First of call, calling ->content is pretty much always a bug. And it is here. You want

print $response->decoded_content();
[download]

or

print $response->decoded_content( charset => 'none' );
[download]

The latter won't undo the character encoding for XML and HTML docs.

HOWEVER, I cannot print this to a file.

That's unfortunate.

I am inclined to believe I am missing something.

Probably, but it's hard to tell what you're missing without knowing what you have.

I am able to print the content to stdout

that does not work since nothing is going to stdout

uh, which one is it?