Tony Scott Takes Us to Chippendales
Oct
30
Written by:
10/30/2009 9:14 AM
Tony Scott Takes Us to Chippendales
Tony Scott (Director of such movies as Top Gun, The Last Boyscout, enemy of the state and many more) is doing a biopic film about the life of Chippendales founder Somen "Steve" Banerjee.
This is no ordinary biopic, Steve Banerjee was Bengali immigrant in the US that went from working at a Gas station to managing the Multimillion dollar Chippendales enterprise back in the 80's.
Steve Banerjee started by buying an L.A. club called Destiny II that featured female mud wrestling and exotic dancing, and his desire to expand got him to open a male strip show. The Chippendales were born. The idea was to present male dancers to upscale women in a "safe" (female-only) environment with mini-shows that presented the dancers as Police men, fire men, etc. This quickly expanded to New York, London, Hamburg, Florida and had authorized shows all over the world.
The company ran into several legal problems in the late 80's (personal injury and racial discrimination lawsuits) and disagreements between Banerjee and his partners caused bankrupcy, legal fights, a murdered partner and Banerjee charged with hiring a hit man to kill a former Chippendale dancer.
He was put in jail with a denied bail when rumors that he intended to pay $25k for a private pilot to take him back to india. He hanged himself in his cell before his sentencing.
Who needs fiction with real life stories like this !
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