All language subtitles for Secrets.of.Penthouse.S01E01.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH

REPORTER: Some people
see you as a national hero,

pioneering
First Amendment rights,

and some people see you
as a sex-crazed maniac.

I'm very serious
about what I do.

I wouldn't do anything
I didn't like to do.

I wouldn't do anything
that I was ashamed of.

I can't photograph a girl
that doesn't excite me.

There's really only
one Bob Guccione.

He starts the dirtiest magazine
in America

and becomes one of
the richest men in the world.

Penthouse is now probably
the most successful magazine
in the history of publishing.

REPORTER:
The Australian office tells us
that you're worth $300 million.

Yes, probably a little bit
more than that.

Just roll your head
over to the right.

He made women feel so beautiful.

He was a cool mother (BLEEP).

He was sexy.

REPORTER: Their business
is rude, nude and lewd.

JOHN COLAPINTO:
Bob had these ambitions

for the name Guccione.

He wanted his children

to create a dynasty.

NICK GUCCIONE:
Dad rose to fame and fortune,

but there was always
that undertow of scandal.

Our family revolved around
sex. Kinda creepy.

BOB: If you wanna turn
your readership on,

you have to be
turned on yourself.

Glamor. Mystery. Pubic hair.

He's waiting for me
in the bedroom.

He says that he needed
to have a look at me.

He was trouble.

FEMALE REPORTER:
Bob Guccione is on trial.

For a while Bob was king,
but he wrecked it.

All that money
just disappeared.

He lost everything.

Do you lose sleep
that it's all slipping away?

DARREN WINSTON:
Without knowing it I became

a sort of expert
in the family history.

Letters and documents,
thousands of photographs.

So that's Penthouse, volume one,
number one, five shillings.

I remember the first time I saw
Penthouse magazine
when I was about four.

Stealing glances at the magazine
when I could.

I fell in love with models
in the magazine,

but I'm sure it completely
screwed me up in ways
that I still haven't worked out.

Here we have editor
and publisher Bob Guccione.

He was my uncle.

I think there was times
when I probably thought,

"Gee, I wish my last name
was Guccione,"

and then a lot
of the time I was like,

I'm so glad my last name
is not Guccione.

What we did,
it was groundbreaking.

But Bob Guccione,
he did some really,
really crazy bull (BLEEP).

JENNA JAMESON: Penthouse,
it was so iconic to me.

All the girls
were like supermodels,

but they were totally naked
and spreadeagled.

I wanted to be them
or be with them,

and so it was
a little confusing. (LAUGHS)

JANINE LINDEMULDER:
I got into the adult business
through Penthouse

and I, I grew up with it.

My dad had quite the collection

and they were hidden
under the bed.

Of course I found them.

SUNNY LEONE:
I am who I am
because of Penthouse.

Playboy was girls
with blond hair and blue eyes

and Penthouse
was more explicit

and more diverse.

So I was like,
"Okay, this is cool."

COLAPINTO: Penthouse magazine,
it just immediately struck me

as clearly completely different
than Playboy,

um, and it hit me right in
the whatever brain center it is.

I did feel that
there was this appeal

to a smarter, more
artistically-minded person.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)

ANNOUNCER:
Ladies and gentlemen,

the editor of Penthouse,
Bob Guccione.

I mean, I'm surprised
you didn't stoop a lot
with the weight of all that.

You're not Houdini
by any chance?

Well. You know, it's funny
you should say that,

because every night
just before I go to bed,

I have to escape
from all of this

-but I've got to do it
very quickly.
-Yeah, right.

WINSTON: I would think
thank goodness
that's not my dad,

because how do
you measure up to that?

How would you ever measure up
to this otherworldly being?

It was amazing that
he had the wherewithal

and the power and the foresight
to accomplish what he did.

But on the other hand,
that ego did get in the way.

(AUDIENCE CHEERING
AND APPLAUDING)

I didn't have a father.

Probably for the last

ten years or so,

I haven't spoken about him,

I don't draw attention

to the fact
that I'm his daughter.

And it is sad, you know,
when it comes down to it,

who else do you have
but your family?

REPORTER: Why can't you,
after all that
you have been through,

as tough as you are,

the experiences you've had,
heal a breach with your son?

I, I really, I really don't talk
about the family on television
or in any public forum.

