Howard Kurtz, Washington Post columnist and host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” recently went to the Playboy Mansion to talk to Hugh Hefner about his legacy, the magazine and a forthcoming documentary that purports to show a different side of the 84-year-old icon. (Sadly, Kurtz did not don a robe for the interview.)
It was a fairly wide-ranging discussion – with Hefner sounding more reflective than I’ve heard him before (“I have lived life richly and take tremendous satisfaction in terms of what I managed to accomplish … It doesn't get better than this and I know it”).
Below are some of the key excerpts.
First, one about Hef’s still-on-the-table-offer to take the company private:
Kurtz: It's no secret that Playboy, the company, has had some financial difficulties. I guess you lost about a million and a half dollars in the most recent quarter. And you have now offered to buy the company and take it private. Why did you decide to make that offer?
Hefner: Well I'm at a point in my life where I'd like to be secure, in terms of the future of the brand, and the company, and the magazine. I think that can be best done as a private company where it can bring in appropriate partners and financial support that will assure the future and also permit us to expand. The brand is so hot I want to take advantage of that opportunity.
Kurtz: You've been sort of dismissive of another bidder that has emerged, that is Penthouse, which says it's going to offer even more than you. Why dismissive of that?
Hefner: Well it confuses the issue because I'm not selling my stock to Penthouse or anybody else. I'm trying to purchase the outstanding stock and bring the company private.
Kurtz: So either the company will remain as it is, or your offer will be accepted and it will no longer be a public company?
Hefner: That's correct.
On pornography lapping Playboy ...
Kurtz: We are now awash in sex. I don't have to tell you. You know, hardcore porn on the Internet, celebrities making sex tapes every other week. I've lost track of who the latest one is. Has all of that combined in a way to make Playboy a little passé?
Hefner: Of course. I think that the revolution we started obviously caught up to us and went on from there with some excesses that not all of which I approve. But that's the way of things. I don't think you can ever go back to those very early years where Playboy played such a part in changing everything. But the bigger problem that I think Playboy faces, quite frankly, is a problem that print faces, that magazines in general face, and that newspapers face, et cetera. We're dealing with that in a unique way because the magazine initially carried the brand.
