Everything was bigger in the ’80s.
The greed. The hair. The shoulder pads. The himbos.
The Me Decade was all about proving you had enough cash to provide you with leisure time, and the fads it introduced are aptly era-specific to a tone set by the excesses of A.L.F., Xanadu, and American Psycho. Dad frequented the sports bar, Mom had her aerobics classes, and the kids played Laser Tag at the video arcade.
Even the strip club became a legitimate business venture in Reagan America. Gone were the days of low-rent joints with seedy-looking women doing the Pony while having the DTs and just-out-of-the-joint ex-con rough trade shimmying to sleazy disco tracks; the men had their upscale gentlemen’s clubs where doctors, brokers, and lawyers could take in the buffet as they scoped out single mothers, dental hygiene students, and touring porn stars on the pole.
Whither the variation targeted at the female demographic?
The answer made its debut in the form of the All-Male Chippendales Revue, featuring not only a cast of oiled-to-a-haze studs, but a moniker unintentionally derived from a glossy-finished cabinet and the gay Disney chipmunk couple — suggesting that, like Playgirl before it, the brand was courting one hard-to-get audience while ignoring an obvious built-in one.
The aesthetic was the antithesis of of the type of vibe you’d encounter at a girlie show; in place of a dark ambiance with a leering raincoat crowd, the ladies instead got a splashy air of showmanship — with a cheesily “romantic” overtone and plenty of torso-swiveling by the boys under the guise of rugged macho icons — where they could celebrate bachelorette parties, birthdays, promotions, and finalized divorces.
It was the brainchild of Indian emigre Somen Banerjee, a fail-forward type of entrepreneur who stumbled upon a goldmine inspiration, namely, reeling in a high-class clientele of women by hiring an assortment of rhythmically-adept sides of beef who would otherwise be dabbling in swimsuit modeling, porn, escorting, personal training, beefcake calendars, and pool boy duty.
With investment partners Paul Snider and Bruce Nahin at the helm with him, Banerjee debuted the act in L.A. in the early ’80s, soon expanding to national and finally international proportions, bringing in an assload of profit into the revue’s collective G-string. Pop culture reflected the trend of the upmarket male money maker shaker, with Christopher Atkins in A Night In Heaven, Ken Olandt in Summer School, Brett Baxter Clark (as Nick The Dick) in Bachelor Party, and Ladykillers — hands-down the greatest TV movie… ever! — all responsible for turning ’80s kids gay.
Banerjee may have been the idea man, but he needed a strong creative presence in the mix, and that’s where choreographer Steve Merrit and producer Mark Donnelly entered. The pair created the theme and trained the guys to keep up with the rigors of an-oft grueling touring schedule. The money was rolling in, and with more money comes more problems, the venture soon derailing into the all-male spin on The Sopranos corruption-bogged Bada Bing! club, with personal beefs and venal grasping for control throwing some serious wrenches into the gears.
Banerjee had achieved his American Dream, and ultimately proved frightfully protective in ensuring that nothing got in his way of keeping it. His malfeasance ran the gamut from code violations and personal injury lawsuits to bankruptcy and outright thuggish dirty dealings. Banerjee had a nasty penchant for literally burning down the house when it came to competing venues that might cut in on his turf (there were two early-’80s business torchings he was widely thought to have a hand in), and the gays — stupid gays — filing law suits because they were barred from entering at the door by bouncers who encouraged a bitches-only environment left him tied up in costly court battles.
It really hit the fan by 1987, when Nick DeNoia, the choreographer successor to Merrit and Donnelly, had begun to edge Banerjee out in the stud-wrangling department, his handling of the wildly-successful tours proving to be the wellspring while Banerjee’s L.A. club languished under debt and debacle. DeNoia bought it — as in bought the farm — that spring with a bullet to the head in the Big Apple, Banerjee a convenient coast away and able to buy up DeNoia’s touring rights from his family after his untimely demise.
Banerjee’s habit of laying off business partners with a hollow point pink slip kicked into overdrive by the dawn of the ’90s. Not only were rival acts with similar selling points popping up, but his own talent was jumping ship in order to set sail for loftier climbs of their own. The new chief nemesis was choreographer Mike Fullington, who along with a pair of turncoat dancers from the Chip’s line-up, was upstaging him with their own act, the fittingly-dubbed Adonis.
Banerjee figured three more chalk out lines to the pile were no big deal, and the sluts had it coming, so he promptly put a contract out on all three men in 1991. His plot was undone, however, by a hit man turned FBI stoolie who spilled to the Feds to save his own ass, agreeing to nab Banerjee on tape in Zurich sealing the deal.
Johnny Law made his move in 1993, and Banerjee was arrested and charged for the attempted murders of Fullington et al., as well as the execution of DeNoia five years after the fact, plus racketeering, arson, and being an unrepentant sick fuck.
Staring down thirty years in the klink even with a plea bargain and the forfeiture of his ownership of the Chips, Banerjee told the world to suck it hard, catching the last train to Deadsville in his prison cell the early a.m. of 1994. His ticket out: a bed sheet noose and one last gasp.
Any epic American rise from the gutter and fall into the grave deserves the movie treatment, and so Banerjee’s infamy/folly as a guy who had it all but couldn’t hold on to it, like the enterprise that was his baby, lives on in his absence.
The whole tawdry affair was adapted in typically trashy telefilm style in 2000 with The Chippendales Murder starring Lost dish Naveen Andrews as Banerjee and featuring frequent Nightcharm fave Victor Webster doing what he does best(left). It got the indie movie treatment the following year in the form of Just Can’t Get Enough — with gyrating J.P. Pitoc — and now an as-yet-untitled third take is slated for a 2012 production date. Marcus Patrick is already greased for action (below).
Whether this will be a snooze along the lines of 54 or the Showgirls spin-off of our dreams is up for grabs, but if this isn’t the project to launch (or re-launch?) the careers of the Shawty its ur booty prick-baiters, Adam the Banana Deep-throating Soldier, and the bionic douches from B4-4, then what is?
