John Stagliano
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
, pornographic actor
Pornographic actor
A pornographic actor/actress or a porn star is a person who appears in pornographic film. Most actors appear nude in films...
, producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
and director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, who founded and owns the Evil Angel
Evil Angel (studio)
Evil Angel is a production company and distributor of pornographic films, founded and owned by John Stagliano.Stagliano and Evil Angel pioneered the Gonzo pornography genre in the late 1980s....
pornographic film studio.
Early life and career
Stagliano grew up in the Chicago suburbs, and attended high school from 1965 to 1969. He enrolled in college, but dropped out in 1969 for several semesters. He then went back to college and studied subjects including English, journalism, and engineering, before transferring to UCLA to major in economics. He originally planned to get an economics Ph.D.Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
and become a professor. He then switched to studying theater, playwriting, modern
Modern dance
Modern dance is a dance form developed in the early 20th century. Although the term Modern dance has also been applied to a category of 20th Century ballroom dances, Modern dance as a term usually refers to 20th century concert dance.-Intro:...
, and jazz dance
Jazz dance
Jazz dance is a classification shared by a broad range of dance styles. Before the 1950s, jazz dance referred to dance styles that originated from African American vernacular dance. In the 1950s, a new genre of jazz dance—modern jazz dance—emerged, with roots in Caribbean traditional dance...
, partly because there were more women in those classes.
In the 1970s, he wrote erotic fiction for a small newspaper, and did some softcore
Softcore
Softcore pornography is a form of filmic or photographic pornography or erotica that is less sexually explicit than hardcore pornography. It is intended to tickle and arouse men and women. Softcore pornography depicts nude and semi-nude performers engaging in casual social nudity or non-graphic...
modeling
Model (person)
A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....
. He made his debut in a hardcore
Hardcore pornography
Hardcore pornography is a form of pornography that features explicit sexual acts. The term was coined in the second half of the 20th century to distinguish it from softcore pornography. It usually takes the form of photographs, often displayed in magazines or on the Internet, or films. It can also...
pornographic film in an 8mm
8 mm film
8 mm film is a motion picture film format in which the filmstrip is eight millimeters wide. It exists in two main versions: the original standard 8mm film, also known as regular 8 mm or Double 8 mm, and Super 8...
loop in 1974. In 1979, he was looking for dancing jobs in Hollywood. He replied to an advertisement in the Daily Variety looking for male stripper
Stripper
A stripper is a professional erotic dancer who performs a contemporary form of striptease at strip club establishments, public exhibitions, and private engagements. Unlike in burlesque, the performer in the modern Americanized form of stripping minimizes the interaction of customer and dancer,...
s for the new Chippendales show. He performed with the group four or five nights a week for the next four years. In 1982, when he was 30, he began publishing a small pornographic magazine
Pornographic magazine
Pornographic magazines, sometimes known as adult magazines, sex magazines or top-shelf magazines are pornographic magazines that contain content of a sexual nature. Adult magazines are mainly aimed towards men, and in some parts of the world, many men's first sight of a naked woman has been in an...
on newsprint, which he called Evil Angel.
Adult film producer
Initially he had little knowledge of film making, but he made his first movie for $8,000 in 1983, Bouncing Buns, starring Stacy Donovan. For the next six years he made films for other companies to manufacture and distribute. In 1989, he started Evil Angel to sell his own films. The origin of the company's name dates back to when Stagliano was working as a stripper. "There was another guy in one of my shows named John. So this MC started calling me Evil John to differentiate us. This was when I was doing DraculaDracula
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
and chains. At the same time I had a girlfriend who called herself Angel when she did strip shows. She was a very nasty girl and I suggested that she call herself Evil Angel. She didn't, but I loved the name and wound up using it for my company."
The first Evil Angel film was Dance Fire, filmed in 1988 by Stagliano, starring himself, Trinity Loren
Trinity Loren
Trinity Loren was a porn star, model, and stripper.- Career and life :...
, Brandy Alexandre
Brandy Alexandre
Brandy Alexandre is the stage name of a former American adult actress.-Career:In 1991, she produced, directed, wrote and starred in Cheeks 5: Cop A Feel. This video received a nomination for the AVN Award for Best Director...
and others. In 1989, he produced "The Adventures of Buttman," the first in a popular series which is credited with sparking the "gonzo
Gonzo pornography
Gonzo pornography is a style of pornographic film that attempts to place the viewer directly into the scene. The name is a reference to gonzo journalism, in which the reporter is part of the event taking place...
" adult film genre. These films involved highlighting the female buttocks, with actors often licking, kissing and playfully biting the female behind. Stagliano has stated that a scene showing Tracey Adams
Tracey Adams
Tracey Adams is an American pornographic actress. She appeared in over 200 movies during the 1980s and 90s, and is a member of the AVN Hall of Fame....
