Chapter 9: Reality Television: How Heidi Invented Reality Star Fame And Her Cousin Mike Fleiss Invented The Bachelor (late 90s/early 2000s)

Chapter 9: Reality Television: How Heidi Invented Reality Star Fame And Her Cousin Mike Fleiss Invented The Bachelor (late 90s/early 2000s)

Heidi Fleiss gets sentenced and goes to jail, doing 37 months in Dublin, California. Meanwhile, her second cousin Mike Fleiss climbs the ranks of early 2000s reality television and invents huge hit The Bachelor. And Don Simpson has one last box office mega-hit and then vanishes from the mortal plane forever.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
The lapd is deeply involved with this world. They all
knew me and often drove me home. But because I
wouldn't make girls sleep with them for free like Alex did,
they decided to make an example of me.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Heidi Flies.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Previously on Heidi World, Heidi Flies has been dragged through
the mud by the press in front of the entire world,
but emerged, as always with a shrug, a smile, and
a good sense of humor about the whole thing.

Speaker 4 (00:46):
Welcome to Heidi World, Chapter nine.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Reality Television, How Heidi invented reality star fame and her
cousin Mike Flis invented the Bachelor late nineties, early two thousand's.
Welcome back to Heidie World. I'm your host Molly Lambert

(01:18):
and the year is now nineteen ninety six. Heidiflice is
still out on bail after getting convicted in both of
her trials for pandering and lying to the irs, but
she's traded in the escort game for the streetwear game,
and she's running her new empire from the Hidiewear Store
on the Third Street Promenade, an open air mall in

(01:40):
Santa Monica. At the Hidiwear Store, they sell baby teas,
long sleep shirts, bathrobes, and the signature heidiwear boxers with
a condom pocket, a nod to the safe sex movement
of the AIDS activism era. Meanwhile, in the OJ Simpson trial,
OJ says he kicked in a door or at his
ex wife, Nicole Simpson Brown's house during an argument in

(02:03):
nineteen ninety three because he was upset that she was
associating with drug users and sex workers. He says Nichole's
friends included a Heidi Flis girl and that he was
upset that Nicole had brought what he thought of his
low lifes around their kids. I was talking about high
flies and hookahs and drug people.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Some people who are on drugs are still on drugs.

Speaker 4 (02:27):
And who were hookahs.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
We're hanging around the house at that time.

Speaker 5 (02:31):
O J.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Simpson, Football Star, February nineteen ninety six.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
I need to come up for air.

Speaker 4 (02:44):
Charlie Sheen.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
After five months of marriage, Charlie Sheen gets divorced from
Donna Peel. Michael Gross, the dad from Family Ties, plays
doctor Paul Flice in a CBS made for TV movie
produced by Dick Clark called The Good Doctor. The Paul
Fly's Story co starring my boy George Siegel as his
best friend. Quote LEO, who I Am just going to

(03:10):
go ahead and assume is meant to be Paul Flie's
best friend, George DiCaprio. On May thirtieth, there's finally some
good news for Heidi. A state appeals court panel overturns
the pandering conviction on the grounds of germsconduct and vote
trading and orders a new trial. Thirty year old Heidi
has started attending Narcotics anonymous meetings. She has elated that

(03:32):
the conviction has been overturned and the court panel has
seen reason.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
You don't know what this means to me.

Speaker 6 (03:44):
I'm relieved that the momentum atly seems to be going forward.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Hopefully it will continue that way.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Jerry. For woman Shila Matrowski is also thrilled. She now
believes that Heidi Fli's was set up for entrapment by
the cops and should never have been tried. Matrowski also
now sees the sexism in Heidi's treatment and how confused
most of the jurors, including herself, actually were about the
case during the trial.

Speaker 7 (04:16):
I can't tell you how delighted I am by this
justice was not served in the case three years in
prison for what she did. Give me a break. That's outrageous, to.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Be honest with you.

Speaker 7 (04:29):
A few of the male jurors decided she was guilty
before we even began deliberating, and others were simply confused
by the entrapment law.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Sheila Matrowski, Heidi's lawyer, Anthony Brookler, wants authorities to drop
the case entirely rather than retry Heidi.

Speaker 8 (04:52):
This is a question of priorities. She's run the gauntlet once.
When you strip away the hoopla, is this really that
important a case? I mean, no matter how you shake it,
we're talking about consensual sex. Anthony Brookler. Heidie Flice's defense.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
Attorney, District Attorney Gil Garcetti, also wants the whole thing
to just go away, but for his own reasons. Garcetti
thinks the media circus around the Heidi trial makes Los
Angeles look frivolous and superficial. But maybe he also doesn't
like how much police corruption it dredges up, or how

(05:30):
it shows off the special relationships between the powers that
be in LA and the cops. June thirtieth, Madame Alex's
former LAPD connection Detective Mike Brambles is charged with a
sting of robberies and one rape committed in nineteen ninety four.
Wow a cop who's also a criminal and a rapist?

(05:51):
Can you imagine? Mike Brambles, forty seven, allegedly robbed a
bunch of dry cleaners, restaurants, and stores with a thirty
eight caliber pistol. He wore a denim jacket in a
baseball cap for the stickups, which began shortly after he
took leave from the LAPD and moved to Las Vegas
to surveil Heidi's girls dates there as a spy for

(06:12):
Madame Alex. Bramble's defense is that he is being framed
by police superiors who want to retaliate against him for
snitching on a fellow cop who took an illegal home
video while working a private security job for Bruce Springsteen.
Also Bruce Mann. Come on a cap, Mister State Trooper.
Detective Mike Brambles was a teenage surfer who graduated from

(06:35):
the police academy in nineteen seventy one. He met Madame
Alex while working in the LAPD's child pornography unit and
arranged to deal with her where the cops would leave
her alone as long as she ferried back any important
information she overheard from Powerful John's. In nineteen eighty nine,
Detective Brambles was accused of coaching a witness as part

(06:56):
of a rigged lineup. Edriddu Putsen, it was three.

Speaker 9 (07:04):
I didn't set out to make a crusading film for Heidi,
but all of us who worked in the film really
liked her, and I think she comes across in it
as likable. I think you see that she's not an
evil Machiavelian person, and that she spent most of the
time when she was supposedly on top of the world,
being bounced between her mentor and her nemesis Nick Broomfield.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
In July, a documentary made by director Nick Broomfield comes
out called Heidi Flices Hollywood Madam. Nick Broomfield is a
charismatic Czech Jewish British filmmaker about twenty years her senior.
In other words, he is also Heidi's type of guy.
Broomfield is very sympathetic to her cause and had made

(07:51):
a pro sex work documentary in nineteen eighty four called
Chicken Ranch about illegal brothel in Pa. Rump Nevada.

