Chapter 1: An LA Story: How Heidi Fleiss’s Family Came To Be And How One Car Accident Changed Them Forever (The 1970s)
In Chapter One we meet young Heidi and the rest of the Fleiss family, delving into the bohemian California lifestyle of the 70s as Heidi ditches high school for her first hustles.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, the only place for a man in the sex
(00:28):
business is paying for it. Heidi Flace, America is a casino.
You can be up one night, down the next, then
back up again, and then with just one bad hand,
lose it all. Despite the myth that this country is
a meritocracy where anyone can work their way up, we
(00:50):
all know that the rich are born with the chips up,
and that the only way for anyone else to get
ahead is to game the system. At the height of
her power, nobody play the game better than Heidi Flice.
The Heidi fly Saga is a classic American story about
one of the greatest hustlers of all time. But unlike
(01:11):
the hustlers in movies like Good Fellas or Casino Haidi
never killed anybody. All she did was dare to broker
sex work. Welcome to Heidi World, the Heidi Flye Story
and the Secret History of l A. I'm your host,
(01:32):
Molly Lambert, and I will be your guide through Los
Angeles High and Low. In the ninety nineties, the world
was captivated by Heidi Flice, the twenty seven year old
woman who briefly and memorably became the most powerful madam
in Los Angeles before she was brought down by a
(01:54):
combination of snitches, hubris, and plain old bad luck. The
scandal enveloped a major movie studio, and employees were alleged
to have bought sex from Heide's girls using checks from
the studio. Her trial threatened to lay bare the depths
of moral hypocrisy in l A among the super wealthy
law enforcement agencies and the entertainment industry. But instead, Heidi
(02:19):
was made of pariah and suffered the only consequences of
the scandal as the men who bought sex from her
went back to their lives and sometimes even got promotions.
Put it this way, the person Heidi that people talk
about in the history of time, no one did what
she did in one year. No one. When I was
(02:40):
twenty five, I went out on my own. I said,
funk all of them. All. Show them how to do
things right with integrity, and treat girls like they're girls.
Not forced a girl to do something she doesn't want
to do. I never once solicited a person. I never
once pushed drugs upon a person. I've always told will
never sell out. Only do something you want to do.
(03:03):
If you're ever in an uncomfortable situation, whatever it is,
get out. You're a person with rights. You never have
to do anything. Heidi World will follow Heidi Flights from
her earliest days as a young Jewish girl in Los
Felis running a babysitting ring at her high school, through
(03:24):
her party girl dropout years on the hair Metal Sunset strip.
We'll introduce you to memorable characters like Madam Alex, the
woman who ran the world of high class prostitution in
Beverly Hills for years and showed Heidi the ropes, then
got busted and accused Heidi of stealing her business, and
little black book of clientele battling Heidi for years in
(03:46):
what she called the hore Wars. Will also go over
the varying rachamon like accounts of what really took place
with that little Black book. We'll get into evil boyfriends,
abuse of John's corrupt lease, and legal hypocrisy. Will explore
how the invention of twenty four hour court TV coincided
(04:06):
with the media circus of several big l A trials
in the nineties, including the O. J. Simpson trial, the
Menendez Brothers trial, and the Heidi Fly's trial. We'll talk
about how we are still feeling the after effects of
the profound shift in the way news is covered and
prioritized in what we all now know as the content cycle.
(04:27):
And of course we will get into Heide's line of
vanity sleepware Heidi ware. At its heart, the Heidi Fly
scandal is a Los Angeles story. There's so much local
history that runs through it. Many of the major players
are second generation l A kids whose parents were notable
local figures in entertainment and lots of other industries. It's
(04:50):
like a Russian novel about a family in a particular
place at a very specific time. Some of the people
involved in the scandal are dead, which means we can
talk openly about them. Some of them are very much
still alive, some even still working in Hollywood. Some are
even portrayed by Bradley Cooper in the Paul Thomas Anderson
(05:12):
movie Licorice Pizza. In the same spirit as Licorice Pizza,
I have made the casting of Heidi World a family affair,
casting my own father as Dr Paul Flice and my
brother is in this podcast, as well as a voice
cast of nearly hundreds of notable podcasters, directors playing other directors,
(05:35):
and more. Fun cameos. All of the quotes you will
hear are sourced from contemporary media that came out while
the scandal was happening, things like magazines, TV segments, books,
and newspapers. Heidi Flice is voiced throughout Heidi World by
actress Annie Hamilton's looks are only a head start. You
(05:59):
do not have to be classically beautiful to get the
man you want. An average looking woman who is confident, happy,
and slightly reserved is way more appealing to a man
than a dumb girl with a nice ass. Along the way,
we'll use Heidi story to make the argument for why
sex work must be decriminalized and discuss the horrifying way
(06:20):
sex workers have been pushed even further to the margin
since this story happened, Thanks largely to pressure from the
extreme right, but also centrists and clueless lib Dems, there
has been a concentrated agenda in recent years to conflate
consensual sex work with sex trafficking. This is the movement
behind Sesta Fasta, a set of laws passed in eighteen
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that were sensibly aimed at eradicating internet sex trafficking, but
in reality we're purposely designed to d platform and shadow
band sex workers on the few online outlets where they
could safely still do their jobs and earn a study income.
Why are people so obsessed with keeping sex work criminalized,
because go with me here. If it was decriminalized, those
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people couldn't find ways to profit off of it being criminalized.
It's too threatening to the powers that be when sex
workers control the means of production. Heidi Flice herself is
no longer in the sex work business. She runs a
bird sanctuary, a private airfield, and a laundromat in par
ump Nevada, after a failed attempt at opening a brothel
(07:25):
for women there called the stud Farm. Right now, she's
considering leaving Nevada for Missouri after someone shot a bb
gun at one of her exotic birds. She's also embroiled
in a fight over cryptocurrency with a former friend, and
eventually we will get into all of that too, But
first we have to go back to the very beginning
(07:48):
to Heidi's childhood in Los Felis. This is Heidi World,
Chapter one, an l a store, How Heidi Flice's family
came to be, and how one car accident changed them forever.
The nineteen seventies, I was born and raised in l A.
(08:14):
My dad was a famous pediatrician. When he died, they
donated a bench to him at the Griffith Park Observatory.
I got an in big trouble. I felt shitty about that.
Dad gave me really the best childhood possible and all
of the opportunity in front of me. I wish that
I took school seriously and won a different route. But
(08:34):
it was not my father's fault at all. Just love him.
They can't love your kids too much. Paul Fish, pediatrician.
When Heidi World returns, meet the Flice's family and learn
about her doctor father's New Age beliefs and connection to
(08:56):
Leonardo DiCaprio. Welcome back to Heidi World. Let's meet the
flies family, shall we? Our story begins in the l
(09:16):
A neighborhood of Los Felis. Paul Flice is a Jewish
American pediatrician who runs his practice out of a craftsman
house on Hillhurst, which is still there and was most
recently an ice cream shop called Ample Hills Creamery. Paul
Flice is a beloved local doctor known for treating the
rich and poor alike, but he also becomes known as
a pediatrician to the stars in his own way. Paul
(09:40):
Flice is also a bit of a hustler himself. He
trains in Detroit as an osteopath and pharmacist. In Nino,
California passes a law that allows osteopaths to convert their
degrees into m d s, and he moves to l
A to take advantage of it. While osteopath our generalists,
(10:01):
the m D allows Flice to choose a specialty and
he goes into pediatric medicine, becoming a resident at USC
Medical Center in l A. A friend introduces Paul to
a hippie school teacher named Alyssa Ash. They fall in
love instantly in her wed within the year. A few
months after that, one of Alyssa's underage sisters gets pregnant.
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Alyssa and Paul offered to take in the baby, whose
name is Kim. The next year, one of Paul's sisters
becomes fatally ill, and the couple agree to adopt her
young daughter, Amy as well. Alyssa then gives birth to
Paul's child, in a girl they name Heidi Lynn Flice.
