Las Vegas- For years, producers of Las Vegas topless revues have offered more sizzle than steak, you might say, with advertising that’s more provocative than their actual product.
John Stagliano may have the opposite problem of trying to tone down expectations for “The Fashionistas” when it opens next month. That’s because he’s a famous porn video producer, and the show is a spinoff from a 4 1/2-hour hard-core movie that swept the Adult Video News Awards in ceremonies on the Strip last year.
“My lawyer wants the county to look at the show before it opens just to make sure we don’t have any problems, but there’s really nothing racier in it than anything else in Vegas,” Stagliano says of the show he hopes to open the weekend of Sept. 10, in the Desert Passage mall nightclub formerly occupied by the Ibiza and Blue Note.
Stagliano says his show will display less skin than the MGM Grand’s “La Femme,” but will have a more intense impact because of “the ideas and the content.”
“The Fashionistas” will have only a few lines of dialogue, but will use rear-screen video and “the feeling of the songs” in the soundtrack — with songs by Evanescence, Lords of Acid and Tool — to tell the movie’s story of a young woman in the fashion industry becoming entangled in a love triangle with her female boss and a famous male designer.
Stagliano’s movie is one of the top-renting titles in a video industry that’s bigger than most of us will own up to. Beyond whatever synergy that comes from ticket-buyers familiar with the movie, “I believe the show could stand on its own” for people who have never heard of the movie, he says.
The producer says he checked out the topless shows on the Strip a couple of years ago, and “saw the tools were available to do a really interesting show in Las Vegas.” He was impressed that Las Vegas producers can use any recorded source music they want, without the filmmaker’s headache of licensing. And the better-trained dancers were “more familiar with doing the erotic-type stuff” than back in the old days when there was a big difference between a “showgirl” and a “dancer.”
“Where I think I can complete in Vegas is with the quality of the ideas in the show,” he says.
The nightclub will reopen with the new name Krave, positioning itself for an “alternative lifestyles” niche to avoid direct competition with the casino-financed nightspots. …