How did the idea for a profile of Joe Francis come about?
We received a “Guys Gone Wild” video [another Francis product] in the business section. Someone sent it in, probably for promotional purposes. I looked it up in our archives, and we hadn’t ever actually written about “Girls Gone Wild” or Joe as a business.., which seemed like kind of an oversight. I ended up meeting Joe at a party, and I gave him my card and told him I wanted to write about his business. He called me a couple of months later, and we had lunch. How did you convince him to let you tag along while he filmed? That took time. I went for our first lunch, and I had a tape recorder and a notepad. I was ready to go, and he sort of put his foot down. He was very wary of being interviewed and wasn’t sure if he wanted to do it, so we just had an off-the-record lunch talking about what I was interested in. It was a matter of kind of waiting it out, and it just kind of happened. After a couple of lunches, he said he was going to the Midwest to film “Girls.” And I had said, “I want t
