By Dennis Scholl & Kareem Tabsch
When Kareem Tabsch and Dennis Scholl sat down to reflect on Bunny Yeager, the subject of their new documentary Naked Ambition, one thing stood out: her unrelenting, almost supernatural drive.
“She was just so hard on the hustle,” Scholl recalls. “She wasn’t Hugh Hefner’s favorite female photographer. She was Hugh Hefner’s favorite photographer for Playboy, entirely.”
Notably, Yeager was the first woman to ever shoot for the magazine and soon became one of its most prolific contributors. Through sheer force of will, she carved out a place for herself in a male-dominated industry and helped define a visual language: the pin-up, girl-next-door aesthetic that can be recognized everywhere today. Naked Ambitionextends beyond Yeager’s singular achievements to paint a portrait of an America reshaping itself alongside her. Tabsch and Scholl trace shifting attitudes toward sexuality, censorship, feminism, and the murky lines between empowerment and exploitation. In conversation shortly after the film’s release, the two went deep on Yeager’s sensational legacy—and the controversies that always trailed her closely.