Speaker 9 (08:00):
The people in Heidi's world didn't do anything particularly wrong.
These are, after all, consenting adults. What struck me as
infinitely more sinister was the hypocrisy of the LAPD, the
corruption that operates there, the building of files on people

(08:21):
and use of information against people to control the city.
Many police departments do these things, but the LAPD took
it to a new limit. They were like the FBI
in the way they operated against people.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Nick Broomfield's Heidiflys documentary is being released directly to video
rental stores in a new tactic that aims to get
movie viewers hooked on non fiction narratives. The Broomfield Heidi
doc is being released directly to video by BMG Video,
alongside a doc about Grateful Dead Fans. Everyone is excited
about narrative documentaries because of the surprise hit success of

(09:02):
Hoop Dreams, the nineteen ninety four documentary about two high
school basketball players that was also my brother's favorite movie,
so much that he had a Hoop Dreams poster on
his wall.

Speaker 9 (09:14):
If the wider implications of this case had been fought
head on, Heidi probably wouldn't have the problem she's got now.
She is the only instance of a madam or pimp
being prosecuted federally. Why Ivan gets away with things because
he's always had a madam who fronts for him. And
Madame Alex was an old pro who did what professional

(09:36):
criminals do. She collaborated with the police. Heidi wasn't a professional,
and she broke all the rules on both sides of
the fence, and that's why she came crashing down. Moreover,
because the DA has been so unsuccessful in getting any
high profile convictions, Heidie's case has taken on a significance

(09:58):
it doesn't deserve.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
Nonfiction narrative books are also selling big, like Nancy Griffin
and Kim Master's book Hit and Run, How John Peters
and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood.
People are increasingly interested in real stories told as entertainment.
Hit and Run is filled with behind the scenes gossip

(10:23):
about the Sony Corporation's disastrous takeover of Columbia Pictures in
TriStar that ended up costing them billions. Griffin and Masters
deflate the myth of the Hollywood power player to show
these people for what they are Charlatan's hustlers, who like
Heidi understand how to work a room and more specifically,

(10:43):
how to charm people out of their money. Peter Gouber
and John Peters traded off the success of their biggest
hits as producers, both critical darlings like Gorillas in the
Mist and box office bangers like Tim Burton's nineteen eighty
nine Batman. Peter Gouber and John Peters are men of
the seventies and eighties. They expect the blockbuster gravy train

(11:06):
to continue chugging along forever. They are ill prepared for
the nineteen nineties, when the major studio model will be
upended yet again by the success of countercultural independent films
like Richard Linklater's Slacker and Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. By
the time Miramax gets bought by Disney in nineteen ninety three,

(11:28):
the long baroque Eighties are finally coming to an end
in Hollywood as the cool grunge nineties arrive. The most
influential film of nineteen ninety four is not a big,
expensive movie at all, but weird, almost impossibly discursive, lurid,
and cheap pulp fiction. It is the first Miramax movie

(11:49):
put out by Disney and possibly the dirtiest movie put
out by the Disney Corporation since Pretty Woman. Made for
eight and a half million dollars and marketed for another
ten pulp Fiction ends up making over two hundred and
thirteen million dollars worldwide and wins the palm door. It
can new Hollywood is back and the writing is on
the wall for Hollywood's aging eighties. Men Peter Gouber and

(12:14):
John Peters have a classic good cop bad cop dynamic
on sets. John Peters is the loud, confrontational one and
Peter Gouber is quietly passive. Aggressive.

Speaker 10 (12:27):
John Peters at least would scream and yell and you
knew what he was thinking.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Goober, you never knew what was going on with him.
I mean he just smile.

Speaker 7 (12:37):
Share actress singer Goddess.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
Mad Max director George Miller calls John Peters quote genuinely
thought disordered, and the book described joint therapy sessions with
Goober and Peters were the formerly tight but now a
strange business partners hold hands and say I Love you
to each other. Just after Goober had Peters dumped from
the company, couple's therapy for creative platonic couples is not

(13:06):
uncommon in Hollywood, and I have now also known podcasting
teams who had to go to platonic couple's therapy. Stanley
Kubrick and Kirk Douglas were ordered to couple's therapy by
the studio during the making of Spartacus, where the psychotherapist
gave Kubrick a book to read called trom Novell Dream Novel,
which he would adapt decades later into Eyes Wide Shut.

(13:27):
Heidi Flics appears briefly and Hit and Run, although it
doesn't delve very deeply into her relationships with men at
the studios other than Michael Nathanson. Although the book centers
on John Peters, his personal relationship with Heidi Flies is
left to the cutting floor. In September of nineteen ninety six,
Heidi fails a drug test. She is arrested at the

(13:48):
Heidiwear store on the Santa Monica Third Street promenade after
a drug test indicates she's been using meth, which violates
her bail terms. A judge orders her back to a
treatment center immediately. In October, the other most famous woman
in the world, Madonna, gives birth to her daughter, lords
Maria chacone Leon. The doctor who makes the announcement outside

(14:10):
the hospital is none other than doctor Paul Flice. Well,
he didn't deliver the baby himself. Doctor Paul Fly says
Madonna asked him personally for help with the process of
her first pregnancy, which also fits if you remember that
Madonna was going deep into her New Age phase around
this time, and that Paul Flies had a reputation as
the new Age pediatrician for celebrities. When Heidi World returns,

(14:39):
we catch up with producer Don Simpson. Welcome back to

(15:06):
Heidie World. December nineteen ninety six, Heidi turns thirty one,
Charlie Sheen is arrested for assaulting a young woman at
his house. By nineteen ninety six, the long Eighties are
long over. Most of the besuited power players Heidi Delt

(15:26):
two are barely hanging on in Hollywood, or at least
have long passed their peak. But producer Don Simpson, the
Eighties Man of all eighties men, is having a big
career comeback after wobbling through a few years at Disney.
In nineteen ninety five, Simpson has a massive hit with
bad boys the Martin Lawrence and Will Smith buddy coop