But do you hope it will heal?

I hope that things
work out for all of us.

Bob Guccione died
in this (BLEEP) house penniless,

and he's sort of
the butt of a joke.

What the hell happened?

Bob was born in Brooklyn,
New York, in 1930.

And when he was very little,
moved to Bergenfield,
New Jersey,

which is just
the other side of Manhattan.

And they lived
in a very modest house
on a modest side street.

He discovered he loved
to draw and then to paint.

So he's now
gonna be an artist.

He goes to Europe.

He's painting.

Dad was an artist
and met Mum
at some smoky club, you know.

She was a dancer, singer

had a heart of gold.

I guess he hit on her.
(LAUGHS)

They got married
and they moved to London,

four kids.

NINA GUCCIONE:
Bobby was older.

He was more distanced
from the three of us.

Bobby had his own room.

Tony, who was a year
younger than me,

and Nick, who was
five years younger than I am.

I used to feel Nick was my baby.

NICK: My dad
was struggling to survive.

My mom had the idea
of selling on mail order

black and white prints
of girls in bikinis

and was quite successful.

Dad said, "I, I like this idea.
Now we're gonna do more."

BOB: I would look
at the newsstands
and I would see Playboy.

I never saw
an English equivalent,

so I put the back
of my mind and go,

"If I'm ever gonna do anything,
this is the sort of thing
that I should do."

WINSTON: Hugh Hefner
set the plate

and Bob said, "I've got this,"
and tried to take it over.

BOB: I was sending
a brochure through the mail

soliciting prepublication
subscriptions.

I thought I was soliciting
5,000 doctors.

Instead of 5,000 doctors
I got 4,000 old-age pensioners,

about, um,
500 14-year-old schoolboys...

-(ALL LAUGH)
-...a few MPs

and some little old ladies.

I was prosecuted
on the basis of

that brochure that went out

because it had
eight nudes on it.

It was the first time
anything like that

had ever been sent
through Her Majesty's post.

NICK: It made a stink.

People, like, "This guy
is a pornographer.
Who is this guy?"

Didn't even show
nipples back then,

just cleavage, you know?

Bob Guccione, scary
Sicilian American guy, you know.

Ahh! Kill, kill!

So it was total
free publicity, man.

Dad had created
his first magazine.

And they just bought it
like hotcakes,

like water in a desert.
(SNAPS FINGERS)
Sold out in a day.

NINA: Penthouse
started selling very well.

So there was a lot of
money coming in.

REPORTER: You take
a lot of the photographs
in Penthouse yourself.

Yes. That's
one of the best jobs.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

-I'm not about to give that up.
-No, I'm sure you're not.

I was eight years old.
I went to a Catholic school
so it was all nuns.

Now, I wrote "my father
takes pictures of naked women."

I got slapped on the spot.
I was slapped.

And then they
called my mother in.

Same shot again, right.

NINA: And my mother said,
"Yes, it's true."

BOB: What really makes
a photograph erotic

is not that you have
an explicitly nude girl,

but the atmosphere
that one creates is right.

No one wants
sex to be too blatant.

My dad, he's asked
my mother to leave the house.

(LAUGHS)

Can you imagine
the nerve, right?
So Mum would go.

I don't know where she went,

and he would invite
some strange chick

into his apartment
and shoot her.

NINA: I look through the keyhole
in the living room,

and he's sitting on the floor
with a girl completely naked,

and I thought, you know,
that's rather odd.

(CHUCKLING) Like,
"What are they doing?"

WINSTON: Things start
going to hell at home

and his beautiful marriage
and fatherhood just falls apart,

and they're left
with their mother.

NICK: Watching my mum
so heartbroken that her husband

was more interested
in the magazine,

which involved
many different women, you know,

wanting to model for him.

I thought, "He'll come back.

"He's busy now.
He's starting a new company."

Believe it or not,
this went through my mind.

But Pandora's box
was opened, you know,

and I know my dad
was a horny guy.

I mean, let's face it,
he did have his perks
with some of the girls.

My father was manipulative.

He was hateful. Crazy.

It just got worse
and worse and worse.

NARRATOR: 1969, Penthouse
jumps the Atlantic from England.

Bob Guccione has dreams

of an empire
to surpass Hefner's.

