Joe Manganiello on Male Stripper Doc ‘La Bare,’ ‘Magic Mike’ Sequel

Variety: Joe Manganiello went from playing Big Dick Richie in 2012′s “Magic Mike” to directing “La Bare,” a documentary about a group of male strippers in Dallas. This might sound like the setup for a joke, but Manganiello is serious. A classically trained actor who studied Shakespeare and Ibsen at Carnegie Mellon University, Manganiello got his big break as the shirtless werewolf on HBO’s “True Blood.” He’s always harbored directing ambitions, and when he stumbled on the Texas strip club while researching “Magic Mike,” he started to think about making his own film. Manganiello financed the documentary himself (the budget was in the six figures), and shot it in eight days with the help of his brother Nick.