In 2004, IN DEMAND, a pay-per-view TV company, approached us and asked if we could produce an event to broadcast during the Superbowl Halftime. They were looking for something to go up against the incredibly lame “Lingerie Bowl” and thought we were just the company to do it. The “Girls Gone Wild Halftime Games” became our biggest production yet. We recruited college girls from all across the country to come to “Girls Gone Wild Island” (actually Casa Aramara) to participate in a series of naked games. We filled the beach with colorful game apparatus, cast a couple of midgets to referee and had an absolute blast, shooting for two days. I remember standing on the lawn of the main house, watching 40 naked girls run around the property as the sun glimmered off the Pacific, thinking, “Joe, you lucky son of a bitch, you have to admit, life is pretty good.”
The following year, Girls Gone Wild produced an infomercial called “Ultimate Rush.” The concept involved MTV comedian Zane Lamprey searching the world for the one wild experience that I (or at least my TV persona) had not experienced yet. For the shoot, we had some “Girls Gone Wild” surfboards made and brought 12 beautiful girls to the North Shore of Hawaii, where the locals welcomed us and invited me to surf the famous Banzai pipeline with them. Later, back in L.A., we shot a scene in which I drove a NASCAR car tricked out with the “Girls Gone Wild” logo around a NASCAR racetrack. It scared the shit out of me. It was a short half-mile course, meaning you’re cranking the steering wheel the entire time, and the visibility in those cars is worse than a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. During lunch, though, I took my own Ferrari onto the track and got it up to 140. That was a hell of a lot more fun. I invited one of the girls we cast for the shoot to ride with me. If you want to get lucky with a girl, I can offer a very effective method: Take her around a racetrack at top speed in a Ferrari. You will close the deal, guaranteed.
In the final scene of the infomercial, Zane calls me on a videophone to find me aboard a spacecraft orbiting the earth with several hot girls. To shoot the scene, we traveled to Moscow, where a company aligned with the Russian space program offers customers the chance to experience zero-G conditions aboard a specially equipped airplane (similar to the “Vomit Comet” used to train NASA astronauts). We arrived on a snowy evening in winter, rented a hotel suite across the river from the Kremlin, and watched as 43 of Moscow’s most beautiful models auditioned for the scene by taking their clothes off for us. Later, we explored the city, eventually escaping the bitter cold in a downtown casino, where I found myself playing Texas Hold ‘em with a group of scary-looking Russian mafia guys. They grew even more scary-looking as I won hand after hand. I played until the sun came up – not because I was enjoying the game so much, but because I didn’t want to walk back to my hotel in the dark after taking everything these guys brought to the table!
The shoot itself was another one of those unbelievable experiences. We built out the interior of an airplane to resemble a spaceship from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Four girls and I climbed aboard with a director and camera crew. We ascended high into the troposphere, where the pilot performed a series of parabolic arcs, which creates several seconds of zero-G condition inside the plane. It was better than any roller coaster ride, and I can probably state with certainty that I am the first person in history to experience weightlessness with four beautiful naked girls, though the enchanting wonder of the moment was slightly offset when the girls filled the plane with glistening, pungent droplets of floating vomit.
BROTHER
There is one person who deserves his own chapter in my story. When I moved into my current house in Bel Air, I got a call from my next-door neighbor inviting me over for a drink. The neighbor was legendary composer and producer Quincy Jones. Over the years, Quincy has come to represent every kind of human decency to me, and is the type of man I personally aspire to being. He is one of America’s most accomplished individuals, and one of the world’s truly great human beings. He’s also one cool dude. The night I first went next door to visit him; I had an 18-year-old girl with me. When she told Quincy her age he said, “Hell, I’ve had hangovers older than you.” We’ve traveled all over the world together, and it’s invariably a great adventure. On the way to the VMA awards in Miami, we flew over Hurricane Katrina as it was gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico. We went to Dubai to celebrate Quincy’s birthday. In 2004, we were riding together on the way to a tribute for Quincy at the Apollo Theater in New York when I got a phone call telling me that a woman from Texas had just accused me of rape. Quincy quickly forgot all about the tribute and spent the rest of the ride helping me get through the ordeal of absorbing this news. When I was arrested in Panama City this year, Quincy flew down the very next day to sit with my parents in court. He’s like a big brother to me. He is one of the rare persons I know who is not afraid to hit me with hard truths about myself, which is something I’ve come to value greatly. Because he is grounded, self-actualized, and primarily focused on bringing good into the world, I consider Quincy one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met.