He's working at getting it,
but it's still a dream.

BOB: We bought full pages
in top newspapers

and showed them
the famous bunny profile.

And underneath that we said,
"We're going rabbit hunting."

(GUNSHOT)

(GUN COCKING)

If you wanted to compare,
Playboy was always airbrushing

and the girl started to look
like a plastic Barbie doll...

PHOTOGRAPHER:
Ready.

MILLER: ...and so
no longer even human.

BOB: Her eyelashes look
a little funny in a couple of
these shots. Did they come off?

Bob felt that to depict
a girl as a living,

breathing, feeling person

would be much more appealing,

not dehumanized.

With Playboy, blonde,
big boobs, all-American.

In Penthouse,

it was very varied,

and it went along
with his philosophy

that just all women
are beautiful.

But you know what?
"I'm your daughter,

"and I don't wanna
hear about sex."

Perversion for profit.

We must save
our nation from decay

and deliver our children
from the horrors of perversion.

MILLER: America
was very repressed.

Bob wanted to be
able to get to the point

where sex could be portrayed

you know, an incredible way
of celebrating it.

It elevates
people's consciousness

to not feel
so guilty and fearful.

NICK: When we
first came to America,
we were really quite miserable.

The gossip and the dirty,
dirty pornography...

I had a hard time grasping it
and I grew up with it.

I think it was their fathers
who were probably like,

"So Nick, you got a minute?

You know, can we
talk for a second?

Any parties
going on lately?"

NINA: I did not have the same
experience as my brothers.

For me, it was,
it was, uh, demeaning.

Like Dad loved women,

so he was not,
in his mind, objectifying them.

He was glorifying them.
He loved women.

Well, I have on my staff
a young lady
called Kathy Keeton.

REPORTER: Are you in fact,
very ambitious?

Extremely ambitious.

I've always been ambitious
since I was a tiny child.

Since I can first remember,

I always intended
to be very, very rich.

Kathy was a very,
very smart woman.

She was... and she was
a great businesswoman.

She was demanding.
She was made of ice.

They were both very ambitious
and they fit together very well.

They were
the power couple of porn.

WINSTON: She was his,
I don't want to say muse

because that doesn't
give her enough credit.

Bob and Kathy
loved each other deeply.

But she was such an outsider.

Kathy was important
enough to him

to completely upset
his relationship
with four of his children.

Kathy was a scary woman, man.

Let me tell you something,

talk about cold,

liquid nitrogen cold.

And there's Kathy,
who I hated.

She was my stepmother.

I hadn't got a nice word
to say to her nor her to I.

I never liked,
nobody liked Kathy.

I can't imagine Kathy Keeton
in the same room with a child.

Maybe she wouldn't eat them,
but she was definitely
thinking about eating them.

And Kathy didn't like the Pets.

DIRECTOR: Okay? Sound good?

All good.

All good in the hood,
as they say.

When I was younger,

I was in this Catholic convent
boarding school,

not had any contact
with the opposite sex.

You know that one
didn't even have a vagina,
to be honest with you.

I mean, it was anything to do
with that was, you know,
it just didn't exist.

And I had just had
my 18th birthday party,

I was still at school
doing my A-levels.

I'd looked in
something called
the London Weekly advertiser,

adverts, little box ones,
"models wanted."

And then found myself
going to an interview.

I just remember
he had quite a presence.

He had a lot of power,

and this very,
very deep God voice.

He says that he needed
to have a look at me.

I have to go upstairs
into the bathroom,
take my clothes off,

and he's sitting in the bedroom
and I stood there naked.

I guess I just had to
overcome my shyness.

I just remember him saying,
yes, he would very much like me
to pose for him if I'd like to.

And then I think
about two weeks later,
I'm flying out to New York.

I'm picked up
by a great, big, long limo
and a chauffeur with a hat

and everything it's like,
"Oh my goodness,
what a way to arrive."

I thought, "That's
pretty damn good, isn't it?"
(LAUGHS)

And I'd been there
maybe two, three or four days.

We then flew off to Honduras.

He went for a meeting,
the palace, the President.

We then flew
to a small private island,

took a boat to another island,
there was nobody around.

So we did a whole load
of pictures there.

He concentrated on sensuality.

He did ask if I would mind
if he trimmed my pubic hair.

