The Prisoner in Cell Block DD

Megamillionaire and Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis built an empire by talking buxom young girls into removing their tops for his camera. Now he's talking through plexiglas at a jail in Reno. GQ visited Francis in the slammer—and asks how his soft-porn life went from wild to wrong

By Joel Stein

April 2008

The first time I wrote about Joe Francis was six years ago; I rode with him on the Girls Gone Wild tour bus, where we watched a woman spread-eagle on a bunk bed and writhe for a video crew. At one point, Francis sent me to fill a Mike's Hard Lemonade bottle with water, which the woman poured on her breasts before shoving the bottle inside her. When the woman's cell phone rang, Francis grabbed it and asked whose number it was, and when she said that it was her boyfriend, his eyes went manic. He flipped it open, told the guy that he was the owner of Girls Gone Wild and was enjoying watching the dude's girlfriend use a bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade as a sex device. He was barely looking at the woman. Francis's real passion is dominating other men.

Francis, 34, not only still remembers that night—of which there must have been so many during his ascension to becoming America's biggest soft-core pornographer—but brings up the bottle incident when I visit him in jail in Reno, where he's been incarcerated for nearly a year without bail, a court date, or being convicted of a crime. "That was fucking classic," he says into the black phone on the other side of the glass.

Joe Francis is in jail for a number of reasons. Some of them have to do with the fact that two of his cameramen taped two 17-year-olds with fake IDs going at it in a shower. But a lot of it has to do with the fact that Francis is incapable of backing down in a fight with another man, even if that man is a district-court judge. So for those expecting Francis to apologize to the thousands of drunk teenage girls he videotaped topless—he says this: "People want remorse from me? They're retarded. For what? For fighting for my First Amendment rights? Fuck you." When I ask Francis if he, like a lot of inmates, has sought solace in God in jail, he makes a jerk-off motion with his hand.

As far as jail goes, this isn't one where you really need God, anyway. Reno's Washoe County Detention Facility isn't exactly Attica. There's a restaurant inside where low-risk inmates among the population of 1,100 can learn to make sandwiches and play barista. In the lobby, there's a corporate motivational poster with a photo of two hands shaking above the very sweet, if patently untrue, statement rule #1: if we don't take care of the customer…someone else will.

Francis may be the best-treated inmate Washoe has ever had. That's partly because he's famous, partly because he's charming, and partly because he's been there so long: People average seventeen days here, either making bail or getting sent to a real prison. Francis has his own cell and access to a barely used room with cable TV and a DVD player as well as to a bank of phones that he works all day. In the process of arranging this interview, I discovered that you can get Joe Francis on the phone—in jail—in less than twenty seconds. He gets The New York Times, USA Today, Newsweek, and Us Weekly delivered, and he doesn't eat the jail food. "I can order food from a restaurant," he says. "I order pizza. I ordered chicken Caesar salad. It's like Daily Grill. Chicken Parmesan with fettuccine. Sushi. I had a turkey sandwich and fries for lunch."

Francis says jail is totally different from what he'd expected from movies. He's seen only one fight and hasn't heard of any sexual assaults. "Nothing will ever happen to me in jail. I'm a god. I'm the cool Girls Gone Wild guy. I'm revered. I'm a rock star," he says. Still, he avoids the other inmates, often going a week without talking to one. "The one thing I fear is one of these fucking people showing up at my house. I'm a different class. They're dumb. They're the people you see on Cops. Those are the people you see in jail."

A female guard walks over and interrupts our conversation to say good-bye to Francis for the weekend. Francis pulls her close and smiles at me through the glass. "Look at that rack," he says, right in front of her. Like the girls in the clubs, the ones who eventually take off their shirts, she gives him that disapproving-but-flattered half frown. "Can you take me home? Don't I get conjugal visits? It's been eight months." As she walks away, he yells, "Call me!"

Francis's charm is that of a horny 15-year-old boy who just can't help himself. For his thirty-third birthday, Francis got sponsors to rent the entire Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park for a night that would have made Richie Rich jealous. Guests at his $25 million compound in Puerto Vallarta can press an anything, anytime button on their phones.

But when Francis isn't charming, he can be manic. As a kid, he was on Ritalin, and people now often mistake him for a coke addict. "Talk about type A personality. He is like A++++," says Steven Hirsch, CEO of the giant adult-film studio Vivid Entertainment, which has a partnership with Francis. "That's part of why he's in jail."

Francis's predicament began in 2003, when Girls Gone Wild announced a pay-per-view event with Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment, to be shot in Panama City, Florida, and hosted by Snoop Dogg. Then-mayor Lee Sullivan warned that the city would enforce its public-nudity laws, which to Francis seemed less like a threat than a terrific publicity opportunity. He made fun of Sullivan in ads for the special and sued the mayor for infringing on his First Amendment rights. But after shooting in Panama City for a few nights, Francis was arrested after his cameramen taped the two 17-year-olds who had provided fake IDs. Francis was charged with more than seventy counts, ranging from drug trafficking to racketeering. Almost all the charges were dismissed, including the ones for having cocaine on his jet, since it turned out that customs had declared the plane clean right before the cops checked it out. Still, four felony charges concerning taping underage women and two misdemeanor prostitution charges stuck, and Francis was released on bail.