(10:43):
I am one of six kids. I described my parents
as intellectual hippies, but minus the grateful Dead and Charles
Manson aspects. Before they would sleep at night, I'd lie
down with each one of them, and I'd always save
Heidi for last, because she was the most most fun
Alyssa ash Heidie's mom. By the time, they move into
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a three story house and the hills of Griffith Park
that they bought for seventy seven thousand dollars in nineteen
seventy around five hundred and seventeen thousand dollars today. The
family adds daughter Shana and son Jason. In nineteen seventy seven,
they have another son, Jesse, bringing the Flies family to
a grand total of six kids. They all live in
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the four thousand, three hundred square foot house built in
nineteen thirty, with five bedrooms and a three story spiral
staircase going up to a crow's nest observation tower. There's
a grotto with a fish pond, stained glass windows, and
murals painted on the walls those Felis is known as
an artsy kind of Bohemian neighborhood, although it was never
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cheap to live there. It's directly next to Hollywood and
provides easy proximity to most of the major studios. Early
movie stars built those filises art Deco mansions. The main
street set from the nineteen fifty four Western melodrama Johnny
Guitar just stood there on Sunset Boulevard for decades before
it was finally demolished. Los Felis is also famous for
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being the neighborhood where Rosemary and Leno la Bianca, an
Italian immigrant couple who ran a successful grocery store, were
murdered by the Manson family on the second night of
their murder spree. Aside from Heidi Flice, there are two
other incredibly famous A List Hollywood stars from Los Felis.
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One of them is Mickey Mouse, who was born in
the original Disney Studios building on Hyperion Avenue in Los Felis,
which is the reason why the Main Street USA corollary
in Disney's beleaguered California Adventure Park is an idealized replica
of nineteen thirties Los Pelis. The other movie star from
Los Philis is Leonardo DiCaprio, whose legal secretary mother and
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underground comics artist father separate when he is one, but
for a while lived next to each other in Bungalow's
with a shared backyard to co parent baby Leonardo DiCaprio,
is even delivered by Heidi's father, Paul Flice, who is
best friends with his father George DiCaprio. In nine seventies, California,
some people are experimenting with new definitions of family and
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domestic life. The Flices are a blended family of four
biological children and two adopted kids, a Jewish, boho Brady
bunch living in a three story fairytale hacienda with lots
of pets. They take family camping trips to national parks together,
where everyone fights in the car. They go to Hurst Castle.
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They're a tight group. I love my daddy. He's the
best dead on earth. My dad never spanked us. He
would say, I'm not gonna ask any questions. This has happened,
and now it's too late, and we're just going to
figure it out. Shane of Flice. Paul Flice is on
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lots of medical boards, and his opinions are often quoted
in the Los Angeles Times. But Paul Flice also holds
some views that were considered at the time unconventional. Some
of them are more potentially harmful than others. His beliefs
tend towards the new age. He is a believer in
the family bed, where parents and children all sleep in
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one big bed together. This is now known as co sleeping,
and its most famous advocate is former Blossom Miambiolic. He
wears birken stocks and the kids are all vegetarians. He's
against rewarding or punishing children, believing the main thing parents
should do is be kind. He's pro breastfeeding and anti formula.
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Dr Flice is quoted in a l A Times article
about a Silver Lake childcare co opera women breastfeed each
other's children, also known as wet nurse, saying while some
of the other doctors the article worn that breast milk
can contain infectious agents. Dr Flice advocates not only for breastfeeding,
but for wet nursing. Mothers have been doing this for
(15:12):
a long long time. It's not quite as good as
the baby's mother, but it's better than propping the baby
up with a bottle. The California counterculture seemed fully into
the medical practices of the time, and on the spectrum
of outrageous nineteen seventies medical thought, Paul Flice was by
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no means the wackiest or most out there person, He
was among many professionals questioning traditional medical practices and child
rearing methods, interested in exploring new, hopefully better possibilities. Doctors
were also pushing the limits in fields like group psychotherapy.
There was Paul Bendraum's Theory of Nude Psychotherapy in ninety seven,
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which involved long marathon naked group therapy session. There's an
incredible ninety one documentary called Out of Touch about the
nude therapy movement. Critics of the nude therapy movement said
it was too charged of an atmosphere and that participants
might mistake the adrenaline high of being naked with strangers
for emotional breakthroughs, but supporters said the nudity became non
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sexual very quickly, and as someone who has spent to
a couple of adult film conventions and one European beach,
I absolutely think this is true. There are still nud
therapy workshops in California, offered by a place called the
Human Institute for Awareness. There's also Lyn the Big sur
retreat with a nude hot tub, founded in the sixties
by two Stanford grads after they heard a life changing
(16:42):
Aldus Huxley lecture about human potential. There were new experimental
techniques for things like drug rehabilitation with the Experimental Rehab
Center turned eventual cult Synanon in Santa Monica. Dr Flice
considered his philosophy of medicine holistic. He was vehemently anti circumcision,
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believing the procedure college children unnecessary pain and that the
foreskin could be cleaned manually. And he advocated for treating
children with the same respect afforded to adults and not
physically punishing them. His saying was no rewards or punishments,
no threats or bribes. Here's the less great part. He
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wasn't anti vaccine, but he didn't insist that his patients
vaccinate their children. Despite, but also probably because of, this bullshit,
he was a beloved family doctor throughout Los Angeles. Dr
Flice was also a paid consultant for a board called
the Los Angeles County Milk Commission, which was put together
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by Altadina. Altadina is a milk company that advertised untrue
health benefits of its unpasteurized milk. Dr Flie was essentially
paid to say that raw milk did have real health benefits,
something he likely believed given his own bent towards holistic
sneake oil. A report on the l A County Milk
Commission alleged that the entire board of milk had been
(18:09):
bought off by Altadina Dairy so that the San Bernardino
Milk Farm could continue to produce raw milk in violation
of health codes. Our parents always stressed the importance of
an education. Our home was filled with love and stability.
Heidi was Mom's favorite. I mean, I knew my mom
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loved me, but she and Heidi like had their own language.
For me. Coming into this family that was so generous
and open minded, it really turned me around. But for
Heidi having a lot of leeway when she acted up,
her actions were considered not wrong, but witty or cute instead.
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Kim Flice, oldest sister. The Flice kids had kind of
freedom and lack of boundaries you might expect out of
a bohemian Los Angeles family in the nineteen seventies. In
profile of Paul Flice by journalist Sean Hubler, a list
of Flice calls herself a quote flower child mother, and
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Hubler refers to Paul Flice as quote the prototypical nurturing mail.
Our house was the house on the block where everybody went,
because they knew our parents were flexible about what time
we came home, so our friends would say, I want
to stay as Shana's and their parents would think, well,
the mother's a school teacher, the father's a doctor. There
shouldn't be any problems, and then we just go stay
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out at night, going to clubs. My parents didn't have
a clue. By the time our parents started talking about curfews,
it was too late. We were like fifteen or sixteen.
I had been going out and doing things since I
was twelve years old. Shana makes it sound like they
were just allowed to run loose, and that certainly was
not the case. While Paul Flice defends his parenting style,
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other people do confirm that The Fly's parents took a
hands off approach popular at the time, basically trusting their
kids to make their own choices. A friend of mine,
whose mother was close friends with Dr Paul Flice, sent
me an email but asked for anonymity. She describes Paul Flice,
like most people do, as a beloved family pediatrician who
would slot in patients even if they couldn't pay, and
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take house calls long after everyone else stopped doing house calls.
She says the Flies family had a parenting style she
calls seventies California very hands off. Her mom believed the
Fly's kids became a mix of high achieving and burnouts.
In Heidi's case, both we have to contextualize the Lais
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fair seventies California parenting style as a product of its
time in reaction to what came before it. Childcare manuals
from the first part of the twentieth century were filled
with concepts like the Refrigerator Mother, which blamed cold parental
behavior from women for children who developed autism or schizophrenia.
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In X, Dr Benjamin Spock put out Baby in Childcare,
the first parenting book to involve psychoanalysis and advocate for
a more touchy feely approach to parenting, telling parents it
was okay to comfort and kiss their babies if they cried,
instead of just ignoring them. Spock was a proto hippie
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whose anti Vietnam War views made him the eventual subject
of conservative backlash. So by the sixties and seventies, the
more liberal Spock influenced parents believe in treating children as
the individuals they are now Some parents absolutely took the
idea of breaking down the boundaries between parents and children
too far, especially in bohemian nineteen seventies California. Their ac
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countless stories, particularly of famous parents pushing their children into
adulthood prematurely, or blurring the boundaries between parenting and friendship
in a way that harmed their children, providing their kids
with access to drugs or alcohol or sex too early,
and creepy stories like the one about the rock star
who quote gave his daughter's virginity to another rock star
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he was friends with as a gift. The seventies was
also the high point of working class latchkey kids whose
parents weren't around to see what they were doing, and
the high point for upper class kids with resources whose
parents let them run free without any rules. In the
nineteen seventies, people still hitchhiked in California. Things were so
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repressed in the first part of the century that when
they swung in the other direction, they really swung hard.
