In LA a couple hours ago. Wondering why?
Some background from Claire Hoffman writing in the LA Times Magazine in the summer of 2006:
Joe Francis, the founder of the “Girls Gone Wild” empire, is humiliating me. He has my face pressed against the hood of a car, my arms twisted hard behind my back. He’s pushing himself against me, shouting: “This is what they did to me in Panama City!”
It’s after 3 a.m. and we’re in a parking lot on the outskirts of Chicago. Electronic music is buzzing from the nightclub across the street, mixing easily with the laughter of the guys who are watching this, this me-pinned-and-helpless thing.
Francis isn’t laughing.
He has turned on me, and I don’t know why. He’s going on and on about Panama City Beach, the spring break spot in northern Florida where Bay County sheriff’s deputies arrested him three years ago on charges of racketeering, drug trafficking and promoting the sexual performance of a child [for which he served time]. 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.
And Ariel Levy went to South Beach at spring break in 2004 for Slate:
It’s 11 on a Friday night in never sedate but usually upscale South Beach, and the area has been taken over by sunburned spring-breakers in tight, synthetic clothing. An SUV passes by and two blond heads pop out of the sunroof like prairie dogs, whooping into the night sky. On the front porch of the Chesterfield Hotel on Collins Avenue, a GGW crew is assembling for a night of filming. They were out last night, too, and they made a new friend, a local who has offered to take them to a club in nearby Coconut Grove. “That’s Crazy Debbie,” says Mia Leist, GGW’s 25-year-old tour manager. “I love her. She’s like a Girls Gone Wild groupie. She gets so many girls for us.”
Crazy Debbie is a 19-year-old personal trainer by day. She wears body glitter, white stilettos that lace up to her knees, and a rhinestone Playboy bunny ring. “I did a scene for them last night,” she says proudly, which is to say she masturbated for the GGW cameras in the back of a bar. “People watch the videos and think the girls in them are real slutty, but I’m a virgin! I just think this is fun. Miami is one of the few places where people aren’t ashamed of their bodies. And yeah, Girls Gone Wild is for guys to get off on, but the women are beautiful and it’s fun!” A song Crazy Debbie likes is blaring from the bar inside, and she starts doing that dance that you sometimes see in music videos, the one where women shake their butts so fast they seem to blur.
The warrant was issued for his failing to appear at a hearing in a tax evasion case.
Meanwhile, a federal appeals court in Atlanta said a woman who took part in sexually explicit t-shirt contest two months before her 18th birthday cannot sue over Internet images of her, even though she was a minor [h/t Walter Olson]. But six high school students in Pennsylvania face child porn charges because three girls took naked photos of themselves and sent them to some boys. What’s that about? More here and here.
But back to Francis… He’s no friend of the queer set — in the fall he had a tussle with Lindsay Lohan’s deejay girlfriend and then went on the Tyra Banks show:
“I care about Lindsay … she’s not gay. She’s being controlled by this…wretched woman, this Samantha Ronson….I just care about her because she’s sweet. I care about her family, her family cares about her a lot. And Michael and Dina, it’s just taking her down a path that’s just wrong for her.”
He’s nothing if not a brazen showman. Last month, along with Larry Flynt, he called for a $5 billion bailout of the porn industry. Video after the jump.
Flynt and Francis put out a press release — conveniently timed to promote last month’s Adult Expo in Las Vegas — and the media laps it up. If you missed the made-for-blogger hoopla (Mikkell had it for us), more from CNN, Political Animal, Think Progress.