Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story

In the third and final episode the narrator and investigative reporter, Ms Scaachi Koul reveals that when she told people she had interviewed Joseph Francis on the subject of his once mighty Girls Gone Wild empire, she says the reaction was generally, oh yeah I have a vague recollection of all that. That is exactly what I thought when "Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story" was released on Peacock!

Interesting story of how high school AV club nobody Francis rises to softcore(mostly) porn video tape impresario and multimillionaire. But this is just the peamble.

"Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story" is a well done mix of: The producers boiling down nine hours worth of Koul-Francis one-on-one conversations; interviews with several girls coerced into flashing their boobs while inebrieated on spring break for peanuts (a GGW T-shirt and/or a couple hundred dollars) and the negative impact it has has on their lives; and discussions with former GGW camera men(yes, surprise, all behind the cameras are men) and other GGW employees. This paints a vivid (and I must say entertaining) picture of Joseph Francis as one hell of a misogynistic sleaze bag.

Also, included is some opining of GGW's impact on overall society in general. To this reviewer, this is not definitive, but should be left to the audience, to mull over and agree or disagree.

Finally, to my surprise, no mention is made of Snoop Dogg, and his involvement both as pitchman on GGW infomercials, and host on at least one of the tapes.

I'm literally asking because I couldn't hear a large portion of it. The sound engineer and QC needs to be fired. Often times the music is so loud that you can't hear the person being interviewed. Thus creating a huge problem of trying to follow what should be the simplest of stories.

Unfortunately, I'm in no position to commend on the meat of the documentary as I couldn't hear a lot of it and I did not finish it due to this. It's very annoying.

I cannot recommend watching this title unless yo my want to turn on the subtitles and read it (which is not what I had in my for today).

It bums me out cause I was one of those kids that saw these late night infomercials and it was a huge filters phenomenon at the time but I guess I'll never know what happened 🤷‍♂️

Still trying to find the part where I'm supposed to feel bad about women making adult decisions and exposing themselves. At no part did I see a camera man hold up a gun to their heads and force them to show their breasts. Per usual it's naive women who want to have a good time and only regret their decision because of embarrassment and or how they will be viewed by friends and loved ones. This is a tired old story everyone knows how it ends man bad women good. Eerie music and dark lighting makes it more sinister than actually is. Zero accountability or personal responsibility was very taken for the so called victims.

The documentary explains nothing unexpected. It's just Joe Francis explaining how he found an untapped market and he tapped it and made himself very wealthy. In an Industry like this, many untoward things happened. No one will hold themselves accountable on either side. He definitely took advantage of the state of mind of many of these girls, and that is 100% wrong. Drinking responsibly is something many of us learn the hard way. That being said, I definitely don't condone what the cameramen did at all. I live in Las Vegas, and I have definitely been in the vicinity of filming her, in New Orleans and at Lake Havasu. In going to most of these places, we were aware of their presence and what they did. I think a lot of this is just regret. I think many (not all) of the girls did this knowing full well what they were doing, and they later realized their mistake. Been there and done similar. I get it. But I also accept responsibility for my own actions and don't blame someone else. I couldn't finish watching it because the music is loud and plays over the people talking. It might have been more interesting if I could have known what was being said. The editing definitely needs to be corrected to make this watchable.

As someone who didn't know much about GGW, I'm really curious around the conversation of shaping TV and porn today. Really fascinating. I think the filmmakers do a great job of portraying the negative side of this otherwise "consensual" fad, and how the exploitation of women can be skinned as empowerment. The line that stuck with me was pointing out that women might have been given confidence, but they were certainly not empowered / given power.

I agree the filmmakers are not very neutral but I think the whole damn point of this show is that we all KNOW the consensual side, of women who want to be taped. Let's talk about the coercion and criminal side.

Some reviews point out the sound mix - make sure the audio is set to STEREO not 5.1 in the Peacock app. It looks like they fixed the default but just in case you have this issue too...