All language subtitles for Secrets.of.Penthouse.S01E03.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH

JOHN COLAPINTO: There's really
only one Bob Guccione.

He starts a magazine and becomes
one of the richest men
in the world.

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

Success and money and power.

Oh, my God.

There was so much money.

My dad was always pushing
the envelope.

He was troubled.

The dark satanic prince of sex.

I felt like I'm trapped
in this world.

COLAPINTO:
Bob had these ambitions
for the name Guccione.

He wanted his children
to create a dynasty.

The reality
was they were set up to fail.

NICK: He was just so caught up
in his own (BEEP) .

He didn't pay enough attention
to the family.

Penthouse was his baby.

And for a while Bob was king.
But he wrecked it.

He felt that he could
do no wrong.

And that was his downfall
at the end.

Phwoar, that's a lovely shot.

Twenty-five years ago,

or around then.

After decades
of looking at naked women,
I tell you, it never gets old.

I have miles of this. (CHUCKLES)

We never went too risque,

you know, we just showed
frontal nudity
and that was it, basically.

Oh, and of course, sometimes
we did a little girl-on-girl.

(LAUGHING)

I forgot to mention that.

Bob's kids and me
and my sister and my cousins,

we all worked at the company.

Bob senior cut off Bob junior,

his sort of heir apparent.

And then Tony was.

NINA: Tony and I butted heads.

I was older, which meant
that I should have been up
in the hierarchy,

but he was a boy, so he was up.

PETER BLOCH:
Tony went to Harvard.

I think
that kind of convinced him

that he was kind of
intellectually superior

and more savvy
in a business sense.

NINA: Great-looking,
spoke beautifully,
well-educated,

not like the rest of us.

He was very proper,
kind of posh,

and he held
onto this posh accent.

(IN POSH ACCENT) "I'm going
to California, uh,
business class."

(IN NORMAL VOICE)
My dad told Tony,

(IN DEEP VOICE) "Tony,
why can't you fly economy
like your brother Nick?"

(IN NORMAL VOICE)
I'll never forget that.

Tony was running
what was then known
as New Media,

and that was anything basically
that's not in print.

BLOCH: About once a year,
Tony would suddenly show up
in the office,

and he'd kind of
have grandiose schemes
of expanding the business.

And then he would kind of
disappear for a year.

And it became pretty obvious
to Bob

that he
didn't have any substance
to these ideas.

So Tony and Dad
had a falling out.

Next child gets disowned.

And I took over New Media.

Tony was very resentful.

He felt betrayed.

But Dad was adamant.
That was it. "You're gone."

Tony was was basically M.I.A.

I haven't seen him in 30 years.

I don't even know if he's alive.

NINA: Our family really
is no different
from any other family.

We are all dysfunctional.

You know,
you fight with your father,
you fight with your siblings,

but in those days,
everything ended up
in the newspapers,

so everybody knew about it.

And that was probably
in the height of Dad's infamy.

I don't say he's famous.
I say he's infamous.

I'm Arlene Herson,

and my guest is a man
who took a three-letter word,
"sex,"

and turned it
into a five-letter word, money.

In the late '80s,
everything was going his way.

Money was pouring in.
He could do no wrong, you know.

REPORTER: Don't bother
coming here to 7-Eleven stores
to buy Penthouse.

They're not available there.

Even with that happening,

Penthouse as a whole
was making so much money.

7-Eleven
was a drop in the bucket.

He said he couldn't have gotten
better press.

STEVE BELANGER:
The Vanessa Williams thing
was huge!

They sold out
every copy they printed.

NINA: He got away with it.
He was untouchable.

Bob Guccione is at it again.

He has explicit photos
of rock star Madonna.

They will be published
in an upcoming issue.

So this could be big bucks
for you.

It could mean
a couple of million dollars
in profit.

-INTERVIEWER: In profit?
-Yes, in profit.

His ego was the size
of the Empire State Building.

The press loved him.

The girls loved him.

His employees loved him.