UPS AND DOWNS
The peak experiences of life have a way of balancing out with those events you would prefer never happen at all, and it’s been no different for me, except perhaps by degree. During Spring Break 2004, I met a Texas college girl in South Beach, Miami. She approached me in a bar and flirtatiously picked a fight by telling me she didn’t agree with the morality of “Girls Gone Wild.” I patiently explained that I had neither invented breasts, nor men’s appreciation of them. I told her that girls have been flashing long before I came along, and that they truly enjoy “going wild” for our cameras. We argued these points for a while, and she eventually backed off her opinion. In fact, she followed me back to my hotel suite, bringing a girlfriend along. She and I had a nice night in my bedroom while her friend crashed in the living room with my bodyguard Jason, who was an active-duty police officer. The following day, the girls looked around my Ritz Carlton room and asked how much it cost me to rent the Presidential Suite. When I told them, they glanced at each other, and I could almost hear the “ka-ching” sound of a cash register ringing in their heads. They ordered lunch from room service. When I told the girl I had to get back to work, it’s possible that she felt I was blowing her off. The fact is, Spring Break is the busiest time of the year for me. In any event, she grudgingly gathered her clothes and headed out the door, but not before I made her return the expensive hotel bathrobe she tried to steal from the room. Later, when I was busy at work, I heard that this girl had gone to the police and cried “rape!” She told the police that I must have slipped something into her drink because she had no memory of the previous night. I was outraged. I have great respect for women and would never drug or force myself on a girl. To prove my innocence, I took three separate lie detector tests for the authorities and passed all three times. The girl submitted to a blood test, which revealed no drugs in her system. The Miami Beach Police Department and the state attorney did not find her story credible and refused to arrest me or file charges. But the press had already picked up the story and blared, “Joe Francis accused of rape.” I went on TV that night and publicly challenged this girl who had recklessly tried to ruin my good name to take a lie detector test herself. She declined. I sued the woman for $25,000,036.00 — $25 million for defamation, $36 for the cheeseburgers that she and her friend had ordered from the Ritz Carlton’s room service the afternoon after the baseless accusations.
Un-f-ing-believable.
KIDNAPPED
Though I think life needs a certain amount of ups and downs to be interesting, I suppose you should be careful what you wish for. Easily one of the lowest moments of my life was the night that I knew, without a doubt, that I was about to die. On a winter evening in 2004, I came home from a nightclub and surprised an intruder who had broken into my house. As I walked through the front door, a stranger wearing a mask came up behind me and put a gun to my head. He tied my hands behind my back, pushed me onto the bed and forced me into a compromising position, all the time keeping the gun pressed against my skull. I was terrified. He produced a video camera, pointed it at me and ordered me to say, “I’m Joe Francis, and I love Boys Gone Wild.” For over six hours, he made threats against my life as he ransacked my house. He stole my watch, a Picasso and several other valuables and then marched me into the garage. He forced me into the back of my car, drove out of my driveway and headed down the streets in the predawn darkness. As I struggled against the plastic ties around my wrists, I could not believe my life was going to end in this way. I furiously tried to think of a way out of the situation, but when the car pulled over and stopped, my heart sank. I was certain that the last thing I’d see was the flash of a gun as a bullet tore into my skull. Instead, my assailant warned me to not to move and drove away in another car. I finally managed to break free and call the police.
Within a day, I got a call from this scumbag, ordering me to pay him half a million dollars or he would release the videotape he made of me to the public. My response was, “Go fuck yourself.” Nobody is going to extort a penny from me. He muttered some threats and hung up, but called again the following day. This time the police recorded the call, and several subsequent calls, but couldn’t put together enough evidence to make an arrest. Amazingly, a short while later, my ex-girlfriend Paris Hilton happened to be at a party where she overheard someone bragging about this crime. She alerted the police and they arrested Darnell Riley, a Hollywood lowlife.
He pled guilty to robbery at gunpoint and attempted extortion and was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. I later heard that Riley had served time for killing two Korean shopkeepers at point-blank range years earlier. It was then that I realized just how lucky I was to have come through the ordeal with my life.
MAGIC MOUNTAIN
In May 2006, I was about to turn 33. I felt I had accomplished quite a bit by this stage of my life, but the greatest (and only true) source of wealth I have acquired is the many friends and business contacts I have made over the years. The company showed its appreciation and decided to celebrate by renting Southern California’s Magic Mountain amusement park and throwing the biggest party anyone ever saw. I arrived at the park early, ready to have a great time. But as dusk gave way to evening, I began to grow a little heartsick. No one was showing up! We’d rented an entire amusement park and nobody was there to enjoy it. Was it because the park is a 45-mile drive from the city? I shrugged it off and decided, “What the hell! It’s not going to stop me from having a good time.” With my friend Mark Shapiro, the Six Flags CEO, I climbed aboard the park’s biggest roller coaster. When we reached the top of Goliath, Mark pointed across the parking lot. “Look at that!” he said. He was pointing to the freeway, where the traffic was bumper to bumper. The exit to Magic Mountain was jammed, and hundreds of cars clogged the street from the freeway to the park’s entrance in a glittering line of stream of headlights. They were coming after all!
