Deconstructing Hef
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2010-08-17/article/36115?headline=Deconstructing-Hef
By Justin DeFreitas
Friday August 20, 2010
Haven't we seen enough of Hugh Hefner in his smoking robe and
pajamas? Hasn't it been a couple of decades since we'd seen enough?
Well, perhaps we can take one last look. His heyday may be long gone,
his image and impact reduced by self-caricature and the sort of
privilege that allows the wealthy to drift into irrevelance and
senility with all their illusions intact; but whatever your take on
the man, his mission and his achievements, Hefner has had a
significant impact on American culture.
Brigitte Berman's new documentary, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and
Rebel, puts these achievements into context, challenging our
preconceived notions of a man who has spent nearly 60 years battling
the government, the religious right and outraged feminists in his
efforts to push us toward "a healthier attitude toward sex." The film
opens Friday, Aug. 20 at Landmark's Lumiere Theater in San Francisco
and at Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley.
But sex is only one aspect of Hefner's career on the public stage. He
fought for civil rights, and not merely as a celebrity endorser; he
put his money and reputation on the line in defense of the First
Amendment; he spoke out against the Vietnam War. In the '50s, '60s
and '70s, Hefner never shied away from fighting for the causes he
believed in. Newsman Mike Wallace didn't particularly like Hefner
when he first interviewed him for 60 Minutes, and he didn't find
Hefner's arguments convincing. But years later, Wallace did come to
like Hefner, and said that, more than that, he trusted him; for
Hefner, whether you agreed with him or not, was always honest and
upfront with his beliefs.
Hugh Hefner's improbable journey began when, as a young family man,
he came to realize that he was not required to simply live out the
model provided by his parents. Seeking an outlet for his creative
talents as a writer and cartoonist, he began planning a men's
magazine. It would be an intelligent magazine with a stable of
talented writers and artists providing provocative essays, literary
fiction, sharp cartoons and plenty of humor. But the most daring
premise of his venture was its frank sexuality. Hefner would
challenge accepted notions of sexual propriety and he would challenge
sexually repressive laws, making the claim that, if those laws were
enforced, most of the population would face prison sentences of at
least five years. His magazine would would air out the sexual taboos
of the 1950s with the radical idea that, not only was sex a natural
and very important aspect of life, but that women liked it, too.
The first Playboy centerfold was a long rumored but rarely seen nude
photo of Marilyn Monroe that Hefner tracked down. Soon Hefner would
move from purchasing photos of models and would further explicate his
view of sex by staging his own photo sessions, seeking amateur
girl-next-door types, presenting sex as common, healthy, fun — even
pure in a slightly prurient way.
The magazine courted controversy from the beginning, and Hefner took
on his opponents without hesitation, fighting his battles in
editorials, in other media, and in the courts. Circulation climbed
quickly; within a few years Playboy surpassed Esquire by selling
700,000 copies a month. In time that number would reach 2 million.
Soon Playboy became a high-profile brand and the empire expanded to
include a syndicated television show, in which Hefner showcased
artists, musicians and intellectuals. His willingness to bring in
black guests, including mixed-race vocal groups, thrust him into the
civil rights debate, as did his support for Lenny Bruce, whom Hefner
provided with legal counsel when the comedian was arrested for
obscenity. When Hefner learned that the owners of his Playboy
nightclub franchises in the South were, in accordance with
discriminatory state laws, refusing to admit black customers or book
black performers, he bought the clubs back and ran them himself,
defying the law by booking controversial comedian Dick Gregory. As
Gregory put it, the white attitude toward black entertainers at the
time was, "You can sing to me, nigger, but you can't talk."
Feminists considered these causes and the literary content of his
magazine a sort of front, a clever ploy to raise the stature of the
magazine and to legitimize Hefner's real vocation: pornography. They
called him on the inherent misogyny of the presentation of the girl
next door as a closeted wild animal, waiting to spring into action at
the snap of a man's fingers; they criticized his promotion of an
unattainable physical ideal that few women could emulate; they
claimed that he treated women as commodities, as mere fodder for male
fantasy, and that the practice was harmful to men as well as women.
The film includes a confrontation with critics on the Dick Cavett
Show during which Hefner did not have an answer for these
allegations. In a telling moment, he refers to his two feminist
critics as girls, making his blind spot apparent: In Hefner's eyes,
he's no sexist, no misogynist; he loves girls. Women, however, are a
more complex proposition.