' buttocks inspired him to make the Buttman series of films. The clip shows Adams on her hands and knees with her rear end stuck high in the air. "The shot only lasted a couple of seconds," says Stagliano, "but I knew then what I wanted to do." Early Stagliano productions had little to no anal sex in them and were critically acclaimed for the showcasing of his buttocks fetish
Sexual fetishism
Sexual fetishism, or erotic fetishism, is the sexual arousal a person receives from a physical object, or from a specific situation. The object or situation of interest is called the fetish, the person a fetishist who has a fetish for that object/situation. Sexual fetishism may be regarded, e.g...
. Later Buttman films included numerous anal sex
Anal sex
Anal sex is the sex act in which the penis is inserted into the anus of a sexual partner. The term can also include other sexual acts involving the anus, including pegging, anilingus , fingering, and object insertion.Common misconception describes anal sex as practiced almost exclusively by gay men...
scenes, often featuring Stagliano himself. In the 1990s, Stagliano became one of the most successful figures in American pornographic films.
He has directed series including Buttman at Nudes a Poppin'
Nudes-A-Poppin
Nudes-A-Poppin is an annual pageant for nude males and females competing in erotic dance. The pageant has been held annually since the 1970s by Ponderosa Sun Club, Roselawn, Indiana, USA and attracts over 5,000 spectators each year.-External links:***...
, Buttman Goes to Rio, Buttman's Anal Divas, Buttman's Anal Show, Buttman's Bend Over Babes, Buttman's Bend Over Brazilian Babes, Buttman's Big Butt Backdoor Babes, Buttman's Big Tit Adventure, Buttman's Butt Freak, Buttman's European Vacation, Buttman's Favorite Big Butt Babes, Face Dance and Fashionistas
Fashionistas
The Fashionistas is a 2002 pornographic film made by Evil Angel Productions. Shot on 35 mm film, it was a high-budget porn film, and is over four and a half hours long...
, as well as numerous one-off films. Stagliano also served as mentor, producer, and co-director to Tristan Taormino
Tristan Taormino
Tristan Taormino is a feminist author, columnist, sex educator, activist, editor, speaker, and pornographic film director . She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with her Bachelor's degree in American Studies from Wesleyan University in 1993...
in her video version of The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women
The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women
The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women is a book authored by Tristan Taormino. The first edition of the book came out in 1997, and the second edition was released in 2006....
.
From October 2004 through February 2008, Stagliano produced and directed a Las Vegas
Las Vegas Strip
The Las Vegas Strip is an approximately stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard in Clark County, Nevada; adjacent to, but outside the city limits of Las Vegas proper. The Strip lies within the unincorporated townships of Paradise and Winchester...
show called Fashionistas
Fashionistas
The Fashionistas is a 2002 pornographic film made by Evil Angel Productions. Shot on 35 mm film, it was a high-budget porn film, and is over four and a half hours long...
based on his porn film of the same name. In 2008, he won the 'Best Director - Video' award for Fashionistas Safado: Berlin.
Private life
Stagliano was in a relationship with pornographic actress Krysti LynnKrysti Lynn
Krysti Lynn was an American pornographic actress.Lynn began her career as a dancer and nude model. She entered the adult film industry in 1993. Soon after she began a relationship with John Stagliano, and starred in a number of his productions...
(a.k.a. Shawna Yager) during 1993. She was driving Stagliano's Acura Legend when she died on December 7, 1995, in an accident in Calabasas.
In 1997, Stagliano tested positive for HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
. To date, medication has kept the virus in check. He continues to produce adult films and still acts in non-sexual roles.
He married former porn star Tricia Devereaux
Tricia Devereaux
Tricia Devereaux is the stage name of an American former pornographic actress.Devereaux grew up "in a small town a couple hours outside of Chicago," where she had a strict upbringing and attended a private Catholic high school.She attended college in the Midwest, got her bachelor's degree in...
, who is also HIV positive, on November 26, 2008. They had previously been common-law married since 1999, and they have a daughter Isabella Joi, who was born March 3, 2001. She is HIV negative. Stagliano espouses a libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
political philosophy, and has been a significant financial contributor to the Cato Institute
Cato Institute
The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane, who remains president and CEO, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., the largest privately held...
and the Reason Foundation
Reason Foundation
The Reason Foundation is an American nonprofit think tank founded in 1978 that also publishes Reason magazine. Based in Los Angeles, Reason is self-described as nonpartisan and publishes a statement of values that can best be described as libertarian...
, both libertarian think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
s.
Pornography trial
On April 8, 2008, Evil Angel and Stagliano were indicted on federal obscenityObscenity
An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious...
charges by a federal grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
On April 14, 2008, Stagliano launched a website, DefendOurPorn.org to post articles, news, and updates regarding the court proceedings.
On July 16, 2010, a federal trial began in Washington, D.C. with Stagliano as defendant, but all charges were dismissed with the judge saying the evidence linking Stagliano to the production and distribution of two DVD videos "woefully insufficient".