(CHUCKLES)

We were there a week.

He... he seemed
to quite like talking to me.

So we, we...

developed a friendship.

Definitely
a friendship, yeah.

NICK: Dad, you know,
he might take a fancy
to one in particular

and spend time with that person,
you know, maybe travel.

JANE: Given that
I was 18 and he was in his 40s,

you see, I was too young
to have any sort of
deep conversations

about whether he cared or not,
or what he cared about.

SHEILA KENNEDY:
Oh, my God.
It was glamorous and money

and I was like,
completely infatuated.

He had a bevy of girls vying
to get into the magazine

or become Pet of the Year.

He only had a relationship
with them to further his goals,

but then,
they were discarded.

Bob, he said, you know,
"Girls have pubic hair."

Bob knew men
wanna look down there.

That's what they want.

Let's not beat around the bush,
so to speak.

That's what they want,
let's give it to them.

MILLER: Bob started
showing pubic hair,

but only it was
be a glimpse of it.

"It would be nice to see

more and better pictures

of the models (BLEEP).

Let's see some
vaginal (BLEEP) soon."

Name and address. Withheld.
Not surprisingly.

And he got his wish.
He did get his wish.

That became the first
raise in cultural influence
that Bob had.

So Hefner got a little panicky

and he allowed
a couple of issues

where the girls
showed their pubic hair,

but he wasn't
comfortable with it.

Bob just allowed
a natural evolution

to see more and more pubic hair,

find legs spread
and he would shoot it

where a girl
was touching herself

as if she might be masturbating,

and, uh, that was, that was
kind of fascinating, um...

WINSTON: Bob was king.
He was it.

Is it true that
you have a running feud

with Hugh Hefner of Playboy?

No, but I think Hugh Hefner
has a running feud with me.

MILLER: Besides
the U.S. edition,

we had 16 successful
foreign editions.

Seven million copies
of Penthouse are published
and distributed each month.

NINA:
We had over 900 people
working for the company.

It was truly expansive
and the satellite offices
throughout the country.

There was so much money.

Basically,
it was a playground.

Hello, I'm Arlene Herson.

Did you ever fantasize about
living in a palace?

Well, this is about
as close to a palace
as any home I've ever been in.

28,000 sq ft, 42 rooms,
nine levels, imported marble

and $100 million worth of art,

including original paintings
by Picasso, Chagall and Matisse.

So come along with us
and fantasize.

(DOORBELL RINGS)

WINSTON: He resided
in the largest and most
luxurious mansion in New York.

It was a beautiful house.

Of course, that's the world
that my uncle buys into.

NARRATOR: This house
has the distinction of being

the most expensively
decorated in New York.

Some people would say
you are the classic case

of someone who is nouveau riche
with taste to match.

That might sound harsh.
What's your response?

No. This isn't harsh at all.
I'm very proud of the fact

because to me,
to be nouveau riche,

it means you have to
make it yourself.

NICK: At 13,
when I moved to the mansion,

that was when
it all started, man.

It was party time.

The mansion itself
was very over-the-top.

NARRATOR: The bathtub
is lined with solid gold.

It cost a quarter of $1,000,000

and 22-karat gold
bathroom fixtures,

including faucets
and toilet paper holders.

The bathroom also features
its own Picasso.

I didn't have
the big lavish fifth floor,
he gave that to the Pets.

I had the maid's quarters,
you know.

(LAUGHS)

That's okay.
I'm not bitter.

NINA: The girls,
they would stay at the house

and they would just come in
if they were going to be
shot for a month.

Pets of the Years
would come in longer and stay

because they would do
a lot of publicity, promotions,

and then maybe
later in the evening,
we'd all have dinner together.

NICK: But when I was 13,
there was one lady,

she just raised her skirt
and I was like, "Whoa."

And then in about
one second I bolted, you know.

So that was my first memory.
(LAUGHS)

My, my first experience
with, with Penthouse Pets.

She wasn't wearing panties,
of course, you know.

SHEILA: When I moved in, I think
I was there for almost a year

and then another Pet moved in

and she was
Pet of the Year before me,

and then there was another Pet.

So there was like
three of us living there.

Living in the mansion,
we had some celebrity guests,
astronauts.

We had all number of types.