(15:48):
comedy directed by a young upstart director named Michael Bay.
Michael Bay isn't connected to the story enough for me
to do a deep dive here, but let's just say
do an Internet search for Michael Bay. John franken Hig,
i'mer secret son and see where you go. I will
say that Michael Bay is like John Peters and also myself,
another striver from the San Fernando Valley, determined to claw

(16:11):
his way over into the Hollywood Hills, probably because his
father is secretly John Frankenheimer, although he passed a DNA test.
Even though he is once again bankable at the box office,
which is all anyone cares about. John Simpson's cocaine use
is still so bad in the mid nineties that his
pals David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg have to stage an

(16:32):
intervention on him. Synanon the La Rehab, which opened in
nineteen fifty eight and forged ties to the Human Potential movement,
then became a cult called the Church of Synanon, disbanded
in the eighties under scrutiny for tax evasion impossible deaths,
although there's still a Synanon branch in Germany. Synanon may

(16:52):
have pioneered the idea of beachfront rehab with a new
age bent, but they have sold their building on the
now wildly expensive Santama on a costrand, where it is
now a luxury hotel called the Casa del Mar, right
next to shutters on the beach. In the nineteen nineties,
people of means in La go to high end beachside
rehabs like the influential Promises in Malibu, founded in nineteen

(17:16):
eighty nine, starting a trend of rehabs using what Promises
called quote the Malibu model, where patients are given much
more freedom than in traditional rehab and group therapy is
skipped entirely in favor of treatment focused on the individual.
Promises costs forty two thousand dollars a month and plays
into the same mindset that worked on Heidi's rich customers

(17:39):
for everything else. If it's the most expensive, it must
be the very best. Promises may have a different visual
aesthetic from Synanon, but its treatments are also somewhat questionable,
and the entire field of rehab for profit is a grift.
But Don Simpson won't go to rehab even a ritzy
rehab on the Malibu Coast to signed around the tastes

(18:01):
of guys just like him. He promises his friends he'll
get help for his addiction issues in his own way.
So Don Simpson hires a doctor named Doctor Amberman, who
is himself a former addict and not surprisingly a total quack.
Doctor Amberman put Simpson on a doctor feel Good detox
of morphine for his cocaine withdrawals. Doctor Amberman is then

(18:24):
found dead in Don Simpson's poolhouse from a cocktail of morphine,
volume cocaine, and ven lafoxine whatever that is. Don Simpson's
drug abuse remains so out of control that Jerry Bruckheimer
terminates their production partnership, which finishes out with The Rock.
At age fifty two, in his bel Air home, Don

(18:46):
Simpson drops dead from heart failure after mixing twenty one
different prescription drugs and cocaine. The Rock, a huge hit
is dedicated to his memory.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Don was not just a customer, He was a close friend.
I loved him dearly.

Speaker 11 (19:08):
Well. Don Simpson was just a bad guy, a bum.
That was the kind of guy who has taken over
the studios. And it's just a big plus to our
industry that he's not here anymore. I'm only sorry that
he didn't live longer and suffered more. Robert Altman, director.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
Today, even in death, Don Simpson still lives. He may
not have an official credit on the Top Gun sequel,
Top Gun Maverick. It is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer Films,
which is the production company that Bruckheimer started after cutting
ties with Simpson and their shared production company that produced
the original Top Gun. But Don Simpson's imprint on the
American entertainment industry, the Big Eighties, big fucking jets, cool

(20:00):
looking stuff, openly working with the military to make pro
American propaganda. Even the franchise replacing Kelly McGillis sixty four
with Jennifer Connolly fifty one as the love interest for
Tom Cruise fifty nine. All of this is the Don
Simpson touch, and I will be their opening night. There

(20:20):
have been a lot of really bad faith arguments about
ethics and movie making lately, mostly online, and I think,
as a person who contains multitudes, that it's possible to
note that Don Simpson was a pedophile who abused sex workers,
and that Robert Altman was totally right about him. Don
Simpson can completely rotten hell and still also want to

(20:41):
see Tom Cruise fly around in his little plane. If
there's any takeaway from this podcast, it should be that
basically everyone producing in Hollywood is a full fledged criminal
in some way, just like anyone who has a lot
of mysterious money is. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism,
so you might as well take it to the danger zone.

(21:13):
It's now nineteen ninety seven, the year Boogie Nights comes out.
If this podcast were Boogie Knights, this part would be
the New Year's Eve party. Heidi appeals to the judge
in her federal court with an apology letter.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
I was young, and stupid and wrong.

Speaker 6 (21:36):
I will be paying for the crimes I have committed
for the rest of my life.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
It is to no avail. Heidi gets sentenced to thirty
seven months in prison for tax evasion and money laundering.
She has relieved because the maximum is ninety seven months,
but she is also frail, wearing her prison uniform from
the Metropolitan Detention Center and no makeup, a far cry
from the glamorous Heidi and Dulcen and Gobana from the trial.

(22:05):
She weeps through her sentencing.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
I wish herd knew words to tell you how sorry
I am.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
I have a different person now. I was young, and
I'd be terrible choices.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
The mistakes that I would I'd never made it.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
The pandering sentence comes down the next month. She gets
eighteen months for pandering that she can serve concurrently with
the thirty seven months from the federal trial. Michael Nathanson,
the Columbia Pictures guy who put out a denial that
he knew Heidi but was fired from Columbia anyway, is
named head of MGM. That's right, everyone. Heidi goes to jail,

(22:53):
and the one guy who was actually named from a
studio gets a brand new studio head job. After leaving
Colle Lumbia, Nathansen went to Arnin Milchon's company New Regency,
where he was poached by MGM. Everything really worked out
great for all the men. Meanwhile, Heidi gets a slander
suit filed against her by Detective Samue Lee the Second,

(23:14):
his father SAMUELI the First, and a police officer named
Patricia Corso for remarks she made on the k Rock
radio show love Line in nineteen eighty six where she
called them all homosexuals Loveline is kay Rock's sex and
relationship advice Radio Collins show, hosted by Adam Carolla and
the absolutely disgusting Doctor Drew. I found out only recently

(23:35):
that all of the phone calls on Loveline were staged.
The slander trial eventually gets tossed out of court. Judah Alza,
better known as JJ the King of Beepers, sues Nick
Broomfield and loses the case because the court says JJ
the King of Beepers, and by that token, Judah Alza
is a public figure due to his very public JJ

(23:57):
King of Beeper's ad campaigns legally allowed to make art
about somebody if they're a public figure, which is why
this podcast is barely legal. Victoria Sellers is laid so low.
She's working retail and not even at the heidiewear store.
She is embarrassed when Sean Hubler, who covered the Heidi

(24:17):
case extensively for the La Times, randomly spots her working
at a clothing boutique on Melrose.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
I'm Victoria Victoria Sellers. We met when I was covering Heidiefliss.
I'm also doing some stand up comedy. Please don't think
less of me.

