Film Review: Hugh Hefner, A Stand-up Citizen

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 27 July 2010 13:05

Written by Laura Blum

Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
directed by Brigitte Berman
starring Hugh Hefner, Dick Gregory, Tony Bennett, James Caan, Jenny McCarthy, Shannon Tweed, Susan Brownmiller, etc.

"You can do many things to insure that your libido works properly until you're in your 90s," wrote sex therapist Ruth Westheimer in her book, Dr. Ruth's Sex After 50: Revving up the Romance, Passion & Excitement! And it's safe to say that octogenarian Playboy empire founder Hugh M. Hefner has done all of them.

The new documentary, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, however, is less concerned with his romps between the bed sheets than with the social and political freedoms his magazine has stood up for in racist, puritanical and homophobic America. That's just one of the numerous reasons to catch director Brigitte Berman's latest film when it opens.

A more voluptuous portrait of the civil rights era may be hard to find. Footage from Playboy's Penthouse and other pioneering TV shows reveal "Hef" as a ballsy impresario of desegregation, hosting club-shunned acts from Count Basie to Dick Gregory.

His crusade "against censorship and for the individual’s right to freedom of expression on all fronts" led him to book blacklisted performers at the height of McCarthyism and, during the Vietnam War, to welcome protest songs from the likes of Country Joe and the Fish.

Hefner's particular lust for blues and jazz led him to produce the Playboy Jazz Festival. It seems he was so taken with Berman's documentary about jazz great Bix Beiderbecker, Bix: Ain't None of Them Play Like Him -- and with Berman -- that they struck up a friendship. Years later, when she requested access to his personal albums and archives, he ushered her into his mansion.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker plays these materials against engaging tête-à-têtes with Hef, his pals and his commentators, including singer Tony Bennett, Kiss frontman Gene Simmons, and actor James Caan; Playmates Jenny McCarthy and Shannon Tweed; feminist Susan Brownmiller; and the aforementioned Dr. Ruth.

But it doesn't take a shrink to suspect that the hug-deprived-lad-turned-lothario isn’t as thrilled chasing bunnies as one might think. Not only does he come off as depleted by his own orgasmic Olympics, but so does his place in history as a major champion of progressive causes, as a person of integrity and as an original contributor to the country's intellectual life.

Though the jury is still out over his credentials as a liberator of female sexuality or as a self-enriching sexist (why the compulsive vamping of the Barbie bod?), Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel makes a strong case for honoring the silk-pajama'd sybarite as an upright citizen -- and for not dismissing him as a "dirty man."

Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
Opens Friday, July 30, 2010
Angelica
18 West Houston Street
New York

• < Prev
• Next >