BLOCH: It was amazing
to work there.

That was the best job
I ever had.

But when you're making
that much money,

it's really hard
to tell somebody
they're doing something wrong.

BELANGER: I started working
at Penthouse back in 1988.

My job was something
called a Production Analyst.

It's as exciting
as I made it sound.

It was really
just numbers drudgery.

I used to say I was
on the rollercoaster
right after

you stop hearing
the clackety, clackety,
clackety, clack.

They put me on right at the top,

right next to the sign
that says, "Please hold onto
your hat."

And then things went south.

They bought
this big lavish office.

It was white walls
and gold trim everywhere

and white leather and fancy
everywhere you looked.

On the wall
was this huge portrait
of Bob Guccione

in a big gold frame,

sitting there on, like,
a throne,

but with a velour shirt on
and the shirt undone to here,

and a thatch
of manly hair coming out,

and on his lap,
it's a naked woman.

I sat there going,

"Oh..." (LAUGHS)

"What the hell
have I gotten myself into?"

I should have been fired
about three times
in the first year.

I was in charge
of buying the paper

for every magazine
in the company.

My second week,
I bought $3 million
worth of paper.

Nobody else signed off on it.
Nobody looked
at what I was ordering.

That's how the company was run.

Like, there was no checks
and balances.

It's crazy, the money
that flew out the door.

They spend money on everything,
every project, every whim,
every idea.

They were plowing through money
with these crazy ideas.

Good afternoon.
My name is Natasha.

Would you like something
to drink?

Oh, wow, yeah. When he bought
that hotel in Yugoslavia.

MAN: Natasha is one of the first
Iron Curtain maidens

to be a Penthouse Pet.

Hostess at an Adriatic
leisure complex

on which Penthouse
has just taken out
a 21-year franchise.

Did he have thoughts of grandeur

that he was gonna open up
the Communist bloc to Penthouse,

and sex and gambling?

Yeah, probably.

No, it was not a success.
It was sort of doomed to fail.

BELANGER: Bob,
he was never at the office.

Kathy Keeton was the in-office
face of the company.

She was there every day.

The people that you work for
tell me that you
never forget birthdays,

that at Christmas-time
your office looks like
Saks Fifth Avenue.

Kathy was a...
I guess the actual term
would be "dragon lady."

The first thing you hear
is that, you know,

she's been known to fire people
on the spot,

so don't be in front of her.
(CHUCKLES)

She definitely ran it
with an iron fist.

You're also interested
in fitness.

I'm interested in a little bit
more than fitness, Arlene.

I'm interested
in living forever.

Dad and Kathy
were obsessed with getting old.

He used to talk about
him and Kathy being shot off

into space, being frozen.

Cryogenics was not panning out
and they said,

"Okay, well, if we can't do
our whole body,

"well, we'll just
sever our heads and...
and that'll do it.

"They can clone us
when we get back." (LAUGHS)

I have no idea how much
he ended up spending on it.

From my first real budget
meeting with Kathy...

This was one of the first times
I was going to be in the room
with her,

her the head of the company,
me, the guy
presenting the numbers.

I passed around some numbers
and she looked at it
and couldn't understand.

"How could we be losing money?
You must have made a mistake."

She saw those numbers
and ripped me a new one
in front of 20 people

and I literally (BEEP) myself.

I was like, "Oh! Oh, no."

You didn't wanna share bad news.

You didn't wanna be that person.

He wanted "yes men" around him.

They didn't threaten him.

He liked to be the rooster
in the room.

And I think he thought
the money was bottomless.

Like, it would never run out.

At the height of his success,

I said, "You know, Dad,
I've got to tell you this.

"I had this dream
that you lost everything.

"You not only lost everything,

"but you were so broke
that I had to buy
your socks for you."

And he roared with laughter.

And that's when he said to me,
"I'm gonna be
a multibillionaire."

When you know
something's gonna happen,

when somebody doesn't want help,

you got to let them drown.

Gotta let them go.

