Los Angeles Times
The man behind the “” soft-porn empire lets Claire Hoffman into his world, for better or worse
By Claire Hoffman, Times Staff Writer
August 6, 2006
, the founder of the “” empire, is humiliating me. He has my face pressed against the hood of a car, my arms twisted hard behind my back. He’s pushing himself against me, shouting: “This is what they did to me in Panama City!”
It’s after 3 a.m. and we’re in a parking lot on the outskirts of Chicago. Electronic music is buzzing from the nightclub across the street, mixing easily with the laughter of the guys who are watching this, this me-pinned-and-helpless thing.
Francis isn’t laughing.
He has turned on me, and I don’t know why. He’s going on and on about , the spring break spot in northern Florida where Bay County sheriff’s deputies arrested him three years ago on charges of racketeering, drug trafficking and promoting the sexual performance of a child. As he yells, I wonder if this is a flashback, or if he’s punishing me for being the only blond in sight who’s not wearing a thong. This much is certain: He’s got at least 80 pounds on me and I’m thinking he’s about to break my left arm. My eyes start to stream tears.
This is not what I anticipated when I signed up for a tour of ‘ world. I’ve been with him nonstop since early afternoon, listening as he teases employees, flying on his private jet, eating fast food and watching young women hurl themselves against his 6-foot-2-inch frame, declaring, “We want to go wild!”
Tonight we had spent almost five hours in a sweaty nightclub, crowded with 2,500 very young and very drunk people. Clubs like this are fertile fields for Francis. He’s made a fortune selling videos of women who agree to flash their breasts and French-kiss their friends for the cameras. In exchange, a girl who goes wild will receive a T-shirt, a pair of panties, maybe a trucker hat. It had been a typical night for him. He’d scoured the club, recruiting young and, for the most part, intoxicated women. Because filming wasn’t allowed inside, he and his newly discovered entourage had stepped outside, heading for the confines of a “” tour bus parked across the street.
Before climbing aboard, he walks in my direction, and the next thing I know, he’s acting out his 2003 arrest on me.
I wriggle free and punch him in the face, closed-fist but not too hard.
“Damn,” bystanders say. Francis barely blinks. He snatches at my notebook. He is amped, his broad face sneering as he does a sort of boxer’s skip around me, jabbering, grabbing at my arms and my stomach as I try to move away, clutching my notebook to my chest. He stabs a finger in my face, shouting, “You don’t care about the 1st Amendment. I care about the 1st Amendment, but you are the kind of reporter who doesn’t care.”
Maybe you’ve seen the “” infomercials that run on late-night cable, advertising mail-order videos of women exposing themselves (“and more!” as the jackets promise). Francis didn’t invent the notion of spring break