Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story

ON SCREEN:

FILTHY GORGEOUS
The Movie Network / Movie Central - Nov. 8


Ladies' Man

"Filthy Gorgeous" takes a revealing look 
at "Penthouse" founder Bob Guccione

By Eric Kohanik

The saga of Penthouse founder Bob Guccione is one of the most colourful in publishing history. And it came as a surprise to Canadian filmmaker Barry Avrich when he discovered, after Guccione's death in 2010, that the story wasn't being told.

“It was odd because I expected, within the year, there would be all kinds of bio-pics announced,” Avrich recalls. “And there was nothing, because no one knew him.”

So, Avrich set out to tell the story. The resulting documentary, Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story, launched at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and Avrich was pleased with the response. He admits the story is sad: Guccione died penniless in a Texas hospital after a battle with throat cancer.

“It is a rise-and-fall [story],” Avrich reflects over coffee at a downtown Toronto espresso house. “It's tragic, [but] I don't know whether he would consider it tragic. Because, if you live for 79 years, and 74 of them are damn good, so be it. It was a great life.”

Born in Brooklyn and raised in New Jersey, Guccione briefly considered becoming a priest before setting off for Europe to be an artist. He eventually became famous for Penthouse, a men's magazine that began in England in the 1960s before taking aim at Hugh Hefner's Playboy empire in the U.S.

The success of Penthouse led to vast wealth and an opulent lifestyle that made Guccione, often decked out in gold chains, a notorious icon of hedonism in the 1970s and '80s. His success led to other ventures, ranging from movies (Caligula) and magazines (including Omni and Viva) to the development of nuclear-fusion energy and even a failed hotel/casino project in Atlantic City.

Along the way, there were ironic turns, ranging from Guccione's role as a righteous defender of the First Amendment to his decision to publish photos that would cause the first African-American Miss America, Vanessa Williams, to be stripped of her crown.

Filthy Gorgeous doesn't hold back in tracing the entire story in sometimes-stark detail. The documentary begins by warning viewers that it is filled with nudity, profanity “and some truth.”

The film is brimming with revealing interviews, ranging from Guccione's family (including sons Nick and Bob Jr.) to professional associates (including Alan Dershowitz and Xaviera Hollander). 

Particularly insightful are recollections of Guccione's personal assistant, Jane Homlish, and Victoria Johnson, who was 1978's Penthouse Pet of the Year and one of Guccione's lovers. 

“There were twists and turns for me,” Avrich says. “When I decided to make the film, I didn't know everything about him. I chose him because nothing had been done and I was curious.” 

That curiosity arose after Avrich was invited to screen his 2005 documentary, The Last Mogul (about Hollywood agent Lew Wasserman), at the Playboy Mansion.

“I was intrigued,” Avrich recalls. “After so many years, why is the Hugh Hefner brand, the Playboy brand, so powerful and the Penthouse brand is tattered and left in ruins, like a Shakespearean tragedy? So, I started to do some preliminary research. When Guccione died in 2010, that file moved to the front for me.”

It soon became clear there was a lot to the story. “He was a flawed genius, without a doubt,” Avrich says. “We're all flawed; few of us are geniuses. And that made him, for me as a filmmaker, really interesting.”

A native of Montreal, Avrich divides his time between making movies and running an advertising agency in Toronto. His credits include last year's Show Stopper: The Theatrical Life of Garth Drabinsky and 2011's Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project.  

Fithy Gorgeous is a compelling addition to that roster, particularly in light of how the story ultimately ends.

“The man died without a penny,” Avrich says. “Without a penny. Nothing to his name. Zero. 

“In that 200-square-foot hospital room in Plano, Texas, was this man with nothing but the name on the door. It's sad.”

Filthy Gorgeous - The Movie Network / Movie Central - Nov. 8

(First published in Channel Guide Magazine - November 2013.)

HBO Canada - Oct. 25, 2008

ON SCREEN:
HBO CANADA
STARTING OCT. 30

BOTTOM LINE:
IT'S NOT TV. IT'S HBO.
AT LEAST, THAT'S WHAT
THEY WANT YOU TO THINK.

Channel flipping

Pay TV subscribers have always
longed to have HBO in Canada.
Now, they weill finally be able to get it.
Well, sort of.


By Eric Kohanik

There was a time when only a handful of pay/cable channels populated the TV landscape. 

Now, there are so many that, whenever another one launches, it’s usually greeted with a ho-hum shrug by those who cover television.

Except for this week. That’s because HBO is finally arriving in Canada. 

Well, sort of. 

Canadian pay TV subscribers have always longed for HBO. That longing is what has fuelled much of Canada’s pay TV industry.

Over the years, it also helped nurture an entire industry of black-market and grey-market satellite dishes across the country. 

Starting Oct. 30, though, Canadians willbe able to get HBO legally. 

Well, sort of.

