The joy about a good documentary is making one re-appraise opinions. Like this fascinating portrayal of Hugh Hefner, who before I started viewing, I had assumed was a very old somewhat annoying man who had made a tidy sum from soft-porn and now spent his days in his pajamas surrounded by a bevy of pretty women young enough to be his granddaughters. Now I feel bad that I simply believed the tabloids sleazy take on one of the most successful cultural pop icons of our time.
This movie from Academy Award-winning filmmaker Brigitte Berman tracks Hefner’s life right from childhood, and thanks to some amazing archival footage the first part also gives great insight of life his hometown of Chicago in the decades immediately after World War 2. The first surprise was Heffner’s great love of Jazz and the fact that he gave breaks to a number of important performers, through his ground-breaking TV shows at the time. The second and more significant surprise was that he was a strong and lifelong advocate for civil rights, most importantly when it made a difference and wasn’t popular.
And as I have never even picked up a copy of Playboy Magazine, I had no idea of the fine literary articles and interviews written by the best writers and politicians he could possibly muster, to fit in alongside the photographs of unclad girls. I’m still unsure of what I feel about the magazine itself, but after the movie focused on so many of Heffner’s tireless and selfless fights against arcane laws and a puritanical right-wing for meaningful sexual emancipation, I do admire him somewhat. And as Bill Maher rightly states that lots of people enjoying sexual freedom today who are totally unaware that Hefner was the moving force behind it all. I am no longer one of them.
So we have an egotistical, workaholic, obsessive, determined, pipe-smoking man, a crowd-pleaser who became the Playboy he conjured up for his magazine. Very urbane and extremely attractive (as a young man), often likable BUT we never get to hear from his wives, and apart for a brief minute from Christie, his grown up children don’t participate in this movie too. Add that to the hint that he could be overbearing monster of a Boss, there is this sinking thought, that Ms Berman is possible trying a tad too hard to show him as liberal saint.
Doesn’t matter though because he an immensely interesting multifaceted dynamo of a man, who I may still not like, but have a great deal of respect though. But I do take issue with creepy Gene Simmonds (from KISS) who’s opening comment is that he doesn’t know a single man who wouldn’t give their left testicle to be this man! But then he doesn’t know me. Thank God.
★★★★★★★
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