LILY: She is like this bird that’s caged, this bird that’s free, this bird that moved into this. I just thought that whole piece was beautiful.

SHEILA: She is beautiful, isn’t she?

LILY: Yeah. I fell in love with her.

SHEILA: And when you meet her, you love her more, especially when you meet her sober. The sidebar of this whole thing is men are much more disappointed with this film than women are because they expect Heidi Fleiss as "the madam." They don’t expect Heidi Fleiss as "the bird."

LILY: They don’t want to see a woman that has to be taken care of in that position of supplying sex.

SHEILA: That’s right.

LILY: They don’t want somebody that’s vulnerable. They want someone that they can walk away from.

LIZ: That’s right.

SHEILA: You can’t walk away from this Heidi, the real Heidi. No, she’s a complicated, wonderful person.

LIZ: Sheila, how did you get Heidi to do this documentary after she spent some years of her life in prison? She was released in 1999 and you say she was running a lingerie shop in Hollywood.

SHEILA: She was trying to run a Heidi-wear store. She was trying to make money the right way, or whatever that’s called. And then she decided to go to Nevada, where all the things that she had done that were illegal in California were now legal, which was mainly prostitution. And she wanted to open a stud farm, a house of prostitution, where woman could go and be serviced by men – sort of to turn the tables. And everybody keeps getting in her way. She can’t get a license because she’s a convicted felon. She just can’t break through.

LIZ: I thought all of those neighbors of hers and the people in Nevada were meaner to her than anybody had ever been in California. I was stunned by the unneighborliness and the lack of love and help extended to her.

SHEILA: Nobody wanted to help her. But I think she really got her way because she opened a Laundromat called Dirty Laundry, which is such a brilliant idea. And she now wants to franchise it. She’s a really brilliant businesswoman. I mean, she got into prostitution because she was a babysitter and —

LILY: I know. I loved that she used to … I’m sorry. I shouldn’t interrupt you.

SHEILA: No, you tell the story. You tell it.

LILY: Because I used to broker out babysitting jobs, too; a couple of them. Because I lived in an apartment house and I would hire my two closest girlfriends, if I couldn’t handle all the babysitting jobs I got in a week. I would have them come in and fill in.

SHEILA: And that’s how Heidi decided to be a madam, really. Because it wasn’t that she was a great sexual creature because she says she’s really not interested in sex.

LIZ: Yeah, she said she’s the only one that will admit she gives bad blow jobs.

SHEILA: Yeah, she gives bad blow jobs. That’s what she says. I think she’s just not interested. I think she wants to make a lot of money. And when she was a teenager she had like three babysitting jobs at once. And so she decided to use her girlfriends. And she would match her girlfriends to the kind of person that needed a babysitter. So if they were compulsive and clean, she’d send her compulsively clean babysitter to go to them. And if the kid needed tutoring, she’d send that kind of babysitter to the other couple, or the other kids. So Heidi really ran a babysitting business. She booked babysitters when she was a teenager. And then, I guess, as she got older, the babies were grown up and she kind of moved into another business. But she used the same skill, the same smarts. She’s very smart. But I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned her drugs.