Bob cooked
and we could sit there

till midnight waiting
for some spaghetti sauce.

NICK: Trump used to
come to our house often.

I'll never forget
how he checked out
the Penthouse Pets,

watching his eyes, you know,

he was trying to be, you know,
discreet about it,

but I saw right through that
because I'd been there.

He just was like, like me,
like a kid in a candy store.

SHEILA: I'm in a fantasy world.

Here's this man
that has everything.

He was sexy.
He was,

he was real,
and he was natural.

NINA: The girls, he made
them all feel very special.

I was always fighting for
my dad's attention with them,
so I was always very jealous.

I could never emotionally, um,
deal with it, I guess, as a kid.

He was the emperor
in his own kingdom

who could do no wrong,

was gonna do
whatever he wanted.

JANE: I moved in with Bob.

I'm put in what, really,
is their dressing room.
It was a very large room.

I was basically
at their beck and call

whenever Bob and Kathy wanted me

and they put me on a retainer.

Can't have been
more than $200 a month.

Why wouldn't they pay
a person enough to live on?

They were just keeping me there.

I don't think he was even
interested in it for the sex.

Uh, I don't think
he had any problem getting sex.

Sometimes I think it amused him
to see what the girls would do,

and we were certainly
put to the test.

So each of us got this feeling
of being the winner.

JANE: He liked me a lot,
and that made me feel important.

There's something
about being, um, chosen.

The girls, he used to put them
on birth control pills.

And he said, "Well, you know,
that makes the girls

"look more voluptuous,
like, before a shoot."

And it made perfect sense to me,

because I know
you can, you know,

maybe your breasts
get a little larger.

But it occurred to me
that he was probably trying

to prevent the girls
from being pregnant.

It's disgusting.
But he didn't care.

NARRATOR: Guccione has
more than matched Hefner.

Penthouse has become
a multinational organization.

-Bob Guccione.
-Bob Guccione.

Mr. Robert Guccione.

(AUDIENCE CHEERING
AND APPLAUDING)

It is by far the biggest selling
newsstand magazine
in this country.

Success and money and power.

-You are a happy man?
-True.

What is left
for you in life now?

It did cut him off
from reality.

I couldn't get
my dad's attention.

I couldn't get it.

I did do drugs and alcohol.

When I was 16, 17
I was caught with a nickel bag
of marijuana, you know?

So I was under
house arrest, right?

Because of this vent I found,

I could literally squeeze into
this vent onto the roof, right,

and then I jumped
to the neighbor's roof,

ran down their six flights.
I got out.

(LAUGHS)

I used to bring
a bottle of Chivas Regal

'cause my dad
had a fully-stocked bar.

I'd bring it to Central Park

and go to the homeless guys

and the homeboys
in Central Park

and they used to love me.

We had acid, mushrooms,
and all that (BLEEP),

alcohol, pot,
yeah, I did it all.

(PROJECTOR CLICKING)

NINA: The only boundaries
were no men in the house.

You couldn't bring home
a boyfriend.

On one side, I'm being told,

"You, you're not allowed
to be sexual or have sex."

Only Dad was gonna have sex
in the house, apparently.

(CHUCKLING)
Nobody else was allowed to.

JANE: A time when Kathy
was away a couple of days,

he asked me
into the master bedroom,

there was this huge bed,
it was about double
the size of a king.

He actually had
a video of women, of course,

having sex with animals,
a girl with a pig.

I never realized that
pigs had a corkscrew (BLEEP).

Did you know?
They're kind of like that,
like their tails.

And I think he wanted
to shock me or something.

And I'm quite, you know,
innocent in many, many ways.

Girl of 18, 19,

obviously, I was living
in their dressing room.

There was
an adjoining shower room,

and then from the shower room,

you could get into the, uh,
master bedroom,

and he started sort of coming
into my room

and, um, wanting to be intimate
to some degree.

Um...

And I wasn't really
sure that I felt
that comfortable with that

because Kathy
was in the other room

and I didn't like the feeling
of that going on, um...

CHERYL RIXON:
Kathy was given the title
The Lady of the House.

I think she fell prey
to feminine insecurity.

I don't think she ever felt

as pretty as the girls.

So many of the girls' dream

was to take Kathy's role,

in essence,
and become Bob's wife.

