Bob Guccione Jr. | |
---|---|
Born | Robert Charles Guccione Jr. September 19, 1955 New York City, New York, U.S. |
Occupation(s) | Magazine editor, publisher, founder of Spin and Gear magazines |
Years active | 1978-present |
Spouse | Kimberlin Grace Brown (2001-present) |
Robert Charles Guccione Jr. (born September 19, 1955) is an American publisher and the eldest son of late Penthouse founder Bob Guccione. He founded the music magazine Spin .
In 1978, after two attempts at going into the publishing business on his own, the young, London-raised Guccione went to work for Penthouse publisher General Media International, a company owned by his father, Penthouse founder Bob Guccione. By the early 1980s, at which time he was running the marketing and circulation department, he left the company (and purported position as heir apparent) to once again attempt to establish his own brand.
In 1985, with a loan from his father, he launched Spin . In 1987, his father abruptly shut down the magazine after General Media experienced a financial dip which resulted in a long-lasting estrangement between the two. This estrangement ended a few years prior to the elder Guccione's death on October 20, 2010. [1] The younger Guccione found new investors and relaunched Spin in late 1987. He managed to gather most of the magazine's old staff, and missed only one month of publication.
In 1996, Guccione and Spin were sued for sexual harassment and discrimination by Staci Bonner, a former fact-checker for the magazine. Guccione was cleared of the harassment charges, but found liable for promoting a hostile work environment and not paying Bonner comparably to a man with a comparable job position.
Guccione sold Spin to Vibe in 1997, and shortly thereafter founded Gear , which published until 2003. In 2005, science magazine Discover was purchased from Disney Publishing and Guccione formed Discover Media, LLC to publish the magazine. In 2007, Guccione was ousted as CEO, in what was described by the New York Post as "a falling-out over philosophical differences with his financial backers about how to run the company." [2]
Gear was launched and published in the United Kingdom devoted chiefly to revealing pictorials of popular singers, B-movie actresses, and models, along with articles on gadgets, cars, fashion, guy tales of sex, and sports.
Gear debuted in September 1998, with actress Peta Wilson on the cover. The magazine established itself with several publishing stunts such as publishing a nude photo of soccer player Brandi Chastain.
Gear reached its exposure apogee when it featured a risqué pictorial of then 17-year-old actress Jessica Biel, who posed while appearing on the WB family drama series 7th Heaven . A controversy arose when 7th Heaven castmate, actor Stephen Collins, who played her father on the series, described the pictures as "child pornography". Collins later admitted to three counts of child abuse. [3] Others, including A.J. Jacobs writing in Esquire , praised it as a brave move by Biel. [4] The publication, which reached a peak circulation of 500,000 copies sold in 2001, discontinued publication in 2003.
The Pubic Wars, a pun on the Punic Wars, was a rivalry between the American pornographic magazines Playboy and Penthouse during the 1960s and 1970s. Each magazine strove to show just a little bit more nudity on their female models than the other, without getting too crude. The term was coined by Playboy owner Hugh Hefner. In 1950s and 1960s America, it was generally agreed that nude photographs were not pornographic unless they showed pubic hair or genitals. Mainstream mass-market photography was careful to come close to this line without stepping over it. Consequently, the depiction of pubic hair was de facto forbidden in U.S. pornographic magazines of the era.
Penthouse is a men's magazine founded by Bob Guccione and published by Los Angeles–based Penthouse World Media, LLC. It combines urban lifestyle articles and softcore pornographic pictures of women that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore pornographic pictures of women.
Caligula is a 1979 erotic historical drama film about the rise and fall of controversial Roman emperor Caligula. The film stars Malcolm McDowell in the title role, alongside Teresa Ann Savoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, John Steiner, and John Gielgud.
Esquire is an American men's magazine. Currently published in the United States by Hearst Communications, it also has more than 20 international editions.
