LETTER: ‘Wild’ videos made out of girls’ free will
July 28, 2003
In reference to Leslie Heuer’s July 17 column, “Girls too much at risk for ‘gone wild’ partying,” I have no problem with Joe Francis. I hope he has fun rolling in his millions, I really do. He saw a market out there for videos of topless college-aged women and set out to saturate it with his product.
Judging by the volumes upon volumes of tapes produced by the Girls Gone Wild crew (ok, so some of them contain footage of the same event), he has no problem getting material.
For some of the videos, the GGW crew traverses college towns all across the United States throwing huge parties, offering free liquor to all the women who attend.
Girls flock to these parties. They aren’t bussed in, shackled and chained together and forced to dance, drink or flash against their will. There is no rule that states women must consume an exorbitant amount of alcohol, or any at all. They go, have fun, drink (a lot), get excited and let their inhibitions go for a crappy T-shirt bearing the GGW logo and/or beads. Then they are videotaped.
What goes on at Francis’s parties isn’t a secret. The cameras are not hidden in the back of the room so partygoers can forget about them. Instead, there are numerous men toting them around in all areas of the facility.
In essence, that is why I have no sympathy for girls like Erin, the chick who showed up on the Dr. Phil show to boo-hoo about how she was exploited. What did she think would happen? Where was her common sense?
Our poor victim Erin loses her inhibitions, then is “coerced” by a cameraman into leaving the main dance floor to go to a room and make out with her drunk friend.
She later whines about how she was exploited and how bad she feels about her lack of judgement.
Why did she come on national television to whine? Because her “lack of judgement” was captured on film and will be sent into the homes of anyone willing to shell out $18 (or less) for a video.
Erin’s story isn’t unique. It happens every weekend at the college town bars without GGW’s involvement.
In this situation, however, Erin has to live with the fact that her episode has been broadcast to strangers all across the country, as well as her friends and family who may find out about it, and now must deal with disappointing them.
Because Joe Francis, multi-millionaire, facilitated the party, not only is it easy to blame him, it’s profitable to sue him.
The cameras make all the difference. Those cameramen make all the difference, too. Those are the guys Mr. Francis must watch out for, because it is they who are getting him in trouble.
Some reportedly offered money to girls in exchange for performing sexual acts while being filmed. Francis, even in all his multi-millionaire glory, does not have a chance in hell of getting out of prostitution charges — and rightly so.
Sexual deviants are not being treated lightly these days, just ask Kobe Bryant. His simple formula of getting footage of topless women is golden, but when the cameramen step out of bounds, so does his credibility. That is Joe Francis’s only problem, and may eventually lead to his downfall.
Mary Duffy
Baton Rouge, LA