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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.
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[11/08/99]

Nothing Personal
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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.
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Rogues' Gallery
Steppin' in it. Woof!
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[11/06/99]

Nothing Personal
Meet the fundits
At the Funniest Celebrity in Washington contest, pundits and pols kick out the phat comedy jams ...
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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]

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Cradling a video camera in his hands, he sidles up to a curvy brunet and fumbles for a pick-up line. Gazing into the lens, the woman seems flustered at first, then amused, then -- lo and behold -- flattered. She follows him to a hotel room, and within minutes she is standing on a coffee table, peeling off her dress. A man knocks on the door and eventually there is a whole lot of naked writhing on a white couch.

Stagliano shoots. Stagliano scores.

Or so it seems. The interlude looks like the world's raunchiest home video, but it's a scene from "Buttman Confidential," one of the year's bestselling skin flicks. The woman, it turns out, is a Hungarian porn starlet, earning $1,100 for her troubles. And though Stagliano is posing as a bold tourist with a powerful zoom lens, this one-time economics student and self-described pervert is something else entirely. He is the man who almost single-handedly revolutionized the $5 billion-a-year pornographic movie market.

"The biggest compliment I ever get is 'How did you get that girl back to the house?'" says Stagliano (the g is silent), pausing a cassette of "Confidential" in his porn-covered office in Van Nuys, Calif. "If I can plant that doubt in someone's head, that means I've accomplished my goal."

In the 10 years since Stagliano introduced "Buttman," his tushy-obsessed alter ego, he has become a one-man dirty movie powerhouse and, depending on whom you ask, either the scourge or savior of an unabashedly sordid business. His radical innovation: Ditch the scripts, fancy scenery and stock characters, like the lucky plumber and the raise-seeking secretary. Instead, improvise the dialogue and stage a pseudo-documentary.

It's the "Blair Witch Project" concept, only Stagliano aims for erotic heat rather than scares. Whether he hits his target is a matter of taste; suffice it to say, Cannes won't honor his oeuvre any time soon. But he proved that anyone willing to max out some credit cards can nab a sliver of the adult film pie. For pornographers, nothing has been the same since. "After Stagliano showed up, every guy with a video camera started making adult movies," says Bryn Pryor, managing editor of Adult Video News. "There's been an explosion."

That explosion has unalterably changed the arithmetic of the pornography racket, which Americans have quietly turned into a financial juggernaut. Since the debut of "The Adventures of Buttman" in 1989, the number of adult videos released annually has quintupled to nearly 9,000 -- roughly 160 new releases each and every week. More than half of the films mimic Stagliano's sin-ema vérité, christened "Gonzo."

That's a nightmare for the handful of companies sticking to Hollywood-style niceties, like plots, and spending more than 10 times as much as their Gonzo rivals to produce upscale titles such as "Interview With a Vibrator" and "Edward Penishands." These are corporations, two of them publicly traded, run by executives trying to mainstream a decidedly un-mainstream product. They watch the stock market, not the Spice Channel. Recently, they hired a Washington lobbyist. Gonzo has gotten on their nerves.

Stagliano, however, is a hero to the nation's independent video stores, which love the plunge in prices he spurred and which rely on their curtained-off adult sections to compete against Blockbuster. And Gonzo has rained small fortunes on dozens of schlemiels who watched Stagliano movies and figured, heck, if that guy can do it ...

In Jacuzzis and rented rooms throughout the San Fernando Valley -- a collection of strip-mall hamlets and the epicenter of the nation's hardcore industry -- the parvenus of porn are turning amateur orgies into gold.

"I usually shoot at my house, but we can do it anywhere," says Adam Glasser, one of Stagliano's most successful imitators and a man best known to his fans as Seymore Butts. "This is Mexico," he says, pointing to a copy of a movie titled "Tushy Con Carne."

An Italian-looking version of comedian Tim Allen, Stagliano could easily pass for an insurance agent if he wore a suit and tie, which is very unlikely. He's 47 years old, single and childless. By adult film standards, he is a mogul. Evil Angel, the production company he founded in 1989, grosses about $7 million annually, $1 million of which he pockets in take-home pay. He employs 23 people in a 12,000-square-foot office, home to a mini porn empire, complete with an Internet department, a Buttman magazine staff and a video duplication lab with 440 VCRs.

Evil Angel's first floor is dentist-office bland. A middle-aged receptionist and a few copies of Parenting magazine sitting on a coffee table greet visitors. Climb a flight of stairs and the place starts looking like a very smutty college newspaper. Stagliano's office is covered with lewd photos and Adult Video News plaques, porn's answer to the Oscars. "They never give me the award for editing," Stagliano says, bitterly eyeing the plaques as he offers me a seat. "They don't understand editing."

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