(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING)

NINA: In the early '90s,
I was running
the New Media department.

Video, phone sex,
anything other than publishing.

Oh, another thing
that fell under me, sex toys.
Fabulous.

You had to buy into it.

You had to, like, pretend
this was normal.

That, for me,
was a very difficult thing
in those days.

For the boys,
it was very advantageous

'cause everybody thought they
had money and they loved women,

and then they played it.
They played it up.

And for me, it was...
was, er...

demeaning.

I thought
it was exploiting women.
It was exploiting men.

I never saw the value

of being so open about sex,

but I wanted
to be close to my dad.

HERSON: Most people don't think
about Bob Guccione
as a family man,

but you are a family man.

-Oh, yes, very much so.
It's bad for my public image.
-Yeah. (LAUGHS)

To think that I'm a family man,
that I don't party.

My swimming pool
is not filled with nude women,
you know, but...

NICK: He says
he was a family man
but he really wasn't.

He was terrible
about giving attention
to his own kids,

to get involved with their life.

My dad never took me seriously.

He looked at me like a loser,
you know?

And, hey,
maybe he had a right to,
I don't know.

Nick had been struggling
with alcohol and drugs
since he hit his teens.

He wanted to be loved.
He wanted to love.

That's what we all want.

On the left-hand side
is the Picasso portrait
of his son, Paul.

This is the boy
that committed suicide.

NICK: My father-figure
is not Bob.

My father-figure is Guy Bonano.

He was the chauffeur,

the guy who drove the limousine.

I told Guy everything,
and he and I were very close.

And he told my dad,

"Hey, Mr. Guccione,
I spoke to your son.

"He wants to blow his brains out
on the Picasso."

You know what my dad said?

"Why the Picasso?"

I guess that's what hurt
in the beginning, you know?

I'm kind of used
to not having a dad

because he wasn't there,
you know?

If you weren't doing something
that interested him,
then you don't exist.

Which is probably why Nick
did get involved
with the company too.

NICK: When I was 18,
I started to understand
the business more.

I'd just graduated
from the Center for Media Arts.

I had started working
at a television production
house in New York.

Nick fancied himself
as the videographer.

He saw the future of Penthouse
being on film, not on paper.

He wanted to take over
where Dad was leaving off.

My dad was doing
Penthouse video back then
and it was extremely boring.

Now, here's the moment
I've been waiting for.

My 25th anniversary
Centerfold video.

I only wish I could be there
to watch it with you,

but I think you'll enjoy it
just the same.

Think this is where
I'm supposed to say "roll it!"

That's not exciting men.

I was coming
from a new generation.

MTV just came out.
It's fast, it's happening,
it's cool.

I said, "We should
have something like that
for Penthouse.

"It's more exciting."

You wanted like
a 19-year-old guy running it.
Like me!

I said, "Dad,

"You're shooting
these videos for, like,
a million dollars apiece.

"We can do this for
one-fifth of the cost, 20%."

I managed to get him to say,
"Okay, Nick,
let's see what you got."

So I wanted to make him proud.

I wanted to bring
something beneficial
to the company.

And sure enough,
it grew from there.

Ready? Go, go, go.

Sexy, Penthouse, gorgeous.

Walk off camera
and then zoom,
she's going to dissolve in.

She's going to wake up like-

and all of a sudden, Amy's
going to take control.

It's never easy
to get these women to do
what you want them to do,

but with the right cajoling,
you can do it.

I'm in a world of sex.

Thanks for joining us.

Cut! That was awesome.
Awesome. Cut, cut, cut.

-(CREW APPLAUDING)
-MAN: Whoo!

Awesome.

Yes, yes!

Okay, everybody start doing
some nice camera actions.

Oh, Suzette? Oh.

NICK: I saw Nick filming a video

and it was like he was directing
a major motion picture.

Nick loved doing this.

Like, he loved shooting videos.

He loved the girls.

-(NICK LAUGHS)
-WOMAN: Go get us a towel.