To Francis, of course, this was just one more fight, another chance to prove he was better than these stupid tight-assed hillbillies. When the underage girls sued Francis for $70 million and a judge, in a bizarre move, ordered the parties to go to mediation, Francis arrived at a hearing and made only one offer to the girls' lawyers: "Suck my dick." He issued press releases titled "Judges Gone Wild" and ignored orders to appear in court. Finally, he was thrown in jail for contempt; his jailers later caught him carrying sleeping pills, cholesterol medication, and $700 in cash. This time the judge refused to grant Francis bail. Francis considers this outrageous. "Let's say I shot the girls," he says. "Let's say I fucked them. I still should get bail." Greta Van Susteren, who has covered Francis's case extensively on Fox News, agrees that he's getting screwed but thinks Francis provoked the judge. "Still, a judge should overlook when a citizen is being obnoxious," she says. "Judges should have thick skin and rule on the facts and the law, not out of a grudge."

A few weeks into Francis's incarceration, the IRS, which had been investigating him for months, arrested him for tax evasion, claiming over $20 million in questionable expenses. Francis was psyched, since the federal charges superseded the Florida ones and he could get out of the Florida jail, where, he says, he was paraded around naked and tortured so badly he was fantasizing about Abu Ghraib, all of which the jail denies. He was transferred to Reno (he had filed taxes in Nevada) on a Con Air jet with a hundred other inmates. "Brand-new 737s," he says admiringly. "More legroom. You leave on time. They give you snacks. Leather seats. Even shackled, I'd rather fly it than Southwest."

For all of Francis's cockiness about jail, it still is, of course, jail. Which is tough on a guy who flew around the world on a private jet with Paris Hilton as his copilot. Francis confesses that there have been times when he has been very depressed, sleeping all the time, even thinking about doing some very un–Girls Gone Wild things. "In the beginning, you want to get married and have kids. That's the first three months. But now this is like a reality."

But now he's back to manic, having fired several rounds of lawyers and his public-relations team and replaced them all with people who will let him do what he enjoys most: attacking. If he can get public opinion behind him, he figures the prosecutors will have to back off, the way it happened with the Duke lacrosse-team members who were wrongly accused of rape. Until recently, he got up at 4 a.m. nearly every day to yell about his case on morning-radio shows on the East Coast. In one three-week span, he says, he was a guest on a hundred local-radio programs. All the local Florida papers and Web sites are clogged with ads telling people to visit Meetjoefrancis.com, where they are directed to write a letter to Florida governor Charlie Crist, who has been so bombarded that he called Francis's lawyer and said he'd look into the case.

Reno attorney David Houston, who was part of the legal team until he, too, was sacked recently, said he believes Francis is the victim of small-town-government politics. Houston thinks Panama City, eager to get high-end real estate investments, was intent on cleaning up its spring-break-party reputation and targeted Francis to make a point. The good old boys, Houston says, ganged up on him. "Central casting could not have presented a better backcountry character than Lee Sullivan. He could make a living in Hollywood doing the remake of Deliverance," says Houston.

But Lee Sullivan, whose mayoral term in Panama City ended last year, claims he hadn't heard of Girls Gone Wild until Francis announced he was coming to town "with Puff Doggy or some other famous rap star." He adds that his city doesn't have a problem with spring break, either. "Spring break is about a six-week event that brings in $63 million," he says, pointing out that MTV was permitted to come back to Panama City this year. "Joe Francis gives himself way more importance than he deserves. He's made a lot of money doing that."

In Sullivan, Francis finally has his perfect enemy, one who not only is entirely different from him but also has beaten him. "I'm going after the hillbillies as soon as I get out of here," he yells, banging three fingers against the glass between us. "I'm going to own Panama City. I can't wait to rename it Joefrancisville, Florida." His enemies list has grown as he sits in jail, and it was recently expanded to include Access Hollywood reporter Maria Menounos, who did an interview Francis didn't like. "She called me the 'ever defiant Joe Francis,' " he howls.”Fuck yeah, I'm defiant! It's like that defiant Rosa Parks won't give up her seat. Fuck you, Maria. The ever defiant Nelson Mandela just can't stand apartheid. The ever defiant Martin Luther King. The ever defiant Jesus Christ. You fucking stupid whore. If I saw Maria Menounos, I'd punch her in the face."

As the tirade ends, he quietly starts repairing the phone he busted by banging it against the glass. "I'm not comparing myself to Rosa Parks or Jesus Christ. I'm comparing myself to someone standing up for their rights," he says. "I'm just saying you can have an unpopular person who is criminalized and demonized. Jesus Christ was crucified by Pontius Pilate at my age. He was not a popular guy."

Houston, his former lawyer, predicted that he won't stay this defiant. That the crashed hopes after each wave of believing you're about to get out of jail will break even a man who thrives on people trying to break him. Which might be good for society and even for Joe Francis, but it makes me just a little bit sad somehow, like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for soft-core pornographers. But when I express this concern to Francis, he just smiles and shakes me off.

"I need three or four days and I'll be fine," he says. "A blow job, a glass of wine, and a nice sleep."

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