Even when her business partner, a prominent Nevada brothel owner, backed out last month, Fleiss vowed to forge ahead. She's vague about the funding for her $1.5 million sexual fantasyland, but she says she has other investors. And she just landed a six-figure deal with HBO to let a film crew document the brothel's birth.
HBO will provide funding, and then shoot the footage and make money off it. Is this much different than a network providing money to, say, a radical political rally and obtaining the exclusive rights to cover it? Perhaps the radical rally wouldn't occur without network funding, in which case it's not nearly as newsworthy. Perhaps the stud farm isn't viable on its own, but when combined with voyeuristic America, it has potential. HBO will probably film the story as an objective documentary of sorts, as if the stud farm has merit solely as a brothel, when, in reality, it needs America's voyeurism (fed by HBO) to make it.