NICK: No, no,
you must come to me.

I want to see some hot nipples.

(LAUGHING)

I love you, girls.
I love you, girls.

WOMAN: That's not funny.

NICK: You both
are just wonderful to me.

You're both so good to me, man.

He was a player.

He never did
anything inappropriate.

But he was young
and full of piss and vinegar.

We did a video lifting weights

and a weight had fallen

and clocked me right
on the back of my head
and rung my bell.

Soon after that,
Nick had me lay down
in this big, beautiful bed.

He says, "Okay, we're gonna do
one more little vignette.

"All you need to do
is lay in the bed."

I'm still seeing little birdies
all around me,

so I'm laying there trying
to produce sexy content.

I was disoriented.

I had a concussion.

And then he's like,
"Don't fall asleep.
Stay awake. Stay awake."

He's definitely
a little bit reckless.

But for the most part,
he's a good guy.

NICK: Okay. Lean in, sweetheart.
Lean in
and kiss her on the neck.

Good. Linger on the ass.

LINDEMULDER: People respected
his creativity, for sure.

He didn't fall far from...

the tree of Bob Guccione.

I definitely did not expect
to be popular.

It wasn't even a thought.

Being in Penthouse
created opportunities.

Being on a very iconic
album cover.

(CHUCKLES) I feel silly
saying it... The Blink-182.
The Nurse.

I get a lot of notoriety
from that.

I was embraced
in the adult industry

and Pentho started me
on that path.

CHERYL RIXON: Fortunately,
I arrived at Penthouse
at a very good time.

Right after me,
the girls were required

to not only do the photo shoot,

but to do a video
that went along with it.

After I became Pet of the Year,

I was traveling a lot

and it became a convenience
that I move into the house.

It was interesting
that a lot of the girls
were sleeping with Bob.

I had no interest
in that kind of relationship
with Bob,

but he was very cunning,
he was very clever

and we were certainly
put to the test.

Bob asked me to go
to a man's 82nd birthday.

At the end of the evening,

I was told
that I would be staying
with the 82-year-old man

because I was his gift.

I was horrified.

I politely declined.

And I called Bob
the next morning

and he asked me
how did the dinner go,

and I told him

and he laughed.

It wasn't a shock at all.

This was an arrangement
and it was common.

But with one of the other girls,

it ended up
in a rather large lawsuit.

NEWSCASTER: A former
Penthouse model testified today

that the magazine's publisher
made her have sex with other men

and with other women
for his own benefit.

Bob had told me one time,

"When somebody tells me
I'm wrong, I know I'm right."

I have no doubt
that that was true
for several things,

but it was also not true
for a whole lot of things.

Atlantic City being the most
notorious example.

Penthouse International
is working
on its gambling palace.

Penthouse bought the Holiday Inn
and Four Seasons Motel

with hopes of opening
their $120 million
casino hotel project.

Being the arrogant person
that he was,

Dad used to boast that he
was the second person to buy in
to Atlantic City.

This was going to be
his step over

from being a multimillionaire
to being a multibillionaire.

It's a license to print money.
Supposedly.

BLOCH: It was a huge,
huge project.

He was just fixated on it.

Nobody could dissuade him
from it.

The thing that really
sticks out to me

is they were expanding
the property

and there was a house
that was in the way

and the homeowner
would not sell.

NEWSCASTER:
Penthouse paid homeowners
an average of $100,000,

but not Joe and Vera Coking.

They figured
their 20-room boarding house
was worth a lot more.

$4 million clear.

Not pay taxes.
They pay the taxes

plus 100, over $100,000
a year rental on my land.

INTERVIEWER: For how long?

Forever.

(LAUGHS) It was not
gonna happen then.

God bless her.

(LAUGHS) He met his match
on that.

And I don't know if she just
was stubborn, didn't like him...

He started having real problems.

I mean, it was a place where you
basically had to build the thing
and open it

before you could apply
for the license.

