After founding the adult DVD empire Girls Gone Wild and cementing the brand into the 2000s pop culture zeitgeist, creator Joe Francis has been exiled to Mexico amidst a slew of legal battles and has largely remained out of the spotlight. But Peacock’s new documentary Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story, which started streaming on Dec.3, puts Francis in the hot seat with journalist Scaachi Koul forcing him to confront his sketchy past.
The three-part series reexamines the cultural phenomenon that was Girls Gone Wild — videos of young women flashing cameras, most notably during spring break trips — and sheds new light on the topic with interviews from former employees, women who were coerced as teenagers to have sex on camera and sign their rights away, and of course Francis himself. Koul interviewed Francis at his compound in Mexico about the history of Girls Gone Wild and confronted him about his torrid history with the company, including alleged assaults.
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire but if you just start at the core, I will work with you, however many hours, and peel back every layer and answer every fucking question and show you every document,” Francis said to Koul at the beginning of their interview. “I would love for you to be able to nail me … I want that to be your goal. Nail me. Fucking nail me.”
Francis doesn’t mince his words, nor does he take much accountability for his alleged wrongdoings. While the docuseries includes a number of shocking and noteworthy moments, here are five major takeaways:
There were underage girls being convinced to participate in Girls Gone Wild videos. As a result, Francis and his staffers were arrested.
In 2003, a group of underage women who took their tops off and performed sexual acts in a Girls Gone Wild video in Panama City, Florida, reported the incident to the local police. Police arrested Francis on 22 criminal accounts, including charges of promoting the sexual performance of children. Francis pleaded no contest. While the judge sentenced him to 339 days in jail, Francis was credited for prior jail time he’d spent regarding a separate legal issue involving tax evasion.
Francis believes he was victimized and doesn’t show remorse for the women in the Girls Gone Wild videos.
Despite the number of women who appeared in the documentary alleging they were coerced and pressured into performing sexual acts on camera — which the women said they had not originally signed up for — Francis says in the documentary that he doesn’t feel bad for the women who appeared in the videos.
“I could always sense when I felt like what I had to say did not matter and I very much got that vibe from this camera man,” one woman shared in a clip. “I felt like if I didn’t comply, things could go really badly for me.”
When Koul specifically asks Francis if he felt bad for the girls who were underage and participated in the videos, Francis doesn’t hesitate to respond, “No.”
“No, because I don’t believe they were victimized. They victimized me,” he says.
Koul reminds Francis, “They were pretty young.”
Francis doubles down and replies: “No, they were 17. They were the ones that victimized us. I believe and we all believe that they were put up by the Panama City Police and it was all an operation.”
When Los Angeles Times reporter Claire Hoffmann traveled to Chicago to profile Francis in 2006, she claimed he assaulted her.
In 2006, Hoffmann was on an assignment in the Chicago area following Francis around so she could ultimately profile him. In the middle of the night, after attending dance clubs and spending time with Francis and his camera crew, Hoffmann wrote that Francis pressed her against a car, twisted her arm, yelled at her, and tried to kiss her, pushing himself against her.
“As he yells, I wonder if this is a flashback, or if he’s punishing me for being the only blond in sight who’s not wearing a thong. This much is certain: He’s got at least 80 pounds on me and I’m thinking he’s about to break my left arm. My eyes start to stream tears,” Hoffmann wrote in her 2006 profile of Francis.
In the documentary, Francis defended himself to Koul. “She tried to kiss me and I wouldn’t kiss her! She was trying to hook up with me. Totally unprofessional, and then she wrote a fucking hit piece,” he said. Hoffman declined to comment or participate in the documentary.
Francis has a long history of alleged sexual assaults and misconduct but in the documentary, he vehemently denied having ever assaulted anyone.
“I was not involved in the filming of girls, and most certainly would never physically assault anyone ever,” he told Koul. “Trust me. By now, there would be so many other girls saying that I raped them, if I had. I have never raped a woman. Ever. Or a man. Or a child.”
There were also Guys Gone Wild tapes where crew members convinced men to perform sexual acts on camera.
A former Girls Gone Wild employee spoke about her time producing videos for Guys Gone Wild, footage that aimed to film straight men for a gay male audience. She said those crew members referred to themselves as “rooster shooters” because they were “shooting cock.”
The documentary also shows a clip of Francis talking about Guys Gone Wild on a “Behind the Velvet Rope” podcast episode explaining that he believes 20 percent of consumers are women and 80 percent of viewers are gay men.
“What does a gay guy like the most? A straight guy,” Francis said. “The straight guys are the forbidden fruit.”
While the former employee said the Guys Gone Wild videos were moneymakers, she described the experience of producing those videos as “traumatizing.” It was grueling, she said, to “coax this guy to have an orgasm.”
“The same way Joe was pressuring the guys [crew members in the field], ‘Make sure you get this amount of footage,’ is the same way he pressured us,” she said. “Just the things you have to come up with are gross … This was like, I had to be in it with you.”
Girls Gone Wild went under in 2012 after Francis was sued for slander.
As a result of a public feud between Francis and real estate developer and entrepreneur Steve Wynn over a debt Francis owed Wynn for gambling at his casinos in Las Vegas, Wynn sued Francis for making defamatory statements in 2012. A jury later found that Francis had falsely claimed Wynn threatened to kill him and have him buried in the desert if he didn’t pay back what he owed. Francis had also claimed record producer Quincy Jones told him that Wynn threatened to kill him but during the case, Jones testified that wasn’t true. The jury ordered Francis to pay Wynn a total of $40 million after finding he had slandered Wynn.
The following year in 2013, Francis’ parent company for Girls Gone Wild filed for bankruptcy in order to block Wynn from receiving funds.
Afterwards, the company went under and Francis faced more legal issues. In 2013, he was sentenced to 270 days in jail for an assault and false imprisonment of three women. Two years later, Francis fled to Mexico with his then-girlfriend and two daughters.
