Of all the late 90s and 2000s cultural phenomena to come under recent scrutiny – the Pam and Tommy sex tape, Woodstock 99, Abercrombie & Fitch, over-inflated Silicon Valley startups, Britney Spears, Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” – Girls Gone Wild is arguably the least surprisingly toxic. Started in 1997 by a fratty entrepreneur named Joe Francis, Girls Gone Wild sold VHS and then DVD videos of co-ed women, almost always intoxicated, baring their breasts on some hedonistic spring break trip in exchange for free underwear or hats.
Francis dominated the soft-core porn market in the early internet days; millions of people purchased footage of the girls – often barely over 18 and sometimes younger, predominantly white, thin and blonde – getting badgered by cameramen to take more shots, take their tops off, make out with their friends, use sex toys on themselves. Obviously, this has not aged well. (Nor was it without controversy at the time.)
The anything-goes raunch and eye-popping infomercials also (barely) masked something much more sinister and damaging, according to a new documentary, Girls Gone Wild Exposed. The 84-minute film, part of TNT’s Rich and Shameless anthology, digs into the queasy popularity of Girls Gone Wild and assembles a deluge of evidence suggesting that Francis, a fixture of mid-aughts gossip blogs, was a serial physical and emotional abuser. “Behind the fun and the wet T-shirt competitions and this sort of faux feminist liberation – flashing your breasts for the camera – lives were being ruined,” the film’s director, Katinka Blackford Newman, told the Guardian. “And there are people whose lives are still being impacted.”
As the film recounts through in-person interviews with former Girls Gone Wild producers and staff and copious footage, the tapes themselves were dubiously sourced and financed. They featured girls, sometimes underage and manipulated into commercial releases while drunk, performing sexual acts on themselves or each other under blatant pressure from Francis. Some, such as Nichole, who appears in the documentary, did not even know she was being taped. Another participant, Tabitha, says she was 17 and drunk when she was talked into a wet T-shirt contest; five years later, she found herself an unwitting poster girl of Girls Gone Wild. (Despite years of legal battles, DVDs featuring her are still being sold.)
A woman in her mid-30s named Jannel alleges that Francis, whom she trusted because he was a celebrity associated with such figures as Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton, fed her shots, manipulated her into masturbating on camera, and raped her in the back of the Girls Gone Wild tour bus. (The alleged assault was first reported in a 2006 Los Angeles Times profile in which he also physically assaults the 29-year-old female journalist.) Though she went to police, “nothing to this day has ever been done about it,” Jannel says in the film.
Lack of accountability appears to be a running theme for Francis. For years, Francis dodged or settled numerous lawsuits and skipped out of jail time for a misdemeanor assault and false imprisonment conviction in Los Angeles by fleeing to his resort home in Mexico. (Those charges, for which he was found guilty in 2013, stem from a 2011 incident in which he met three recent college graduates at a bar, took them to his Bel-Air home, prevented them from leaving his vehicle, grabbed one girl’s hair and throat and slammed her head on the floor.)
“He slipped under the radar of the #MeToo movement, because he has been irrelevant for quite some time,” said Blackford Newman. “Of course, his legacy lives on in the lives that he’s ruined, the women whose images he stole, either by filming them without their permission or getting them blind drunk and persuading them to take part in seedy sex scenes without payment.”
The allegations are not all from the Girls Gone Wild days; the film opens with a disturbing audio recording from August 2020 by his ex-wife, Abbey Wilson, in which she screams in terror as Francis apparently attacks and chokes her; when Wilson screams “You’re killing me,” Francis replies: “Good. I hope you fucking die.” (The film states that Wilson “has not objected” to use of the recording.) Francis was arrested in Mexico and spent 73 days in jail on domestic violence charges.
The documentary attempts to make sense of Francis’s apparent violent streak. Raised in Laguna Beach, Francis supposedly did not have a happy home life with his three sisters and parents. (His family, who later took out restraining orders against him, declined to participate in the film). By high school, he attended a correctional boarding school in Idaho that was later shuttered under allegations of abuse.
