Heidi Fleiss, Hollywood Madam

Released 1995
Featuring: Heidi Fleiss, Ivan Nagy, Madame Alex, Victoria Sellers, Daryl Gates, Nick Broomfield, and others
Directed by Nick Broomfield

It doesn't take a genius or an expert in sociology to understand why the Heidi Fleiss scandal captured so many headlines. It had everything the public craves: sex, violence, power, and the potential to incriminate the rich and famous (although, admittedly, Charlie Sheen's career hasn't suffered as a result of his alleged connections to Fleiss). The story of the "Hollywood Madam" kept Hard Copy and other, similar shows going for months. Now, after the furor has died down, after the much-publicized nude pictures of Fleiss have appeared in a mens' magazine, and after her pandering conviction has been overturned, Nick Broomfield's muck-raking documentary, Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam, is slowly making its way across the U.S. art house circuit.

Broomfield offers everything that tabloid TV gave us, and more. Not only do we get interviews with Fleiss, her girls, her friends, her mother, her ex-lover, and her enemies, but we are presented with stuff that could never make it to television: a home video of Heidi cavorting naked while trading barbed insults with Ivan Nagy (who shot the tape), graphic descriptions of what it meant to work for Heidi, and a profane tirade by Madame Alex, the woman whom Heidi deposed.

If you like stories with unreliable narrators, Heidi Fleiss will be a source of delight. You can't trust anyone, no matter how straightforward or honest they appear to be. Ivan says one thing. Madame Alex says another. Heidi contradicts both of them. No one is credible. After all that has happened, are Heidi and Ivan still together, continuing their twisted, co-dependent relationship (as he asserts), or have they split up (as she claims)? Who's lying and who's telling the truth? For that matter, is anyone telling the truth? Do any of these people even know what truth is?

Summary by James Berardinelli