At one point,
and this is a story
Bob himself told me,

Trump said to him,

"It's a great idea. A Penthouse
hotel casino is a great idea,

"but you're never gonna
get a license."

To keep Atlantic City gambling
up and running,

they can't have anyone around
that even slightly reeks
of the sleazy.

Say no more, right?
He's Bob Guccione.

BLOCH: To get a license
to operate a casino

was not something the state
of New Jersey wanted to give
to a notorious pornographer.

COLAPINTO: So he's denied
his license, but...

has he already spent
hundreds of millions of dollars

of his own money
on like, building something?

Oh, yes. Yes, he has.

And it came home to roost.

Penthouse officials say
their $120 million

casino hotel project
is not for sale,

but financial difficulties
brought work to a stop.

For somebody
who never even played Snap,

he shouldn't have gone
into gambling.

It was bleeding the company dry

and he would not let go.

He was so adamant
that he made the right decision.

TV HOST: $145 million lost.

In Atlantic City.

Couldn't you stop that bleeding
at some point?

I mean, I could have
if I were a quitter,

if I gave up
and walked away from it.

I'm not a quitter.

You know, I'll, I'll fight
to the bitter end.

I'll be open in Atlantic City.

I was 27 years old
when they made me
budget director, I think.

It's a little hazy,
but that sounds about right.

There probably, at that time,
weren't a lot of 27-year-olds

in charge of
a multimillion-dollar company,

and their budget and finances.

But I was the best man
for the job at the time,
obviously.

I now had access
to everything we had spent
in the last 20 years.

We were still paying
hundreds of thousands
of legal bills every year

for the casino project.

I'm like, "I don't get this."
(CHUCKLES)

We had a lot of different things
we were paying for,

and Bob and Kathy had two
big Rhodesian ridgebacks,

and it turns out
that we were paying

for the monthly storage
of their sperm.

I had so many questions.

How did they get the sperm?
Whose job was that?

I hope it's not my job.

Is somebody doing
an annual check to go make sure

that the sperm
is still in good shape?

I didn't understand why we
were spending that money
and what the goal was.

Was Bob going to create
like an army of genetic mutants
from the sperm of these dogs?

We probably paid that bill
for ten years
and nobody gave it a thought.

That's how the company was run.

Bob was this big,
successful businessman
to the outside world.

Ah, that's not the truth.

He doesn't have as much money
as he thinks.

He doesn't have nearly
as much money
as everybody else thinks.

Now here's a shock.
Dad had to sell the casino
to Trump.

We'll be number one.
The right management,

we're number one.
Nobody competes with it.

I'm sure he wasn't thrilled
about doing that,

but I think
by the time he did it,
he had no option.

Dad was so outraged
and he was like,

"This guy, I can't believe.
We're supposed to be friends."

Dad and Kathy had a trip
coming up with Donald and Ivana,

and he made Kathy
cancel the trip.

"I never wanna see
these people again."

The fact is
that Trump was right,

and everyone who told Bob

that Atlantic City
was gonna be a disaster for him
were right.

That really started
the kind of downfall.

NICK: All right. Shall we start
with the first one?

Anytime you're ready, Juliet.

-Is it on? Okay.
-NICK: Yep.

Hi. (LAUGHS)

-Hi. Hi.
-NICK: Hi.

Hi. I'm Penthouse Pet Juliet.

Finally, you have a reason
to watch TV.

(LAUGHS)

NICK: I loved shooting
these videos.

(NICK SPEAKING)

I didn't connect
with my dad so much,

but I did connect
with his approach.

(NICK SPEAKING)

NICK: Oh!

I understand his focus
on the art
and the beauty of the women.

(NICK SPEAKING)

I wanted to highlight
what my dad had done
with photography.

Take lovely girls,
shoot them in a lovely setting

without being too contrived,
too rehearsed,
or absolutely not too vulgar.

I always used to say,
"No swinging (BEEP) on my set."

(LAUGHS)

Never thought
we'd be having a fire
in the summer.

