Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam

This is an odd documentary because, as a previous reviewer said here, you don't want to watch but you do. You're drawn in by director Nick Broomfield's smooth and ever-so-earnest British-style interviewing techniques while forgetting that he's talking to extremely unpleasant and even odious people (including Heidi Fleiss herself).

This Hollywood madam was apparently at the top of the heap in her 'profession,' and it's a tribute to her manipulative skills (I guess) that she was able to do it. She must also be a terrific actor: she looks at times like a wounded little girl, so it's hard to imagine how she was able to reach the 'top,' if that's the word. That's one of the keys to this woman's character, it seems to me: she is such a sleazy opportunist that she seems capable of talking herself into, or out of, anything. If this is true (and the evidence in this film would indicate that), how or why would we believe ANYTHING she says, including her more-or-less 'confessional' at the end? This is a hard-core, professional liar at work.

Fleiss is just one of a cast of people in this film who deliberately and systematically deceive each other, so much so that they have lost touch with what is, or isn't, truth. They no longer know where the line of truth is, and their own glaring self-deception is evident in Broomfield's camera.

You're left quite exhausted by the talking heads, and you realize that the documentary has little redeeming value -- we don't know anything more about who these characters REALLY ARE than when the film started.

In short, everyone is lying here, everyone is driving the viewer down a very convoluted series of rhetorical streets, everyone is playing that famous 'blame game'. What this film needs is some kind of resolution, some denouement. We don't get one, but we still watch. It's interesting to observe ourselves being manipulated by professional liars, and also interesting to see that director Broomfield emerges as a pretty nifty manipulator himself.

Nick Broomfield often pokes his camera in places many would rather he not venture. The liars, and occasionally, people telling the truth, in his films are like those pilots having dogfights in old war movies. Who will shoot down who first?

My summary refers to the entertainment industry that always has and always will have an arm which reaches out for prostitutes' services. In the old days, rich men could buy sex and expect a certain discretion came along with the carnal for hire agreements. Now, any woman who claims she was Eldrick Woods' mistress or a hooker he dallied with is thrust into the spotlight by a tabloid juggernaut that needs constant angles on the latest scandal. Whether or not there is a scintilla of truth doesn't really stop the steamroller from flattening ethics in journalism to a ridiculous non standard of rumour and outright fabrication. Where are you when we need you, Walter Cronkite?

Broomfield interviews many here and most of them have their hand out, wanting money to speak. Heidi comes across as the most likable person you could meet in this sleazy crowd. The ultimate scum is her former boyfriend, Ivan, who delights in proving how he can manipulate her anytime he wants. If anyone should have gone to jail, it really should have been this obnoxious fool.

Prostitution is here to stay. Decriminalizing it and making sure the health of both workers and their clients are sound is much more important than some "crimes" which have been foolishly prosecuted by overzealous DAs and harshly sentenced in the US. The persecution of sex workers of legal age and other felonies, like non violent marijuana offences, are clogging up the courts and jails/prisons. Throw the book at those who force underage boys and girls into selling themselves and those who commit rape on the internet. Let the Heidis of the world peddle sex and their customers buy it. And pay taxes too!