Of course, there was a swift backlash to all the
sixties and seventies freedom and exploration called the nineteen eighties.
This is all to say that the Flice family existed
somewhere on this spectrum between aditional parenting and letting children
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fend completely for themselves, much like most other Gen X
kids experienced. Which is not to say that the Fly's
parents were absent or distant. By all accounts, they were involved,
even strict sometimes, and the family was legendarily close knit.
On celebrity rehab which will get too much later. Heidi
is horrified when Mackenzie Phillips, the daughter of Mama's and
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the Papa's musician John Phillips, perhaps the poster child for
nineteen sixties and seventies bad parenting, talks about her dad
asking her to get him drugs. Later that year, Phillips
opened up about the adult in sastuous relationship she had
with her father. Heidi is completely horrified and says she
would never have so much a smoked pot with her dad.
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I always had my own agenda. I was always looking
for something else. She's always been a wheeler dealer. Idea
was desperate to get West of Doheny, vonage producer that
was Avantage, the Hungarian director, producer and all around dirt
(24:13):
bag who will introduce you to an episode two. He's
talking about how Heidi was desperate to get west of Doheny.
Doheny is a street that is sort of a dividing
line into the neighborhood of Beverly Hills. It is named
after Edward L. Doheny, who was the first person to
successfully drill an oil well in Los Angeles, setting off
a Southern California oil boom and making a ton of money,
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becoming one of the first dynasties of l A. Doheny
was the inspiration for Upton Sinclair's novel Oil exclamation Point,
which was in turn the inspiration for Paul Thomas Anderson's
There Will Be Blood, which features Daniel day Lewis as
a Doheni inspired character named Daniel Plainview. Heidi is the
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ringleader of the Flice family gang. She's a kid who
ties her younger siblings shoelaces together. In photos of Heidi
as a child, she's a skinny little stick with long,
scraggly black hair, a tomboy in a football jersey. Growing up,
Heidi makes little movies with her siblings using a Super
eight camera. In one of Heidi's movies, her brother, dressed
(25:20):
in drag, pushes their younger sister in a baby carriage,
then appears to lose control of the carriage and watches
as a Karean's down a steep hill in what we
can only assume is an homage to Battleship at Tempkin.
When the Fly's kids show the short to their mom,
she freaks out, thinking they'd actually push the carriage down
the hill with their sister in it. Heidi has to
jump in and explain the magic of movie editing. They
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replace their real baby sister with a doll before pushing
the carriage down the hill. That should give you an
impression of the kind of kid. Heidi was the one
who ropes the other kids into making a movie and
scares her parents a little bit in the process. Heidi
Flies attends John Mark Shall High in Los Felis, a
beautiful Gothic public school built in featured in A Million Things,
(26:06):
probably most famously as Rdel High at the End of Greece.
Besides Heidi, other notable John Marshall students include Michelle Phillips
from The Moms and the Papas, Sue Lyon, who played
Lolita in the Stanley Kubrick film, Judge Lance Edo from
The O. J. Simpson Trial, and will I am an
Apple de app from The Black Eyed Peas Van Halen's
(26:29):
Hot for Teacher music video was also shot at John
Marshall High which was closed at the time due to
lack of city funding. The band, who also themselves met
in l A Area Public Schools in Pasadena, donated an
undisclosed amount of money to refurbish and reopen the school,
which is cool as hell. When I was a teenager,
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all I wanted to do was London. I felt awkward
around my peers. The things that were on my mind
were different from anything they talked about. Once I went
with some friends to a party at U C l A,
and I remember watching a group of girls who dressed
the same, laugh the same, and talked the same, and
I wanted so badly to just be like them. Heidi
(27:15):
is clearly very smart. She wins a citywide chess championship
twice at age thirteen and fourteen. Around the same time,
she starts babysitting to make money and figures out she
can make even more money by helping set up other
girls to babysit too. Thus, the first incarnation of Heidi
Girls is born. A babysitting ring of twenty or so
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teenage girls that Heidi matches up with her first clients,
parents who need babysitters. In junior high, Heidi, who had
been a stellar elementary school student, starts falling behind. She
can't keep up with the schoolwork, and she's very frustrated
by and embarrassed about it. Her parents value education, and
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Heidi plans to go to a good college someday like
they want. But her grades keep dropping and the only
reason she keeps going to school at all is because
of a crush on a teacher named Mr Jamie. When
she gets a C in one class, she begs the
teacher to change it to a bee, and he refuses,
so she gives up on trying and starts ditching school.
(28:21):
I was always in the classroom staring at the blue sky,
thinking I gotta go, I gotta go. After a while,
I hardly went to school at all. I'd cut glass
and go to the beach with a race track. When
Heidi World returns, Heidi ditches high school for hustling. Welcome
(28:51):
back to Heidi World. Although she's been truant from high school,
she manages to hold down a part time job at
a flower shop called Flowers by Judith. One of her
jobs is to bring roses over to the Greek theater
and sell them to people after shows. One day, she
is doing her job and sells out out of all
(29:14):
of the roses, and although her boss had told her
to just stop when she finished, she goes back to
the flower shop, gets more roses, and sells all of
them too. So you can see that Heidi has a
natural talent for finding money and then turning that money
into more money. Flower shops figure heavily into Heidi world,
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and it's not hard to see why a bouquet of
beautiful blooms for sale arranged just right can fetch a
significantly marked up price when the right person is selling them.
But this outside success doesn't translate back to school, where
she feels like a misfit, like she doesn't quite fit
in with the other kids her age. She develops an
(29:56):
attraction to much older men. I don't like them under
forty five. Just show me a six year old guy
with a million dollars point me in that direction. However,
Heidi does date some guys her own age, like her
best friend Steve, the blonde guy next door, who becomes
(30:16):
her first boyfriend. There's also a boy named Scott who
resembles young Johnny Depp that Heidi describes as her first love.
Her ideas of romance are forged by movies like Excalibur,
epic medieval fantasy movie depicting our Thurian legends. Excalibur features
Helen Mirren as Morgan le Fay, a powerful female enchantress
(30:39):
who can use magic to bend powerful men to her will.
But in her own life, Heidi is not the sex
goddess that she wishes she was. I didn't lose my
virginity until I was almost eighteen. I'm real slow. I'd
go to bed at night and say, why can't I
have tits like Dolly Park? But I remember the first guy.
(31:03):
He was blonde. I've never slept with a blonde again,
and I wanted to understand what everyone was talking about.
So I just did it. And it was like, this
is so painful, I will die. I will never do
this again. I'll be an, No way will I do
this again. She also spends an ever increasing amount of
(31:25):
time at the Hollywood Park race track in Inglewood, where
she develops a taste for betting on the horses. She
bets on her first horse at the age of fifteen,
which is definitely illegal. Her boyfriend Steve goes with her
on these racetrack hooky trips at first, but he gets
sick of the scene at the racetrack, which he finds
sort of depressing and seed and stops going. But Heidi
(31:49):
loves it. There's so much she just keeps going to
the racetrack alone. Hid he likes to gamble. She'll bet
on which rain drop will make it down the window first.
And Nie Brook Layer attorney at law. Now officially failing
out of school, Heidi's parents tell her if she brings
her grades up, they'll give her a car for her
(32:10):
sixteenth birthday, a common motivational strategy used by parents of
rich kids in l A, and it works if only briefly.
Heidi hits the books just long enough to raise her
grades and is rewarded by her parents with the brand
new car. But the lesson she learns from the experience
is not to study, but to start forging her report cards.
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On top of all that, she also starts selling pot,
shoplifting and stealing car radios. I lied to my parents
for a year and told him I was going to school.
