Heidi Fleiss--once known worldwide as "the Hollywood Madam" and still a symbol of decadence years after completing her prison sentence for money laundering, tax evasion and attempted pandering--talks about her new incarnation as designer and author, and sees Shampoo for the first time.
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Oh my God! I think I burned the popcorn!"
Heidi Fleiss--attired in fluffy pink pajamas, white sweatshirt and big floppy slippers--has most definitely burned the popcorn. "What do I do?" she yelps, yanking a smoking bag of Orville Redenbacher's from the microwave and ripping it wide open to peer inside. Sadly, there's nothing to be done. With a pungent trail of smoke streaming out behind her, Fleiss sprints through the sprawling house and out to the deck, where she drops the scorched munchies on the stone pavement, shutting the glass door to lock out the stench. The popcorn, it seems, will be spending the evening alone by the pool, enjoying the dramatic views of Hollywood and the Sunset Strip, while Fleiss moves on to the matter at hand--showing off her elegant and spacious home theater, and screening the 1975 Warren Beatty sex-and-hair classic Shampoo.
"I've heard so much about this movie, for years and years, but for some reason I've never seen it," Fleiss says, leading the way up numerous flights of stairs to the theater area. The house, once occupied by W.C. Fields, is one of many owned by developer-friend Jeff Greene, who's been letting Fleiss stay as the place undergoes a thorough remodeling. "Jeff's an after-prison friend," Fleiss states, shooting me a pointed don't-you-dare look, to deflate any potential misunderstanding. "This is about friendship," she explains, "not about paying back favors. It's been a great place to be while I was finishing my book, and while I got ready to open my new store and chase all the other rabbits in my life."
Fleiss, it is clear, has been chasing a lot of those rabbits lately. At the time of our "movie date," she is preparing to launch a syndicated radio advice show, Sex Advice with Heidi Fleiss, and is about to embark on a book tour for Pandering, the self-published coffee-table book that marks her emergence as an author and publisher. "Of all the things I've done in my life," she says, "this book is the one I'm proudest of." To show how much, she stops to sell me a copy, cash money, before the tour continues. As for her store, an upscale boutique located on Hollywood Blvd.--cheekily named Hollywood Madam--it opened in early summer, and features lingerie, books and Fleiss's full line of Heidi Wear fashions. Those fluffy pink pajamas? She designed them--"perfect for world-class fashion models and teenage girls," she brags--and they and others like them are for sale in the store.
We've arrived at the theater, a large, low room with a bar and pool table which opens onto a step-down level--lined with comfy sofas--that looks out onto an enormous 12X30 foot movie screen. "Is this cool or what?" she says. Yep. It's cool.
Once the disc is loaded into the theater's GoVideo DVD system, with a high-definition Panasonic, ceiling-mounted front-projection system, we settle in to watch Shampoo. Sixty seconds in, as the credits flash on a dark screen while we hear Warren Beatty's hapless hairdresser, George, having loud sex with Oscar-winner Lee Grant, Fleiss exclaims, "The movie just started, and I already love it!" Two hours later, she's still loving it, as poor sex-obsessed George, having literally screwed himself out of his last chance for happiness, stares helplessly as Julie Christie drives off with another man.
"He was an idiot," Fleiss sums up when the film is over. "A total, total idiot. You can tell by the bewildered, dumbfounded look on Warren Beatty's face. What this George guy needed was to sit down and ask himself, 'What do I want out of life? What will give me happiness, structure and balance?' But he couldn't make it happen because he's such a fuck-up."
While she liked the film's '60s-era automobiles--"I love cars! I want every single car in that movie!" she says--Fleiss was horrified by the fashions. "I can't fucking believe those clothes," she laughs. "Even when I was 17 I wouldn't have worn stuff like that!"
While Fleiss strolls over to eject the DVD from the machine, she admits that Shampoo held a certain poignance, since she'd been close friends with the late Gene Shacove, the Hollywood hairstylist on whom George was partly based. "Gene died a lonely man, just like George is going to," she says, "but he had a good heart. Two months before he passed, he told me he'd just had sex with a woman who was 83 years old, and no man had ever gone down on her before. So he did, just so she'd know what it was like. I remember saying, 'Gene, you are a 10 for doing that for her.' A 10. To go where no man has gone in 83 years. Still, like George in Shampoo, he was always looking for someone else to make him happy--and he never found it." Asked what advice she'd give if a guy like George called her up on Sex Advice, she barely hesitates. "I'd tell him he needed to focus on those things that would really make him happy--and ignore the stuff that was leading him nowhere.
"I learned that one in solitary confinement," Fleiss smiles. "When I'm not getting in my own way, I'm a pretty lucky girl."
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