Speaker 3 (24:38):
The writer Dominic Dunn puts out a new book called
Another City Not My Own. It's a novel that is
semi fictionalized narrative nonfiction about his experience covering the OJ
Simpson trial. Dominic Dunn is the older brother of John
Gregory Dunn, another writer who was married to Joan Didion.
Dominick's daughter, whose name was Dominique Dunn, was horrifically murdered

(25:01):
in nineteen eighty two, at which point he started writing
about wealth, crime and the judicial system, mostly for Vanity Fair.
Much like Heidi, Dominic Dunn knows absolutely everyone in LA
on both the high and low ends of the spectrum.
In Another City Not My Own, Dominic Dunn casually writes
that allegedly he introduced Heidi Flights to former First Lady

(25:23):
Nancy Reagan at the bel Air Hotel he was at
lunch with Heidi, spotted Nancy Reagan with her friend Betsy Bloomingdale,
and decided to introduce them because he thought it would
be funny. According to Dunn, here's how Heidi reacted.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
I can't fucking believe what just happened.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yes, it should be funny that Nancy Reagan, the throat goat,
met Heidi Flight's the Hollywood Madam. However, I have to
be a Debbie Downer here and say that when Nancy
Reagan was giving head to everyone in Hollywood, it was
because it was wampwomp coors. The stuff they made starlets
do while under contracts for old school studios was essentially pimping.

(26:07):
The forties and fifties in Hollywood were even worse for
women than the nineteen eighties. And if you don't believe me,
check out Koreina long Worst podcast. You must remember this.
Nick Broomfield's new documentary kurtin Courtney is banned from Sundance
after Courtney Love threatens to sue because the documentary sort
of implies she may have been responsible for the murder

(26:28):
of her husband, Kurt Cobain the Dock. Being banned from
Sundance just makes people more curious, almost like controversy is
good publicity For a documentary that basically endorses a conspiracy theory,
I wonder if that will have any effect on American
culture in the twenty first century. Who can say? After

(26:49):
thirty years, Alyssa ash Fliss lists the family home in
Los Pheelis where the Fly's clan all grew up for
one point three million dollars. Heidi's lawyer, Anthony, gets stuck
with a tax bill from the IRS for failing to
file his taxes in nineteen ninety three and nineteen ninety four.
He pleads guilty in court. It comes out he actually

(27:10):
didn't pay her file taxes for ten years, intentionally deciding
that he just didn't feel like it. He gets off
with a slap on the wrists and probation.

Speaker 8 (27:20):
My failure to file was a mistake which I am
taking very seriously and for which I take full responsibility.
I am doing all I can to resolve the problem.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Thirty two year old Charlie Sheen overdoses at his house
in the West Valley enclave of Agra in his hospitalized
Now you may wonder why we are still following Charlie
Sheen in this story, and it's not just because making
this podcast made me realize that seeing Charlie Sheen for
the first time in the Rambo parody Hotshots Part deh
was probably the moment I hit puberty. It's because I

(27:57):
think it's instructive to see how Charlie Sheen's career recovers
in the wake of the scandal. He's the perfect example
of the way there's a system in place to give
straight white guy second chances after scandals that would be
career ending for anyone else. But I also think Charlie
Sheen is a tragic figure because he gets trapped in

(28:17):
the sort of bad boy image that made him a star.
There's a whole system of social cues around masculinity that
say that what he's doing lots of drugs and having
sex with a million different women all the time is
cool and idealizable, even if it's clear that it's probably
killing him and at the very least puts his sexual
partners in extreme harm's way. We live in a deeply

(28:38):
misogynoist world, and part of that is the refusal to
acknowledge that masculinity is also a prison. November of nineteen
ninety eight, Heidi has been in federal prison in Dublin, California,

(28:59):
for twenty one months. She is released from prison and
moved to a halfway house after three days. She says
she actually hates the halfway house so much she'd rather
go back to prison, and while in prison she has
a lot of time to think, she finds herself getting
oddly sentimental.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
The strange part of that everything is when I was
in prison, I thought back on my life and all
the people I had met.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
I really missed Madame Alex.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
I knew she would have done what she could to
make my prison sentence easier, even though she helped put
me there.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
I love and miss her.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
In nineteen ninety nine, the cops bust another La Madam,
a forty one year old woman named Jody Diane Baby
Doll Gibson, also known as Sasha of the Valley. Gibson
is originally from Westchester County, New York, and comes from
an East Coast entertainment family of Russian Jews. Her father
was a radio announcer for CBS in the nineteen forties,

(29:59):
and her mother there was a talent manager who takes
full credit for being the first talent scout to discover
a young actor in New York fresh off the bus
from Kentucky named William Mappether, who would later become known
as Tom Cruise. See I brought it back to top gun.
Gibson's aunt was a jazz singer whose stage name was
Georgia Gibbs born Freeda Lipschitz, who achieved minor success with

(30:22):
whitewash covers of black artists' songs, most notably a cover
of Eta James The Wallflower retitled Dance with Me Henry.
Baby Doll says her aunt inspired her to pursue singing,
so Baby Doll Gibson moved from Manhattan to LA to
pursue modeling and music. She was occasionally featured on the
USA Network show Up All Night. Singing wasn't panning out,

(30:45):
so in nineteen ninety eight she started a modeling agency
that turned into an escort business. She eventually used her
money from Madam ing to finance a vanity pop star career.
I found a video on YouTube of Baby Doll in
nineteen ninety two giving a tour of with Robert Evans
by her side, where she shows off the new billboard
on Sunset Boulevard for her freestyle song which will Flop.

(31:09):
While she was also known for running the Valley with
Heidi locked up, Baby Doll was able to start running
escorts to the West Side. Gibson was also more under
the radar than Heidi. She ran her business out of
a hotel in the valley through a website called California
dream In that showcased photos of twenty to thirty models
and build itself as a modeling agency. Sasha's roster included

(31:31):
some adult film performers as well as some mainstream actresses.
Some of Sasha's girls were former Heidi girls who made
the jump to Sasha when Heidi went down. One of
Baby Doll Gibson's girls also rats on her to the cops,
who conduct a sting out of a West La hotel
to show that they are also coming for Heidi's successors.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
Sasha in the Valley, she used to leave threatening messages
on the answering machine or find out what hotel we
were using.