(WOMAN SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)

MAN: Okay. Rolling.
NICK: Rolling.

And hand...

And hand, go in...

Very good. Pull it down.

Seeing each other,
discovering each other.
Play with her hair a little.

Lick each other a little bit.
Yeah. Ooh!

I loved to push the envelope,

make it as artistic as I could

for, you know, minimal budgets
my dad gave me, you know?

I'd have a lot of interviews
with girls on the side.

That's what cut my stuff apart.

Uh, my goal in life
is I wanna be a makeup artist.

I wanna make people feel pretty.

NINA: Nick had such
a soft heart.

My father
was manipulative with women.

He would talk girls
into, you know, whatever.

He'd make them feel
so special and wonderful.

And on the other hand,
Nick truly believed they were.

NICK: Martina. Nikie.

That's how I met Nikie,
my wife.

NIKIE: I'm starving.

-NICK: Tell me.
-I'm ravenous.

-NICK: Ravenous.
-Ravenous.

NICK: Ravenous.

At this point,
I'm not ravenous anymore.

-NICK: I'm beyond ravenous.
I'm (BLEEP) ravenous.
-I'm ravenous.

NICK: We met
on the Pet of the Year playoff.

And then we hit it off.

-Hello, Nikie.
-You missed a spot.

(NICK LAUGHS)

We shot,

and by the end of the day,
I think we were already saying,

"Listen, let's have dinner."

And at the end of the night,
we were already kissing,
you know?

MAN: What's the one thing
that you've enjoyed about L.A.?

Um, well, the sun, of course,
and the beaches.

And I met my boyfriend here,
which is always a good thing.

(LAUGHS)

NINA: He fell madly
in love with her.

She was a beautiful girl.

I thought she was
fabulous for him.

NICK: She was awesome.
She was my number one girl.

Go, baby. Go. Yes.

Oh, honey.
Nikie, you're the best.

We shot more and more,
and I shot more and more.

And I had some great productions
behind me.

But it was short-lived,
unfortunately.

BLOCH: Video was a big deal
in the early '90s

and from what I could tell,
Nick was doing a good job
with it.

This was an opportunity
to make money quickly,

but Bob didn't see it.

LINDEMULDER: I think Bob
would have been very content

just staying right where he was

in the '60s and '70s and '80s,

and the future
wasn't even a thought.

NICK: I brought in
a great opportunity for us
to have a Penthouse channel.

So of course, I was thinking
about the future.

I brought that deal to my dad.

Unfortunately,
because I was his son,

who he didn't have any faith in,
I guess,

it never happened.

NINA: Dad's really got
all the cards.

If he wasn't in control
and didn't quite understand
the nature of the business,

he felt
at a terrible disadvantage.

If it wasn't his baby,

if he didn't bring
that deal to the table,

it was automatically out.

NINA: Nick was trying
to push back,
which you can't do with Dad.

If you pushed it,
he felt betrayed.

And when he felt betrayed,
you were dead to him.

The excess, the fame, the money,

people filled in all the blanks
for things they didn't know,

and they thought
that's who we were,

and they didn't see
the pain behind it

and the deprivation
and lack of love.

Nick suffered the worst.

It was like throwing him into,

throwing him into the fire.

He would just drink
from morning till night.

He'd be bouncing off the walls.

He'd be angry.
When he was angry,
he was scary.

I seem to remember stories
about him being
completely out of control,

shooting videos
drunk off his arse.

I became sort of isolated
from Nick.

It was very difficult
for me to be around him
during that time.

You know,
there's no relationship there.

You can't talk to somebody
in that state.

But it got to a point
where Nikie
just got tired of it

and said, "That's it."

I'm sure it was her
that left the marriage.

NICK: I don't blame her
for that.

Yeah, it was horrible.

NINA: You know,
a lot of people hurt themselves

because other people
are hurting them.

NICK: As far as moving forward
with Dad and the company,

there wasn't that trust.

