Porn Valley- In an interview in the February issue of Vanity Fair, Bob Guccione says that Boca Raton private-equity investor Marc Bell reneged on a deal that would have kept Guccione on in a $500,000 capcity as consultant to Penthouse. Bell is saying that Guccione declined the offer. Big difference.

The article states that Penthouse’s circulation is now down to 400,000 and that Bell acquired the magazine in a bankruptcy sale last October with Bell insisting that he would turn Penthouse around in three years. The article also quotes Guccione’s assistant Jane Homlish as saying that once a ruling came down approving Bell’s takeover of Penthouse, Bell severed his relationships with Guccione, telling him, ‘You are no longer with the company.’

Homlish and Guccione were, ostensibly, helping Bell edit the Penthouse of the Year issue, but Homlish says Bell informed them to hand over all materials relative to layouts of that issue. “It was pretty hostile,” Guccione says of the incident. Bell, according to the article, is saying there was nothing unpleasant about it.

“Meanwhile there are reports of chaos at the new Penthouse,” the magazine article goes on to say. “Many longtime staff members have been fired, and some insiders feel that Bell, who has little magazine experience, doesn’t understand the dynamics of Penthouse or its curious but enduringly readable mix. Bell insists that, while there will still be pictorials of Penthouse Pets, the end product will no longer be ’embarrassing.’ ”

One of Guccione’s former editors states that Bell is too cautious and too buttoned down.