Speaker 4 (31:59):
In call.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
She once threatened to have the irs come after.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
Me in a twist that should not be too shocking.
At this point, Baby Doll Gibson aka Madam Sasha aka
Sasha of the Valley says she was having an affair
with one of the cops investigating her escort business, who
in turn protected her from the cops. When she ended
the relationship with the cop, she lost the cops protection.

(32:26):
Baby Doll just passed away recently, and Susan Orlean wrote
a short oh bit of her for The New Yorker.
Baby Doll herself Rotegrate tell all called Secrets of a
Hollywood super Madam. September twenty second, nineteen ninety nine, Heidi
Flice is released from federal prison after serving her sentence
of three years. She is now thirty three years old.

(32:48):
She files for protection from bankruptcy. She owes legal fees
to affirm back rent for the Heidi World store in
Santa Monica and money for unsold Heidiwear inventory. But if
you were concerned and Heidi wouldn't immediately think of a
plan to drum up some money, you haven't been listening
to this show. At the end of nineteen ninety nine,
just in time for y two K, Heidi announces that

(33:11):
she is launching a website with Internet Entertainment Group, who
put out the Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee sextape. Heidi
plans to launch the site with an advice column, media
featuring some brand new Heidi Girls, an emerged section of
Heidiwear lingerie Jodie Baby Doll. Gibson's case goes to trial,

(33:32):
once again targeting the Madam but ignoring the Johns. Gibson's
Black Book is a Rolodex card index of four hundred
names of alleged customers. Some of these customers are major
financial supporters of gil Garcetti, who's the DA on the case.
The lead investigator on the Baby Doll case, Detective Roz Curtinian,

(33:53):
also draws criticism for allegedly having had sex with Gibson's
girls multiple times during his ten month long undercover investigator.
Critinian cops to being naked around prostitutes, but denies having
had sex with them. Gibson calls out the police for
their hypocrisy. She suggests that prostitution should be legalized in
Los Angeles, with a one percent tax going to pay

(34:16):
for housing for the homeless. In a court in Van Nuys,
Baby Doll is sentenced to three years in prison for
her high priced call girl ring. Heidi sues E Entertainment
Television for their Hollywood True Story episode about her, which
she said made her look like a police informant AKAA snitch,
therefore putting her life in danger. While she was in jail.

(34:38):
She also ends up launching her site at heidiwear dot net,
selling ceramic coffee cups she made in jail. The auction
prices for the cup start at fifteen hundred dollars and
there's also a message board. Actor Robert Downey Junior is
making art in prison too, doing paintings while serving a
three year sentence in Corcoran for violating his drug probation. Well,

(35:00):
Heidi is in prison. The sex game is changing yet again.
The phone is no longer the cutting edge in sexual arrangement.
Now there's the Internet, which bypasses the need for a
madam to arrange sexual transactions. The Internet itself is the madam.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
I was the last of the last. You can get
anything you want now online.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
At the dawn of the twenty first century, Heidi reunites
with Sean Hubler. After prison, Heidi has moved into a
new place, still in the canyons of Hollywood, although much
less expensive than her old Tower Grove estate. She has
also gotten a post prison plastic surgery makeover.

Speaker 6 (35:48):
Hey, my lips are still going down from the cosmetic surgery.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
I had a lot done lips, eyes, boobs.

Speaker 6 (35:56):
Being in prison with no skin care really does a
number on you. You're in that recreation yard, but the
sun beating down on you, it really ages you.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Prematurely.

Speaker 6 (36:05):
Write it if you want, but be sure to put
in the name of my plastic surgeon doctor Randall Hayworth.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
Heidi has come back out of prison to a different world.
She no longer wants to be a madam, even if
she could. She makes an investment deal with Seth Warshovski,
the shady Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson sex tape distributor
who runs internet entertainment group. He agrees to give her
money to open a new heidiwear store, this time on Melrose.

(36:36):
Seth Wartowski is also a character in Hulu's Pam and
Tommy and yet another interesting huckster. He started in phone
sex and moved on to running one of the very
first camgirl operations, a website called clublove dot com. Warshovsky
purposely courted controversy first by distributing the Pam and Tommy
sex tape against the couple's wishes, but also by threatening

(36:59):
to distribute a Kelsey Grammar sex tape and putting up
a hoax website called Our First Time that purported to
show two virgins having sex for the first time live
on a webcam. Honestly, the frasier sex tape sounds worse
than a stuff film. The post court TV culture of
twenty four hour content and coverage driven by morbid curiosity

(37:20):
has spread to its final host, the Internet, where it
takes its final form of social media and clickbait. But
the deal between Seth, Warshovski and Heidi goes up in
flames when they get in a fight with a rabbi
landlord with one stipulation. Warshovski is also being investigated for
fraud at the exact moment, Heidi is trying to open

(37:41):
another store with his investment.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
The landlord was a very religious guy who at one
point was going to be a rabbi. All he asked
was that I agree not to sell sex toys, which
was fine.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
It was going to have a velvet roped VIP area.
We were going to do live webcasts with select debritize
that Seth insisted. He threatened to sue me, sue the landlord.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
He was a great concept, but it fell apart over dildos.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
Heidi tells Sean Hubler that in jail, she was once
put in solitary confinement for throwing a metal chair at
a guard.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
I know this sounds really prison, but the officer was
humiliating me. For my own safety, I had to prove
I wasn't a punk.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
Going to prison has also changed Heidi in the same
way it changes most people. It has hardened her.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
Let's just put it this way.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
There's a lot of sex in prison and a lot
of people who get raped. Three guards were transferred while
I was there for inappropriate behavior, but the women also
seduce the guards.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
But in her unique fashion, Heidi still always tries to
find the silver lining in her situation with a shrug
and a smile. Prison gave her time to reflect on
her own issues addiction and self hatred.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
I had a spiritual awakening at one point watching an
Oprah winfree video about loving yourself.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
Charlie Sheen makes a comeback in the mainstream media, taking
over for Michael J. Fox on the hit ABC sitcom
Spin City. When Fox is Parkinson's disease symptoms advance, much
like Robert Downey Junior's post jailt on Ali McBeal. The
Spin City gig is a way for people with addiction
scandals to prove that they are reliable and can be

