John Stagliano Biography

John Stagliano is the creator of the stage show the FASHIONISTAS. He produced, directed and wrote the show with the help of Las Vegas veteran Yanco Inone and choreographers Enrique Lugo and Nick Navarro. The show is based on his award winning adult film of the same name. The show and film are the high points of his career. He says that the show is “the most creative thing I’ve ever done. Transforming the show to the stage involved a life time of experience in many areas, utilizing my dance, film making, music and business knowledge to create a totally unique experience.”

Stagliano is one of the most innovative and successful producer/directors of adult films ever. His three “shot-on-film” features (two on 35mm and one on 16mm) have all won best film awards. (The Fashionistas was shot on 35mm film and has won more awards than any other adult movie.)

But it is in the “shot-on-video” genre where he has achieved the most fame. In 1989 he experimented with a new way of making movies where he is in the movie as the cameraman. This first-person POV style of film making became known as “gonzo” porn. This form has been wildly successful, to the point where it now is the predominant form of adult film making. In fact, his concept for “The Adventures of Buttman” predates all reality-type filmmaking and TV shows (except Geraldo Rivera tagging alone on police busts). It can be argued that MTV’s Real World and the other reality type TV shows all were heavily influence by the wild success of this gonzo porno genre which Mr. Stagliano is credited with originating.

Stagliano is also the owner of Evil Angel Video, a company he founded in 1989 that sells his video product as well as those 10 other directors. The company is one of the most successful in the adult business, with annual sales approaching 20 million dollars, and a reputation as having the finest adult product. The company is unique in that it does not own the movies of the other directors, but only keeps a percentage of the gross sales. This provides a better incentive to the directors and helps Evil Angel acquire the best directors. The cornerstone of this company is its integrity of product and business relationships, a unique thing in the adult business. It is wildly successful.

Stagliano was born is Chicago in 1951 and moved to California when he transferred to UCLA in 1972. He majored in Economics and wanted to become a teacher. He didn’t even know that Hollywood was in Los Angeles when he arrived, but he soon realized that he was not cut out for the academic life. Maybe it was something he inherited from his grandparents who grew up around Florence Italy. He took acting, modern dance and playwriting classes his last year at UCLA, 1974. From 1973 to 1975 he studied acting in Hollywood with Eric Morris, one of his classmates was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then in 1975, after having no luck finding acting work, he turned his full attention to studying dance, from 1977 to 1979 he took a few low paying conventional dance jobs, then was fortunate to answer an ad in Variety for male strippers for a new show at a club called Chippendales. He was in the very first show there and continued to strip there for 6 months, working for promoter Paul Snyder, the infamous boyfriend of Dorothy Stratton. Later he would perform in the movie STAR 80, directed by Bob Fosse, doing the exact same thing he did in real life. This movie is about the tragic alleged murder/suicide of Stratton and Snyder.

After several years of honing his skills as a creative performer, stripping all over the western United States he saved his money and financed, produced and directed the adult video, “Bouncing Buns” in 1983. Some of this money also came from a contest he won on the 1983 cable TV show “Shake it Sexy,” which played on the Playboy channel. On this show he choreographed the winning act of himself with a female dance partner and won the grand prize of $5,000.

Over the years, Mr. Stagliano has always done all the producing, writing, directing and editing of his major projects, as well as creating some of the music. He wrote one of the songs (Jesse’s Blues) in the Fashionistas. He also did all the music selection and music editing for the show. He also edited all the video that accompanies the show.

Throughout his life and to this day, he has continued to study dance. He owns a dance studio in Studio City. The explicit reason for him getting into producing porno was so he could make enough money to finance dance projects of his own.

In 2003, after the success of Fashionistas, and the movement of Vegas back to an adult-oriented town, he realized that the time was right to go back to dance. So a dream that he had back in 1983, sitting on a beach in Santa Monica, has finally come into reality.