NICK: I didn't
have a perfect vision
of what a family should be,

but I opened up to my dad.

Say, "Dad, listen, by the way,
I just want you to know...

I took a ton of acid
in my time, you know?"

And I'll tell you what,
instead of him say,

"Oh, wow," you know, "Why?"
and "Are you okay?"

It was just like,
"Okay, thanks. Thanks for that.
Let me make a note."

Okay. Scratch Nick off

the list of
potential inheritance, you know.

Kathy, forget about...

She was probably like,
"Forget Nick.
Send him off to Australia."

She tried to ship me
off to Australia

when I was like 16 and I tried,
I, I got the visa, everything.

I don't know why, I never went,

but I realized looking back

that she was just trying
to get rid of me, you know.

There was this,
get the kids out,

get the siblings out.

The reality was that
they were going to be

tripped up by Kathy,
first and foremost.

They were set up to fail.

(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING)

Welcome back. Ten years ago,

Playboy magazine was selling
five million copies an issue

while its nearest rival
sold only 100,000,

and that, according
to my next guest,
was an unnatural gap.

Soon, he's going to embark

on making
his first feature film,

film's called Caligula.

Have you started
shooting on that yet?

No. We start the 1st of June.

I think the ideas
and the concepts
that we plan for Caligula

will transform much
of the standard thinking
about filmmaking.

I think this really
will be a revolutionary film.

JANE: Bob was involved
in producing several films

and he was offered, uh,

one that did incredibly well,

which he refused,
which was, uh, Deep Throat.

Have you heard of Deep Throat?
Linda Lovelace.

Well, typically it is,
you know, um, what it says.

But it did incredibly well.

So he kicked himself
for not taking that on.

PETER BLOCH: The genius
of things like Deep Throat

were that they were shown

in real "movie theaters"

where they became
culturally accepted.

JANE: His idea was to make
the ultimate erotic film.

That's what he wanted to do.

NICK: Dad wanted to cross
hardcore erotic material

with a feature film
that would be mainstream.

It was all about Caligula
and his strange behaviors.

You think I'm a lunatic,
don't you?
You don't understand me.

JANE: He was promiscuous,

and I think
he had a relationship

with his sister and a horse.

NICK: Dad did Caligula
because he was

personally interested
in this man

who was out of his mind,
you know, Caligula.

But at the same time,
he kind of admired it,

which is sick,
you know what I mean.

Dad, he was, himself,
his own little Caligula.

It took forever.
They were shooting in Rome.

A lot of big names.

NARRATOR: Peter O'Toole,
Sir John Gielgud, Helen Mirren.

GAY HAUBNER:
Big paychecks.

DIRECTOR: Action.

GAY: Bob sunk so much money.

It was his obsession.

I think it's the most expensive
porno film ever made.

Irresistible mixture
of art and genitals in it.

WINSTON: What
a ridiculous spectacle it was

because things were just going
over budget and over time.

It was a saga.
It was rife with problems.

Actually, they say
it was a financial disaster,
I guess, in some ways.

I really think the film
is gonna be an enormous success.

It has to be.

JANE: After a while,
Bob wasn't very happy at all.

It wasn't erotic enough.
He was very disappointed.

BOB: But a particularly
good reason
for doing this film,

using the beautiful girls
that we portray in the magazine,
the Penthouse Pets.

He decided
he was going to fly over

and shoot some scenes
himself, secretly.

So I said,
"Yes, okay, I'll take part,
you know, in this film."

He said, "You're going
to get paid the same
as all the other extras."

So we're supposed
to be these special girls,

but he didn't want
to pay us anything

other than what all
the other extras were getting

because we didn't speak.
Um...

GAY: Most of the women
that I met really did believe

they were on their way
to Hollywood,

sincerely believed

they were on their way
to Hollywood.

He wanted us all to,
you know, take part in an orgy.

I was literally
still a teenager, but...

He had the gift of the gab
and, you know,
he would talk you up to it.

The film indicates
nothing more than the fact that

we see Rome

as accurately as possible
in the historic sense.

And we think
this is absolutely vital
to the success of the film.

DIRECTOR: What did you
think you were signing up for?

I didn't know that
I was going to be sucking
somebody's (BLEEP)

who I'd never, ever met before,

and I'd never even
done that before.

