There's an old saying that goes, "A single moment of understanding can flood a whole life with meaning." For John Stagliano, that moment in life occurred fairly early.

"I've been looking at pornography since age 11," the porn-industry mogul admits.

His father had naked women on playing cards, which Stagliano managed to find in his youth. Once, his dad stuffed a few magazines under the seat of the family car, meaning every night, young Stagliano was checking beneath the seat for more.

Stagliano's entire career has been fueled and influenced by what he witnessed and enjoyed before high school. Raised in Chicago, he experienced puberty right around 1963 when a sexual revolution was dawning. After moving west to California where he majored in economics at UCLA, Stagliano with his libertarian mindset pursued a business and revolutionized it.

"My thesis is that what's happened in the world is the art we are creating in porn," said Stagliano, now 54. "It has become more intense and more real. It has become more S&M oriented because it's really interesting to look at. This whole vehicle I helped start create has led to a different artform - or a recognition of an artform - that is more powerful and something people enjoy in a different way."

But the pursuit had its ups and downs.

Liberty Watch looks at this businessman's journey that has led him to Las Vegas, where he planted a dance revue based off his marathon porno, The Fashionistas.

By the time Stagliano reached his senior year in college, he had lost interest in economics. After all, few girls fancied that field. He completed his major, but enrolled in nearly all theater arts and modern dance classes his final year of school. While at UCLA in 1973, Stagliano became associated with the porn business. Veteran adult entertainer Bill Margold had posted an ad at the student center looking for nude models. Mostly he wanted girls, but for some reason agreed to meet Stagliano. 

Margold was editing a small-time porn newspaper, which Stagliano expressed interest in writing for. He wrote a 1,450-word story, marking his start in the industry. Stagliano performed in maybe six films - two which did well sales-wise; four that bombed. The first time he did any hard core porn was in San Francisco in 1974. Stagliano's performance was fine, he said, but he was 22 years old then. 

"To talk about my career and how it started, back in the '70s, I saw one person looking into the camera while she was having sex," Stagliano shared. "If you look at all the other pictures in this magazine, it was the one thing that stood out. It had so much more power by this woman looking at the camera and communicating to the viewer. I remembered this for the longest time and I kept it in the back of my head while I was trying to compete in making porn movies during the '80s."

While working as a Chippendale, Stagliano met someone in Margold's building who was publishing hard-core magazines on newsprint. Stagliano was interested, eventually soliciting to enter the business. The businessman agreed to consult Stagliano on how to make the publications. From '81 to '83, this became Stagliano's hobby.

While looking for something to do besides trying to be an actor and dancer, Stagliano said doing the small-time porno newspaper in 1982 was natural despite its long hours to edit and layout. Doing motion pictures was the next natural step. Fortunate for him, video would soon emerge the following year.

In 1983, Stagliano decided to exercise his contacts in the porn industry. Bobby Hollander shot some material on video in 1982 and Stagliano was quite aware of that. David House was the photographer, who met Bruce Seven on the set. Seven had shot a few bondage movies and a girl-on-girl movie, and House wanted in on a piece of the producing package. 

Since House had shot with Stagliano and done artwork on his magazine, the two had a decent relationship and eventually a business partnership, despite it being all Stagliano's money. 

The first movie, Bouncing Buns starring Stacy Donovan, was shot in July of '83. The two rented a house from Seven, who was the cameraman for part of the movie. House was also a cameraman, but while shooting the first scene, for some reason he missed the money shot. He lost confidence and told Stagliano to just pay him for his work rather than be partners. 

Five thousand dollars deeper, Stagliano developed a good relationship with Seven and sold Bouncing Buns to VCA, a company that gave him a royalty deal. Following that deal, Stagliano's first notable income came from a movie that grossed about $24,000 after he spent $8,000. 

Seven and Stagliano became partners for a while after Seven bought his own editing facility. But Seven soon left for Vivid and the several-year struggle for Stagliano began. 

Stagliano would produce a movie and then try to sell it for a $4,000 to $6,000 profit. Once VCR (which became LBO) gave him $28,000 for a movie, he began working with them quite a bit.

