After the Dance Is Over

Like a ballroom after a party, a sudden silence has descended over Hollywood. The misadventures of Heidi Fleiss have slid off of page one and twinkled off the airwaves, leaving an emptiness that awaits the next move.

For the so-called Madam to the Stars, that move will be her slow, methodical journey through the courts, standing suddenly small and vulnerable before a process that will judge her fate with impassive disposition.

Predictably, each appearance will summon a stampede of journalists who, like wildebeests on the Masai Mara, will kick up brief clouds of new interest, but the apathy they’ll leave in their wake will grow deeper after each surge.

Then what? Much of Hollywood, from agents to stars, has been involved in what has become known as the Heidi Chronicles. Some might even be her so-called clients.

Given that kind of industry involvement, will someone actually make a movie about a procurer whose clientele might have included them?

I asked the question of four producers, each of whom has spent at least 25 years making movies, pilots and episodes for television. I’ve worked for all of them. Call them Bernie, Phil, Harry and Armand. They don’t want their full names used.

They agreed that if there’s money to be made from Heidi’s alleged activities, there’ll be at least one movie and maybe three--whether or not the charges are proven--the way Amy Fisher’s dirty little story was told over and over again.

“Sex, wealth, youth, money,” Harry intoned, ticking off the elements alleged in Heidi’s case. “All you need is a title.”

“It won’t matter who’s involved,” Bernie said. “The networks would eat their grandmothers for ratings.” He shook his head in mock grief. “Granny was a wonderful woman, but by God we got a 40 share.”

*

There is nothing new about whore movies, Phil said. He recalls “The Mayflower Madam” a few years back. It was the story of Sydney Biddle Barrows, who can trace her family roots to the Pilgrims. Hence her nickname.

Like Heidi was supposed to have done, the queen of New York call girls catered to a moneyed clientele. “I like nice things,” she told an interviewer who asked how she became a madam. “I have beautiful, expensive tastes.”

“There are always clients for hookers,” Armand said. “It goes back to the Egyptians.” Guilty or not, “Heidi would have been no big deal back then. She’d have been just another hieroglyphic.”

Hollywood is not like most places in the world, Phil said. “They eat and breathe ‘the deal’ here. Sex is just another element of the deal. You deal for power, and a beautiful woman on your arm is power, the way a home in Bel-Air is power.”

Hollywood’s new brand of movers and shakers are driven people, Harry said. They work 14 hours a day and there’s no time to pursue women. So they pay for instant gratification. The men go elsewhere for dates because the women around them are as obsessed and driven as they are.

“There’s nothing soft or feminine about female television executives,” Harry said. “I see them at parties. They have the best-looking guys. How do they get them? By promising them better deals. P-o-w-e-r. It’s a new casting couch.”

*

The producers wondered what the latest episode of sleaze would do to their business. They see their futures in the hands of “hot young executives” whose morality wallows on the bottom line, whether they’re dealing for a movie or for a woman.

“You know,” Harry said, “there’s something terribly sad about the whole Heidi thing. You’ve got to wonder what she says to herself when she’s all alone.” He thought about that then shrugged. “But then I guess that’s just another scene in a movie of the week, isn’t it?”

Bernie knows two men who he thinks were among Heidi’s alleged customers. He saw one at a party recently.

“He had a beautiful woman with him. He came up to me, gestured toward the woman and said, ‘Whatta you think? A thousand bucks. No complications.’ He was proud of what he’d bought, like she was a new car. You’ve got to feel sorry for a guy who has to pay for companionship.”

“Yeah, but they feel sorry for us, “ Harry said, “because we go home at night to the same wife. They figure the real world is out there at trendy restaurants and at clubs where the rock stars hang out. Reality is distorted. Glitz has become truth.”

My involvement with television is peripheral. I’ve written a few movies, pilots and episodes. But I know it to be a place where morality rarely intrudes on production. Sex still sells soap. Nothing ever changes.

Heidi Fleiss is perfect for a medium that understands pandering. Her sad little party may be over, but the movie is about to begin. And that may be the saddest truth of all.