I'd just had my 19th birthday.

Little me realizing
how unimportant I was

from a man I, you know,
I was supposed to trust.

I probably had hoped and thought

that there was something
of value there,

and then I realized
that it wasn't,

and it's time to go.

I got completely away
from Penthouse.

It's not something
I even spoke about.

I forgot all about it.
Not until the Internet.

And then people were telling me
that there were images of me
on this Internet thing.

That's when I, I started to see

that it was all being
resurrected again,

and there was no control.
No control over, over that.

(TUTS) The whole experience,
looking back on it,

I don't think...

apart from some
attractive pictures,

I don't think
it's really served me
that, that well, to be honest.

NINA: Dad wanted
his family to work at Penthouse.

Basically all of us kids,

went through
every department.

My first job at Penthouse
was the switchboard.

I can't tell you how many people
I hung up on by mistake.

WINSTON: I would work
at the office on, like,

school holidays
and in the summer,

and then when I was 18,

I literally went
from graduation,

the next day
I show up at the mailroom.

The boys, they started
in the mailroom.

Ran it through the machine.

(MIMICS STAMPING MACHINE)

To make sure
it was all stamped correctly
and did all that (BLEEP).

NICOLE SABATINI:
When I was 18,
we had the mail order business.

You know, we sold dildos

and all sorts of,
you know, sex toys.

Like, I didn't even know,
honestly, what I was seeing,

and I would find all sorts
of really weird things, so...

WINSTON: We were tasked
to send out a box of sex toys.

It was probably some vibrators
and dildos, and God knows what.

On the same day, we were sending
a box of books to Isaac Asimov,

who Kathy was friendly with.

Well, wouldn't you know,

but those labels got switched,

and I'm sure that Isaac Asimov
thought it was very funny.

It was bizarre,
but it was just, it was,

I just didn't know
anything else.

WINSTON: I remember my mother
taking me aside one day

and saying, "Whatever you do,
you're gonna have to try
twice as hard as everyone else

"to get half the recognition,
because you're my son

"and you're your uncle's nephew,
and that's just the way it is."

I think Nina
and her brothers had that

times a thousand,
times a million.

COLAPINTO: Bob had these
ambitions for the name Guccione.

He wanted his children to be
in the Penthouse empire.

He wanted to groom them,

to carry it on,
to create a dynasty.

WINSTON: Bob Jr.
was the natural heir.

I think he was probably
looked upon as a natural heir

and he perhaps
thought he would be

till Spin came along.

Bobby had his own
trajectory for publishing,

and it didn't involve Penthouse.

He was interested in music.

BOB JR.: We, we were
originally partners.

My father very graciously
backed me in the beginning.

After a couple of years,
we had a bit of a falling out.
I don't discuss...

About editorial philosophy,
or something...

No, no, just,
just family stuff.

-Father, son thing?
-Father, son stuff.

WINSTON: Bobby thought
it was his own magazine,

and Bob Sr. was like,
"No, no, I actually own this."

Dad thought he owned the rights
to the name and he didn't.

WINSTON: Bob Sr.
cut off Bob Jr.

"You know what?
I think we're done here,"

and he exits the stage.

NINA: I think they didn't speak
for about 17 years.

WINSTON: So now
Tony is the heir apparent.

So this is from
the 1987 family reunion,

and there's Tony.

NICK: Tony went to Harvard.
Top of the class.

He considered himself
a posh gentleman.

I think (BLEEP)
(COUGHS), excuse me.

(LAUGHS)

Tony was there to help grow
the company, in his own way.

It wasn't in the same way
as Dad,

but Dad, he felt Tony
was trying to betray him.

That's a great picture of Tony
and his girlfriend at the time.

So Tony and Dad
had a falling out.

Next child gets disowned.

NICK: They say
you choose your friends,
not your family, you know?

Nina and I had our own issues.

In the company,
even family members

will try to usurp you

for their own begotten gains.

Siblings should have
a relationship together.

We didn't,
and there was probably
a lot of rivalry there.

You know, if you're gonna
run a company that size

or a profitable business,
you have to trust each other.

NICK: Bobby
wanted to do his thing.

Very stuck in his ways.

Tony is completely selfish
and shallow.

Nina, cynical, bitter.

Me... naive.