Creepy Geniuses

"Why was i selling bitches?
I could have been selling birds."
--Heidi Fleiss


Directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato film infamous people who were once awkward. Heidi (Fleiss) and Michael (Alig) move at the pace of money, with the force of fearlessness; they both expect to suffer no consequence. One reason for this is the nature of their product; they market ego and primal appetite . Their clients are us other awkward, insecure people who will pay for status to fill and build ourselves up.

Both Party Monster (the doc) and Heidi Fleiss: Would be Madam of Crystal are about appetite and haunted innovators. Both films work to illuminate the creepy, needy shells of spirits that these two notorious figures had always been.

Heidi is more attractive, not the least because she is a woman and because she has never committed manslaughter or murder, as did Michael. Also, Heidi owned her crimes early on. they are as lucid and attached to her skin as are the searchingly large and screaming eyes on her face. Her transgressions were violet , not violent. And they were masculine, and she is a Girl. She is a girl who is top dog, and she calls out loudly to tell people what to do, and so those who hear her tone deaf voice feel compelled to muffle it.


Poor Heidi. Where is her place? After transgression has come and gone, how does one move elsewhere? How can one be allowed to grow and fit ?
there is a song called LOVEBIRD that plays in Heidi Fleiss: would be Madam of Crystal, and it is composed of music , timed with the visual song of a melodic animation.
It draws flowery feminine pictures of acceptance and home...the picture of a girl in a bedroom , starting out forlorn, but by the end she has perked up as the pencil draws colorful birds that relate and interact with her.

She's for the birds.

She finds wounded and brilliant exotic parrots, and they are as wounded and brilliant as their new person. Oh yes, these birds are like Heidi, also new to sentiments such as trust and community.
Heidi finds a home.
Farewell profit motive. Your attachments imploded.
Heidi can devote her creativity of expansion and production to securing new aviaries instead of building upscale brothels.



There is a sense of manic desperation that hides in the cage. We know it's there for the first 60 mins of the film but it is drowned out.
In the final moments, the cage door is opened. Profit motive is really a dishonest grasp at protection.
Heidi is rabidly high on crystal . Her intoxication and her addiction are flying free in a cageless block of glass. Her words and cries go nowhere fast.
As this is happening, her cries finally vocalize the intense fear and sadness that always stayed tucked under her wing.
Her birds have set her free. At least it almost time to get to the last cage door and find the real open space, the open skies of Recovery.