(39:39):
employed again without becoming an insurance liability for big entertainment companies.
Remember Jacob Cookie Orgad, the ecstasy dealer who went from
working with JJ the Beeper King to being Heidie's enforcer,
Cookie or Gad now forty four heads to trial for
conspiracy to import and distribute to legal drugs. Even the

(40:03):
special agents are impressed at the scope and skillfulness of
Orga's ecstasy operation. The ring had been operating for two
years when customs officers at Lax caught two couriers coming
from Paris carrying one hundred and forty thousand ecstasy pills
in their luggage. The Dutch chemist who made the ecstasy
goes on the lamb all in all six hundred and

(40:24):
fifty thousand tablets of ecstasy with a value of twenty
million dollars our sees. The Los Angeles avant garde artist
Paul McCarthy makes a series of paintings and video art
about Heidi where he conflates Heidi Flies with the German
children's story of Heidi.

Speaker 5 (40:43):
Heidi has a series of themes I'm interested in. It's
a kind of moral story with the purpose of conditioning
children to good and pure things. For me, Heidi Flies
represents this kind of Heidi in this land. It's sort
of strange innocence to her really, and so this piece
is a way of deconstructing media culture, like you know,

(41:03):
People magazine or whatever. Within the theme of Heidi, it's
really about consumption, consumerism. It's a lot about that. It's
the use of fantasy figures and how that kind of
permeates our culture as a spectacle or a conditioner. And
I point that out through the use of these characters
such as Heidi. They're almost fabrications. They're the culturalization of innocence,

(41:28):
which is generational passes down, it becomes you. You are
in culturalized into absurdity.

Speaker 11 (41:37):
And I'm in it too.

Speaker 3 (41:39):
Paul McCarthy artist, And what about Ginger Allen, the adult
star and former girlfriend of Charlie Sheen. Gingerlyn Allen returns
to adult films in nineteen ninety nine. In two thousand,
she stars in New Wave Hooker, six installment in the

(42:01):
franchise she originated. Alan makes a few more adult films
in the late nineties and early two thousands, like Sunset Stripped,
My First Sex Teacher seventeen, Ginger Loves Girls, and a
hardcore porn parody of Saw. She also starts hosting a
serious satellite radio show for Playboy called I Swear to God.
I did not know this until right now Night calls radio.

(42:32):
When Heidi World returns, Heidi gets a new boyfriend, actor
Tom Sizemore. Welcome back to Heidie World. Two thousand and one.

(43:06):
Heidi violates her parole by testing positive for methamphetamines. While
under house arrest for violating probation, she moonlights writing a
column for a website called laugh dot Com. Paul Flies
and George DiCaprio, still best friends, take a walk together
every morning around those feelists. They are inspired by a
neighbor's son who's doing a sit in at Harvard for

(43:28):
a living wage, and decide to throw a benefit fundraiser
together for a nonprofit group dedicated to raising wages. The
fundraiser gets covered in the local newspaper as a positive
local civic event, suggesting that doctor Paul Flics's reputation at
least has been somewhat redeemed. Meanwhile, his daughter, Heidi, is
trying to hustle a one woman show, an instructional DVD,

(43:51):
and a book profiling call girls that she wants to
call a hooker book. She also has a new boyfriend,
actor Tom Sizemore, known for playing Detectives and True Romance
and Natural Born Killers and also appearing in movies like
Strange Days and Heat. The couple move in together after
dating for a year. How's it going.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
So far? So good? Relationships are more difficult than dieting.

Speaker 10 (44:22):
And one doesn't pick who they fall in love with.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
Tom Sizemore actor.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
Heidi and Tom Sizemore agree to auction off a dinner
date with them as a couple for a Catholic high school.
When the previous year's celebrity guest, local newslegend Hule Hauser,
declines to repeat, there is an immediate backlash from parents,
and the magical night with Heidi and Tom is taken
off the auction block for the Catholic school fundraiser.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
I can't believe this.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
I didn't know I was in such a mand I
guess it was the rejection that created a bit of
a buzz.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Two thousand and two, Heidi and Tom Sizemore breakup.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
Love is a sickness, a disease. Our behavior is completely different.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
We get vulnerable, obsessed, delusional.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
Charlie Sheen wins a Golden Globe for his work on
Spin City. Somewhere after nine to eleven, the media landscape
shifts completely, yet again to become more uptight and racist
than ever, but also increasingly raunchy. In tandem with the
twin phenomenons of a new wave of reality television and
the success of amateur internet pornography, Joe Francis's amateur flashing

(45:41):
at spring break series Girls Gone Wild, which began in
nineteen ninety seven, is peaking in sales in the early
two thousands. At the same time, a writer's strike leads
the television industry to invest heavily in the burgeoning form
of reality television. While MTV's The Real World was the first,
its social issue use format was not what these network

(46:02):
shows chose to copy about it, and by its early
two thousands Las Vegas season, even The Real World was
slipping and ditittilating hot tub territory. The early two thousands
wave of reality shows are network shows like competition, game
show Survivor. The industry likes these shows because they are
cheap to make and easy to evade traditional union protections,

(46:23):
with viewers like them because they are long and tawdry.
The American shows are a step down in tawdreness and
length from the European ones, which can show nudity in
shows like twenty four hour surveillance camshow Big Brother. Sometimes
the tawdreness goes over the line from fun to watch
into exploitation, and the viewer must contend with whether they

(46:44):
are complicit in America's new favorite fast time humiliating real
people on TV. How does this relate back to Heidi Flice, Well,
the Heidi trial in many ways set the template for
the sort of public stoning on camera that reality television
made its bread and butter on. But the connection between
the Flight's clan and reality television goes even deeper, all

(47:06):
the way out to Fullerton, California, where Heidi has a
second cousin named Mike Fliss.

Speaker 12 (47:17):
I like to take a topic that someone says, you
can't put that on TV, and then I put it
on TV. I want to feel a little bit dangerous,
a tiny bit ir responsible probably, and it usually equals
some controversy. And that's sort of my stock and trad
Mike Flis, reality television producer.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
Mike Flais's mother is a nurse and his father owns
a Baskin Robbins franchise in nearby Lahabra. Much like his
cousin Heidi. Mike Flis doesn't totally fit in with the
other easy gooing California kids at Fullerton's Sunny Hills High the.