I goofed around instead. That was restless as hell. Heidi
(32:54):
has some wealthier friends whose famous parents wield more power
and influence than a loose feless pediatrician, even a pediatrician
to the stars. These friends also have the kinds of
l a luxuries that come with lots and lots of money,
fancy cars, Palm Springs houses, good tables at hip restaurants,
(33:14):
expensive clothes from nice department stores. This becomes the blueprint
for the kind of life Heidi wants for herself. When
she's sixteen, Heidie meets a girl who will become her
best friend, Victoria's Sellers, daughter of legendary comedian Peter Sellers
and Swedish actress Britt Eklund. Victoria Sellers is the only
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friend I have ever felt completely comfortable around. We met
in our teens during spring break in Palm Springs. We
are very different from each other, but also very much alike.
Heidi is star struck by Victoria's glamorous lifestyle and Hollywood connections.
(33:58):
Victoria's beauty a full blonde, bond girl. Mother has dated
famous playboys like Warren Beatty, Rod Stewart, and the producer
Lou Adler, who still sits front row at every Lakers game.
Heidi's smart when she puts her mind to something, she
gets it. Victoria Sellers, Heidi's best friend, The Flight's parents,
(34:21):
who are very concerned about Heidi's truancy and lack of
interest in school, have her transferred to a private Catholic
girls school called Immaculate Heart, where she flunks out in
her first semester. Her senior year, Heidi drops out of
high school entirely, promising her parents that she'll use the
time to get her g E ED High School Equivalency
(34:42):
diploma and sign up for early enrollment in college. But
back to that car, you know in clueless how share
Horroitz says, look at the loked out jeep Daddy got me,
referring to the white jeep Wrangler that she can barely drive,
or when Murray asks on if she was jeep in
I e. Creepin in a Jeep, Heidi like share Horroits,
(35:06):
drives a Jeep. A burgeoning trend for off road sport
utility vehicles and a timeless California taste for convertibles made
jeeps the it car for a certain kind of moneyed
young girl in that era. But while jeeps, which started
as military vehicles, are cute, they aren't the ideal starter
car for someone just learning to drive. Like any SUV,
(35:29):
they're prone to tipping over. Nineteen year old Hidi is
behind the wheel of the jeep when she flips the
car of eight passengers over in a nightclub parking lot,
trapping her sister Shana underneath the car and injuring Shana's
arm to the point where it almost has to be amputated.
Heidi panics, allegedly drunken on downers. Frantic, but unhurt herself
(35:54):
at first, she flees the scene. None of the other passengers,
including her, badly hurts, so her file charges against her.
Her parents, perhaps naively still set against the idea of
punishing their kids in a traditional sense, by her another jeep.
It was July, and after it happened, it changed everyone's lives.
(36:19):
When I was eighteen, I flipped a jeep over with
eight girls in it. The only person who was hurt
was my younger sister. She had a multiple fracture, the
kind where the bone comes out, because her forearm and
her upper arm got trapped under the roll bar. But
(36:40):
mentally it might have caused more harm to me. You see,
I wish it was me, Okay, She was sixteen years old,
she couldn't finish school, and you know how your ego
is when you're sixteen, Well, I I felt responsible. The
jeep flipping in didn't changes the entire family's dynamic forever
(37:03):
fulfilling a Lissa Flice's worst fears from when she thought
Heidi had pushed her sister down a hill in a
baby carriage and that Super eight movie. Heidi's own recklessness
was becoming a liability to more than just herself. Heidi
goes into a deep depression, allegedly even maybe going to
a mental hospital for a while, feeling like she has
completely ruined her sister's life. Heidi is impulsive, but she's
(37:28):
also very sensitive. But Shana doesn't even really blame Heidi,
who stays with her at the hospital through all of
her painful operations. By the end of the year, the
Fly's parents announced that they are getting a divorce. Heidi
(37:48):
is at a crossroads. Will she get on the straight
and narrow by going back to school and figuring out
a stable career, or will she plunge deeper into partying
and try to lose her self in sets, drugs and
rock and roll On the debaucherous sunset strip. Like Heidi Flce,
I'm a half Jewish woman with hippie parents from the
(38:10):
flatlands of Los Angeles who has spent her life trying
to claw her way up into the Hollywood Hills. The
Heidi fly scandal broke when I was first developing my
ideas about sex and morality. I remember wondering why it
was even illegal to sell sexual services. From a steady
diet of television, magazines, movies, and billboards, I already understood
(38:33):
that sex was used to sell virtually everything, and I
was interested in the pornography industry that operated around me
in the San Fernando Valley is a shadow economy of
the mainstream film industry. Fascinated by the mundanity of the
work of cranking out glamour and arousal for public consumption.
A sexy young woman was the ultimate product, a symbol
(38:56):
of desire and commerce itself. You could make a killing
selling the female image, but the people who did make
a killing selling the female image always seemed to be men.
Hugh Hefner, male directors, producers, and executives that a woman
couldn't sell her own body consensually to customers who were
(39:17):
paying consensually. Made no sense to me, even as a child.
Here was Heidi being punished, basically burned at the stake,
by the media for something that didn't seem like it
should even be against the law. Legacy news outlets and
(39:40):
tabloids alike had a clear narrative in mind for the
Heidi Fli scandal, one where sex work is bad, sex
workers are either bad people or naively coerced innocence, and
the experience of doing sex work leads only to drugs,
degradation and death. The l A Times has always notoriously
functioned as a mouthpiece for law enforcement agencies, but it
(40:01):
was especially clear during the Heidi flight scandal when they
printed absolute Lives from the cops connecting an unrelated murder
to Heidi's maddening business. The media angle made no sense
because the drugs, degradation and death narrative was not the
Heidi fly story at all. Sure, there were drugs, but
everyone involved as a willing participant, and the sex was
(40:23):
always a consensual exchange of goods between consenting adults. Heidi
Flice's arrest itself was meant to serve as propaganda for
the Los Angeles Police Department. Just a few years after
four l ap D officers were filmed beating Rodney King
and then subsequently acquitted. The police force, known around the
world for its brutal, racist treatment of civilians, was looking
(40:47):
for a public relations coup, something to show that they
were the heroes. They thought of themselves as cleansing the
city of vice and crime and interesting Heidi flights. They
also sent a clear message to other sex workers that
they would be targeted too, literally targeted. In the nineties,
the l a p D supposedly had an internal acronym NHI,
(41:10):
which means no human involved. Allegedly, the cops used NHI
as code when a sex worker, unhoused person, junkie, or
gang member was murdered, So that should tell you something
about how the cops viewed sex workers, these people they
allegedly are claiming to protect. What the cops really cared
(41:31):
about was that Heidi Flice had made the cops as
an institution look as corrupt and stupid as they really are.
But busting Heidi didn't have the effect the lap D expected.
It made the cops look again like jackasses for wasting
city time and money on and over the top raid
(41:51):
of a woman brokering an escorting business for a bunch
of men with too much money who want to spend
it on sex. Even though Heidi Flis didn't set out
to become famous and the glare of the spotlight she
was thrust into almost broke her, she did set a
(42:14):
lot of rules for a new kind of fame. It's
the only type of fame that exists now and the
driving force behind all social media, the person who you
just can't stop watching. The media Mailstrom capitalized on Heidi's
youth and sex appeal at the same time as it
condemned her and vilified her. But Heidi did her best
to cash into launching a very ahead of its timeline
(42:37):
of pajamas and accessory she called Heidi ware while she
was on trial. Once Heidi became notorious after she got
out of jail, she continued to leverage what was objectively
a horrible situation into money by becoming that newest thing,
a reality TV star. She also has a very deep
family connection to The Bachelor. I'm not saying Heidi is
(43:00):
a saint. I think the details and documents will speak
for themselves. To me, She's the most interesting anti hero
and with the continued persecution of sex workers by a
fanatical right wing anti porn lobby, for whom sex work
is always, without exception, somehow degrading and exploitative, even when
the workers themselves are telling you it's not, it seems
(43:22):
like the perfect time to take a fresh look at
the Heidi Fly story and discuss what went wrong and
why America is still so fucked up about sex, especially
when there's money involved. Next time on Heidi World, Heidi
(43:51):
gets a job waitressing on the world famous Sunset Strip,
is introduced to the glamorous world of v I P
partying with celebrities at notorious club of Helena's, and meets
a wealthy, mysterious, much older man named Bernie Cornfeld who
will change her life forever
Oh, the only place for a man in the sex
(00:28):
business is paying for it. Heidi Flace, America is a casino.