7th Heaven is an American family drama television series created and produced by Brenda Hampton. The series debuted on August 26, 1996, on The WB, where it aired for ten seasons, making it the longest-running series in the history of the network. Following the shutdown of The WB and its merger with UPN to form The CW, the series aired on the new network on September 25, 2006, for its eleventh and final season, airing its final episode on May 13, 2007. 7th Heaven was one of the network's first major successful shows and, alongside Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's Creek, helped in the early success of the WB during the mid to late ‘90s. It was also the last series to be produced by Spelling Television before the company was shut down and became an in-name-only unit of CBS Television Studios.
Robert Charles Joseph Edward Sabatini Guccione was an American photographer and publisher. He founded the adult magazine Penthouse in 1965. This was aimed at competing with Hugh Hefner's Playboy, but with more explicit erotic content, a special style of soft-focus photography, and in-depth reporting of government corruption scandals and the art world. By 1982 Guccione was listed in the Forbes 400 wealth list, and owned one of the biggest mansions in Manhattan. However, he made some extravagant investments that failed, and the growth of free online pornography in the 1990s greatly diminished his market. In 2003, Guccione's publishers filed for bankruptcy and he resigned as chairman.
Discover is an American general audience science magazine launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. It has been owned by Kalmbach Publishing since 2010.
Omni was a science and science fiction magazine published for domestic American and UK markets. It contained articles on science, parapsychology, and short works of science fiction and fantasy. It was published as a print version between October 1978 and 1995. The first Omni e-magazine was published on CompuServe in 1986 and the magazine switched to a purely online presence in 1996. It ceased publication abruptly in late 1997, following the death of co-founder Kathy Keeton; activity on the magazine's website ended the following April.
Jessica Claire Timberlake is an American actress. She has received various accolades, including a Young Artist Award, and nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards.
Bob Larson is an American radio and television evangelist, and a pastor of Spiritual Freedom Church in Phoenix, Arizona. Larson has authored numerous books critical of rock music and Satanism.
Heat is an English entertainment magazine published by Bauer Media Group. Its mix of celebrity news, gossip, beauty advice and fashion is primarily aimed at women, although not as directly as in other women's magazines. It also features movie and music reviews, TV listings and major celebrity interviews.
Pornographic magazines or erotic magazines, sometimes known as adult magazines or sex magazines, are magazines that contain content of an explicitly sexual nature. Publications of this kind may contain images of attractive naked subjects, as is the case in softcore pornography, and, in the usual case of hardcore pornography, depictions of masturbation, oral, manual, vaginal, or anal sex.
Juggs is a softcore pornography adult magazine published in the United States that specializes in photographs of women with large breasts.
"Get in the Ring" is the fifth song on the Guns N' Roses album Use Your Illusion II. Written by Axl Rose, Duff McKagan and Slash, it is a diss track directed at music critics. Mentioned by name are critics from Hit Parader, Circus, Kerrang! and Spin.
Celia Ingrid Farber is an American print journalist and author who has covered a range of topics for magazines including Spin, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Harper's, Interview, Salon, Gear, New York Press, Media Post, The New York Post and Sunday Herald, and is best known for her controversial beliefs about HIV and AIDS, and a 1998 report on O. J. Simpson's post-trial life. Farber is the daughter of radio talk pioneer Barry Farber and a graduate of New York University.
Gear was an American men's magazine published by Bob Guccione, Jr. devoted chiefly to revealing pictorials of popular singers, B-movie actresses, and models, along with articles on gadgets, cars, fashion, sex, and sports.
Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 465 U.S. 770 (1984), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that a state could assert personal jurisdiction over the publisher of a national magazine which published an allegedly defamatory article about a resident of another state, and where the magazine had wide circulation in that state.
Horatio (Ray) Weisfeld is a writer/editor/publisher who co-founded mass-market comics magazines and developed other media properties. His creation of often irreverent commercial entertainment follows in the footsteps of his father, Irwin Weisfeld, a writer and manufacturer of ubiquitous mid-late 60s counter culture buttons.
Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story is a Canadian biographical documentary film which is a biography of Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione.
Anneka Di Lorenzo, later Anneka Vasta was an American exploitation film star and nude model.