Speaker 12 (47:50):
Girls were unbelievably hot, but I was the alienated parking
lot stoner man.

Speaker 3 (47:57):
Nevertheless, he becomes class president. He also starts dating a
girl that he meets at local theme park, nots Berry Farm.
Then he goes to UC Berkeley, where he studies journalism.
He writes for the college paper there and wants to
become a sports writer. He works at the Sacramento Union,
then the Santa Rosa Press for about three hundred bucks
a week, but he spends all his time at the

(48:19):
office writing television specscripts and watching reruns of Married with Children.

Speaker 6 (48:26):
The name Flice in German means industrious and hard working,
and Mike has the same genetics that I have.

Speaker 3 (48:35):
Mike Flice's bolt of inspiration comes when he sees a
sketch on the syndicated TV version of Howard Stern's radio show.

Speaker 12 (48:44):
It was something called the Lesbian Dating Game, and I thought, damn,
they had completely creative freedom, and I was being restricted
by the facts all the time. I felt like if
I sat there with a bunch of old men, I've
become one of them. I flipped my editor the bird,
and I told him to fucking fire me, motherfucker.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
His editor remembers it differently. He says he fired a
shocked Mike Flie for spending all of his time at
the office watching syndicated reruns of Married with Children and
not doing work. After getting laid off from the paper,
Mike fly sends out his television specscripts, which go nowhere.
Then he gets his wife pregnant.

Speaker 12 (49:23):
I would kill a human beig for this opportunity.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
After being unemployed for a year with a baby on
the way, Mike Flie's big break comes when he wins
an audition to write for a Fox show called Totally
Hidden Video. He writes forty bits in one night and
gets the job, finding out he's hired while his wife
is giving birth to their son, who they name Aaron Flice,
after the legendary television producer Aaron Spelling, who produced, among

(49:50):
other things, Melrose Place. Totally Hidden Video gets canceled almost immediately,
but Mike Flies has gotten his foot in the door
of a gold mine during the old rush that is
reality TV in the early two thousands. Next, Mike Flie
links up with two prolific reality show producers named Bruce
Nash and Mike Darnell. Mike Darnell's specialty is making shows

(50:13):
that he compares favorably to violent car crashes you Can't
Look away from. Their new writer, Mike Flice, is tasked
with writing a script for a Fox special called Breaking
the Magician's Code Magic's Biggest Secrets Revealed. The special features
a mass magician explaining how tricks work. It's a huge
hit and leads to five sequalized Magician's Code specials, a

(50:35):
bunch of lawsuits and a lot of very angry magicians.

Speaker 12 (50:40):
I wanted to do a show called The World's MEANUS
People Caught on Tape, and you have a bunch of
people doing mean stuff. We had a clip of a
bartender this one time, and he was stirring a martini
with his penis.

Speaker 3 (50:54):
The Fox network, known for scraping the gutter even for reality,
buys The World's MEANUS People Caught on Tape idea. It
airs in nineteen ninety nine under the new title Shocking
Behavior Caught on Tape. And So Mike flies charges into
the wild West of reality shows, demonstrating that the Fli's
family genes for hustling work and good money out of

(51:15):
thin air are indeed very strong. Mike Flies produces shows
with titles like World's Scariest Police Shootouts. In two thousand,
he produces a Fox reality special called Who Wants to
Marry a multi Millionaire, where fifty women compete in a
beauty contest to win marriage to a rich man. They
don't get to see the rich guy until they win

(51:35):
during the televised marriage ceremony. This kind of they can't
do this on camera?

Speaker 4 (51:40):
Can they?

Speaker 3 (51:41):
Reality show format lives on even today, primarily on Netflix.
Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire is a controversy before
it even airs, attracting criticism from both conservative Christian groups
and the National Organization for Women. It's Mike's idea to
further court the controversy by staging the show like a

(52:01):
beauty pageant.

Speaker 12 (52:03):
Imagine what kind of self respecting multimillionaire would want to
marry a woman's sight on scene. I mean, thank go
for Rick Rockwell, It's quite possible he was the only
person on the planet who was willing to do it,
and our backup millionaire he's trying to get me to
buy him a Mercedes five hundred E free and clear.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
Rick Rockwell, the show's titular multi millionaire, is revealed to
have lied about his net worth. It turns out he
didn't even have one million dollars, let alone several. The
winner of the show is a pretty blonde Air Force
veteran named Darvi Conger, whose mother was the minor nineteen
fifties actress Susan Harrison, best known for Sweet Smell of Success,

(52:43):
a movie about how corrosive and a moral the media
industries can be. Conger asks for an immediate annulment of
the on screen nuptials. She does a press tour where
she says she and Rockwell had not consummated the marriage
and that she regrets doing the show. She poses for
play Boy later that year and fights former Soviet Olympic
gymnast Olga Korbutt on an episode of Celebrity Boxing in

(53:05):
two thousand and two. Then she gives up on fame
and moves to Northern California, where she's worked as a
nurse anesthecist ever since. Rick Rockwell claimed the show ruined
his life, but shortly afterwards a smokinggun dot com story
came out about how he had allegedly assaulted and threatened
a former fiance who filed a restraining order on him.

(53:26):
In response to the scandal, the Fox Network canceled some
planned upcoming boundary pushing reality shows like Plastic Surgery, Nightmares,
and Jumbo Jet Crash The Ultimate Safety Test. Fox purposely
has been courting this kind of controversy in the early
two thousands, right up until it starts to backfire, airing
shows whose outrage value right there in the titles drew

(53:49):
viewers in. Fox aired reality shows like two thousand and
fours Horrific the Swan, where a bunch of normal women
get plastic surgery makeovers and then compete in a beauty contest,
ran for two seasons and is to this day the
most fucked up thing I've ever seen on TV. The
late nineties content cycle has met the two thousands, an

(54:10):
era where a little bit of fame and controversy can
potentially be parlayed into a slightly larger amount of fame.
Anyone could become a professional dalister for at least a
brief amount of time. Despite the Rick Rockwell scandal, Mike
Flie gets back on the reality television horse selling a
show called Battle of the Child Geniuses. He gets a

(54:31):
new deal with CIA and becomes showrunner of an NBC
hidden camera show called The Spy TV. He lands a
seven figure deal to develop new shows for Warner Brothers.

