Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

Ali Catterall As Bob Dylan once said, money doesn't talk, it swears - and never as coursely as in Tinseltown's movie and sex trades; the Heidi Fleiss scandal erupted, as if at the apex of a thrashing Venn diagram, where the two industries traded blows.And money is the prime mouthpiece here: everyone - including former LA police chief Daryl Gates - wants cash up front. In making this documentary, Nick Broomfield becomes just another john, with an ever-ready wad of cash for answers.In 1993, the director set off to interview Heidi. How did an apparently well-adjusted, middle-class teenager, the daughter of a Beverly Hills doctor, get sucked into such a life? However, during pre-production, Fleiss was convicted of pandering and sentenced to three years in prison, during which time she was also charged with money laundering and tax evasion. Broomfield was thus obliged to seek out anyone with connections to her, and Hollywood Madam chronicles his efforts between Fleiss's June 1993 arrest and her trial in May 1995.Broomfield had visited this territory before with Chicken Ranch, in which he documented the daily lives of sex workers in a Texan whorehouse. But that film, candid as it is, looks positively prurient beside Hollywood Madam, which unspools like a sordid film noir, with its taut score, and roll call of pimps, porn stars, informants and corrupt cops. After viewing this you'll want to scrub yourself down with a wire brush and Dettol.Initially, Broomfield lightly skirts the edge of his subject - looking up various individuals on the scandal's periphery. "I was wondering if you could put us in touch with Heidi Fleiss?" he asks a bemused prostitute. "What are you on about?" comes the retort. After this fruitless foreplay, he begins to penetrate the inner sanctum - uncovering an unholy trio of grotesques; TV director Ivan Nagy, Heidi's former boyfriend (and the man who possibly grassed her up); the foetid, bed-dwelling Madame Alex - once Heidi's mentor and the foremost brothel keeper in Hollywood until Fleiss spirited away her clientele; and Victoria Sellers, daughter of Peter and Britt Ekland, and Fleiss's former best friend, unfresh out of rehab.Admittedly, there's much here that you could have easily gleaned from endless tabloid column inches and trashy talk shows. But Broomfield gives us more - the stuff TV could never show: such as Ivan Nagy's home video of Heidi, reluctantly stripping for him as he goads her on - "banter, fun and games", he smirks - and eliciting one of the film's more lurid exchanges, concerning the colour green.Here too are graphic stories from the trade. Sellers recalls a client attempting to place a coat hanger inside himself(family planning advisers will be relieved to know the hanger was wearing a condom). Gaby, another Fleiss callgirl relates how many clients - those well-heeled Arabs and Hollywood A-Listers, the anonymous names in Heidi's infamous 'Black Book' - simply wanted them to watch while they did drugs. "It's much better to have a meal with someone and an intellectual conversation", she adds hilariously. Most agree that their gentlemen preferred blondes, and specifically "typical, Californian surfer girl-next-door types. You could be an acne-faced dog - as long as you were blonde".Nobody has a good word to say about anybody. Madam Alex, says Nagy, is "pure evil - devastatingly evil". Heidi, says Sellers, is "a mean, ice-cold bitch". Meanwhile Nagy denies pimping Heidi to Madam Alex for $500. "Look around this room" he gestures at his original art collection. "Do I look like I need $500 dollars?" No... but what's with the bullet holes in his ceiling? And who is the mysterious Israeli known only as "Cookie"? Everybody's telling different stories. Is anybody telling the truth? Or has truth become another commodity to be bought, sold and traded along with everyone else? Nagy's so slippery he could be melted down for lubricants and Madam Alex isn't saying zip - she died shortly after the film was completed. Answers suggest themselves, yet remain tantalisingly out of reach: was it the fault of her hippie liberal parents? Ivan Nagy's influence? Yes, everybody's hiding something, including Broomfield, with his well-honed faux-naif persona - not to mention subjective editing of the documentary itself. Only Fleiss, after finally granting Broomfield an interview, seems halfway on the level, coming across as surprisingly down-to-earth, sharp, attractive and witty - if not entirely trustworthy. It's the one moment of grace. But for the most part, this film is akin to being stalked by evil, chuckling pimps while trapped in an ever replicating maze of funhouse mirrors.

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.

Schlockmeister This movie was interesting in that it shows us a side of "Hollywood" many of us will never see otherwise. Its a netherworld of prostitutes and their Madames, pornographers and high powered Hollywood players. The lines blur and meld in this movie. The stories you will hear these people give are so contradictory to each other that it almost keeps you on edge like a mystery movie. Well 'almost' anyway...The obvious lying and doubletalk get tedious after awhile when you suddenly see that it's very possible that EVERYONE in this movie is lying. The movie does not resolve most of these lies either and leaves with a "we'll never know, will we?" attitude. You get the impression Heidi and the other interviewees probably got together after the filming to laugh at the film maker for making him go around in circles. The film maker was toyed with and played for a fool. You will feel like Heidi and her circle of shady characters will have also played you after you see this movie.

auter I've never "loved" anything that Nick Broomfield has done, but I certainly love him as a documentarian. He has a unique, and very obtrusive style of filmmaking that forces the viewer to follow his line of thinking. This, as one might surmise has advantages and disadvantages, and indeed the flaws in this otherwise fascinating documentary are mostly from his style.On the other hand, it's a fitting style to use as he does his investigative reporting trying to get the inside scoop on the whole Heidi Fleiss affair, and just what exactly was going on between the cast of characters involved. I haven't seen such a collection of manipulative, shady characters in one place in a very long time. It's particularly fun watching a former Madam and a former (or are they still together?) lover of Fleiss exchange insults and spin intricate lies about each other and their roles in her life.Part of what allows this to come out is Broomfield's follow-up style. He interviews one person, then another, then often goes back to a previous interviewee to get their reaction to what someone else said. It's an inevitable, but still ingenious structure that helps to involve the viewer.At the same time, there does come a point when all this lying becomes tiresome. But just when you think you've had enough, Broomfield finally scores an interview with Fleiss herself, which rather than clearing things up, only adds to the confusion. It's a wonderful scene, and true to form, things don't end there, as Broomfield once again returns to certain people to try and put the pieces together.OVERALL SCORE: B