It broke my heart
that after working for my father

in Penthouse,
giving my heart
and soul,

paying my dues and then Dad
basically turned his back on me.

He kicked me out.

NINA: Yeah, poor Nick.

What, what a family, my God.
It was like we weren't there
for each other.

I mean, ask him
what I went through.

You know, he won't have a clue.

The publisher
of Penthous Bob Guccione,

is on trial defending himself
against a $10 million lawsuit.

NEWSCASTER: A former
Penthouse model testified today

that the magazine's publisher

made her have sex with other men
and with other women
for his own benefit.

WOMAN:
Claiming magazine publisher
Bob Guccione

turned her
into his personal sex slave.

RIXON: Anneka was a force
to be reckoned with.

She had this strength in her.
She was very beautiful.

And she had the power
of a magnificent laugh.

NINA: She was in the magazine
a lot,

and she was in Caligula.

They had a long-standing
relationship as well.

She was one of the girls
that were living at the house
when I moved in.

An ordinary girl who got
into an extraordinary life.

I hate Guccione,
what he did to me.
He ruined my life.

How he abused me,
it's against the law.

And I don't want him
to do that to anybody else.

DAVID GIDEON:
When I first met Anneka,

I didn't know who she was.

I wasn't a follower
of Penthouse.

And so I go
into the classroom one day

and in walks
this very beautiful woman.

She was one of those people
who came in

and it was evident
that she was paying attention.

It was evident
that she was practicing.

She wanted more
and she worked hard to get it.

So I believe that Penthouse
and/or Bob Guccione
were managing her career.

People do what they think
they need to do to get a leg up
in this business.

And people like Bob Guccione
take advantage of that.

Di Lorenzo broke down
several times
while on the witness stand.

She told the court
that Guccione brainwashed her

into having a two-year-long
affair because it would
help his business empire.

(CRYING) I didn't know what...
who he was going to ask me
to sleep with next.

He had somebody
who worked for him in England

that he wanted to move here.

I overheard him telling her

to, um, flirt with him,
sleep with him,

do whatever she could

to make him fall for her
and move over here.

GIDEON: When Bob says do this
or do that,

you're not recognizing
what is actually happening.

What she survived from Penthouse
and all of that,

um, yeah,
had a long-lasting effect
on her.

RIXON: She felt she'd been used.

You put yourself
in dangerous situations.

How bad do you want the role?

How bad do you want the gig,
you know?

I see a differentiation

between me being set up
as a birthday gift
in the beginning

and Anneka's experience.

I'd had a career already.

I'd had opportunities
and experiences.

I didn't want to do things
I wasn't comfortable doing.

I think often girls get lured
into doing things

that they didn't really
intend to do

and that they
weren't comfortable with

because they're afraid
of losing opportunities.

They're afraid
there's nothing else for them.

Charges are baloney,
that's why we're here defending.

It's all trumped up.

-REPORTER: What do you think?
-The lady's trying
to extort money.

That should be obvious
to a lot of people.

We built our career
on representing victims
of sexual harassment,

so I've seen
many different methods.

So Anneka testified,
"I told him that I didn't want
to do this.

"He told me
that I had to do this,

"that he needed me to do this

"and that I was part
of the Penthouse family

"and that I should do this
for him."

I think that he's
a certain kind of predator.

He's not that unusual at all.

Quite common.

He had what he thought was
a very impressive legal team.

It was David and Goliath.

It's a sensational end
to a sensational eight-year
court battle.

MAN: Judge Elliott Wilkes
has found in favor of Anneka.

In a landmark ruling,

he said, "Guccione's cold
and calculating use
of sexual coercion

"forced her
to safeguard her employment
by sacrificing her body."

He was irate.

He hated losing.

They believed her.
And they should have
because it was the truth.

RIXON: Bob was wounded.

I think it just took
the wind out of him.

It was something
he had never expected
would happen to him.

INTERVIEWER:
What is your feeling
towards Mr. Guccione right now?

I hope that he
doesn't do the same thing
to anybody else

that he did to me.