Speaker 12 (54:43):
Here's Mail Order Bride's which is an idea I think
someone is doing now. Intervention called Turkey is about people
trying to give up addictions. Spot your former lover. Get
a room full of people. You slept with one of
these people, and now you've got to find that person.
Social Climbers. That's a title, like kind of like and
ruin your Life. That's pretty good. What has ruin your

(55:05):
Life about? I don't even remember what's about.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
After running through his first batch of insane ideas, inspiration
comes first. He invents a high school reunion reality show,
and then it comes to him like a bolt from
the blue. The Bachelor, a dating.

Speaker 12 (55:29):
Show where you watch your relationship evolve. I mean within
fifteen minutes, I had the whole thing in my head,
the roses, the house, I mean everything, I swear to God,
it was like it hit me in one flash.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
The Bachelor is Mike Flis's turned towards I guess respectability
at least it's a step away from the car crash
videos he made his name on. The Bachelor also draws
obvious comparisons to his cousin, Heidi's former business. It's there's
a show about men choosing one beautiful woman out of
a lineup of beautiful women. The Bachelor is strangely chased

(56:08):
for a show that is so blatantly about sexual competition.
But by the time The Bachelor arrives there is an
entire class of actor who would settle for reality show fame.
Is it really exploitative if everyone involved has agreed to
be degraded on television consentually. I don't know. When I
announced that the name of this podcast was Heidi World,

(56:31):
some people asked if it was a podcast about Heidi Montag,
the star of the Hills, who got a bunch of
intense plastic surgery procedures very close together for attention and
publicity in the two thousands. I guess I'm trying to
say the answer is sort of also yes. Anthony Pelicano

(56:53):
is arrested for possessing heavy explosives, and Charlie Sheen gets
married for a second time to actress Denise Richards. Tom
Sizemore's relationship with Heidi, and so badly that Heidi ends
up the last place she would ever want to be again,

(57:15):
a courtroom. In May of two thousand and three, Heidi
files charges against Tom Sizemore for domestic violence and intimidating witnesses.
Sizemore is ordered to stay away from her. Tom Sizemore's
lawyer claims Heidi is just trying to get revenge on
his client for ending their relationship.

Speaker 10 (57:35):
In recent months. I've permitted my personal demons to take
over my life. I don't want to make excuses, but
I'm convinced if I had not been under the influence
of drugs out of control my behavior, I believe I
can beat this scourge that it's afflicted me and become
a better man and better citizen, and remind you of

(57:56):
the Bard's praise of justice tempered with mercy or she
benefits those who receive it and those who give it.

Speaker 3 (58:05):
Tom Sizemore is already being charged in another trial with
domestic violence and intimidating witnesses by a different ex girlfriend.
In phone messages played for the jury, Sizemore allegedly tells
Heidi that no one will believe her because he is
a famous Hollywood actor and she is quote a convicted
felon and garbage whore end quote. Sizemore pleads not guilty

(58:27):
in this Heidi trial, but he is convicted and sentenced
to six months in jail.

Speaker 10 (58:33):
I like to put this behind me now and do
what I've always loved doing, which is to make movies.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
Heidi sells her life story to Paramount Pictures for a
movie that will supposedly star Nicole Kidman. The movie doesn't
get made, probably just development hell, but the studios also
just want the scandal to disappear. They may have even
bought the rights in order to bury the story and
stop it from resurfacing, which, well, too bad for them.
They didn't predict podcasts.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
No relationship is easy. They are constantly a work in progress.

Speaker 6 (59:09):
And because of my life's experiences and my years running
the sex business, I know more about the dynamics of
male and female behavior and the complexities of relationships than
someone who has spent years in a classroom, reading self
help books.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
Or going to a therapist.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
My advice may not follow society's standards.

Speaker 3 (59:29):
But it is right, Heidi writes, and publishes two books.
One is a dating guide called the Player's Handbook. In
the Player's Handbook, she gives advice about how to date
like a powerful man. That feels very in step with
the third wave feminism of the late nineties and early
two thousands. The casual sex that came out of the

(59:50):
nineteen sixties sexual revolution had merged with eighties and nineties
corporatism that happened to be right on brand for Heidi.
Flies be the best, the most beautiful object you can be.
Then use your brain to make men pay for your
extravagant lifestyle.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
Don't deny your past. Your past is part of the
woman he loves.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
So if you were a stripper, hooker, you fucked half
the football team in high school, don't deny what you
have done and who you are. See your past with humor.
If your man finds out, laugh it off.

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
It's also very much about Heidi's own specific taste. There's
an illustration of the ideal bachelorette pad where she describes
what a girl's apartment should look like.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
A player's home should have soft ambience, beautiful mood lighting,
home feeder complete with all the classic player flicks.

Speaker 6 (01:00:51):
Immaculate bathroom, complete with all types of hygiene products for
men and women. Abundance of special presence for each date, candles, pajamas,
glass animals that are all one of a kind except
for the extra fifty in the basement, fully loaded bar,
personal touches of player wisdom like rejection, breeds of session,

(01:01:13):
overall uberbimp, super slick furniture, art and ambience.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Heidi's other book is an autobiography called Pandering. Pandering is
a yearbook sized coffee table book that's basically a scrap
book of Heidi's exploits. As we learned, the girls were
all really into scrapbooking and kept careful records with ticket subs, diaries,
and physical photos. Heidi seemingly kept everything Pandering in the

(01:01:41):
Player's Handbook. Both have some really wild graphic design in
this early Internet collage maximalist style. Meanwhile, Charlie Sheen gets
another starring role as an aging bachelor and a TV
show called Two and a Half Men. It's a huge hit,
providing Sheen with a mainstream career comeback as a sitcom
star after He's oft launched on Spin City, and also

(01:02:04):
providing him with absolutely ungodly amounts of Network television sitcom
money while he cultivates his new image as a loving
husband and father married to America's sweetheart Denise Richards. Heidi
Flace completes her probation. Somehow she has finally come out
of her ordeal for good and she is a free woman.

(01:02:26):
But she has changed in the years since she first
took on the city of Los Angeles, and the city
of Los Angeles has changed in those years too, And
somehow Heidi has to figure out yet again how to
make a viable living. While she may no longer be
able or even interested in selling sex, she can still

(01:02:46):
sell notoriety. And where do notori as people go for
a second wind in their career alongside washed up famous people.
Why Reality TV, of course. Next time on Heidi World,

(01:03:14):
Heidi moved to the Nevada Desert with a dream to
open a brothel for women called Heidi's Sud Farm in Parham,
where prostitution is legal.