3 Comments
Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
Published Monday, Jan. 12, 2009 | 6:35 p.m.
Updated Monday, Jan. 12, 2009 | 6:37 p.m.
John Stagliano
Sun archives
- Jan. 11 -- Annual porn convention has a political streak
- Jan. 11 -- Porn industry no longer such an early adopter
- Jan. 10 -- Techies know how to party, for charity
- Jan. 9 -- Adult expo reveals tough times for porn industry
- Jan. 8 -- ‘TiVo for porn’ a hit at Vegas adult expo
- Jan. 8 -- Porn industry feeling pain as expo hits Vegas
- Jan. 7 -- CES, porn expo sharing the Vegas stage
- Jan. 5 -- Trade shows bringing mobs to Vegas when it needs it most
Oscar Wilde once said, "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life,” -- but what if your life includes seven federal obscenity charges, the prospect of 30-plus years in jail, and $7 million in possible fines, if convicted?
If you’re adult film legend John Stagliano, you don’t waste time with hyperbole; instead, you focus on creating a poignantly political piece for the AVN Adult Movie Awards.
Stagliano has made a name for himself creating “art” that imitates life – “gonzo”-style adult films, especially – though the artistic nature of his craft has been questioned.
Is pornography art? While the iconic adult film actor/director/producer thinks so, a federal indictment stands to disagree.
The former “Fashionistas” director and one-time Chippendales performer tapped both his life and his art to assemble a dance sequence for Saturday’s awards show at Mandalay Bay.
It was the third consecutive year he was asked to produce a sexy halftime show for the event and the second time he used the AVN spotlight to stage an aesthetically pleasing protest against the government’s crackdown on adult entertainment.
“Last year’s number was brilliant,” Stagliano said from the floor of the Adult Entertainment Expo, more matter-of-fact than boastful. The expo’s four-day run in Las Vegas ended Sunday.
Like this year’s performance, the sequence he created for the 2008 AVNs was a five-minute objection to the federal government’s use of the Patriot Act to persecute adult entertainment companies and customers.
“Did we really believe them when they said they would only use these laws to prosecute terrorists?” the piece asked an arena full of porn stars, industry heavyweights and ticket-holding fans.
Stagliano created an optimistic, yet scaled-back follow-up for this year’s awards ceremony.
While one might not think porn and politics mix, the two make for strange bedfellows. The AVN awards dripped with pro-Obama sentiment.
Coincidentally, the awards were held just over a week before Barack Obama is scheduled to be sworn into office. For many porn industry insiders, Obama’s inauguration apparently can’t come fast enough.
Stagliano makes no effort to hide his political stripes.
While his 2008 AVN awards sequence dwelled on politics and controversy involving the sort of obscenity charges that Max Hardcore faced in 2007, this year’s number took a page from the Obama campaign and focused on hope.
“It’s not, like, radical or terribly innovative or whatever,” Stagliano said, joking that his inspiration “came from watching the Chicago Cubs play baseball.”
The presentation begins with “Legends in Concert” cast member and Whitney Houston impersonator Jazmine singing the national anthem. As she belts out the stars and stripes, images of George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Abu Ghraib, Haliburton, and the Iraq war punctuate the patriotism from a giant video screen above the stage.
It is a dramatic statement that champions the First Amendment and decries censorship.
The resilient 57-year-old said it wasn’t hard to recruit dancers to the show.
“Most of the dancers in this number were in my (“Fashionistas”) show,” he said. “There’s one new guy and one new girl but most of the dancers I have worked with before.”
“Fashionistas” ended its run at the Empire Ballroom last February but many former cast members took time away from their current projects – including the Pussycat Dolls, Sirens of TI and Folies Bergère – to perform at the AVNs.
Former “Fashionistas” assistant director Yanco Inone also collaborated on the awards show’s sequence.
This year’s show was produced using a scaled-back budget and doesn’t feature the aerialists that were involved in Stagliano’s previous AVN creations -- but the message remains clear.
While it’s hard to know if Stagliano’s life imitates art or if Wilde’s assertion was a more accurate perspective, it doesn’t seem to matter.
Stagliano may be facing seven federal obscenity charges, decades behind bars and bankruptcy, but he still has hope.
Using the (Un)Patriot Act to prosecute porn is obscenity in itself. Whatever your definition of porn might be, the stripping away of our Constitutional rights and protections under the guise of security is tantamount to raping the American people.
I have no confidence in the Obama administration to be much different than Bush's on this score, his views on the 2nd Amendment are not encouraging.
Thanks to the Patriot Act and overzealous prosecutors the Bill of Rights and all it stands for became irrelevant.
We should all be asking the feds what their interest in Buttman and his ilk has to do with protection us from terrorism. Keep in mind one of the first prosecutions under the Patriot Act were U.S. citizens running a child porn website. As utterly reprehensible as that "crime" may have been, what did prosecuting them have to do with protecting the rest of us from terrorists??
The basic issues here were settled 20 years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court in Larry Flynt's case. The court said "the fact that society may find speech offensive is not a sufficient reason for suppressing it. Indeed, if it is the speaker's opinion that gives offense, that consequence is a reason for according it constitutional protection."
Watch out -- those most dangerous to us are those who swore oaths to support and defend the Constitution. Because of those oaths courts and their officers have a fundamental duty to be vigilant guardians of our liberties and conduct cases accordingly. So how come they do the reverse, besides selling all us out??
In the current economic crisis where even governments are looking at ways to stick us all for more revenue it's time to cut back on funding for stupid prosecutions like this!
Bush had an interesting, albeit un-American, strategy.
First he declared that the Islamo-Fascists hated us for our freedoms.
Next, Bush uses the Patriot Act to take away the freedoms that they hated us for.
Ultimately his dastardly plan was turn to America into a Theocracy similar to Iran, except Christian instead of Muslim.
Heckuva job Bushie.
Thankfully the populace woke up and voted against more of the same neo-nuts in 2008.
Question:
If Americans are not free, can you still call it America The Beautiful?