Obscene: A Portrait Of Barney Rosset and Grove Press - 2007 - 6/10

Scored this high early on, lowered it as the film progressed.
Suspicious documentary of the publisher of Grove Press.
The first half of this is absolutely smashing! New York literary elite, the Beats, Jazz greats. All signposted.
Rosset bought a tiny press and proceeded to publish “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” “Tropic Of Cancer,” and “Naked Lunch.”
Each time, he and his cohorts fought local censors and numerous courts. Grove became the locus of the new generation of literature. and published the 50’s edgy icons.

Next, Grove bought I Am Curious Yellow and fought for the film.
By the 70’s, however, Grove was publishing Victorian erotica (porn in purple prose).

Those erotic titles were the ones I distinctly remember seeing in the drugstore racks.
The press, as well as the documentary, goes downhill at this point.
There was a well publicized strike by, as Rosset called them, women libbers.
A bomb went off. He lost his business, he lost his property.
Everyone soft pedaled the latter years. Last twenty minutes feels like a whitewash.