It's hard not to enjoy Heidi Fleiss, a work clearly superior to rote television sensationalism. Never fear, sensationalism is present in abundance and obviously drives the movie. Broomfield hops from madam to druggie to porn-star with gleeful excess, intent on shocking and disgusting as much as possible within the confines of broadcast-quality material. However, he tends to show us a little more, material that run of the mill documentarians wouldn't show. We see, for example, LA Chief of Police Daryl Gates accepting a surprisingly large sum of money for his appearance in the film, apparently unconcerned that he's being filmed doing so. Before interviewing a former porn actress about her connections with Heidi, he establishes the fact that she's appearing to get some quick cash to fund her drug habit. Bloomfield's obvious mean-spirited approach to each and every character - with the blatant exception of the fetishized Fleiss - leaves no room for casual viewer identification. Broomfield himself constantly appears to add to the sense that none of these people, including the filmmaker, spends their time doing kind, humane things. The two people suggested as major influences on Fleiss's road to ruin would make an ideal harpie and Cyclops. Elderly Madam Alex, who died shortly after her scenes were shot, gossips rampantly for two visits but starts cursing Broomfield out when he refuses to pay for follow-up visits. Possibly not entirely evil Ivan Nagy, writer/director of a number of unimpressive features, does all he can to convince Broomfield's cameraman (when Broomfield's not having any of it) that he's just a good guy and could never have done all the things proven to be true about him. Victoria Sellers - Peter and Britt Ekland's daughter - grants Broomfield an interview right out of rehab, clearly at the end of her rope. Conceptually, this all would be difficult to absorb due to the daunting amount of pain all these people are going for, but Broomfield's nasty spirit finds a way to make it all fun. Always welcome porn star Ron Jeremy appears in a sleazy hotel room.

Intrepid documentarian Nick Broomfield looks to uncover the real story behind the notorious Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss in this fascinating, repellent film.

Broomfield is, as usual, totally fearless, and uses his oh-so upright British bearing ("I'm doing a piece for the BBC")to mask the fact that he's a complete gutter-crawling slimebag, able to hold court with the sleaziest characters imaginable. At first, Fleiss won't grant Broomfield an interview (she is arrested for violating her probation shortly after he arrives in Los Angeles) so he pursues her friends and associates with tunnel-vision tenaciousness.

All the neon slime is on display here: pimps, hookers, adult film stars, drug dealers, crooked cops, shady figures of all shapes and sizes. Broomfield goes after them all without fear.

The two people he spends the most time with are Madam Alex, a creepy old-world crone from Hungary who controlled the Hollywood flesh trade before Heidi stole it from her, and Ivan Nagy, a smiling, brutish pimp-drug-dealer-movie-director (also Hungarian) and Heidi's ex-boyfriend who also (supposedly) was the one who narc'd on her to the police. The two spend their time on camera telling wild, half-baked stories and making accusations against each other that criss-cross and contradict so often that eventually it becomes clear that they ARE ALL lying to some degree.

Fleiss does finally give Broomfield an interview and she comes off quite well. Intelligent, lively, and a keen observer of human nature, she clearly is no dunce, although its tough to believe she could actually go toe-to-toe with either Nagy or Alex.

In the end, because he's on screen so much and is such a persistent presence, "Hollywood Madam" is more about Broomfield and his relentless desire to get at the truth than anything. At times, one can only marvel at the audacity of this guy: whether badgering known drug-dealers and pimps until they all but plead with him to GO AWAY, or making what amounts to crank calls to an underworld enforcer (and possible ex-Moussad hit man) Broomfield walks through it all with a zeal it is hard not to admire.

I felt so trashy while watching Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madame, yet it was so engrossing I just couldn't help continuing on. It's an expose of a woman who ran a high class prostitution ring in LA in the early 90s. Nick Broomfield interviews his subjects (call girls, the director of Starsky & Hutch, an elderly madame who looks and acts exactly like the Egg Lady in Pink Flamginos, a gruff voice on the phone belonging to "Cookie" the bodyguard, and eventually Heidi herself) again and again, eventually trapping them all in a web of lies. It's impossible to figure out who is telling the truth, if the people involved are just having a chuckle at Broomfield's expense, or if they're all so wigged out on coke that they legitimately have no idea what is going on.

In exchange for interviews, Broomfield actually hands his subjects huge wads of cash on camera, so at first he seems like the sucker (or, oddly, like he's applying the prostitute/john relationship to the structure of his documentary), but really he's buying a career move while they're just making themselves look silly. Overall I think Broomfield had the last laugh by exposing how absolutely ludicrous some of these Hollywood types are.

Broomfield is a shameless sensationalist, but he certainly knows how to bring out the hilarity and surreal nature of otherwise serious subjects.