TER General Board
I think that Dangerous Beauty is a wonderful film. It's about real life Courtesan Veronica Franco... I'd say it's the best film about the "business" but it's not modern day (but still definitely worth a look)
Also Sydney Biddle Barrow's "The Mayflower Madam; The Secret Life of Sydney Biddle Barrows" is quite good. About how a WASPY girl got into the business in the 80's running a high class call girl ring. Great book.
Memoirs of a Geisha is .......ok... but a guy wrote it who supposedly stole the story from a real Geisha without giving her a dime.
Sadly, that's all that comes to mind at the moment... There are so few really good books or films about the business (in my humble opinion)
There's supposed to be another one "Pay the Girl" coming out with Nicole Kidman as Heidi Fleiss but I'm afraid it might fall flat and end up being an anti business film like most of them 
One of my favorite books on the industry is called Pros and Cons: A Working Girl's Guide to the World's Oldest Profession. Unfortunately, as far as I know, it's not readily available here in the States as it was written by a Madame from Melbourne, Australia. Her account of the business is humorous, informative, and extremely positive... Check it out.. You won't be able to put it down. If you want to know how to get a copy, TER PM me.
Jaclyn 
This is a frank and unappealing version of "the hobby" that is likely too frank and from the woman's standpoint to appeal to almost any hobbyists (or "clients" for my friend Sedona 
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It is not glamourous in any way shape or form, but is one hell of a lot more relative to modern times than "Dangerous Beauty", which, while being a fairly good movie, is completely romanticized. The two would make good counterbalances.
Another good indie movie that sheds light on "working girls" is "My Son the Fanatic". It is more about other things, but Rachel Griffiths gives a great, believeable performance as a streetwalker, and it is based in modern London.
Of course, for the ultra dark side, there is the movie "Q & A" with Nick Nolte as a sadistic cop who uses streetwalkers as informants. His "seduction" of a TV hooker is one of the most chilling scenes I have ever seen in the movies. It froze my blood.
Then, we have my favorite actress of all time, Vivien Leigh, in "A Streetcar Named Desire". Again, not a flattering portrait of a working girl, but the psychology was interesting, and her soliloquy on the pier with Karl Malden as spectator was one of the most moving moments in movie history; it earned her a well-deserved Oscar for Best Actress in 1951. Ms. Leigh also played a hooker right after "Gone With The Wind" in the British film "Waterloo Bridge"...which was considered scandalos in 1940, but is tame by today's standards.
Lastly (and I can't believe anyone didn't mention this one), we have "Pretty Baby", Louis Malle's interesting depiction of early New Orleans and its red light district. A young Susan Sarandon makes a great working girl, but she was overshadowed by the scandal of 15 year old Brooke Shields cast in a movie about prostitution.
I wish someone had mentioned that Streetcar Named Desire is totally completely depressing... Marlon Brando just irks me every darned time I see him. When he's not beating up his pregnant wife he seems to be sticking butter up girls butts or chopping off the heads of cows.
Poor little Blanche, doing what she felt she needed to to try to save her childhood home, and getting ripped to shreds over it.
I actually got very, very irritated recently when I saw "As Good as it Gets" with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt... Where she was saying "I won't sleep with you... EVER!! EVER!!!" Even tho this man had just essentially saved her sons life. She won't???? WHY NOT???? WHY???? For the sake of her son, her "honor" is more important??? (Ok, she winds up with him in the end, but that scene pissed me off bigtime!)
BTW, NUTS has nothing to do with reality in my opinion. I'd be interested to know how many ladies were raped by their fathers as children, grew up hating attention from men, and then lived in a gorgeous apartment elegantly furnished in Manhattan only to have it all go wrong in such a simple way. Don't you think most experienced ladies have a game plan in effect for when you gents get that out of hand that doesn't involve shoving a mirror in your throat? I mean I LOVED that movie... very powerful... but realistic? No, I was never raped by my father while my mother stood by and let it happen. And if I hated attention from men I would not have chosen this occupation.
Aren't there ANY movies out there that don't *condemn* ladies, shove a moral hook down your throat, or make you feel suicidal with sadness at the end???
BTW, I actually enjoyed the Crimson Petal and the White, the novel. Sugar gets hers in the end... 
Hugs*
Tamara
epressing movies and "realism"...Nuts!