It's a curious mindset that can't see the problematic nature of
Hefner's relations with, and presentations of, women. The glamor of
the parties at the Playboy Mansion, where Hefner supplied his
celebrity friends with wine, food and beautiful women, doesn't
conceal his role as a sort of high-society pimp. He fails to
recognize the possibility that women are drawn to him not out of love
or physical attraction, but because of his money and power and
star-making potential, his ability to launch a young woman on a
career path as he did Jenny McCarthy, Shannon Tweed and Pamela
Anderson. His proclamations of sexual honesty and freedom belie the
fact that his view of sex is not only relentlessly male-centric but
blatantly adolescent. Thus his provocative centerfolds spurred a
national debate while simultaneously retarding it; they put sex
center-stage but it was a rather limited view of sex, and when that
point was made, Hefner and Playboy were ill-prepared for the debate
that followed.
In the Reagan years, Playboy was beset by a boycott campaign that
pressured convenience stores to drop the magazine, leading to
significant losses in circulation which it never recovered. The
nightclubs closed; a Playmate was murdered; and Hefner suffered a
stroke. His brush with death changed his outlook and he tried
marriage and family life again; but once that marriage failed, he
returned to his swinging ways with a vengeance, overcompensating with
polygamous relationships with a bevy of young, buxom blondes.
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, for years a friend, supporter and admirer of
Hefner, says she no longer mentions his name when debating issues of
sexual freedom; he mixed up his personal life with his mission, she
says, so that the self-caricature of his later years has undermined
his credibility and the merits of his arguments — people just don't
take him seriously anymore. Other friends interviewed in the film say
that love is his "rosebud," the elusive childhood longing that
motivates the man.
So if your image of Hefner is a doddering old fool drifting into
senility with a bleach-blonde silicon doll on each arm, his
lascivious grin masking the emptiness inside as his improbably
buoyant companions serve as substitutes for love ... well, fair
enough. But it's the extremist who push the limits, who forges the
debate and pushes us toward progress. Hefner established the other
end of the spectrum; we may not travel even half the distance across
that spectrum, but at least we know the limits, allowing us to better
define ourselves and our place on the continuum. Hefner is happy to
help people to define their values, even if they only define them in
opposition to his own.
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Movie Review:
Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
By OLU ALEMORU
Aug 19, 2010
Robert Downey Jr. may now want to start practicing his Oscar speech.
The "Iron Man" star, whose life and career has already been the stuff
of legends, is often mentioned as the man to play media and pop
culture icon Hugh Hefner in any Hollywood biopic.
And that particular juggernaut gets a significant boost with the
recent release of an illuminating documentary, "Hugh Hefner: Playboy,
Activist and Rebel," written, produced and directed by Canadian
filmmaker Brigitte Berman.
Having sent jazz aficionado Hefner a copy of her award-winning
feature documentary "Bix: 'Ain't None of Them Play Like Him Yet'"
about one of his favorite musicians, jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke,
Berman developed a friendship with the publishing mogul and was
invited to his momentous 80th birthday party at the Playboy Mansion in 2006.
In a masterful and engrossing 124 minutes, Berman, who was given
unprecedented access to the man known simply as "Hef," unravels a
story few people knew and will leave a legacy that sharply divides
his fans and foes.
To his critics, Hefner is a monster who began the moral turpitude of
America by
peddling smut that objectified and degraded women, while contributing
to the liberal hedonism that foreshadowed the 60s revolution of sex,
drugs and rock and roll.
Meanwhile, others see him as an American hero, a free-thinking
renegade who liberated society from the dark forces of Puritanism and
was influential in preserving First Amendment rights and championing
racial and social justice.
For instance, in the late 1950s, Hefner debuted his Playboy Penthouse
television series, a precursor to the late night chat shows that
featured Black entertainers who were banned elsewhere.
And in the early 1960s, when Playboy clubs in Miami and New Orleans
would not allow Black patrons into the establishments, Hef used his
own money to buy back the franchises taking a financial hit.
Within the next two decades, he also defied the McCarthyite blacklist
by employing great writers like Dalton Trumbo, vehemently opposed the
Vietnam War, provided legal teams to fight anti-abortion laws that
eventually led to Roe v. Wade and campaigned against censorship and
for the individual's right to freedom of expression on all fronts.
Meanwhile, in the 1980s he had to fight his own battles against the
Reaganite religious right, when a government commission dubbed his magazine
pornography and took steps toward to ban it. He also dealt with
personal anguish following the brutal killing of Playmate Dorothy
Stratten, which led to a debilitating stroke.
In expertly edited interviews that weave a tight narrative through
Hefner's life, a veritable "Who's Who" of famous names, including
Tony Bennett, Dick Gregory, Pat Boone, Joan Baez, Jim Brown, James
Caan, Reverend Jesse Jackson, George Lucas, Gene Simmons and Bill
Maher, expound on his cultural relevance.