You can be up one night, down the next, then
back up again, and then with just one bad hand,
lose it all. Despite the myth that this country is
a meritocracy where anyone can work their way up, we
(00:50):
all know that the rich are born with the chips up,
and that the only way for anyone else to get
ahead is to game the system. At the height of
her power, nobody play the game better than Heidi Flice.
The Heidi fly Saga is a classic American story about
one of the greatest hustlers of all time. But unlike
(01:11):
the hustlers in movies like Good Fellas or Casino Haidi
never killed anybody. All she did was dare to broker
sex work. Welcome to Heidi World, the Heidi Flye Story
and the Secret History of l A. I'm your host,
(01:32):
Molly Lambert, and I will be your guide through Los
Angeles High and Low. In the ninety nineties, the world
was captivated by Heidi Flice, the twenty seven year old
woman who briefly and memorably became the most powerful madam
in Los Angeles before she was brought down by a
(01:54):
combination of snitches, hubris, and plain old bad luck. The
scandal enveloped a major movie studio, and employees were alleged
to have bought sex from Heide's girls using checks from
the studio. Her trial threatened to lay bare the depths
of moral hypocrisy in l A among the super wealthy
law enforcement agencies and the entertainment industry. But instead, Heidi
(02:19):
was made of pariah and suffered the only consequences of
the scandal as the men who bought sex from her
went back to their lives and sometimes even got promotions.
Put it this way, the person Heidi that people talk
about in the history of time, no one did what
she did in one year. No one. When I was
(02:40):
twenty five, I went out on my own. I said,
funk all of them. All. Show them how to do
things right with integrity, and treat girls like they're girls.
Not forced a girl to do something she doesn't want
to do. I never once solicited a person. I never
once pushed drugs upon a person. I've always told will
never sell out. Only do something you want to do.
(03:03):
If you're ever in an uncomfortable situation, whatever it is,
get out. You're a person with rights. You never have
to do anything. Heidi World will follow Heidi Flights from
her earliest days as a young Jewish girl in Los
Felis running a babysitting ring at her high school, through
(03:24):
her party girl dropout years on the hair Metal Sunset strip.
We'll introduce you to memorable characters like Madam Alex, the
woman who ran the world of high class prostitution in
Beverly Hills for years and showed Heidi the ropes, then
got busted and accused Heidi of stealing her business, and
little black book of clientele battling Heidi for years in
(03:46):
what she called the hore Wars. Will also go over
the varying rachamon like accounts of what really took place
with that little Black book. We'll get into evil boyfriends,
abuse of John's corrupt lease, and legal hypocrisy. Will explore
how the invention of twenty four hour court TV coincided
(04:06):
with the media circus of several big l A trials
in the nineties, including the O. J. Simpson trial, the
Menendez Brothers trial, and the Heidi Fly's trial. We'll talk
about how we are still feeling the after effects of
the profound shift in the way news is covered and
prioritized in what we all now know as the content cycle.
(04:27):
And of course we will get into Heide's line of
vanity sleepware Heidi ware. At its heart, the Heidi Fly
scandal is a Los Angeles story. There's so much local
history that runs through it. Many of the major players
are second generation l A kids whose parents were notable
local figures in entertainment and lots of other industries. It's
(04:50):
like a Russian novel about a family in a particular
place at a very specific time. Some of the people
involved in the scandal are dead, which means we can
talk openly about them. Some of them are very much
still alive, some even still working in Hollywood. Some are
even portrayed by Bradley Cooper in the Paul Thomas Anderson
(05:12):
movie Licorice Pizza. In the same spirit as Licorice Pizza,
I have made the casting of Heidi World a family affair,
casting my own father as Dr Paul Flice and my
brother is in this podcast, as well as a voice
cast of nearly hundreds of notable podcasters, directors playing other directors,
(05:35):
and more. Fun cameos. All of the quotes you will
hear are sourced from contemporary media that came out while
the scandal was happening, things like magazines, TV segments, books,
and newspapers. Heidi Flice is voiced throughout Heidi World by
actress Annie Hamilton's looks are only a head start. You
(05:59):
do not have to be classically beautiful to get the
man you want. An average looking woman who is confident, happy,
and slightly reserved is way more appealing to a man
than a dumb girl with a nice ass. Along the way,
we'll use Heidi story to make the argument for why
sex work must be decriminalized and discuss the horrifying way
(06:20):
sex workers have been pushed even further to the margin
since this story happened, Thanks largely to pressure from the
extreme right, but also centrists and clueless lib Dems, there
has been a concentrated agenda in recent years to conflate
consensual sex work with sex trafficking. This is the movement
behind Sesta Fasta, a set of laws passed in eighteen
(06:42):
that were sensibly aimed at eradicating internet sex trafficking, but
in reality we're purposely designed to d platform and shadow
band sex workers on the few online outlets where they
could safely still do their jobs and earn a study income.
Why are people so obsessed with keeping sex work criminalized,
because go with me here. If it was decriminalized, those
(07:04):
people couldn't find ways to profit off of it being criminalized.
It's too threatening to the powers that be when sex
workers control the means of production. Heidi Flice herself is
no longer in the sex work business. She runs a
bird sanctuary, a private airfield, and a laundromat in par
ump Nevada, after a failed attempt at opening a brothel
(07:25):
for women there called the stud Farm. Right now, she's
considering leaving Nevada for Missouri after someone shot a bb
gun at one of her exotic birds. She's also embroiled
in a fight over cryptocurrency with a former friend, and
eventually we will get into all of that too, But
first we have to go back to the very beginning
(07:48):
to Heidi's childhood in Los Felis. This is Heidi World,
Chapter one, an l a store, How Heidi Flice's family
came to be, and how one car accident changed them forever.
The nineteen seventies, I was born and raised in l A.
(08:14):
My dad was a famous pediatrician. When he died, they
donated a bench to him at the Griffith Park Observatory.
I got an in big trouble. I felt shitty about that.
Dad gave me really the best childhood possible and all
of the opportunity in front of me. I wish that
I took school seriously and won a different route. But
(08:34):
it was not my father's fault at all. Just love him.
They can't love your kids too much. Paul Fish, pediatrician.
When Heidi World returns, meet the Flice's family and learn
about her doctor father's New Age beliefs and connection to
(08:56):
Leonardo DiCaprio. Welcome back to Heidi World. Let's meet the
flies family, shall we? Our story begins in the l
(09:16):
A neighborhood of Los Felis. Paul Flice is a Jewish
American pediatrician who runs his practice out of a craftsman
house on Hillhurst, which is still there and was most
recently an ice cream shop called Ample Hills Creamery. Paul
Flice is a beloved local doctor known for treating the
rich and poor alike, but he also becomes known as
a pediatrician to the stars in his own way. Paul
(09:40):
Flice is also a bit of a hustler himself. He
trains in Detroit as an osteopath and pharmacist. In Nino,
California passes a law that allows osteopaths to convert their
degrees into m d s, and he moves to l
A to take advantage of it. While osteopath our generalists,
(10:01):
the m D allows Flice to choose a specialty and
he goes into pediatric medicine, becoming a resident at USC
Medical Center in l A. A friend introduces Paul to
a hippie school teacher named Alyssa Ash. They fall in
love instantly in her wed within the year. A few
months after that, one of Alyssa's underage sisters gets pregnant.
(10:22):
Alyssa and Paul offered to take in the baby, whose
name is Kim. The next year, one of Paul's sisters
becomes fatally ill, and the couple agree to adopt her
young daughter, Amy as well. Alyssa then gives birth to
Paul's child, in a girl they name Heidi Lynn Flice.
