Product Details

• Actors: Hugh Hefner
• Format: NTSC
• Region: All Regions
• Studio: WOR-TV (New York, N.Y.)
• DVD Release Date: August 11, 2008
• Run Time: 50 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001E52U44
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #179,166 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Meeting of The New Kid On the Block, March 26, 2009

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Pit O'Maley "Moon Man" (Alameda, Ca United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. "The Playboy Philosophy" (DVD)

This is a fascinating look at the rising publishing/king, Hugh Hefner, in his fighting trim. Here, host Bill Buckley spars with Hefner with gloves of respect on, for the most part. Yet, he makes some of his wittiest asides, in his attempt to topple Hefner from his thin log of respectability as the darling media/king of faux philosphy. Only once, momentarily does Hefner unconsciously squirm into a defensive posture as Buckley gives the Playboy philosopher an historical lecture. It is a wonderful sharing of viewpoints,pre-dating the subsequent collapse of the Playboy empire due to its own self-importance and excesses,on an explicit magazine wrapped in cellaphane-thin philosphy by two opposing publshers. Very enjoyable.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars T.rex versus O.cuniculus, February 2, 2010

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cxlxmx - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. "The Playboy Philosophy" (DVD)

In this early Firing Line filmed in black & white and broadcast without the distinctive Brandenburg Concerto theme music, William F. Buckley engages in a mono-e-mono with Hugh Hefner moderated by a third party. Buckley and Hefner go round and round, with Buckley trying to demonstrate that Hefner is inconsistent, contradictory, or lacking in an acceptable philosophical ground for his ethics, and with Hefner unwilling to concede any points. For example, when Hefner criticizes American sexual mores as unacceptable because arbitrary and rule-driven, Buckley points out that Hefner refuses to let the Playboy Bunnies in his clubs sleep with the customers even in their private lives and on their own time. Hefner's only defense is that this is for the protection of the Bunnies, although he has just critiqued protection (from venereal disease and out of wedlock births) as a control tactic used by religious authorities. Hefner does not acknowledge (or address) the parallel Buckley has set up between Hefner and religious authorities he dismisses. This talking at cross purposes characterizes the entire debate and mars it, although it is not clear whether Hefner is slippery or just a little fixated and confused in his thinking.

While Buckley is clearly the superior debater, seen in retrospect from 2010, he is also clearly a dinosaur on the way out. Hefner's suit and pipe seem dated and affected, but he speaks with a vocabulary and perspective one would recognize today. It is Hefner that uses indefinite words like "values" as well as speaking of the "wall of separation." Buckley's terminology is precise, and he tries to avoid conflating legal matters with moral philosophy and letting the debate descend into a question of Constitutional Rights. His thinking is clear, but his assumptions (e.g., "man has a naturally religious outlook") are foreign to us.

As to Hefner and the Playboy philosophy, one is struck by the inconsistency of the message and the lifestyle. While posing as prophet and practitioner of a universal ethic, Hefner's slightly adolescent eccentricity, difficulty expressing himself, and pursuit of living Barbie Dolls suggests someone using moral philosophy as a tool to leverage personal conquests rather than someone who has seriously thought out a social ethic. I don't know how much film footage there is of Hefner from these early years, so perhaps this video has some historical interest. As to its relevance to any current questions of sexual ethics, it can't have much. Hefner's appeal to Freud and liberation from psychological problems caused by sexual repression doesn't have much relevance today. In fact, Hefner's suggestion that sexual "perversions" (his word) are based in a socially-imposed repression of natural heterosexual fulfillment wouldn't fly with most sex-positive activists, either.

There are a variety of reasons one might be interested in this video, and it delivers on most of them, although if you are looking for something salacious, you won't find it here.