LIZ: Well, I think one of the best things in the documentary is when she suddenly says that she loved crystal meth and hated it, and it was the poison of drugs. And then she waivers on about not using and you don’t know whether she’s still using or not.

SHEILA: Yeah, well, she’s still using. But she’s trying to get clean. The metaphor of the dirty laundry is good. I said to her, and this isn’t in the film, I said, “Heidi, now if you get clean, your Dirty Laundry can stand for something. You can have a green bar and you can have drinks and you can get investors. And, you know, it can be Heidi Fleiss’s Dirty Laundry where you get your dirty laundry clean and you stay clean and you’re green. She gets it. And she’s trying to get clean.

LIZ: After she encountered this awful prejudice from these people in this desert community in Nevada, from the sheriff, from the spokesman for the brothel association, and from Miss Kathy, who owned a saloon.

SHEILA: Miss Kathy.

LIZ: And tried to kill her.

LILY: I feel like driving out there to see Miss Kathy.

LIZ: Yeah, I’d like to see Miss Kathy …

SHEILA: She’s waiting for you, Lily.

LIZ: … with a big bowling pin. But anyway, I wanted to ask you, Sheila, has Heidi ever solved her problem there?

SHEILA: No.

LIZ: She hasn’t been able to set up the male stud farm?

SHEILA: No. She’s been able to open the Dirty Laundry. She was arrested in February for possessing meth.

LIZ: Yes. No, Heidi is a real character. I mean, she collects rocks in the desert to decorate with. And she buys a tiger’s head at a swap meet. And she keeps saying she’s trying not to use drugs.

LILY: Meth usually just ravages an individual physically and their looks just absolutely go.

SHEILA: There are some shots when you see her looks going. She’s young enough to not be totally debilitated by it. But I think that Heidi knows and that if she wants to die she should keep using. And if she wants to live, she has to try to get herself clean.

LIZ: Well, you know, she says, “I’m not going to fall apart.” And she alternates between seeming defeated and then being very positive in her ambitions. I guess she’s just like the rest of us.

SHEILA: Heidi really needs to be cured of her illness, because the rest of Heidi is magnificent. She’s a really nice human being. She’s nice. If someone can’t cross the street, she goes and helps them across the street. She’s just nice. And she takes in a lot of wounded birds.

LILY: Yeah. She’s wounded.

SHEILA: She takes birds whose wings have been clipped at circuses or at Las Vegas shows. And when they die, when Dalton died, I mean, she mourns that bird. I’ve never seen Heidi cry except then.

LILY: Ah, it’s so tender. But she has a little toughness. Just a little.

SHEILA: She has the toughness of someone who knows men’s dirty secrets.

LILY: Yeah. Right.

SHEILA: She has that toughness and that darkness. And that darkness is her business. But the rest of her is very light.

LIZ: You know, I copied down a few things she’s actually said. Just listen to this. She said, “I conquered the world in my 20s. I took the oldest profession and made it mine.” And then she said, “Men say, ‘We want what you’ve got, but we just don’t want to pay for it.’” And then she says, “To be in a sex business is to be in a hustling business. You can’t be squeaky clean.”