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Yesterday, Larry Flynt died at the age of 78.

He is most famous for having founded Hustler, and unashamedly calling himself “a pornographer” at a time when that was far from fashionable.

Flynt, who dropped out of school in the ninth grade, came from nothing, growing up poor in Kentucky. Using street smarts and a penchant for taking risks, he amassed a $100 million porn empire which included magazines, private clubs, a casino, an online sex-toy store, and other ventures.

As The Washington Post reports, many members of the public weren’t that fond of him:

Repeatedly sued, prosecuted, jailed for contempt, gagged for obscene outbursts in court and, in 1978, shot and paralyzed by a would-be assassin, Mr. Flynt thrived on controversy. After the shooting, he used a wheelchair — gold-plated and velvet-lined to his specifications.

One man who really despised Flynt was Jerry Falwell, a Southern Baptist preacher who established Thomas Road Baptist Church, and founded Liberty University.

In 1983, the two began a long-running legal feud, which eventually ended up in the US Supreme Court, and forever changed the media and political landscape in America.

This from The Roanoker:

The case, known as Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, “remains one of the great cornerstones of modern First Amendment law,” according to Rodney Smolla, dean and professor at the Delaware Law School of Widener University, who wrote about the case in 1988’s “Jerry Falwell v. Larry Flynt: The First Amendment on Trial.”

Essentially, Flynt ran a Hustler advert in 1983 that suggested that Falwell had done the deed with his own mother:

In June 1984, Flynt, who was in a federal prison in North Carolina serving a sentence for contempt of court, was deposed by lawyer Norman Ray Grutman, who was representing Falwell.

Flynt was in a rather uncooperative mood;

Flynt was depressed, covered in bedsores, on several different medications and handcuffed to his hospital gurney. During the deposition, Flynt claimed to be receiving radio signals, spewed vulgarities and verbally attacked Falwell, Grutman, the justice system and traditional American values in graphic terms.

Here are a few of the more memorable exchanges:

As unlikely as it may seem, given the long and heated legal battle between the two, Flynt and Falwell went on to become friends.

You can read an in-depth account of that legal battle here, and it’s also detailed in the 1996 movie, The People vs. Larry Flynt, starring Woody Harrelson.

The film was nominated for two Oscars, and five Golden Globes, winning two of the latter:

[sources:washpost&roanoker]