On that warm California evening under a sky choked with stars, more than 5000 friends and business acquaintances arrived to be greeted by a smiling park staff. All of Hollywood was there. I was blown away. There’s no way I had time to personally greet all the guests, but I made sure everyone had a blast. All the rides were running, there were four full bars and a dinner buffet, and the park’s many restaurants and food stands served their offerings for free. There were no VIP areas or star treatment: Everybody enjoyed themselves like one enormous, happy family. Truly one of the great events of my life.
REPORTER GONE WILD
In 2006, I was at a party when I was approached by a reporter named Claire Hoffman from the Los Angeles Times, who told me she wanted to profile my company for the newspaper’s business section. The reporter called me daily for almost a month before I finally agreed to meet her for lunch. She asked why I was so reluctant to meet with her. I told her I didn’t trust journalists because I’d had been screwed by reporters in the past. But she said readers would be interested in how I built a business from zero to $100 million annually in just nine years, so I invited her to visit my Santa Monica office, our telephone call center and the Girls Gone Wild warehouse.
She seemed impressed with my company, and fascinated with me on a personal level. At one point, as I was explaining some aspect of my business to her, I saw something in her eyes that gave me a bit of a shock. Call me crazy (you wouldn’t be the first), but I am rarely wrong about these things. As she leaned closer and stared into my eyes, I realized why she wasn’t paying attention to my business story anymore. She was thinking about something else. I swear to God, she was falling in love. This was not good news for me because she was one of those women you feel kind of sorry for: Not at all attractive, and neither bright enough nor interesting enough to make up for it. When she told me she was required to write her newspaper stories at a 7th grade reading level, I remember thinking “How does she manage to write so far above her capacity?”
Looking back, I realize I should have picked up clues to her true agenda. I’m reminded of one of my favorite movies, “The Sixth Sense,” in which unsuspecting audiences don’t realize what’s really going on until the last minute, compelling them to go back and carefully review the entire story again. I should have realized, by the nature of this reporter’s questions and disingenuously flirtatious manner (which I refused to reciprocate) that she wasn’t planning to write a dry business piece at all. But it never occurred to me. Instead, I decided to provide her with a fascinating perspective on the kind of culture that allows Girls Gone Wild to flourish by traveling into America’s heartland to watch it in action. She happily accepted an invitation to accompany me on my private jet to Chicago. Along the way, the phrase “QWERTY keyboard” came up in our conversation. She asked what a QWERTY keyboard is. I was astonished. A journalist! Anyone who owns a keyboard can tell you that the standard American layout for the keys is known by the six letters that appear on the top left side of the keyboard. Q, W, E, R, T, Y. I playfully ripped on the reporter for not knowing this, and for not knowing the reason why the letters on the keyboard are arranged that way. I was quietly beginning to wonder if the Los Angeles Times had sent me one of their least qualified reporters. At the same time, I was a creeped out by how infatuated she was with me. At one point, she tried to kiss me, but I backed away and said, only half-joking, “I don’t hook up with fat girls.”
In Chicago we joined the Girls Gone Wild tour bus at a club packed with hard-partying college students. The reporter spent much of the night in whispered conversations with other girls in the club. And if any of these girls came up to me, she would maneuver to fend them off, saying, as a jealous girlfriend might, “Why are you interested in Joe? You shouldn’t like him.” Later, I walked her outside to the bus where a local police officer was chatting amiably with my crew. When the reporter asked the cop a question, he told her she wasn’t allowed to write his answer down on her notepad. She replied by putting her pad away. I was astonished. “Don’t you think that’s a violation of the First Amendment?” I asked her. “This officer doesn’t think you have the right to report what he says!” She just shrugged. I told her I had been harassed in Florida for exercising my own right of free speech, and paid a serious consequence for it. “This is what they did to me,” I said, gently pressing her against the police car in a playful demonstration of how the Florida police chilled my constitutional rights. The cop and my crew members saw what I was trying to explain and laughed at our horseplay, but the clueless reporter missed my point altogether. She turned on me with a strange look in her eyes. Perhaps I triggered some traumatic memory from her past because suddenly she wasn’t smiling anymore. She stormed away, called for a cab and left. I never saw her again, but a few weeks later, her article came out in the Los Angeles Times, and it was a complete hatchet job. The funny thing about her piece is that any thinking person would find it hard to believe — which it was, because no person could be as bad as the fictional character she “profiled” in her story. The story’s accuracy started and ended with the correct spelling of my name. Worst of all, she accused me of raping a girl I’d met that night in Chicago (a supposed virgin who, it turns out, was a local stripper). Let me repeat that as a brother of three sisters and as a guy who has no trouble getting women, that I would never force myself on a girl.
