The X-Man's Last Stand

Former Hustler editor Alan MacDonell exposes himself.

David Weigel | July 31, 2006

The title of former Hustler magazine editor Allan MacDonell’s memoir, Prisoner of X (Feral House), sounds like an exaggeration. It isn’t. A “punk rock dropout” who edited a department store’s newspaper ads before moving to Hustler in 1983, MacDonell spent 20 years clambering up the greasy pole at Larry Flynt Publications. He turned around scabrous, sexually explicit content for several of the companies’ magazines with the Flynt empire’s egos and numerous enemies constantly banging on his door. He was on deck for some of the key free speech battles of the 1980s and 1990s, and possibly saved Bill Clinton’s presidency. But he was sent packing in 2003 after insulting his boss, during a speech, at a roast. His book forces open a window into the workings of Flynt's empire and the lives of journalists for whom collecting beaver shots from aspiring models or exposing the sex lives of pious politicians are part of an honest day's work.

MacDonell, who now lives in the Hollywood Hills with "two dogs, a wife and a clear conscience," spoke via e-mail with Assistant Editor David Weigel earlier this month.

Reason: What's the connection between Hustler's sexual content and the oddball political content, like Larry's JFK conspiracy theories?

Allan MacDonell: The connection is that at Hustler we valued sensationalism, and a winning conspiracy theory must be sensationalistic. There were very few restrictions on reality at Hustler. We created an alternate world with our manufactured biographies of the models and our fake letters of sexual confessions. So a straight-faced exposé of extraterrestrials committing date rape seemed right at home.

Reason: In Prisoner of X you say that "the feature articles defined what passed for reality in the world of Hustler. The trick was to remain in that shifting sector where Hustler reality and the outside universe overlapped." Well, where do they overlap?

AM: We ran several pieces that were firmly rooted in the here and now, but that overlap wasn’t enough to ground anybody in reality. The trick was in knowing that what you were doing for a living was absurd and aberrant. The common experience for almost everyone I hired was that eventually working on Hustler would come to seem like an ordinary office job. Then some outrageous event would transpire, and it would be obvious that the job was nothing like normal. It was important to always remember that working at Hustler was fundamentally unlike any typical employment. If you lost sight of the absurdity of your daily grind, then you could be knocked for a loop when one of your office mates showed up in the magazine having sex with an artificial vagina.”

Reason: What was the reaction around the office when a new lawsuit or threat hit Hustler?

AM: Oddly enough, for all the shots we took at celebrities and politicians, very few fired back. I wrote the “Asshole of the Month” column thirteen times a year for an entire decade, and there was never one single lawsuit. We were relentless in mocking people who could afford the best lawyers in the country. The only threat of legal action I remember came from the makers of Swisher Sweets cigars. They were responding to a gay-themed fake ad for Swishier Sweets cigars.

Part of the credit for avoiding lawsuits goes to our legal team, which was headed by very competent attorneys. Their vetting of our manuscripts established a basic guideline for avoiding libel. If an editor exercises common sense while constructing parodies and character assassinations, these items should be effectively impervious to legal action.

The only real anxiety I had about repercussions coming from something we published was when Larry Flynt ordered up a photo set that depicted a black slave having sex with a plantation owner’s daughter. In the last panels, the slave was shown being bullwhipped and boiled in a big cauldron. My art director and I expected mobs of extremely offended African American picketers outside the Flynt building, but none materialized.

Reason: Is Larry Flynt a hero of the First Amendment and free speech?

AM: For my two cents, a First Amendment activist is best judged by the use to which he puts free speech. Larry Flynt can be summed up as the man who championed journalistic rights by appearing on CNN in November 2003 to announce that he had purchased naked photos of a rescued Iraqi-war POW. Larry freely spoke of himself as a guardian hero because he had decided not to publish these private pictures of an inadvertent celebrity. This wounded soldier had done nothing to attract the exploitation of Larry Flynt and CNN other than travel halfway around the world and be placed next to death’s door in service to the United States.

I guess the Founding Fathers can rest easy knowing that America is safe for Larry Flynt to puff himself up while trampling a gravely injured soldier’s privacy, with the complicity of the most trusted name in news. CNN, as far as I can tell, ran the story of these photos with little or no confirmation of their existence beyond the word of loose-lip crusader Larry Flynt.

Reason: Why were so many of the people you encountered in this industry, for lack of a better word, assholes?

AM: I think we both know that the porn industry has no monopoly on assholes. Maybe there is a peculiar breed of bottom feeder that sinks to the level of porn, something like a cross between a paparazzo and a Hollywood agent. In my mind, what separates the XXX skeeve from scumbags in the entertainment, fashion, political, academic, advertising and other ego-fueled industries would be degree and quality of achievement. I mean, Representative Dan Burton can probably dial up a great table at the Palm anytime he wants, and he’s addressed as ‘the right honorable’ or some crap like that. Is he any less creepy than some loser hanging around the mall with a camera trying to persuade 19-year-old girls to take their clothes off? For all we know, those two guys might one day be revealed to be the same person.