Heidi Fleiss finds hard times in Nevada desert

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.

She never revealed the names of clients, but actor Charlie Sheen acknowledged in videotaped trial testimony that he paid thousands of dollars for the services of her prostitutes.

FAME, NOT QUITE FORTUNE

Fleiss has attempted to turn fame into fortune with various enterprises, including selling men's boxer shorts and producing a DVD called "Sex Tips with Heidi Fleiss and Victoria Sellers," the daughter of the late film comedian Peter Sellers.

She also found herself in an abusive love affair with actor Tom Sizemore.

Nothing seemed to work, and eventually Fleiss packed her bags and headed to Nevada to do what she had done so well before -- sell sex -- this time legally on a small patch of hard-scrabble desert near Pahrump called Crystal (thus, the film's title, "Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal").

In Fleiss, Bailey and Barbato found a subject like others they had previously documented, including disgraced televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker Messner and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

"Sometimes, the more overexposed someone is, the less revealed they are as a person, and we reckoned there was a person there (in Fleiss) who wasn't understood," Bailey said.

With her cooperation, Bailey and Barbato made the journey from Hollywood to Pahrump and trained their cameras on Fleiss as she encountered local business owners who were jealous that she bought a piece of land at a seemingly below-market price.

One of her business partners runs afoul of the authorities, and Fleiss admittedly deals with her own abuse of crystal meth.

Yet, even as Fleiss encounters problems, she finds friendship with an elderly woman -- also a former madam -- who lives next door with a menagerie of exotic birds.

Bailey and Barbato say Fleiss' story is neither a tragedy, nor a triumph. In fact, they see their subject as a work in progress.

"Look, Heidi Fleiss is not going to have anybody feel sorry for her," Barbato said. "This is like the second act of her life, and there will be a third."

Reuters/Nielsen