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Does Hollywood get it right?

"The Chippendales Murder"  

A stripping story

November 6, 2000
Web posted at: 6:07 p.m. EST (2307 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- In Hollywood, male strippers are hot stuff. The hit movie, "The Full Monty" (1997), was recently reborn as a Broadway musical. And this week, USA Network is offering a sexy TV movie called, "The Chippendales Murder," the story of how lust for power led the founder of Chippendales into a downward spiral of blackmail, arson and murder.

It seems like there's lots to show and tell about the stripping industry. Male exotic dancing got its big break in the early '80s when the first Chippendales opened in Los Angeles. Today, there are similar clubs across the country and around the globe.

New York City's Hunkmania is finding success mixing scantily-clad men with screaming women. To get a glimse into the real business, we talked to three strippers at the Manhattan hot spot about keeping the body buff and being in the buff.

Jessie
Jessie
Stripping for 7 years
 
Dylan
Dylan
Stripping for 6 years
 
Armando
Armando
Stripping for 10 years
 

CNN: Do you feel good about what you guys do?

Jessie: I feel great about what we do. I call our show a Broadway show with muscles. It's very classy, very tastefully done. We take a lot of pride in what we do, what we say -- it's very important.

Armando: But it's a show; it is a show. We don't just go out there and take our clothes off -- we make it an art form. It's dancing; it involves a lot of dancing, a lot of theatre, a lot of acting.

Jessie: Most important -- personality. It's extremely important. We could have the best looking guy with an incredible body coming into our show ... we could look at him, he could look great. If he speaks and he's very self-centered, if he doesn't have the right attitude or right personality, forget about it.

Armando: You have to remember, it's about the women. You need to be able to be friendly -- a lot of times the women are drunk and they don't know what they're doing so you need to have a high tolerance level to deal with that situation.

Jessie: But we love you, we love you women. Keep coming back -- we love you.

CNN: Do you like it when there are films made about you and your profession?

Jessie: If it's tastefully done we do ... If we see a movie that puts us down, that's an insult to us because all of us are very classy people. We take a lot of pride in our show.

Armando: As long as the movie is a positive movie, and it's good. Unfortunately, that's not always the case.

CNN: Isn't it hard to stay in shape?

Jessie: We're so used to it -- it's a lifestyle. I don't even call it a diet. I call it just a way of living -- eating healthy -- just a way of living.

  SCHEDULE
'The Chippendales Murder' airs Tuesday, November 7 at 9:00 p.m. ET on USA Network
 

Dylan: It definitely helps to know that you have to take your clothes off every night in front of people. If you could go a couple of months knowing that you wouldn't have to take your clothes off, I could see how you could slip. But when you're doing it every night, it kind of keeps you in check.

Armando: But you have a choice, you know. The choice is to feel good -- if you want to feel good about yourself, that you do this type of work, you need to do the right thing and that is lower your carbs and lower your fat.

CNN: Do you feel like you're fighting stigmas a lot of the time? When you tell people what you do, they make assumptions about you?

Dylan: (nods head) This (CNN interview) helps because when the public sees it and accepts this as a real job or something, when you tell people -- they'll accept you as a real person, not just what people think of strippers or whatever the stigma we have.

Jessie: I'm very proud of what we do and I love it ... I really believe our show is the best in the world and I'm very proud of it. I feel like we have the best looking, best built, most talented guys -- men that work for us. I'm very proud of it.



RELATED STORIES:
Lawmaker in huff over Buffaloans in the buff
June 23, 2000
'The Full Monty' musical prepares for New York
June 19, 2000

RELATED SITE:
USA Network: The Chippendales Murder

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