(10:43):
I am one of six kids. I described my parents
as intellectual hippies, but minus the grateful Dead and Charles
Manson aspects. Before they would sleep at night, I'd lie
down with each one of them, and I'd always save
Heidi for last, because she was the most most fun
Alyssa ash Heidie's mom. By the time, they move into
(11:07):
a three story house and the hills of Griffith Park
that they bought for seventy seven thousand dollars in nineteen
seventy around five hundred and seventeen thousand dollars today. The
family adds daughter Shana and son Jason. In nineteen seventy seven,
they have another son, Jesse, bringing the Flies family to
a grand total of six kids. They all live in
(11:27):
the four thousand, three hundred square foot house built in
nineteen thirty, with five bedrooms and a three story spiral
staircase going up to a crow's nest observation tower. There's
a grotto with a fish pond, stained glass windows, and
murals painted on the walls those Felis is known as
an artsy kind of Bohemian neighborhood, although it was never
(11:48):
cheap to live there. It's directly next to Hollywood and
provides easy proximity to most of the major studios. Early
movie stars built those filises art Deco mansions. The main
street set from the nineteen fifty four Western melodrama Johnny
Guitar just stood there on Sunset Boulevard for decades before
it was finally demolished. Los Felis is also famous for
(12:10):
being the neighborhood where Rosemary and Leno la Bianca, an
Italian immigrant couple who ran a successful grocery store, were
murdered by the Manson family on the second night of
their murder spree. Aside from Heidi Flice, there are two
other incredibly famous A List Hollywood stars from Los Felis.
(12:31):
One of them is Mickey Mouse, who was born in
the original Disney Studios building on Hyperion Avenue in Los Felis,
which is the reason why the Main Street USA corollary
in Disney's beleaguered California Adventure Park is an idealized replica
of nineteen thirties Los Pelis. The other movie star from
Los Philis is Leonardo DiCaprio, whose legal secretary mother and
(12:54):
underground comics artist father separate when he is one, but
for a while lived next to each other in Bungalow's
with a shared backyard to co parent baby Leonardo DiCaprio,
is even delivered by Heidi's father, Paul Flice, who is
best friends with his father George DiCaprio. In nine seventies, California,
some people are experimenting with new definitions of family and
(13:18):
domestic life. The Flices are a blended family of four
biological children and two adopted kids, a Jewish, boho Brady
bunch living in a three story fairytale hacienda with lots
of pets. They take family camping trips to national parks together,
where everyone fights in the car. They go to Hurst Castle.
(13:39):
They're a tight group. I love my daddy. He's the
best dead on earth. My dad never spanked us. He
would say, I'm not gonna ask any questions. This has happened,
and now it's too late, and we're just going to
figure it out. Shane of Flice. Paul Flice is on
(14:02):
lots of medical boards, and his opinions are often quoted
in the Los Angeles Times. But Paul Flice also holds
some views that were considered at the time unconventional. Some
of them are more potentially harmful than others. His beliefs
tend towards the new age. He is a believer in
the family bed, where parents and children all sleep in
(14:24):
one big bed together. This is now known as co sleeping,
and its most famous advocate is former Blossom Miambiolic. He
wears birken stocks and the kids are all vegetarians. He's
against rewarding or punishing children, believing the main thing parents
should do is be kind. He's pro breastfeeding and anti formula.
(14:48):
Dr Flice is quoted in a l A Times article
about a Silver Lake childcare co opera women breastfeed each
other's children, also known as wet nurse, saying while some
of the other doctors the article worn that breast milk
can contain infectious agents. Dr Flice advocates not only for breastfeeding,
but for wet nursing. Mothers have been doing this for
(15:12):
a long long time. It's not quite as good as
the baby's mother, but it's better than propping the baby
up with a bottle. The California counterculture seemed fully into
the medical practices of the time, and on the spectrum
of outrageous nineteen seventies medical thought, Paul Flice was by
(15:33):
no means the wackiest or most out there person, He
was among many professionals questioning traditional medical practices and child
rearing methods, interested in exploring new, hopefully better possibilities. Doctors
were also pushing the limits in fields like group psychotherapy.
There was Paul Bendraum's Theory of Nude Psychotherapy in ninety seven,
(15:56):
which involved long marathon naked group therapy session. There's an
incredible ninety one documentary called Out of Touch about the
nude therapy movement. Critics of the nude therapy movement said
it was too charged of an atmosphere and that participants
might mistake the adrenaline high of being naked with strangers
for emotional breakthroughs, but supporters said the nudity became non
(16:19):
sexual very quickly, and as someone who has spent to
a couple of adult film conventions and one European beach,
I absolutely think this is true. There are still nud
therapy workshops in California, offered by a place called the
Human Institute for Awareness. There's also Lyn the Big sur
retreat with a nude hot tub, founded in the sixties
by two Stanford grads after they heard a life changing
(16:42):
Aldus Huxley lecture about human potential. There were new experimental
techniques for things like drug rehabilitation with the Experimental Rehab
Center turned eventual cult Synanon in Santa Monica. Dr Flice
considered his philosophy of medicine holistic. He was vehemently anti circumcision,
(17:02):
believing the procedure college children unnecessary pain and that the
foreskin could be cleaned manually. And he advocated for treating
children with the same respect afforded to adults and not
physically punishing them. His saying was no rewards or punishments,
no threats or bribes. Here's the less great part. He
(17:25):
wasn't anti vaccine, but he didn't insist that his patients
vaccinate their children. Despite, but also probably because of, this bullshit,
he was a beloved family doctor throughout Los Angeles. Dr
Flice was also a paid consultant for a board called
the Los Angeles County Milk Commission, which was put together
(17:46):
by Altadina. Altadina is a milk company that advertised untrue
health benefits of its unpasteurized milk. Dr Flie was essentially
paid to say that raw milk did have real health benefits,
something he likely believed given his own bent towards holistic
sneake oil. A report on the l A County Milk
Commission alleged that the entire board of milk had been
(18:09):
bought off by Altadina Dairy so that the San Bernardino
Milk Farm could continue to produce raw milk in violation
of health codes. Our parents always stressed the importance of
an education. Our home was filled with love and stability.
Heidi was Mom's favorite. I mean, I knew my mom
(18:31):
loved me, but she and Heidi like had their own language.
For me. Coming into this family that was so generous
and open minded, it really turned me around. But for
Heidi having a lot of leeway when she acted up,
her actions were considered not wrong, but witty or cute instead.
(18:53):
Kim Flice, oldest sister. The Flice kids had kind of
freedom and lack of boundaries you might expect out of
a bohemian Los Angeles family in the nineteen seventies. In
profile of Paul Flice by journalist Sean Hubler, a list
of Flice calls herself a quote flower child mother, and
(19:16):
Hubler refers to Paul Flice as quote the prototypical nurturing mail.
Our house was the house on the block where everybody went,
because they knew our parents were flexible about what time
we came home, so our friends would say, I want
to stay as Shana's and their parents would think, well,
the mother's a school teacher, the father's a doctor. There
shouldn't be any problems, and then we just go stay
(19:39):
out at night, going to clubs. My parents didn't have
a clue. By the time our parents started talking about curfews,
it was too late. We were like fifteen or sixteen.
I had been going out and doing things since I
was twelve years old. Shana makes it sound like they
were just allowed to run loose, and that certainly was
not the case. While Paul Flice defends his parenting style,
(20:03):
other people do confirm that The Fly's parents took a
hands off approach popular at the time, basically trusting their
kids to make their own choices. A friend of mine,
whose mother was close friends with Dr Paul Flice, sent
me an email but asked for anonymity. She describes Paul Flice,
like most people do, as a beloved family pediatrician who
would slot in patients even if they couldn't pay, and
(20:25):
take house calls long after everyone else stopped doing house calls.
She says the Flies family had a parenting style she
calls seventies California very hands off. Her mom believed the
Fly's kids became a mix of high achieving and burnouts.
In Heidi's case, both we have to contextualize the Lais
(20:46):
fair seventies California parenting style as a product of its
time in reaction to what came before it. Childcare manuals
from the first part of the twentieth century were filled
with concepts like the Refrigerator Mother, which blamed cold parental
behavior from women for children who developed autism or schizophrenia.
(21:07):
In X, Dr Benjamin Spock put out Baby in Childcare,
the first parenting book to involve psychoanalysis and advocate for
a more touchy feely approach to parenting, telling parents it
was okay to comfort and kiss their babies if they cried,
instead of just ignoring them. Spock was a proto hippie
(21:28):
whose anti Vietnam War views made him the eventual subject
of conservative backlash. So by the sixties and seventies, the
more liberal Spock influenced parents believe in treating children as
the individuals they are now Some parents absolutely took the
idea of breaking down the boundaries between parents and children
too far, especially in bohemian nineteen seventies California. Their ac
(21:54):
countless stories, particularly of famous parents pushing their children into
adulthood prematurely, or blurring the boundaries between parenting and friendship
in a way that harmed their children, providing their kids
with access to drugs or alcohol or sex too early,
and creepy stories like the one about the rock star
who quote gave his daughter's virginity to another rock star
(22:18):
he was friends with as a gift. The seventies was
also the high point of working class latchkey kids whose
parents weren't around to see what they were doing, and
the high point for upper class kids with resources whose
parents let them run free without any rules. In the
nineteen seventies, people still hitchhiked in California. Things were so
(22:40):
repressed in the first part of the century that when
they swung in the other direction, they really swung hard.
