CraveOnline: Barry, what would you have asked Bob Sr. if he were still alive to do an interview?
Barry Avrich: That’s a great question. It is a great question. The two best questions ever on this whole journey is somebody, they make references to your dad and the house in Citizen Kane. Somebody said to me, “What was Bob’s rosebud?” which I thought was a great fucking question. This is up there as well.
I think I would have really honed in on the art and whether or not he really wanted to sell his art or not. I’m haunted by the volumes, the paintings and the quality. This wasn’t Anthony Quinn or Keith Richards’ paintings. It wasn’t pop showbiz bullshit art. The art’s really good. I’ve had art experts, friends and aficionados look at paint stroke. The man was a great painter. I would want to know more from him in terms of did he paint because he wanted to show himself that he could paint and surround himself with his art? Or was he really interested in selling his art and having galleries?
Now, he was very proud of the fact that his paintings were shown in shows, but would his dream have been that his art had hung in MOMA or in Europe or something like that? I would have loved to know the answer to that question. I would have also liked to know, was there no secret stash of cash? These guys get to a point where money is irrelevant. Now it’s about pushing the envelope and doing different things and power, people get bored, but some people have that special money drawer, as my wife calls it. Didn’t seem to be that. He was not driven by money at the end.
Bob Guccione, Jr.: He died penniless, literally penniless.
What extra material might be on the DVD?
Barry Avrich: Every time I cut a film, I go through this delusion with myself, the first cut is three hours and I don’t want to touch anything. You know the cliché, you may as well just be killing children of your own because you just don’t want to cut anything of this, because it’s such a big story I tried to get everything in. Hollywood Reporter called it “a breezy documentary,” whatever the fuck that means.
The stuff that’s on the floor, there’s so much more about the making of Caligula that didn’t go in. We have all kinds of making of that’s interesting, the war with Tinto Brass and the craziness that went on. Without a doubt, Bob has influenced the guys that made 300 and “The Borgias” and even 50 Shades of Grey. Eroticism, that approach, all of that, but at some point in the film, in a breezy 96 minutes, you have to stop and say, “I’ve got to stay true to the fact.”
There was an article written which is the headline that I want, because what inspired me to make this film were the obituaries that I read for Bob Guccione which was: “Pornographer dies.” Pornographer? Okay, a little bit more than that, and I understand because that’s a good headline, but that’s not what that’s about. The better pieces that are coming out now get why I made the film.
I should tell you, I made a film called The Last Mogul about Lew Wasserman and my phone rang in 2005 and it was Hugh Hefner himself saying, “I’d like to show your film at the mansion. I’ll fly out and show the film.” I thought it was a practical joke. I went, got to know him and said, “Okay, I think there’s got to be more to this.” He’s certainly a smart man, but it was about Playboy.
In Guccione’s world, Penthouse was one little sliver of that pie. Yes, it fueled everything but he had so many other interests. Around that dinner table, and I’ve sat at Hefner’s dinner table 50 times since 2005, it was never Isaac Asimov and Bradbury and Kissinger and John Glenn and Muhammad Ali.
Bob Guccione, Jr.: Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal.
Barry Avrich: And these weren’t guys that were going to the house in ’68 trying to get laid. This was fascinating conversation. I’ve talked to them.
Bob Guccione, Jr.: I was there. He threw Ted Turner out for being rude to his date. He said, “I don’t think you should stay here any longer” and he physically walked him to the door.
Ted Turner being rude to his own date?
Bob Guccione, Jr.: His own date, yeah. He was embarrassingly rude. The woman was almost in tears. He was just disgustingly rude and my father got up and said, “I think it’s time you left” and just walked him out, in front of all the other guests. You couldn’t be rude. Once in a while one of us kids would use a swear word, we were told to leave the table. That was it. Out. We were adults at the time. I’m talking about I’m in my 30s.
Barry Avrich: There was a certain formality about him.
Bob Guccione, Jr.: Yes, he was. He was incredibly concerned about cursing. If a woman was sitting down and you didn’t get up to pull her chair out, he’d give you a glare, like, “What is wrong with you?” You would never do it twice.
Bob, what does the name Bob Guccione still mean for your life today?
Bob Guccione, Jr.: To properly answer that question, I have to tell you it has never, ever been a problem.
I didn’t mean it in that way. Does it still open doors?
Bob Guccione, Jr.: I think the doors I tried opening are usually doors that are opened by my own reputation, to be honest, from being in the publishing business and media business.
Barry Avrich: I have to tell you, knowing Bob now for a year and a half, you don’t play that card at all. He’ll tell you whether or not he wants his name mentioned, but we were sitting in a restaurant in New York having drinks and Meg Ryan came up. It’s not that he couldn’t care less, he just doesn’t play that Guccione name at all. Yes, I think you wear it with honor because you loved your dad but you don’t use the name.
Bob Guccione, Jr.: Exactly, that’s right. I’m very proud of him to this day and I don’t drop the Jr. The best answer to that is I don’t drop the Jr. Technically, when your father dies, JFK Jr. eventually dropped the Jr. Somebody said to me when my father died, “You know you no longer have to have the Jr.” I said, “Well, I didn’t realize that but it doesn’t matter because I’m proud of it.” And I like distinguishing us.
One of the proudest things in my life, and my dad preferred this, was that he had to be known as Bob Guccione Sr. because of my own activity with Spin and some success with that. He said to me once, smiling when we had reconciled, “You know, because of you I’ve got to be known as Bob Guccione Sr. now.” That just made me very proud, and he was saying it in a proud way. It’s certainly not a problem and I don’t even think about it really, is the rest of the answer.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