See, it’s not really HBO. It’s a Canadian adaptation – a couple of existing channels masquerading as the famed American icon.

Pay TV in Canada started a quarter of a century ago, following a formula similar to HBO in the U.S. There were three national English pay TV channels in Canada then: First Choice, Superchannel and C-Channel.

The first two were competing movie channels; the third was a “culture” channel that had programs with a high-class appeal. 

C-Channel didn’t last long. And the two remaining services found their only hope for survival would be to split the Canadian TV market right along the Manitoba-Ontario border, with First Choice taking the east and Superchannel saddling up in the west. 

Still, HBO was nowhere to be seen in Canada. At least, not legally. The two Canadian pay channels eventually took on new names: First Choice became The Movie Network (or TMN), while Superchannel rebranded itself as Movie Central.

Canada’s pay-TV scene recently got a newplayer – a national network called, wait for it, Super Channel. But, hey, that’s a wholeother story we’ll save for some other time. 

Multiplex and video-on-demand technology have broadened the reach of both TMN and Movie Central over the years. Both of them even cut deals long ago for the rights to show most HBO programming in Canada. 

But Canadian TV fans continued to long for HBO itself – to the point where the CRTC had actually considered opening Canada’s protectionist doors to let the American channel in. 

In a crafty countermeasure, though, the parent companies of TMN and Movie Central took pages from Canwest Global’s deal for E! and CTV’s partnership with MTV. They teamed up to snag rights to the HBO brand and are now rechristening two of their existing multiplex channels (MMOR in the east and MC4 in the west) as HBO Canada.

So, technically, Canadian viewers will have HBO available to them this week – even though it’s really a Canadian version that will have to air homegrown programs as well.

But at least Canadian TV viewers can now finally stop longing for America’s beloved HBO.

Well, sort of.

TV Season Report Card - Oct. 11, 2008

ON SCREEN:
PRELIMINARY REPORT CARD ON THE NEW TV SEASON

BOTTOM LINE:
THERE'S GOOD AND BAD AMONG THE NEW AND OLD.


Cheers and jeers

The new TV season is only a month old. 

And, already, it's clear there are things on 

the tube that are - and aren't - working well.


By Eric Kohanik

It has only been a few weeks since thenew TV season officially got rolling. But it has already become clear. There are shows, both new and old, that are – and are not – working for me this fall.

So, what’s doing it for me?

✔ Dancing With the Stars (Mondays andTuesdays; ABC, CTV): The calibre of talent is better than ever. In fact, the first week saw routines that were already miles ahead of the final weeks of some earlier seasons.

✔ The Big Bang Theory (Mondays; CBS): Jim Parsons’ stints as the socially clueless Sheldon get more ingenious each week.

✔ Californication (Mondays; The Movie Network, Movie Central): Hank Moody (David Duchovny) and those around him keep hitting one wall after another. It’s so much fun to watch them pick up the pieces.

✔ 90210 (Tuesdays; The CW, Global): OK, don’t laugh. Nobody expected it to be good because it didn’t have to be; the show had a built-in audience. And that actually makes it kind of a pleasant surprise.

✔ The Rick Mercer Report (Tuesdays;CBC): Mercer is a brilliant satirist, even if the elements of each instalment of his show are getting way too familiar and predictable. At least the federal election is providing plenty of new ammunition.

✔ Survivor: Gabon (Thursdays; CBS, Global): OK, if ever there were a show made for HDTV, this is it. Too bad it took so long.

✔ Weeds (Sundays; Showcase): Quite simply, it stars Mary-Louise Parker. Enough said.

✔ The Bonnie Hunt Show (weekdays; Citytv): Despite its cheesy opening titles, Hunt’s warmth on this daytime gab showputs TV’s latenight talkers to shame.

There’s plenty that’s not working for me this season, too. The leading offenders?

✘ Mad Men (Sundays; AMC, A): The first season was so fabulous. But sometimes, there are such long, silent moments this season that you can’t figure out what’s up.

✘ Desperate Housewives (Sundays; ABC, CTV): Executive producer Marc Cherry reset the clock, moving things ahead five years to get rid of story screw-ups. After only two episodes, though, the show has already painted itself into a creative corner again.

✘ Knight Rider (Mondays; NBC, E!): Sorry. Maybe a supercharged car would be way more appealing if gas were cheaper.

✘ Saturday Night Live (Saturdays; NBC, Global): No matter how good it gets, how come cast members still don’t know how to read lines on cue cards without making it so obvious that they’re reading cue cards?

✘ So You Think You Can Dance Canada (various days; CTV): I LOVE it, but I feel sorry for it. As the debut week of Dancing With the Stars and Grey’s Anatomy illustrated, if CTV’s American shows have something big going on, the network will quickly treat this as a second-class refugee. If only Canadian broadcasters had the balls to put Canadian shows ahead of American ones …