LIZ: As the executive producer of world famous documentaries seen on HBO, why in the world did you choose a madam for your subject on television? And I am talking about Heidi Fleiss.
SHEILA: I had always been a fan of Nick
Broomfield’s documentary on Heidi, which is now about ten years old.
But I always wondered what happened to Heidi and I decided to find out.
So I tracked her down to a lingerie shop in downtown Hollywood and
that’s where I met Heidi about two or two-and-a-half years ago. She was
fascinating. I never met a creature like that before. I never met
anybody who was so wicked and at the same time wise.
LIZ: Yeah.
SHEILA: I thought if you were a bad girl, you’re bad all over. And if you were a business woman or a smart girl, you were smart all over. And I had never seen a contrast like Heidi. There are so many facets of her character and I identified with her also as a woman. And I wanted to find out about her. I wanted to know where she was at.
LIZ: My very vague remembrance is that my heart sort of went out to her and I felt I was on her side. I’m not much for seeing people put in jail for prostitution. And then she would not reveal the names of the men in her little black book.
SHEILA: Never has. It’s a kind of prostitution McCarthyism in the sense that she wouldn’t give names. And won’t. And doesn’t.
LIZ: OK. So let’s establish for people who don’t know about Heidi Fleiss, that in 1993 she went to prison on charges of money laundering, tax evasion, drug possession. And they gave her a term of 37 months. Am I correct in that?
SHEILA: That’s correct. Of which she served three years.
LIZ: They didn’t specifically charge her with prostitution …
SHEILA: Right.
LIZ: … though prostitution is illegal in California, isn’t it?
SHEILA: Yes.
LIZ: But it’s not illegal in Nevada?
SHEILA: Nope.
LIZ: OK.
SHEILA: Which is where Heidi now lives. She lives in Nevada
LIZ: Sheila, let me just ask you a hypothetical. Why do they always punish prostitutes and they very seldom punish the johns, or the men, who are doing business with them, Mr. Ordinary Joe? And, except for the governor of New York State, Eliot Spitzer, who seems like he came off worse than the women accusing him, why do they do this? Why do men escape the opprobrium of prostitution, since men are the purchasers of prostitution?
SHEILA: I don’t really know why. My heart went out to her, like you said — that thing about your heart going out to Heidi. Yet she’s not bitter. She’s, unfortunately, drugged a lot of the time. She uses substances and she admits it in the film. And she really needs to be rehabilitated. But some of my best friends have that problem. I mean, there was Heidi the sober woman in a nice Armani suit talking about business and doing things; and then there was Heidi the drug addict. And then there was Heidi the environmentalist and the bird lover.
LILY: That whole bird metaphor was just so incredible.
LIZ: We need to explain the birds.
SHEILA: Go ahead and do it.
LIZ: Heidi moves to Nevada and she buys property next to a very old lady, who is described as a madam. And the old lady collects these rare, fabulous cockatoos and cockatiels and wonderful birds that talk. Heidi becomes involved with these birds and when the woman dies, she’s left the birds and she goes on to care for them in a really exaggerated, wonderful way. That’s what Lily means by the birds being a metaphor.More from wowOwow.com:
