Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story

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.

Im trying to get through this documentary so I can understand why anybody in their right mind would do these videos. Currently from what I can tell, nobody was in their right mind. I'm only into episode one, but the issue is that whoever created this documentary has no clue how to edit anything. They're doing interviews with people that were involved either in making a video or lawyers or whomever and they have this very dramatic music playing over, not behind but over the commentary and you can barely hear what they're saying because it is so loud. I would give this an F+ in regards to creation, and how peacock even considered this to be a part of their collection is beyond me. Something that my son would've made in sixth grade.

Synopsis - Women are baring their breasts for the camera. Joe sees an opportunity to profit from this and subsequently makes a lot of money. I'm not going to defend any of the criminal acts that may have been committed, but it seems the majority of the women have a moment of clarity after the fact.

This could have easily been a 30 minute episode on Dateline or something similar. Why this material was expounded to 3 hour docuseries is quite perplexing. Who approved the audio mix for the final edit? To say it is subpar doesn't really do it justice. The background audio should never overpower the dialogue from your subject!!!

I gave up after the first episode and hope you will do the same. Read the Wikipedia article with a fireplace stream in the background. You'll save time and have a much more pleasant experience.

Do better next time Peacock.

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.

It seems as if this documentary mini series should have been made years ago. From this point in time, it does not seem to be much of an audience for those who genuinely care about this story. We remember there was a brief mini series episode in 2022 of the Rich & Shameless which briefly covered this.

Some of the newer revelations is that there were underaged girls on camera during the beginning stages of the franchise. It was clear the cameramen and overall team of the crew weren't experienced or else these problems wouldn't have happened. The girls themselves should have known better as well. This mini series is rather quite bias towards the women "victims" documenting some of these women roughly twenty or so years later.

This mini series also reminds us how big the franchise was during its peak days, with many celebrities supporting them with merchandise and with Joe Francis himself being close with a few of them. The main reason as to why this entire franchise ultimately failed was because of the rise of social media, easier access to free adult sites and also them using real girls as opposed to adult star actresses (however that is of course what made their foundation stand out and feel authentic).

In the end, it may be eye opening to those completely unfamiliar with the situation but for a majority of people, it doesn't cover too much new ground. It is a memory lane/ nostalgia type series.