Heidi Fleiss finds hard times in Nevada desert
By Bob Tourtellotte
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - It's a long trip from the lush gardens and multimillion-dollar mansions of Beverly Hills to the desert scrub brush and a broken-down home in Pahrump, Nevada, but former Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss has made it.
Whether she truly has "made it" -- in the sense of finally finding success -- is another story altogether.
Starting on Monday, documentary filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato ("The Eyes of Tammy Faye") offer HBO viewers a look into the recent life of the woman who in the mid-1990s became infamous for her arrest and trial on charges stemming from running a high-priced Hollywood call girl ring.
A decade later, Bailey and Barbato follow Fleiss as she sets out to open a legal brothel in Nevada called "Heidi's Stud Farm" that caters to women, then runs into obstacles set up by local business leaders and battles her own drug abuse.
Bailey and Barbato are quick to say Fleiss' tale was not what they thought it would be. They expected some sort of happy Hollywood ending, but found something else -- something as rough and rocky as the desert landscape itself.
"There is a kind of messiness to this film," Barbato said. "It is not wrapped up in a tidy little bow."
But there is love, added Bailey in a joint interview. "It redeems her."
Fleiss, now 42, became a media sensation following her 1993 arrest in Los Angeles on charges of running a prostitution business that catered to the rich and famous. After trials in state and federal court, Fleiss eventually spent time in prison for tax evasion. Continued...