A problem developed after Stagliano shot "Very Dirty Dancing." Stagliano sold that movie to his foreign agent, who sold the domestic rights to Caballero. Despite earning Stagliano his first adult-movie award nomination, "Very Dirty Dancing" caused trouble as Vestron, the owner of "Dirty Dancing," didn't like the title.

Caballero and Vestron settled a deal to change the title. Caballero owed Stagliano $9,000 on two other movies he had sold, but refused to pay, claiming it was Stagliano's fault for the lawsuit despite the fact he sold "Very Dirty Dancing" to his foreign agent. 

After losing money on other films and with Caballero holding out on him, it was the summer of '88 and Stagliano decided to alter his adult-film pursuit.

Stagliano was good friends with Ed DeRue and Linda Courso who had started 4-Play together. The duo at the time was selling Loose Ends. Stagliano explained to them that he wanted to tackle all of his outstanding debt and distribute himself.

Courso offered to be his salesperson and put together a deal where she would sell a Stagliano movie once a month and another filmmaker's the next, as distribution companies need to have several movies coming out in order to be successful.

Dance Fire was his first release in December of 1988. Stagliano shot Mystic Pieces, which was financed by his foreign agent, who gave Stagliano an advance on four other movies. The foreign agent made a killing, Stagliano admits, but took a risk by advancing the money. 

With these movies, in January of 1989, Stagliano started Evil Angel. Evil Angel had a 10-foot-by-10-foot booth at the AVN show that year. Stagliano had five movies in the can and the packaging done for four of them - a good start for a young company. Most companies come in with one title and even that one isn't ready. 

Stagliano had good credit at the time, which allowed him to sink $60,000 into debt as he maxed a dozen credit cards to finish the movies. He even borrowed money from DeRue, who was hesitant, as he didn't like to loan money to friends. 

The first movie came out and sold fairly well. As the spring went on, money was coming in to the point where Stagliano was able to pay all of his credit card bills and pay back DeRue. After shooting a few more movies, Stagliano worked on an idea of eliminating crew members. 

"I wanted to use fewer and fewer people," Stagliano said.

Since he was using Betacam, which had a microphone mounted to it, he didn't need anyone to work sound. Since he edited video, he became experienced enough to use the view-finder versus a monitor that another crew member had to watch. Plus, he became experienced enough to know when he had a shot and when didn't. The fewer crew members Stagliano had, the more intimate he became with his actors.

Stagliano's influence on the porn industry began that same year. In an era when filmmakers would not abandon the idea that porn had to be scripted, Stagliano threw away the terrible scripts and began to talk to his female actors from behind the camera. For Stagliano, the camera personalized the movie and became part of the scene rather than a removed object where he's trying to tell a story yet not acknowledge the camera. This allowed each scene to become independent versus a horrible storyline from beginning to end.

"This first movie that I did where instead of having two people walk in a room and have sex, I had a guy going around and looking at a girl and pointing the camera right into her face. She would have sex and relate to me or the camera," Stagliano explained. "There was this other level of entertainment people could get because they felt more of a personal connection with that person."

If a filmmaker is going to manipulate a female character to fit into some ridiculous storyline, then the movie isn't going to offer the best sex scene, the best tease, the best wardrobe or the best build-up. To Stagliano, it's much easier to shoot only one scene in a day and be totally into the scene. In the '80s the formula was much different. You have to shoot the whole thing in a day or two, with five sex scenes in a day.

"Now you recognize there is a camera there, so you are doing a movie that has more of a real feel to it," Stagliano said. "The important thing is to look into the camera and communicate with the audience better."

This was also the era when the Buttman character spawned. Buttman, Stagliano's fixture nickname, stems from the character in The Adventures of Buttman, first released in September 1989. The idea was actually a cheap one to keep his company afloat. Batman came out the same month that Stagliano was shooting and a colleague suggested he call himself Buttman. Today, he's stuck with it.

Stagliano was shooting masturbation films at the time. He would set up a scene on the beach as if he was approaching a random woman. On one shoot, Stagliano set up the camera to film him having sex with his character. The camera fell over while he was talking to it, but he was experienced enough to know he could still use the material.

"Having edited all of my movies was significant to my development as a pornographer; I learned a lot about my abilities and my flaws," he said. "Seeing the camera turn over like that and realizing I could use it was intriguing. It just so happened that it came about at the same time I wanted to do the buns fetish movie."

