson. At the American Cinema Editors' EditFest New York in 2012, the film's editor, Christopher Tellefsen, ACE, said, "Almost every scene with them was done with two cameras because she was such a good improviser… She would take Woody by surprise so often that it…created a wonderful dynamic." With a cast and crew of over 150, the 75-day shoot ran from January 17 to April 27, 1996. Shot by Philippe Rousselot, ASC — an Oscar winner for Robert Redford's A River Runs Through It (1992) — most of the principal photography took place in and around Memphis, Tennessee, standing in for Kentucky, Ohio and Georgia. The Memphis train terminal built in 1929 was converted into a full-sized replica of the US Supreme Court chambers where Flynt's Jerry Falwell lawsuit was ultimately decided. Despite filming in the Bible Belt, the production attracted little attention. A Memphis TV news crew covered the shoot on a day of exteriors depicting Flynt being met by protesters as he arrived for his Cincinnati trial. Thinking the protest real, the local TV station ran their crew's footage as showing a real demonstration against the making of the movie. Late in March, production moved briefly to Oxford, Mississippi, to shoot another old courthouse exterior and, during most of April, major sequences were shot at the Flynt Publications building on the Sunset Strip and at Flynt's mansion in Bel Air. The final day of filming took place on the steps of the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC. The major difficulty facing editor Tellefsen was the amount of footage. Cutting dailies of a scene during the shoot, he said, "I did a few versions of it and [Forman] says, 'That's good...but try four versions... no, make 10 versions.' It was fun but a lot of work." He continued: "Miloš doesn't move the camera much, but everything was covered. In the trial scenes, every single juror had coverage. There was about 800,000 feet of film… It was a big, challenging job." THIS QUARTER IN FILM HISTORY Wishing the controversy would go away, Columbia gave no tickets to Larry Flynt for the Oscars ceremony on February 28, but Woody Harrelson took him as his guest.