On the heels of the discharge of the most recent Menendez brothers rehash, The Hollywood Reporter has realized that Heidi Fleiss is the subsequent sensational Nineteen Nineties information phenomenon to get the in-depth doc therapy. Sheila Nevins, the previous longtime head of HBO’s documentary programming, will produce the multipart challenge, which is ready to be helmed by Andrew Renzi, director of current non-fiction narratives about influencer-turned-boxer Jake Paul (for Netflix) and the model Von Dutch (for Hulu).
The so-called “Hollywood Madam,” despatched to federal jail for operating an upscale prostitution ring catering to the wealthy and well-known, now lives on the outskirts of a small Nevada city, the place she spends her days rescuing and rehabilitating macaws. Fleiss guarantees that, in an period of more and more anodyne display tales about celebrities which mainly serve to burnish their manufacturers, her personal story might be welcomely unfiltered. “I feel individuals are sick of the docs which might be infomercials — and I’m not an infomercial,” she tells THR. “I don’t care if somebody likes me or hates me. I’m not now making an attempt to reinvent myself or be seen as somebody I’m not. Individuals will see and listen to the reality. Some whether it is humiliating.”
Fleiss is a documentary aficionado with loads of sturdy opinions about current releases, from these she thinks are sharp and neglected — together with Inform Them You Love Me, in regards to the discredited science of facilitated communication — to those who miss the mark. (Resembling Mr. McMahon, about WWE founder Vince McMahon: “too many speaking heads, however I used to be sucked in by that bizarre cosmetic surgery.”)
Fleiss’ story has been advised earlier than — by herself within the guide Pandering; within the sprawling 2022 podcast HeidiWorld; in a cable TV film starring Jamie-Lynn Sigler (“I by no means noticed it”); and, most pertinently, a seminal feature-length cinema verite doc by the famous English director Nick Broomfield, which was launched in 1996 and chronicled how her relationships with a pair of mentors, her director boyfriend and one other madam, led to her downfall.
In 2008, HBO aired The Would-Be Madam of Crystal, about Fleiss’ failure to open a authorized brothel geared toward girls in Nevada. That’s how she met Nevins. Extra just lately, Maggie Cohn (The Staircase) had reportedly launched into a drama based mostly on her life for HBO Max, however Fleiss says there’s no deal and that challenge is useless.
Fleiss is conscious that the general public’s urge for food is now doubtless approaching its zenith for retrospections on the interval when she entered headline infamy for, as she places it, “operating an unlawful enterprise of consensual intercourse.” She contends that her personal saga could also be stuffed with intercourse however a minimum of there’s refreshingly little violence: “My story isn’t O.J., the place his spouse’s head was reduce off. There’s no penis reduce off, like with Lorena [Bobbitt]. Even with Tonya Harding, it’s brutal what she did.”
The brand new docuseries might be wide-ranging, protecting her felony case — her prosecutor was Alejandro Mayorkas, now the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Safety (“he had hair again then,” she jokes) — in addition to her struggles with drug dependancy and efforts to avoid wasting unique birds. She expects the payday for her participation within the challenge will enable her to make hoped-for enhancements on a tree-filled Las Vegas property she says she’s bought for herself and the greater than 30 macaws below her care. In accordance with Fleiss, she wants to go away unincorporated Pahrump, Nevada, partly as a result of the birds, which she permits to freely fly over the city, have been below menace from neighbors: “I’ve had individuals taking pictures them. I’ve had individuals holding onto them — a hostage scenario, just like the [Charles] Lindbergh child. I’ve needed to put on a wire; the cops had been concerned. It’s sufficient.”
Fleiss’ dedication to her macaws and efforts to fund her work with them beforehand led her right into a misbegotten association with a rich longtime male pal. She says she’d paid off the person’s prostitution money owed utilizing her personal cash in change for the promise that he’d reimburse her by contributing exponentially extra capital to her fowl sanctuary. Shortly after Fleiss first advised THR concerning the scenario, in 2019, offering detailed documentation to corroborate her declare that the pal had unjustly welched on his dedication, she recanted, declining to clarify the turnabout.
Heidi Fleiss with two of her rescued birds, Ajax (left) and Previous Man.
Courtesy of Heidi Fleiss
Now she acknowledges this pal was the Hollywood financier Steve Bing, who died by suicide the next yr. Within the days afterward, Fleiss defined to THR, “I really like telling individuals Steve Bing was my finest pal. Steve Bing is my royal flush. Try to beat it.” As we speak, she says, “he morphed into one thing slowly monstrous that was exhausting to grapple with.”
Fleiss, who famously by no means spoke about her purchasers, avows the docuseries will embody her candid reflections on the highly effective males with whom she typically crossed paths, each earlier than and after her arrest, together with Bing (“no person actually knew him, and I do know the entire story”), the Nevada brothel baron Dennis Hof and the lawbreaking worldwide financier Bernie Cornfield, who was at one level her boyfriend and mentor.
Whereas her exploits date again three many years, Fleiss believes her story is each well timed and timeless. In any case, Fleiss observes, “proper now we’re within the age of the self-invented woman boss.”