Strippers: The Naked Stages

Nobody understands better than HBO the sheer incongruity of getting a personal and unvarnished look behind the scenes of real women paid to be varnished, impersonal, and ethereal. And, no one else has mastered the craft of paying for quality documentary filmmaking by including just enough of the bodacious and the titillating to find a secondary audience of men who love to watch-without-listening the very exploitation being exposed. It's a tightrope most filmmakers would be too afraid to go near. Nevertheless, The Naked Stages is just one of a series of these documentaries that has earned critical praise for solid documentary exposition and insights whilst proving to be commercially viable as well.

In terms of substance, The Naked Stages delivers the goods. It provides us with insights we'd never get otherwise of all aspects of the lives these women lead, the impact of age on beauty, and the lengths traveled by aging stars addicted to the adoration of losers.

Given the well-known nature of The Naked Stages as the standard that helped define this specialty genre, I am shocked to find that this is the first review submitted for posting and in the six years that this has aired, that there are fewer than one dozen comments on it.

Finally, I just reviewed a similarly themed fictional and independent film called "Nothing Really Happens: Memories of Aging Strippers." If you appreciated The Naked Stages, this is a movie I would highly recommend watching.