Of course, there was a swift backlash to all the
sixties and seventies freedom and exploration called the nineteen eighties.
This is all to say that the Flice family existed
somewhere on this spectrum between aditional parenting and letting children
(23:01):
fend completely for themselves, much like most other Gen X
kids experienced. Which is not to say that the Fly's
parents were absent or distant. By all accounts, they were involved,
even strict sometimes, and the family was legendarily close knit.
On celebrity rehab which will get too much later. Heidi
is horrified when Mackenzie Phillips, the daughter of Mama's and
(23:24):
the Papa's musician John Phillips, perhaps the poster child for
nineteen sixties and seventies bad parenting, talks about her dad
asking her to get him drugs. Later that year, Phillips
opened up about the adult in sastuous relationship she had
with her father. Heidi is completely horrified and says she
would never have so much a smoked pot with her dad.
(23:49):
I always had my own agenda. I was always looking
for something else. She's always been a wheeler dealer. Idea
was desperate to get West of Doheny, vonage producer that
was Avantage, the Hungarian director, producer and all around dirt
(24:13):
bag who will introduce you to an episode two. He's
talking about how Heidi was desperate to get west of Doheny.
Doheny is a street that is sort of a dividing
line into the neighborhood of Beverly Hills. It is named
after Edward L. Doheny, who was the first person to
successfully drill an oil well in Los Angeles, setting off
a Southern California oil boom and making a ton of money,
(24:37):
becoming one of the first dynasties of l A. Doheny
was the inspiration for Upton Sinclair's novel Oil exclamation Point,
which was in turn the inspiration for Paul Thomas Anderson's
There Will Be Blood, which features Daniel day Lewis as
a Doheni inspired character named Daniel Plainview. Heidi is the
(24:59):
ringleader of the Flice family gang. She's a kid who
ties her younger siblings shoelaces together. In photos of Heidi
as a child, she's a skinny little stick with long,
scraggly black hair, a tomboy in a football jersey. Growing up,
Heidi makes little movies with her siblings using a Super
eight camera. In one of Heidi's movies, her brother, dressed
(25:20):
in drag, pushes their younger sister in a baby carriage,
then appears to lose control of the carriage and watches
as a Karean's down a steep hill in what we
can only assume is an homage to Battleship at Tempkin.
When the Fly's kids show the short to their mom,
she freaks out, thinking they'd actually push the carriage down
the hill with their sister in it. Heidi has to
jump in and explain the magic of movie editing. They
(25:43):
replace their real baby sister with a doll before pushing
the carriage down the hill. That should give you an
impression of the kind of kid. Heidi was the one
who ropes the other kids into making a movie and
scares her parents a little bit in the process. Heidi
Flies attends John Mark Shall High in Los Felis, a
beautiful Gothic public school built in featured in A Million Things,
(26:06):
probably most famously as Rdel High at the End of Greece.
Besides Heidi, other notable John Marshall students include Michelle Phillips
from The Moms and the Papas, Sue Lyon, who played
Lolita in the Stanley Kubrick film, Judge Lance Edo from
The O. J. Simpson Trial, and will I am an
Apple de app from The Black Eyed Peas Van Halen's
(26:29):
Hot for Teacher music video was also shot at John
Marshall High which was closed at the time due to
lack of city funding. The band, who also themselves met
in l A Area Public Schools in Pasadena, donated an
undisclosed amount of money to refurbish and reopen the school,
which is cool as hell. When I was a teenager,
(26:52):
all I wanted to do was London. I felt awkward
around my peers. The things that were on my mind
were different from anything they talked about. Once I went
with some friends to a party at U C l A,
and I remember watching a group of girls who dressed
the same, laugh the same, and talked the same, and
I wanted so badly to just be like them. Heidi
(27:15):
is clearly very smart. She wins a citywide chess championship
twice at age thirteen and fourteen. Around the same time,
she starts babysitting to make money and figures out she
can make even more money by helping set up other
girls to babysit too. Thus, the first incarnation of Heidi
Girls is born. A babysitting ring of twenty or so
(27:38):
teenage girls that Heidi matches up with her first clients,
parents who need babysitters. In junior high, Heidi, who had
been a stellar elementary school student, starts falling behind. She
can't keep up with the schoolwork, and she's very frustrated
by and embarrassed about it. Her parents value education, and
(27:58):
Heidi plans to go to a good college someday like
they want. But her grades keep dropping and the only
reason she keeps going to school at all is because
of a crush on a teacher named Mr Jamie. When
she gets a C in one class, she begs the
teacher to change it to a bee, and he refuses,
so she gives up on trying and starts ditching school.
(28:21):
I was always in the classroom staring at the blue sky,
thinking I gotta go, I gotta go. After a while,
I hardly went to school at all. I'd cut glass
and go to the beach with a race track. When
Heidi World returns, Heidi ditches high school for hustling. Welcome
(28:51):
back to Heidi World. Although she's been truant from high school,
she manages to hold down a part time job at
a flower shop called Flowers by Judith. One of her
jobs is to bring roses over to the Greek theater
and sell them to people after shows. One day, she
is doing her job and sells out out of all
(29:14):
of the roses, and although her boss had told her
to just stop when she finished, she goes back to
the flower shop, gets more roses, and sells all of
them too. So you can see that Heidi has a
natural talent for finding money and then turning that money
into more money. Flower shops figure heavily into Heidi world,
(29:36):
and it's not hard to see why a bouquet of
beautiful blooms for sale arranged just right can fetch a
significantly marked up price when the right person is selling them.
But this outside success doesn't translate back to school, where
she feels like a misfit, like she doesn't quite fit
in with the other kids her age. She develops an
(29:56):
attraction to much older men. I don't like them under
forty five. Just show me a six year old guy
with a million dollars point me in that direction. However,
Heidi does date some guys her own age, like her
best friend Steve, the blonde guy next door, who becomes
(30:16):
her first boyfriend. There's also a boy named Scott who
resembles young Johnny Depp that Heidi describes as her first love.
Her ideas of romance are forged by movies like Excalibur,
epic medieval fantasy movie depicting our Thurian legends. Excalibur features
Helen Mirren as Morgan le Fay, a powerful female enchantress
(30:39):
who can use magic to bend powerful men to her will.
But in her own life, Heidi is not the sex
goddess that she wishes she was. I didn't lose my
virginity until I was almost eighteen. I'm real slow. I'd
go to bed at night and say, why can't I
have tits like Dolly Park? But I remember the first guy.
(31:03):
He was blonde. I've never slept with a blonde again,
and I wanted to understand what everyone was talking about.
So I just did it. And it was like, this
is so painful, I will die. I will never do
this again. I'll be an, No way will I do
this again. She also spends an ever increasing amount of
(31:25):
time at the Hollywood Park race track in Inglewood, where
she develops a taste for betting on the horses. She
bets on her first horse at the age of fifteen,
which is definitely illegal. Her boyfriend Steve goes with her
on these racetrack hooky trips at first, but he gets
sick of the scene at the racetrack, which he finds
sort of depressing and seed and stops going. But Heidi
(31:49):
loves it. There's so much she just keeps going to
the racetrack alone. Hid he likes to gamble. She'll bet
on which rain drop will make it down the window first.
And Nie Brook Layer attorney at law. Now officially failing
out of school, Heidi's parents tell her if she brings
her grades up, they'll give her a car for her
(32:10):
sixteenth birthday, a common motivational strategy used by parents of
rich kids in l A, and it works if only briefly.
Heidi hits the books just long enough to raise her
grades and is rewarded by her parents with the brand
new car. But the lesson she learns from the experience
is not to study, but to start forging her report cards.
(32:33):
On top of all that, she also starts selling pot,
shoplifting and stealing car radios. I lied to my parents
for a year and told him I was going to school.
