VividSimon Simply Perfect

Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

fedor8 Broomfield takes a look at Hollywood decadence, not just the world of porn here. This documentary should be viewed by anyone who still has naive notions about Tinseltown i.e. what really goes on behind the scenes.Heidi Fleiss is interesting, I suppose, with her boundless naivety (while fancying herself a sly vixen) and greed, but it's really her Hungarian pimp/porn-master/sex-partner and other lesser-known seedy individuals (like the fat old madam who hates both the Hungarian and Fleiss) who catch one's full attention here. These people make Ron Jeremy look utterly dull by comparison (yes, he's in this, too - no surprise there). Even a forgotten Peter Sellers daughter makes one or two appearances, letting us see what happens to some of the offspring that aren't as lucky as David Arquette or Anjelina Jolie. The mad relationships between various inidviduals here almost make for a sort of soap-opera: there is treason, bickering, back-stabbing and all that other stuff. Wonderful.It's just a pity that the movie was made before Fleiss hooked up with Tom Sizemore. Having him scream into the camera would have been fun.Not a minute of this film is dull.

groggo This is an odd documentary because, as a previous reviewer said here, you don't want to watch but you do. You're drawn in by director Nick Broomfield's smooth and ever-so-earnest British-style interviewing techniques while forgetting that he's talking to extremely unpleasant and even odious people (including Heidi Fleiss herself).This Hollywood madam was apparently at the top of the heap in her 'profession,' and it's a tribute to her manipulative skills (I guess) that she was able to do it. She must also be a terrific actor: she looks at times like a wounded little girl, so it's hard to imagine how she was able to reach the 'top,' if that's the word. That's one of the keys to this woman's character, it seems to me: she is such a sleazy opportunist that she seems capable of talking herself into, or out of, anything. If this is true (and the evidence in this film would indicate that), how or why would we believe ANYTHING she says, including her more-or-less 'confessional' at the end? This is a hard-core, professional liar at work.Fleiss is just one of a cast of people in this film who deliberately and systematically deceive each other, so much so that they have lost touch with what is, or isn't, truth. They no longer know where the line of truth is, and their own glaring self-deception is evident in Broomfield's camera. You're left quite exhausted by the talking heads, and you realize that the documentary has little redeeming value -- we don't know anything more about who these characters REALLY ARE than when the film started.In short, everyone is lying here, everyone is driving the viewer down a very convoluted series of rhetorical streets, everyone is playing that famous 'blame game'. What this film needs is some kind of resolution, some denouement. We don't get one, but we still watch. It's interesting to observe ourselves being manipulated by professional liars, and also interesting to see that director Broomfield emerges as a pretty nifty manipulator himself.

kate I felt so trashy while watching Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madame, yet it was so engrossing I just couldn't help continuing on. It's an expose of a woman who ran a high class prostitution ring in LA in the early 90s. Nick Broomfield interviews his subjects (call girls, the director of Starsky & Hutch, an elderly madame who looks and acts exactly like the Egg Lady in Pink Flamginos, a gruff voice on the phone belonging to "Cookie" the bodyguard, and eventually Heidi herself) again and again, eventually trapping them all in a web of lies. It's impossible to figure out who is telling the truth, if the people involved are just having a chuckle at Broomfield's expense, or if they're all so wigged out on coke that they legitimately have no idea what is going on.In exchange for interviews, Broomfield actually hands his subjects huge wads of cash on camera, so at first he seems like the sucker (or, oddly, like he's applying the prostitute/john relationship to the structure of his documentary), but really he's buying a career move while they're just making themselves look silly. Overall I think Broomfield had the last laugh by exposing how absolutely ludicrous some of these Hollywood types are.Broomfield is a shameless sensationalist, but he certainly knows how to bring out the hilarity and surreal nature of otherwise serious subjects.

Joseph P. Ulibas Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam (1995) was another great film from Nick Broomfield. This time he tries to get a one-on-one interview with Heidi Fleiss and documents the life and times of Hollywood's most famous high price madam (pimp). Broomfield interview those who were close to Ms. Fleiss and people who knew her off hand or in passing. But as Mr. Broomfield logs in the miles and rolls of film, Heidi Fleiss is very elusive and hard to reach. One of the most funniest parts of the documentary is the confrontation Nick Broomfield has with a local news reporter. Does he get the interview? Will anyone co-operate with him? Is it worth watching? You'll have to find out for yourself!!I enjoyed this film very much. It was a real hoot seeing Nick Broomfield trying to get answers out of people who wanted to get paid or those who didn't trust him. A lot of home movies and nude peeks at Heidi Fleiss as well. If you watch this movie you'll a different opinion about the woman either way. No matter if it's the common street walker or a high priced hooker the business is all the same. Seedy, sleazy and shady.Highly recommended.