This morning, I had a brief phone interview with John Stagliano, who Tuesday was charged by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., with multiple counts related to "operating an obscenity distribution business."

Stagliano spoke to me against the advice of his attorney.

A little background: Stagliano is among the best-known pornographers in that industry. He is considered the founder of a genre of adult entertainment known as gonzo porn.

In recent years, his films have won him a reputation as an auteur for his epic series "The Fashionistas." The first "Fashionistas" movie, a 4 1/2-hour epic shot on film rather than video, won Stagliano more AVN awards (the adult Oscar) than any other adult film in history before.

Stagliano was so smitten with the success of  "Fashionistas" that he created a modernist dance interpretation as a Vegas production show. The Vegas show was not even topless, yet ran for more than three years and generated worshipful reviews. That is how I met Stagliano. I went behind the scenes to document the show's creation.

"Fashionistas" was a labor of love for Stagliano, mixing his lifelong dedication to modern dance, erotica and the stage into an amazing Vegas experience. But without casino support or a good location (the heterosexually oriented show performed in the gay nightclub Krave, which had no Strip access), "Fashionistas" lost a lot of money; and earlier this year Stagliano closed the show to focus on his day job.

But "Fashionistas" did have a permanent impact on the Strip. Stagliano's eye for talent proved prescient. Many of his techniques and stars were incorporated into other shows after "Fashionistas" closed. One of his leads became the star of "Le Reve" at Wynn and the other was selected by Dita Von Teese recently to be in the "Crazy Horse" show at MGM. Meanwhile, the "Fashionistas" original choreographer went on to create the "X Girls" show at the Flamingo.

But though Stagliano returned to his real job in California, he has also been planning his next Vegas show. He has learned the ropes and is planning to produce another show. This time he will match his creativity with star power to bring customers in the door that "Fashionistas" had a hard time reaching.

So we stay in touch. He is one of the most creative people I have met while covering Vegas, and I am eager for his return. But I also knew that his temporary departure from Vegas was because of challenges in his own industry, where DVD sales were vanishing in the face of downloadable adult content. Now Stagliano's challenges have grown substantially.

In addition to his own films, Stagliano's company Evil Angel is one of the largest distributors in the nation of adult titles by other directors. It is those films that form the heart of the indictment.

As long as I have known him, Stagliano has been prepared for the day the police come for him. His libertarian world view sees the government as always out to get him. I kind of always figured he was being grandiose. "The People vs. Larry Flynt" was a long time ago. For example, Stagliano also was originally worried that Las Vegas authorities would find "Fashionistas" too racy, and instead, the positive buzz meant that even family Vegas proponent Steve Wynn came down to Krave to enjoy the show.

Stagliano, though, has always felt like an outlaw no matter how successful he became. With alarming prescience at January's adult awards show, the AVN Awards at Mandalay Bay, Stagliano had his "Fashionistas" cast perform a routine he created based around the premise of the government going for people who watch naughty movies. And now, just months later, Stagliano's fear of the government turned out to be justified.

So the moment Stagliano has been expecting has suddenly arrived. Though he says he was totally unaware of any investigation of him by a grand jury, he now is facing criminal charges. The indictment's punishment: "If convicted, Stagliano faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each of the obscenity counts." That would be decades of prison time he is facing.

But when I reached Stagliano this morning he seemed upbeat: "The charges are real, and something bad could happen. But I look at the world with wonder and amusement, especially when it comes to the government. I am hoping this will result in a bump in sales for the films. It is all films I distribute and not a single one I directed. I wish my 'Fashionistas' had been chosen. The films are hard, but I have real artistic ambition. I wonder how closely they watched? I am surprised the government, with the war and the economy, has time for this."

(Photo by Sarah Gerke)

Yesterday I met with John Stagliano to discuss the future of his Vegas erotic dance revue, "Fashionistas." He confirmed that after more than three years in Vegas, the show will be closing by either the end of February or the beginning of March. 

Stagliano is best known to the world as a pornographic director and owner of the adult distribution company Evil Angel. At the AVN awards last week, he took home an AVN award for best director as one of the 18 awards that Evil Angel won. The directing award was for the final part of the "Fashionistas" trilogy that originally inspired the Vegas revue.

Stagliano's idea of a Vegas show as a modernist dance interpretation of an epic (4 1/2 hour) adult film was such an unlikely venture that I went behind the scenes to document its creation. The amazing thing to me as I reported the story and everyone in the local entertainment community was just how great "Fashionistas," the Vegas dance show, turned out to be. From the costumes to the choreography to the dark metal soundtrack, Vegas had never seen anything like "Fashionistas." In a risk-averse town, this was a show made not to please an audience but by an auteur hoping that if he made something special, people would then arrive to view his work. He did make something special, but he was wrong on the other point.