Another way that Stagliano influenced the porn industry was by playing with more interracial scenes, as the concept was more of a fetish then. He also introduced "gang bangs." For porn fans today, it may be difficult to understand how instrumental this was for the late '80s, early '90s. The concept never took off until the mid-'90s. Stagliano liked the title because he knew it would sell. Plus, he wanted to see four or five guys with one girl. No one was doing that.

The breakout movie for Stagliano, though, was Ultimate Workout. It won several awards, including the Best Group Sex Scene which no one can see any longer because Alexandria Quinn was only 17 years old. 

Throughout his career, Stagliano has proved to be a risk-taker - from breaking the '80s porn standards to introducing transsexual scenes in more recent material. As he put it, "To me, taking chances is the fun part."

Those chances may have caught up with him in 1997, the year he was infected with HIV. A few weeks after finding out he was positive, he was declared non-detectable, meaning the best DNA tests available cannot detect the virus.

Since being infected, Stagliano has previously told reporters that his sex life has diminished - and has oddly helped his career. It's become more visual, as is the case in his recent venture in Las Vegas, The Fashionistas at the Aladdin hotel-casino.

Now Vegas show producer and director, Stagliano transformed his more than four-hour porn picture epic, The Fashionistas, into a dance revue. But getting attention from a property to host the show was challenging. There was the stint on the reality show that bombed, The Casino. Producers of the show were more interested in setting up an uncomfortable scene with Stagliano and the owners of the Golden Nugget than they were interested in hearing the pitch. Paris passed, as did the Venetian and Stratosphere.

His solution was to buy a majority of the shares in Krave, a nightclub geared toward the "alternative" crowd outside the Aladdin hotel-casino. While Stagliano always enjoyed having his fingerprints all over each and every project, he had to give up some of that authority to be partners in, well, a Vegas nightclub.

He's contended the venture was not about making money. It's just that he's always wanted to do a dance production - an ambition from his days trying to make it as a dancer and actor. Meshing the ambition with his porn career seemed appropriate.

"When I was writing the script for Fashionistas, I read a book called the Art of Fiction," Stagliano said. "One of the things the author talks about is if you want to tell a story and communicate well with your audience, pick conflicts and situations in you characters' lives that are extreme. She said pick the most difficult and stressful situation you can put your character in and make your point. Don't make a bland one, make a stressful one."

The attempt to open his show came with stresses of its own - several delays thanks to staging, lighting and a slew of other issues, including Stagliano's nature for perfection and putting on an overwhelming production. There are 20 dancers in an area that can only hold 300 people. 

For those unfamiliar with the movie, the plot seems pretty obscure. Regardless, it's about a successful fashion designer (perhaps a successful pornographer) who wants to express his artistic side in his work more (perhaps a Vegas dance revue). Trimmed with lots of sex, two business partners compete for the attention of the man, who is most interested in making his work flawless.

Aside from a recent libertarian convention, the show hasn't witnessed many sell-out crowds. However, media reviews rave about the show, a rarity for Vegas adult entertainment. Plus, the production just celebrated its first anniversary in October. This indicates one of two things: Either the show is doing better than some might suspect, or Stagliano is ignoring the financial consequences of pursuing an undeterred dream.

Stagliano has always asserted that porn is an artform that has barely begun. To him, great production with great erotic ideas has hardly been touched because great movie makers are making movies about other things. 

In a business laced with slime, Stagliano's reputation and business has continued to thrive. For this libertarian, now a Vegas show producer and porn industry legend, he's just shooting what he loves and has found a large audience who likes his material.

"In Fashionistas, I use a very extreme pornographic image, but it was more bland than what we did in the movie," Stagliano said. "There is a seduction image in my show and that image is extreme; it is people pushing themselves, and people saying, 'OK, my life is not just going to be average and bland, but it is going to go further.' 

"I mentioned the idea that you have to put your character in a stressful situation; that is why stronger porno is on the appeal," Stagliano continued. "Instead of filming people having normal easy sex, we are really familiar with that. What is really interesting to people is to go further. As an artform, I think this is something that is going to grow in terms of being acceptable. The power to help people enjoy their lives is something that is controversial right now.

"That's what I am here to do," he concluded. "This is a lot more interesting and I am still exploring ideas." LW