John Stagliano

John Stagliano
Stagliano at the "Free Speech Coalition Awards Annual Bash Event", Los Angeles, CA, November 2009
Born	(1951-11-29) November 29, 1951 (age 65) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Other names	Buttman, John Stag, John Stagg, John Staglano, Jon Stagliano, Jon Stallion, Romeo Verdi
Spouse(s)	Tricia Devereaux (since 2008)
Website	http://www.buttman.com

John Stagliano (born November 29, 1951), also known as Buttman, is an American entrepreneur, former pornographic actor, producer and director, who founded and owns the Evil Angel pornographic film studio.

Stagliano grew up in the Chicago suburbs, and attended high school from 1965 to 1969. He enrolled in college, but dropped out in 1969 for several semesters. He then went back to college and studied subjects including English, journalism, and engineering, before transferring to UCLA to major in economics. He originally planned to get an economics PhD and become a professor. He then switched to studying theater, playwriting, modern dance and jazz dance, partly because there were more women in those classes. He is of Italian and Polish ancestry with some of his grandparents from Florence.

In the 1970s, he wrote erotic fiction for a small newspaper, and did some softcore modeling. He made his debut in a hardcore pornographic film in an 8mm loop in 1974. In 1979, he was looking for dancing jobs in Hollywood. He replied to an advertisement in the Daily Variety looking for male strippers for the new Chippendales show. He performed with the group four or five nights a week for the next four years. In 1982, when he was 30, he began publishing a small pornographic magazine on newsprint, which he called Evil Angel.

Initially he had little knowledge of film making, but he made his first movie for $8,000 in 1983, titled Bouncing Buns, starring Stacy Donovan. For the next six years he made films for other companies to manufacture and distribute. In 1989, he started Evil Angel to sell his own films. The origin of the company's name dates back to when Stagliano was working as a stripper. "There was another guy in one of my shows named John. So this MC started calling me Evil John to differentiate us. This was when I was doing Dracula and chains. At the same time I had a girlfriend who called herself Angel when she did strip shows. She was a very nasty girl and I suggested that she call herself Evil Angel. She didn't, but I loved the name and wound up using it for my company."