‘The Heidi Factor’ Puts Hollywood in a Spin

The tenor of business conversations has taken a sudden turn in Hollywood. Added to the usual machinations over star billing and profit participations is the Heidi Factor.

Heidi is 27-year-old Heidi Fleiss, who has been threatening to expose the dark world of Hollywood and prostitution ever since her high-profile arrest last spring on felony pimping, pandering and narcotics charges.

With police describing her as the madam to the stars, Fleiss’ tale naturally lends itself to the tabloids and to some level of serious press coverage. But the case also has affected the way business is done in this town, becoming the biggest whodunit in years.

For those on the outside, it’s as if Hollywood is stuck in the throes of one big anxiety attack. Already executives’ careers have been damaged, and private investigators have been hired to track down the sources of press leaks. One studio executive, who has not publicly been named by Fleiss or anyone else, is being shunned by some associates.

The most fevered rumor of all--that a major studio paid for the services of prostitutes with development money--is totally unsubstantiated so far. It’s a testament to Hollywood’s innate skittishness that those even tinged by trouble are so promptly ostracized.

It’s also a lesson to those who still think of Hollywood as one big party town. The truth is that most executives live in fear of anything that might derail their high-stakes careers.

“The only group that still openly lives that wild and crazy life is the record industry guys,” says one producer. “The movie and TV executives are more like sheep than wolves.”

Sources expect a packed house of lawyers, reporters and other interested parties when Fleiss makes her first court appearance next Monday. A front-page story on Fleiss that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday has already touched off a flood of calls to her from tabloid TV shows, as well as more mainstream ones.

The case began when she was arrested at her Benedict Canyon home in June, following a sophisticated undercover sting operation. Soon afterward, stories of wild parties and sexual escapades involving some of the top people in the business surfaced. Phone lines burned, with one tale more bizarre than the next and with grim speculation about the consequences.

The tales became even more lurid with the revelation that someone had secretly tape-recorded phone conversations between Fleiss and some famous friends, and separately, with the strong suggestion that in one instance the good times were bankrolled with studio funds.

The recordings indicated that two high-profile producers have already agreed to help pay legal bills for Fleiss. According to Sunday’s story in The Times, two other producers and a screenwriter have looked into acquiring the rights to Fleiss’ story, and an Italian multimillionaire has offered to buy her $1.6-million home.

While she has not been formally charged, Fleiss has done little to discourage the Hollywood party girl image that’s been handed her. She told one reporter she would sell her story for $1 million. So far, only a few names have surfaced publicly--producer Robert Evans and rock star Billy Idol among them--and then only as acquaintances. But when blind items popped up in gossip columns several weeks ago, it didn’t take insiders long to connect the dots. Sources say that as many as 20 stable Hollywood marriages could be undone by the revelations. The one ray of hope for those with something to lose is that other madams have made similar threats but have not carried them out.

Reporters, for their part, have come under a daily barrage of calls detailing all sorts of fun-but-illegal activity supposedly involving well-known industry figures. That’s led to some rare soul searching. Should the folks who put Bob and Carol in bed with Ted and Alice be held to the same moral standards as politicians, and if so, where should the disclosure end?

The formal bios of some of Hollywood’s best-known executives and creative people might have to be altered to read something like--”graduated from Harvard, won three Academy Awards, liked to party with high-class call girls”--if the Heidi chronicles make it into print as advertised.

The other vexing issue for the press is the increasingly sophisticated spin being put on Hollywood stories, which reminds some of the way news is controlled in that other hub of power--Washington. It started with the withering pre-release attacks against “Last Action Hero” and continued through the recent restructuring of MGM, when sources insisted against all evidence that Minneapolis-based grain giant, Cargill Inc. had made a secret bid for the studio.

The Fleiss rumors are the weightiest of all, and the most widespread. And though they may lead nowhere, since Hollywood scandals rarely live up to their advance billing, one thing sources agree on is that this one won’t go away anytime soon.

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Suit Terminated: Billy Milligan has settled his lawsuit against “Terminator 2” director James Cameron and two production companies. Milligan, who authored an autobiographical book on his multiple personalities, alleged in a recent suit that Cameron, his Lightstorm Productions and two other production companies violated a contract to film his life story, with him as a consultant. The $9-million suit also alleged that the movie was delayed so that Cameron could work on “Terminator 2” and other projects. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Some of the parties could not be reached for comment, though one reliable source confirmed the settlement late Monday.