Hefner's story was that of many American youth of his generation.
Born and raised in Chicago to conservative parents, he found early
escapist fantasy in jazz music and cartoons in high school, and, his
curiosity piqued in areas of the human psyche, studied philosophy at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
A few years out, he was a copywriter for Esquire magazine, and by
this time, married with a young child had seeming acquired the
American dream: stability and abject boredom.
"I recalled standing on the Mackinac (pronounced Mack-in-naw) Bridge
and looking out over Lake Michigan thinking is this all there is,"
Hef revealed.
Well cometh the hour, cometh the man and shortly afterwards Hefner
came up with the idea of publishing his own very different men's magazine.
He originally wanted to call it "The Stag Party," after a popular
local club, but a legal "cease and desist" letter put an end to that,
and the Playboy empire was born.
Now in most success stories, luck and timing can play a key role and
Hef's double dose came when he persuaded a Chicago photographer who
owned the copyright to a nude photo of a model named Marilyn Monroe
to let him use it for his first centerfold.
Thus, Playboy's launch in December 1953 featured the alluring charms
of what would become Hollywood's most enduring sex symbol and the
magazine achieved instant notoriety and success. Its initial 2,000
copy print run ended up selling 7,000 issues.
In one of the best lines in the film, when thinking of Hef today with
his trademark silk robe and matching blonde girlfriends, Dick Cavett
opines: "He gives wonderful hope to men over 100."
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Documentary shows the other side of Hefner
http://www.theprovince.com/entertainment/other+side+Hefner/3412429/story.html
Bunny King: Doc maker wants us to see activist Hugh, too
By Glen Schaefer
August 20, 2010
When director Brigitte Berman decided to make a documentary about the
progressive, activist life of her longtime friend Hugh Hefner, she
couldn't leave out that whole arrested-development side of him, with
the multiple girlfriends all cut from the early '20s big blond hair,
big boobs template.
The Canadian director is candid about her friendship with the Playboy
publisher, but she says her first duty was to the truth of the
onscreen portrayal that became Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, Rebel.
"He himself says he didn't grow up," says Berman. "He makes no bones
about it. His life is an open book. I don't agree with it I
wouldn't have three boyfriends but I can't say this is wrong.
"When I talk to him about the young girls, at his age, he talks about
how that is what he himself needs, that is what keeps him young, that
is what keeps him alive. His happiest times were when he was in high school."
Hefner, now 84, has in recent years experienced a Viagra-fuelled
pop-culture resurgence of his role as the party guy with the armful
of pneumatic eye candy.
"It's the image that most people have of him," says Berman, adding
she decided to make the movie because she wanted to give equal time
to his lesser-known side as an advocate for tough causes through the
decades most notably the 1950s and 1960 civil rights battle in the U.S.
"When people just get so on about Hugh Hefner and they don't want to
give the film a chance as a film, they miss all that."
Since she finished the film and screened it at last year's Toronto
Film Festival, she has had a hard time getting it into theatres and
getting it taken seriously by some reviewers. She was at an L.A.
screening with Hefner earlier this month, and she will be in
Vancouver Thursday without Hefner, taking post-screening questions
from an audience prior to the movie's wider Canadian release Aug. 27.
"It's a matter of breaking through a lot of preconceptions,
unfortunately, with a lot of people, and dare I say with a lot of
media people."
The movie shows a disparate group of admirers, including
groundbreaking comedian Dick Gregory, civil rights leader Jesse
Jackson, singer Pete Seeger and sex educator Rush Westheimer, talking
about the Bunny king's activist work. But Berman also includes
Playboy mansion habitues James Caan, Tony Curtis and others relishing
their wanton party days with Hef.
"You can decide at the end," she says. "I just want to present
another side of Mr. Hefner, not to glorify him in any way, just to
set the record straight."
Berman, an Oscar-winning documentary maker, first met Hefner when he
screened her 1981 biography of jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke, Ain't
None of Them Play Like That, at a Playboy-sponsored festival of jazz
films. As she got to know Hefner, she says, she found there was more
to him than his string of centrefolds.
"He is somebody who really did stick his neck out," she says. "I'm
dealing with many important issues in American history that also
affect Canada over 50 years, issues that we all wish were completely
finished with, but they are not."
Berman, who won an Academy Award for the 1987 jazz documentary Artie
Shaw: Time Is All You've Got, says she tried to draw out the personal
Hefner, and thinks the endless string of babes is part of a search for love.
"Sex is not all the happiness in the world. ... Love is his
'Rosebud,'" she says, quoting Citizen Kane.
"I'm not excusing Hefner, but in his complexity, he is all kinds of things."
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