NINA: That was one of the things
that I shut out

because I knew the truth

and I didn't have to deal
with anybody who maybe suffered
because of it.

If he was this horrible person
who did bad things,
then I can't love him,

then what's wrong with me?

I think that
that was the beginning
of the end of Penthouse

and Bob Guccione.

The handwriting was on the wall.

You can't treat
people like this.

There is a thing called karma.

BELANGER: We had been slowly
getting to the point
with Bob and Kathy

where we were telling them
exactly how dire
the situation was.

We are losing a lot of money
and the lifestyle
you so preciously love

cannot continue.

There was a meeting called
to discuss the future
over at the house.

This is gonna be
a little different
than our other meetings.

We really
have to explain the situation.

Kathy was not there.

We specifically planned
for a day Kathy was not around.

So it was Bob.
And Bob seemed like he
was on board.

"Yes, we're in some trouble.
Let's fix this."

He seemed like he wanted
to get down to business.

Here we are in this meeting
and he seemed amenable.

He was saying the right things.

This is the guy
who had launched
Penthouse magazine

and made hundreds of millions
of dollars.

This is the same guy.

Maybe he can, you know,
pull a miracle out of his ass.
Who knows?

We got to a point
where we're showing him
all the numbers

and just, it was a money pit.

We couldn't do the investments
he wanted to do.

Money was gonna drain away.

And at one point,
my boss said, "So, Bob,
it's gonna be your call."

And it was
such a dramatic pause.

He took a sip of his Tab.

He looked around the room,
and then he finally
came out with,

"Obviously, everyone knows
UFOs are real

"and if we could be the company
that exploits that

"and brings that to the masses
and really uncovers it..."

And I was just like,

"Did this mother(BEEP) just say,

"'As you all know,
UFOs are real?'"

(SIGHS)

I want him to save money.

And now he says he wants
to spend more

and not just spend more,

he wants to go find
little green men.

Things had taken
a really bad turn

and it was not gonna end well.

Bob loved conspiracy theories.

He kind of got into areas
that I didn't like.

I said, "Bob,
a lot of this stuff
is not verified."

"No, no, no.
We have to do that."

It was just a desperation sign.

MAN: Community standards
determine when pornography
becomes obscenity,

when porn goes
over the legal line.

By the late '90s,
it was pretty obvious

that things
were really not going well.

Bob's response to that
was to make the pictorials
harder and harder.

This was just his instinct
to save the company.

LINDEMULDER: What we experienced
in the late '80s

was the fun
of all coming together
and creating this erotica.

It was magical.

And then things changed.

Penthouse layouts
for the longest time
was just women only.

I was asked to do
more extreme content,

and that was something
entirely different.

It was quite a big payday too,
so, I said, "Yeah."

There's obvious hurdles
that come with that.

Now, at 54,

I'm getting kind of
the flip side of it all.

I did want
to be a schoolteacher.

I held onto that dream
for a long time

until I realized there's
no way your average person
is gonna say,

"Oh, you've been
in the adult industry
for 35 years,

"and now you wanna
teach my kids?" No way.

That's a heartache
of being in the industry.

It's not all, you know,
(BEEP) and giggles.

Uh, there's things that you...

you can't do
because of it. Uh...

Do I wanna change it?

There may be things
that I'd maybe tweak
a little bit.

But... Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Are you gonna
have to keep increasing

the pornographic content
to be able to sell the magazine?

We go the way the public goes.

Penthouse is a magazine

that very closely monitors
social change.

If the public
wants to be exposed to

more sexually explicit material,

then that's the way we will go.

Penthouse kept upping the mark

and it just was getting stronger
and stronger sexually.

Over time, society
demands more.

They're not satisfied
with soft pictorials.

They want the next step,
and they want it more hardcore
and more hardcore.

MAN: In our country,
we are concerned about morals.

I don't want to let him be able
to set the national standard.

We have already
set the standard.

Like it or not,
we are the standard.