I goofed around instead. That was restless as hell. Heidi
(32:54):
has some wealthier friends whose famous parents wield more power
and influence than a loose feless pediatrician, even a pediatrician
to the stars. These friends also have the kinds of
l a luxuries that come with lots and lots of money,
fancy cars, Palm Springs houses, good tables at hip restaurants,
(33:14):
expensive clothes from nice department stores. This becomes the blueprint
for the kind of life Heidi wants for herself. When
she's sixteen, Heidie meets a girl who will become her
best friend, Victoria's Sellers, daughter of legendary comedian Peter Sellers
and Swedish actress Britt Eklund. Victoria Sellers is the only
(33:38):
friend I have ever felt completely comfortable around. We met
in our teens during spring break in Palm Springs. We
are very different from each other, but also very much alike.
Heidi is star struck by Victoria's glamorous lifestyle and Hollywood connections.
(33:58):
Victoria's beauty a full blonde, bond girl. Mother has dated
famous playboys like Warren Beatty, Rod Stewart, and the producer
Lou Adler, who still sits front row at every Lakers game.
Heidi's smart when she puts her mind to something, she
gets it. Victoria Sellers, Heidi's best friend, The Flight's parents,
(34:21):
who are very concerned about Heidi's truancy and lack of
interest in school, have her transferred to a private Catholic
girls school called Immaculate Heart, where she flunks out in
her first semester. Her senior year, Heidi drops out of
high school entirely, promising her parents that she'll use the
time to get her g E ED High School Equivalency
(34:42):
diploma and sign up for early enrollment in college. But
back to that car, you know in clueless how share
Horroitz says, look at the loked out jeep Daddy got me,
referring to the white jeep Wrangler that she can barely drive,
or when Murray asks on if she was jeep in
I e. Creepin in a Jeep, Heidi like share Horroits,
(35:06):
drives a Jeep. A burgeoning trend for off road sport
utility vehicles and a timeless California taste for convertibles made
jeeps the it car for a certain kind of moneyed
young girl in that era. But while jeeps, which started
as military vehicles, are cute, they aren't the ideal starter
car for someone just learning to drive. Like any SUV,
(35:29):
they're prone to tipping over. Nineteen year old Hidi is
behind the wheel of the jeep when she flips the
car of eight passengers over in a nightclub parking lot,
trapping her sister Shana underneath the car and injuring Shana's
arm to the point where it almost has to be amputated.
Heidi panics, allegedly drunken on downers. Frantic, but unhurt herself
(35:54):
at first, she flees the scene. None of the other passengers,
including her, badly hurts, so her file charges against her.
Her parents, perhaps naively still set against the idea of
punishing their kids in a traditional sense, by her another jeep.
It was July, and after it happened, it changed everyone's lives.
(36:19):
When I was eighteen, I flipped a jeep over with
eight girls in it. The only person who was hurt
was my younger sister. She had a multiple fracture, the
kind where the bone comes out, because her forearm and
her upper arm got trapped under the roll bar. But
(36:40):
mentally it might have caused more harm to me. You see,
I wish it was me, Okay, She was sixteen years old,
she couldn't finish school, and you know how your ego
is when you're sixteen, Well, I I felt responsible. The
jeep flipping in didn't changes the entire family's dynamic forever
(37:03):
fulfilling a Lissa Flice's worst fears from when she thought
Heidi had pushed her sister down a hill in a
baby carriage and that Super eight movie. Heidi's own recklessness
was becoming a liability to more than just herself. Heidi
goes into a deep depression, allegedly even maybe going to
a mental hospital for a while, feeling like she has
completely ruined her sister's life. Heidi is impulsive, but she's
(37:28):
also very sensitive. But Shana doesn't even really blame Heidi,
who stays with her at the hospital through all of
her painful operations. By the end of the year, the
Fly's parents announced that they are getting a divorce. Heidi
(37:48):
is at a crossroads. Will she get on the straight
and narrow by going back to school and figuring out
a stable career, or will she plunge deeper into partying
and try to lose her self in sets, drugs and
rock and roll On the debaucherous sunset strip. Like Heidi Flce,
I'm a half Jewish woman with hippie parents from the
(38:10):
flatlands of Los Angeles who has spent her life trying
to claw her way up into the Hollywood Hills. The
Heidi fly scandal broke when I was first developing my
ideas about sex and morality. I remember wondering why it
was even illegal to sell sexual services. From a steady
diet of television, magazines, movies, and billboards, I already understood
(38:33):
that sex was used to sell virtually everything, and I
was interested in the pornography industry that operated around me
in the San Fernando Valley is a shadow economy of
the mainstream film industry. Fascinated by the mundanity of the
work of cranking out glamour and arousal for public consumption.
A sexy young woman was the ultimate product, a symbol
(38:56):
of desire and commerce itself. You could make a killing
selling the female image, but the people who did make
a killing selling the female image always seemed to be men.
Hugh Hefner, male directors, producers, and executives that a woman
couldn't sell her own body consensually to customers who were
(39:17):
paying consensually. Made no sense to me, even as a child.
Here was Heidi being punished, basically burned at the stake,
by the media for something that didn't seem like it
should even be against the law. Legacy news outlets and
(39:40):
tabloids alike had a clear narrative in mind for the
Heidi Fli scandal, one where sex work is bad, sex
workers are either bad people or naively coerced innocence, and
the experience of doing sex work leads only to drugs,
degradation and death. The l A Times has always notoriously
functioned as a mouthpiece for law enforcement agencies, but it
(40:01):
was especially clear during the Heidi flight scandal when they
printed absolute Lives from the cops connecting an unrelated murder
to Heidi's maddening business. The media angle made no sense
because the drugs, degradation and death narrative was not the
Heidi fly story at all. Sure, there were drugs, but
everyone involved as a willing participant, and the sex was
(40:23):
always a consensual exchange of goods between consenting adults. Heidi
Flice's arrest itself was meant to serve as propaganda for
the Los Angeles Police Department. Just a few years after
four l ap D officers were filmed beating Rodney King
and then subsequently acquitted. The police force, known around the
world for its brutal, racist treatment of civilians, was looking
(40:47):
for a public relations coup, something to show that they
were the heroes. They thought of themselves as cleansing the
city of vice and crime and interesting Heidi flights. They
also sent a clear message to other sex workers that
they would be targeted too, literally targeted. In the nineties,
the l a p D supposedly had an internal acronym NHI,
(41:10):
which means no human involved. Allegedly, the cops used NHI
as code when a sex worker, unhoused person, junkie, or
gang member was murdered, So that should tell you something
about how the cops viewed sex workers, these people they
allegedly are claiming to protect. What the cops really cared
(41:31):
about was that Heidi Flice had made the cops as
an institution look as corrupt and stupid as they really are.
But busting Heidi didn't have the effect the lap D expected.
It made the cops look again like jackasses for wasting
city time and money on and over the top raid
(41:51):
of a woman brokering an escorting business for a bunch
of men with too much money who want to spend
it on sex. Even though Heidi Flis didn't set out
to become famous and the glare of the spotlight she
was thrust into almost broke her, she did set a
(42:14):
lot of rules for a new kind of fame. It's
the only type of fame that exists now and the
driving force behind all social media, the person who you
just can't stop watching. The media Mailstrom capitalized on Heidi's
youth and sex appeal at the same time as it
condemned her and vilified her. But Heidi did her best
to cash into launching a very ahead of its timeline
(42:37):
of pajamas and accessory she called Heidi ware while she
was on trial. Once Heidi became notorious after she got
out of jail, she continued to leverage what was objectively
a horrible situation into money by becoming that newest thing,
a reality TV star. She also has a very deep
family connection to The Bachelor. I'm not saying Heidi is
(43:00):
a saint. I think the details and documents will speak
for themselves. To me, She's the most interesting anti hero
and with the continued persecution of sex workers by a
fanatical right wing anti porn lobby, for whom sex work
is always, without exception, somehow degrading and exploitative, even when
the workers themselves are telling you it's not, it seems
(43:22):
like the perfect time to take a fresh look at
the Heidi Fly story and discuss what went wrong and
why America is still so fucked up about sex, especially
when there's money involved. Next time on Heidi World, Heidi
(43:51):
gets a job waitressing on the world famous Sunset Strip,
is introduced to the glamorous world of v I P
partying with celebrities at notorious club of Helena's, and meets
a wealthy, mysterious, much older man named Bernie Cornfeld who
will change her life forever
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