TAMPA – Joe Redner starts every day with hours of exercise at a gym that is one of the millionaire’s many businesses.
“Without fitness, I don’t think there is any life,” he says.
It’s where Redner ponders what he’d do if he ever gets the chance he dreams of. He’s run for public office six times, but he’s never won.
“If they trust me”, Redner told FOX13, “let me get my foot in, so I can show them what I can do and what kind of leader I can be,” he says.
Redner owns the Mons Venus, a world famous Tampa strip club. The business is a blessing and a curse for Redner because some won’t trust him enough to vote for him, seeing him as an evil pimp who exploits women for profit.
“The only part of that I disagree with”, Redner says, “is about I’m a bad guy. I do use sex to make a living and golly, I can’t think of any part of the media that doesn’t use sex to make a living,” he says.
Previewing the documentary, Redner says the film both flatters and embarrasses.
“It catches me at some times when I was passionate, very passionate about what I was doing, and I’m not sure it will portray an image of the real me.”
Like the famous talk show chair-throw that went around the world, after Redner and a guest got into it on a cable TV show. The man stalked off the set, throwing a chair at Redner.
“The main message of this film is don’t judge a book by its cover,” says Shelby McIntyre, the film’s director. “Everybody thinks they know Joe Redner, and let me tell you something, you don’t.”
The film recounts Redner’s humble beginnings, quitting high school to go to work for his family, and avoiding other kids.
“I was an introvert, I was afraid, I was so uncomfortable, I couldn’t ride a school bus. I had social anxiety disorder, I’m getting over it now, but I still feel it.”
Redner, after a series of jobs, ended up managing a Tampa bar, and after adding strippers, his long-running legal battles began.
Redner boasts of being arrested four times in a single day, and then suing local governments to defend his civil rights. He won six figure settlements, enough to launch a business empire that now spans everything from real estate, to a new micro-brewery he’s started with his son.
“I’ve always found”, Redner says, “if you let people do what they really want to do, they’re going to be successful,” he says.
The film premiered Friday night at Channelside Cinemas, and ends with Redner’s closest political race yet: his narrow run-off loss to City Council member Gwen Miller.
Will he run again? No one who knows the real Joe Redner has any doubts.