Wild Thing

Joe Francis made his first Girls Gone Wild video four years ago, two years after he graduated with a dual degree in business and in film and television production from the University of Southern California. He grew up in Los Angeles, a Ritalin kid in a big house with three sisters and a doting mother and a father who owns a pharmaceutical company. After college, Francis worked first as a marketing manager for his father and then as a production assistant on a reality-TV show (he won't say which). Neither job turned into a career.

"I sucked at working for someone other than myself," says Francis. "Even my dad fired me after three days."

Though he doesn't particularly love movies and can't remember the last book he read, Francis has always liked taping things on video. He's been that way from childhood, since the time his dad bought him an 8 mm camera while on a business trip to Japan. Francis' sole extracurricular activity in high school was video-yearbook editor. And he'd always fancied himself an entrepreneur, so when he cooked up an idea for what he thought would make a good reality-type program, he just took out big cash advances on a bunch of credit cards and got to work.

Banned From Television was a compilation video showing people getting hit by trains, shark attacks, public executions and other gruesome spectacles. Francis sold it via direct-response commercials, meaning you watch, then call the toll-free number and order with a credit card. "It was cheap to get the footage, because there were news guys out there who couldn't do anything with it, since it couldn't get on TV," Francis says.

The idea for Girls Gone Wild came from footage that someone had submitted for Banned. It was shot in New Orleans, at Mardi Gras, and showed drunken college students having fun. "That tape lived in my VCR for a month," says Francis, grinning. "There was a lot of porno on it, too, but I didn't like that part. I just kept going over the parts of the real girls flashing their breasts — just girl after girl after girl. It was awesome. More than anything else, Girls Gone Wild started off as a product of my sexual fantasy." Meaning? "Girls look really good from age eighteen to twenty-five," he says. "It's just a fact that that's the best time for girls. Afterward, things start to happen — bad things."

Francis wondered how he could market such a concept. On a plane one day, he took out a legal pad and wrote down titles: "College Women." "Girls Gone Crazy." Then he wrote, "College Girls Gone Wild," thought about it for a minute and put a big X through the word college.

Francis put out the word to cameramen who had supplied his Banned video that he now wanted a new kind of footage. He got in about a hundred tapes and spent three weeks assembling a reel before buying $50,000 of commercial air time (mostly late at night, when rates are cheapest) to sell it. The response wasn't huge, but it was enough to keep the ball rolling, and tapes kept coming: from guys who usually shot porn and wanted some quick cash, from TV-news cameramen who'd shot B-roll of nudity on spring-break assignments, from random amateurs who'd taken hand-helds to Mardi Gras.

These days, Francis claims a staff of ninety full- and part-timers. The GGW commercials air 40,000 times a year all over the U.S. Francis talks about buying Playboy or starting his own magazine, or a GGW video game or feature film. "My brand is so huge, and it's only getting bigger," he says, calling from behind the wheel of his 2001 silver Ferrari 360. "I really see myself becoming a global media player."

Though Francis remains the sole owner of Girls Gone Wild, he recently signed a deal with Mandalay, the Hollywood production company founded by Peter Guber, the former studio head and producer of movies such as Midnight Express and Caddyshack II. Under the name Mandalay Direct, they're producing new videos using the Girls Gone Wild formula. Guber declined to comment for this article, but managing director Ken Stickney says, "Joe's demonstrated that he's one of the best, if not the best, direct marketer in the world, and we want to be in that business, whether it's to sell sex or comedy or fitness products."

As Francis' business has grown and become more of a real enterprise, so have its problems. In the early days, not all the cameramen who sold him footage had gotten model releases from the girls they'd filmed. Consequently, suits were filed, and on one occasion Francis settled a claim out of court for around $10,000.

Becky Lynn Gritzke, a business major at Florida State University, was taped topless at Mardi Gras last year — but was never asked to sign a release. She wore a big smile on her face as she squeezed her breasts and juggled them for the camera. "The girl was putting on a show," says Francis' lawyer, Ronald Guttman. Gritzke was featured on the GGW commercials and Web site, and on a billboard that a friend spotted in Italy. According to Florida law, even an image filmed in a public place cannot be used commercially without the subject's consent. Gritzke is now suing GGW, and her case is scheduled for trial in the fall.

"In my opinion, what people in this industry do is visually rape these girls," says David Sergi, a lawyer who sued a company that tried copying Francis' concept on behalf of a woman who was caught on tape at a wet T-shirt contest.

Francis doesn't worry that such suits will cramp his style.

"In the past, we did license a lot of stuff from people who represented to us that they had releases when they didn't," he admits. "But we're not doing business like that anymore. Now we get releases from all the girls. Why? Because getting them is too easy."