“Girls Gone Wild” docuseries reveals disturbing camera operator guidelines: 'Be aggressive'

Peacock's new docuseries Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story pulls back the curtain on the infamous adult entertainment franchise to reveal a behind-the-scenes operation even more disturbing than previously imagined.

"It is important to be aggressive," begins one unearthed document, an excerpt of guidelines given to camera operators who were sent to popular spring break destinations to manipulate young women into disrobing and engaging in sexual activity. "The cuter girls/hotter chicks are naturally less inclined to flash for the camera. DO NOT give up and move on to someone else girls. BE PERSISTENT and more times than not it will pay off."

Directed by Jamila Wignot, The Untold Story chronicles the rise of the lascivious media mogul Joe Francis in the late 1990s, his founding of the exploitative adult entertainment franchise Girls Gone Wild, and his career's protracted death by a thousand lawsuits in the late 2000s.

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The three-part docuseries features interviews with journalists who covered Francis throughout the years, members of his core team at Mantra Films, the company behind Girls Gone Wild, various lawyers and law enforcement officers who pursued justice for the women caught up in Francis's dark web, and at the very center, segments of a nine-hour taped interview with Francis himself. It is his sit-down interview with a journalist (Scaachi Koul) in a decade.

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The journalist Amy Wallace, who coordinated coverage on Francis at Los Angeles Magazine and the Los Angeles Times throughout the aughts, reflected that he "wasn't selling perfect beauty," with Girls Gone Wild, "what he was selling was the average American nice girl who really really wants to be naughty. The realness was the draw."

"But for the girls involved," continued Raina Kelley, the editor-in-chief of Essence, which also covered Francis during his prime, "nobody was prepared to tell you there might be downside to that, and even talk about what that downside might be."

Several women share their horror stories of encountering Girls Gone Wild camera operators, like Lori, who recounted being plied with liquor on the Girls Gone Wild bus and brought into a backroom in a state of heavy intoxication. "I felt like if I didn't comply, things could go really badly for me," she said. Another interviewee, Trista, said the momentary drunken decision to pose for a GGW cameraman led to decades of online and in-person harassment, as Mantra Films continued to appropriate her image despite her revoked consent. "I don't think it's ethical, I think it's immoral, but I feel like they think it's okay, because Joe Francis and his team at GGW tried to make it okay," she said.

In footage from a deposition Francis gave to the lawyer Todd Julian as part of a 2003 lawsuit against the mogul, he proudly describes the "no means yes" ethos at Girls Gone Wild. "Interplay is important because it establishes conversation and it's fun," he says, "and girls love to tease. That's the nature of a girl. There's no problem with being aggressive. I'm always going to be persistent. and you know what, if I took 'no' for an answer I wouldn't be where I was."

Mark David Schmitz, one of Francis's primary camera operators who was named alongside him in a 2008 lawsuit that eventually brought down the company, says early in the docuseries that his thinking at the time of his hiring was, "I got to tell beautiful women to get naked, and I got paid for it? This is awesome."

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After hearing about the lasting pain, harassment, and trauma endured by the women captured by his camera, however, he ends the docuseries by professing he's "extremely sorry" and predicting, "I'm probably going to hell." No such remorse from Francis, however, who expressed pride that Girls Gone Wild "loosened everything up" and "created a much more fun generation."

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