There is a reason: Vegas entertainment remains conservative. Critics like myself, my colleague Mike Weatherford at the Review-Journal and blogger Robin Leach were all blown away when "Fashionistas" opened in 2004 and wrote glowingly about what Stagliano had accomplished. We all also realized the chance of the show finding an audience in Las Vegas was slim to none.

Yet, it is safe to say the staying power of "Fashionistas" surprised all of us. The show wound up lasting more than three years, thus beating out far more costly and high-profile ventures like "Avenue Q" and "Hairspray." On the other hand, this is because none of us knew just how many millions of dollars Stagliano was willing to lose from his porn fortune to keep "Fashionistas" going in Vegas. In fact, changes in the adult industry are a major motivating factor in Stagliano's decision to pull the plug on "Fashionistas" by spring.

According to Stagliano, he let his day job suffer from his attention to the Vegas show. Not his movies (as of last week "The Fashionistas" is now the most award-winning trilogy in adult-movie history), but his company, Evil Angel.

"The industry has changed in the past few years so much because of the Internet," Stagliano says. "It has changed the volume of porn, the way porn is being manufactured and, mostly, how it is being delivered to people. And I have been too slow to adapt Evil Angel to dropping DVD sales. I hate closing the Vegas show, but I am glad we went as long as we went. If I had closed the show earlier, I would have always had questions about what would have happened if I gave it more time to find an audience. I am glad that I have had all of this time to do the show. Of course, I had no idea how much I would wind up spending to keep this going."

And Stagliano hopes he is not done in Vegas yet. He would still love to create a new show in a casino venue, having proved his talents. "I now have a team in Vegas and I hope to do more," he says.

One interesting synergy that emerged over the last couple of years was how well segments of "Fashionistas" as spectacle worked in a nightclub environment. Stagliano demonstrated this a few times by breaking off single routines from the show to present to nightclub patrons at Krave. He even brought his "Fashionistas" dance cast to the AVN awards to do a new routine (a pointed warning about the dangers of being caught by the government viewing Internet porn, as opposed to the anonymity of buying a DVD).

Stagliano gets how the theatrical vignettes of erotic dance, costume and music he does so well can fit with the nightclub scene. As Vegas nightclubs look for entertainment besides hard-drinking celebrities and Jeff Beacher's little people, they could do worse than have Stagliano's dancers heat up a crowd with wild choreography and costumes. In that environment, Stagliano's art would be less pushing the envelope and more riding the wave. After all, adult stars are already now regular hosts at Vegas nightclubs. Imagine how many would show up just to be there when the owner of Evil Angel is in the house. Then there is the  more important fact that a wild 15-minute routine like Stagliano's dance numbers can really pump up a club audience. I hope this happens, and that Vegas has not seen the last of Stagliano after "Fashionistas" closes (except for his annual January pilgrimage to collect AVN awards).

Mike Weatherford offered a view similar to mine in the Review-Journal this morning, in which he concludes: "But ... to lose Stagliano. The man may have bought his way to the Strip, but he deserves to stay on his own merits." Well said.

I have blogged before about the odd connections between libertarians and Las Vegas. In fact, Las Vegas has its own libertarian magazine with the fanciful title: Liberty Watch. I learned about the existence of Liberty Watch when it debuted, 9 issues ago,  because every editor and writer at Las Vegas Weekly began receiving it. But unlike everyone else I was invoiced for it. So, I e-mailed to point out that I had never ordered a subscription to Liberty Watch. Someone wrote back all snotty to say that either I or my assistant (I wish!!!!) certainly had ordered the subscription, but that I would be removed. Nonetheless, unwanted and unasked for, Liberty Watch still keeps coming in my mail every month like it is a request for an alumni donation. Well, finally I am glad because the December issue just came and John Stagliano is on the cover. I did a cover story on Stagliano over a year ago for Weekly when he prepared to open The Fashionistas, an erotic dance show, at the Aladdin. I went into the story thinking I was going to cover a train wreck(Stagliano had little stage experience and no Vegas history--sure recipe to mess up on every level in this market), but wound up being the first of many critics to worship at the altar of The Fashionistas. Anyway, since I know all about the Fashionistas and John's libertarian views (which I have written about on the Buffet) I wasn't expecting much from the Liberty Watch article. But it turns out the profile traces Stagliano's porno career (oh, did I mention that?), and that is an area I have never gone into specific detail with him and so the read was well worth it.   

His "Eureka!" moment, which led him to pioneer a new style of porn films is described thusly:

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.