Francis first got his start in television in the mid-90s, working as a production assistant for Real TV, a syndicated show of home-video bloopers. In 1997, he released Banned from Television, a collection of material cut from Real TV for being too graphic or violent. (In 2000, a fellow Real TV producer sued Francis for breach of implied contract, breach of confidence and unjust enrichment. The two sides settled for an undisclosed sum.) A year later, he narrowed focus with the first Girls Gone Wild video. Within two years, it had made $20m in revenue. By 2003, there were 83 different titles and 4.5m Girls Gone Wild videos sold – exploiting women in the name of empowerment, wrapped up in first amendment rights. The now 49-year-old businessman cultivated what former E! host Brooke Burke describes in a sit-down interview as a “lovable bad boy” image.
Francis declined to participate in Blackford Newman’s documentary – in emails included in the film, he claimed there was another project in production and that they would “have to agree to the terms that have been provided” for him to appear on camera. “I understand that was complete bullshit,” said Blackford Newman. “He basically wanted editorial control,” which was “something we were never going to agree to”.
Joe Francis and Girls Gone Wild may be culturally irrelevant in 2022, but “the lessons we learn from his story are hugely relevant”, said Blackford Newman. “There will always be sleazy abusers and predators like Joe Francis. The question is, how did he get away with it?” Blackford Newman, bolstered by a seemingly endless camera roll of Francis at red carpets and Hollywood events, largely blames the sheen of legitimacy provided by his celebrity circuit, including Hilton, the Kardashians (Francis briefly dated Kourtney before she was with Scott Disick), and Mario Lopez. Francis was “celebrity-washed”, said Blackford Newman. “He was given credibility by his celebrity friends who turned a blind eye.”
The film particularly zeroes in on his connection to the Kardashians and especially Kim Kardashian, whose celebrity dovetailed with Francis’s in the mid-2000s. (Francis allegedly helped Kardashian broker a deal with Vivid Entertainment to net $4.5m from her leaked sex tape.) The documentary includes a scene from an early season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians in which Francis phones Kris Jenner from jail in Reno, Nevada, for tax evasion. “Oh my gosh, Joe! We need to come get you out,” Jenner says. Kardashian, in another clip, wears a “Free Joe” shirt before paparazzi cameras. “I feel like I love Joe and his situation is unfortunate. And he should be free … I’m a Joe supporter,” she says. It’s unclear when the clip was filmed; Francis served time in 2007 in Panama City, Florida, for contempt of court in a civil case involving the filming of underage girls, and later 11 months in Reno for tax evasion. He also pleaded no contest in Panama City for prostitution and child abuse for filming two 17-year-olds in a shower and paying their friends to masturbate him; he received credit for time served in Reno and was set free.
“The guy was in jail facing charges of child pornography and underage sex. These were serious charges,” said Blackford Newman of the Kardashians’ support. “They knew what was going on, but somehow he managed to charm them.” The friendship appears to have continued until at least 2016, when Kim vacationed at his 40,000-sq-ft resort property in Mexico, Casa Aramara, with her children. (Casa Aramara also hosted part of Kardashian and Kanye West’s honeymoon in 2014, Mario Lopez’s wedding and Kylie Jenner’s 18th birthday vacation in 2015.)
Blackford Newman hopes the film will serve as a “wake-up call to celebrities like the Kardashians to be more accountable, and to understand that they have a responsibility”. By associating with Francis, known to film underage girls, “they’re giving them credibility, particularly in the eyes of younger impressionable women”. The film-making team, according to Blackford Newman, approached about 100 of Francis’s celebrity friends, including all of his Kardashian associates, for comment. All declined.
According to the film, Francis remains free in Mexico, unable to return to California without risking jail time for his misdemeanor assault conviction in 2013. For now, there is little movement for legal or financial accountability. Still, “I hope that the film will encourage other survivors of shameful and abusive behavior to have the courage to speak up,” said Blackford Newman, “no matter how rich or famous their abusers are.”
Rich & Shameless: The Dark Side of the Girls Gone Wild Empire airs on TNT on 23 April with a UK date to be announced