Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon People

Nothing Personal
The prose of Hackman, the passion of Hillary
Gene hacks out novel without a ghost; Hotham Clinton? First lady's old boyfriend says she was a wild thing. Plus: Scary Spice scares the bejesus out of reporters.
By Amy Reiter
[11/08/99]

Nothing Personal
Munsters, UnderGore and, uh, cow lube?
Eddie and Grandpa are baaack; when the going gets tough, the Gores get literal; Farrakhan's calypso days; readers riot over bovine nipple grease. Plus: Washington's pundits and pols kick out the phat comedy jams.
By Amy Reiter
[11/06/99]

Rogues' Gallery
Steppin' in it. Woof!
Who breaks a Chihuahua on the wheel? Wall Street Journal gets medieval.
By Douglas Cruickshank
[11/06/99]

Nothing Personal
Meet the fundits
At the Funniest Celebrity in Washington contest, pundits and pols kick out the phat comedy jams ...
By Amy Reiter
[11/05/99]

People Feature
A-list extravaganza!
A birthday bash with George Lucas, Mike Myers, Trey Parker and Jewel. Plus: Ron "The Hedgehog" Jeremy, Joey Buttafuoco, a white supremacist and a baffled Japanese guest dine at Jerry's Famous.
By David Goodman
[11/05/99]

Complete archives for People

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

I'm not among those who believe Stagliano's profession of choice makes him a reprobate; porno is legal and harmless, after all, and arcane constitutional arguments aside, millions of men avidly consume it. But let's stipulate up front that Buttman movies would unnerve a proctologist. Once his starlets disrobe and the intro-tease is over, Stagliano crams in more close-ups than the Surgery Channel. Never mind your own love of the female backside, buddy, Buttman is possessed. Anal sex rules his life.

And might end it prematurely. In 1997, Stagliano startled the adult film world -- and gave new meaning to "Greek tragedy" -- by revealing that he is HIV positive, the result of an unprotected tryst with a preoperative transsexual in Brazil. Many in the business were aghast. Stagliano should have announced his apparent bisexuality years before, they argued, a news flash his female co-stars deserved to hear. Once a performer in his movies, Stagliano these days is strictly a panting bystander. He lives now with a former adult film star who is also HIV-positive.

The son of a garbage man, Stagliano grew up in a Chicago suburb, and when other kids were swapping baseball cards, he started collecting dirty magazines. "I was 10 or 11 years old. This was in the '60s, when you had bits of nudity but not yet hardcore," Stagliano says. "I remember one layout of Raquel Welch in a magazine called Pageant. Seeing all that tease, I think it had a significant effect on me."

No kidding. Stagliano became a regular at strip shows and by his own account a chronic masturbator. He ended up studying economics at UCLA, figuring that he'd land dates if he became a professor. He chucked the dismal science when he came up with a better idea: modern dance. After leaving college, Stagliano landed in the first ever Chippendales show. He'd hit the stage as Dracula in chains and bite the neck of a few ladies to the tune of Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker."

Stagliano had been appearing in X-rated loops since he left college and by 1983, like so many actors before him, he wanted to direct. Saving up $8,000 in stripping cash, he financed his first film, a fetish movie called "Bouncing Buns." It earned him $24,000.

At the time, the humble video camera was upending the X-rated industry, a change lamented in the porn epic "Boogie Nights." VCRs were becoming household items, porn movie houses were being shuttered and the era of the 35 mm X-rated movie was ending. Even when video took over, however, pornographers still spent money on scenery and insisted on back-story. Until Stagliano came along.

For years, he'd been seeking ways around a perennial adult film problem: The actors can't act. One day, he set his camera on a beach in Santa Monica, then walked in front of it and started talking straight into the lens. A gust of wind blew the machine over. Perfect, Stagliano thought. What could suggest reality more than a mistake like that?

By then, he'd already shed every other member of his crew and refined his shtick to a solo act. It worked like this: He'd hire an actress or two and dispatch them to a beach or sidewalk. He'd arrive and pretend to sweet talk them to a waiting lair, all the while playing the shambling, slightly desperate doofus. "I usually tell them to react not just to me, but to my camera," Stagliano says. "I want them to be like 'Why is this guy pointing a camera in my face?'"

Stagliano was peddling a time-tested male fantasy brought vividly to life -- the everyman getting lucky. And the less money he spent, the more popular his productions were. A typical Gonzo movie costs just $12,000 to make, about one-tenth the cost of a scripted feature.

Mockumentaries had been around for years -- "This is Spinal Tap" came out in 1984 -- but nobody had dragged the idea into the porn realm. When "The Adventures of Buttman" debuted, a small group of established players ruled the X-rated video shelves, companies such as Vivid Video and VCA. They took one look at Stagliano's handiwork and they were appalled. As an economist would put it, Stagliano demonstrated that there were virtually no barriers to entering their business.

Steven Hirsch was among the alarmed. The company he co-founded in 1985, Vivid Video, is the largest producer of adult movies in the world, releasing about 30 shot-on-film features a year, some of them costing $150,000. By porn standards, Hirsch is selling an upscale product, packaged in slick, airbrushed video boxes and featuring a heavily promoted and highly aerobicized coterie of actresses. Echoing the old Hollywood studio system, Hirsch signs the "Vivid girls," as they're known, to exclusive deals and reportedly pays them about $100,000 a year. In a nod toward minimizing health risk, all of Vivid's male performers are required to wear condoms.

Hirsch had little choice but to start offering his own line of shot-on-video Gonzo flicks, christened the "Raw" series. His main product, however, remains the glossy plot-and-script feature, which apparently is a serious creative challenge in a business filled with actors and directors who, let's face it, couldn't cut it in nearby Hollywood. Judging by "Seven Deadly Sins," a summer release, the silicone-to-talent ratio of Vivid's posse is way, way off and the sex scenes too often veer toward the cruel. At one point an actor named Jon Dough sits on a chair, looks bored and slaps at a woman's breasts. Whose idea of scintillation is that?

Next page | Men sign up regardless of the price