Documentary salutes porn-again publisher.

Byline: Jeffrey Long

COLUMN: MOVIE REVIEW

When we think of historically notable advocates of freedom of the press, we might think of Worcester's own Isaiah Thomas, as well as John Peter Zenger, Nat Hentoff, and, of course, Barnet Lee Rosset Jr.

Wait. Barnet Who?

This enlightening and entertaining film traces the course of this fascinating man's riches-to-rags life, from the experimental school he attended during his Chicago youth, through his tour of duty as a Signal Corps photographer in India during World War II, to his acquisition and 34-year association with Grove Press, which he transformed into a platform for counterculture novelists, playwrights and other freethinkers. (Before Rosset's arrival, writings carried by New York publishers smacked of the genteel and staid.) "Obscene" also covers Rosset's founding of the risque and politically provocative journal Evergreen Review.

Here are spliced together interview segments and original and archived footage (gleaned from such sources as home movies and the underground television program "Midnight Blue"). Some of the more notable writers and filmmakers who appear to render tribute to the iconoclast Rosset: John Waters, Erica Jong, John Sayles, Amiri Baraka and Jim Carroll. Family members and former business associates provide perspective as well, through deeply felt views and telling vignettes.

Because his publishing house's inventory included pornographic titles, some people might find it surprising to learn that, throughout his life, Rosset has been as fixated upon ideas as upon orifices. His championing of civil rights for blacks during the 1940s and 1950s is one of his often overlooked legacies. His firm published "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" after Doubleday had second thoughts about doing so; also, he produced the 1948 film "Strange Victory," which is a diatribe against the racism faced by African-Americans returning home from World War II.

It was Rosset's sharing of Henry Miller's disdain for American crassness and narrowness that prompted him to initiate a costly court battle to lift the ban on the U.S. distribution of D.H. Lawrence's novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover." In so doing, Rosset's ulterior motive was to clear away legal barriers that had barred the publishing of Miller's "Tropic of Cancer." Rosset triumphed on both fronts.

During his life, he has survived sniper fire and burglary, persecution and prosecution by Gerald Ford, the CIA and the U.S. Postal Service. Some of the more important authors whose names appear under the Grove imprimatur include Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter, Jean Genet and Lawrence Ferlinghetti - not to mention Worcester's own maverick, Abbie Hoffman. (Another Worcester connection: Named after the former longtime book editor of this newspaper, the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Barney Rosset in 2001.)

Now in his mid-80s, Rosset remains a man whose mind brims with gadfly irreverence. While proud of his accomplishments, Rosset is not reluctant to admit mistakes, such as when he sought to return to Grove, after its glory years, as a sort of "porn again" savior.

So, in the end, this documentary more than fleshes out the life of a pornographer. (Would that be a redundancy?) If Barney Rosset chose at times to move beyond the margins of conventional society, the result is that there is a wider latitude in what Americans today may read between the margins of a printed page.

Obscene: A Portrait of Barney Rosset and the Grove Press

* * *-1/2

Double O Film Productions

Rating: none

Running time: 97 minutes