Anyone want to share their favorite books and/or movies about the hobby and providers?  I'm interested in books and movies that capture something real without moralizing, condemning, or sentimentalizing.  Any suggestions?

"Dangerous Beauty"; "Owl and the Pussycat", and I've heard "Irma la Douce"..

Gotta go..

In his book, "Chasing the Dime", Michael Connely draws what seems to me to be a rather bizarre picture if the Escort business in L.A.. His picture does not fit my experience; am I naive. Does his picture fit any one else's experience?

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

KLute
Mccabe and Mrs. Miller
Sweet Charity

...about true Courtesans, refined and savvy and beautiful, with their wealthy patrons, based on the historical figure Veronica Franco  (my ATF turned me on to it...available in DVD!)

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 .
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.

The Call Girl is out of print but you can pick up a used copy on amazon for a couple of bucks.

Written by a Phd who interviewed 100s of providers and their clients. It's really interesting, how little has changed since the 50s and 60s about the hobby...

MC

I'm currently reading 'Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl' by Tracy Quan.  It's an easy read, but humourous and insightful.

I've said this once before this is my fave scene..Once upon a time in America...A young boy want's favors from a girl who will provide for a cream puff...as he is waiting and has his mind of  a great experience...he eat's the cream puff slowly..
i just love the scene...its so innocent and filmed so beautiful i just have to say to all please see the film, and i think you will agree.
Sham

the owl and the pussycat......ewwwwwww the thought of barbara streisand  omg ewwwwwww who wants to make it with that liberal twat???

sorry im so negative but babs gets to me lol
Sham

In the comedy "For Pete's sake" Ms. Streisand plays a young house wife who attempts being a provider so as to earn enough money to invest in commodities and get her taxi driver husband (Michael Sarazzan??)and herself on the road to financial independence.

_Nuts_ with Barbra Stresand.  I know a lot of yall don't find her attractive, but it isn't her relative attractiveness that makes this film so good (IMO).  I believe that this film does a great job of representing the life of a hooker... as well as the social stigma and repercussions associated with living that life.

Love to all,
Anne

See this, in today's New York Post:

'Meadow Soprano' to Play Hollywood Madam

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Jamie-Lynn Sigler, best known as Mafia princess Meadow Soprano on the HBO series "The Sopranos," will play former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss in a cable TV movie.

The USA Network film, tentatively titled "Going Down: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss," will detail her oft-told saga of running an upscale escort service, which ended with a three-year prison term for Fleiss.

The movie is scheduled to air early next year.

Sigler also has appeared on Broadway in Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" and starred in the national touring production of "Cinderella" opposite Eartha Kitt.

She recently completed her first feature film, "Extreme Dating."

"Scandal" I liked this movie about the Profumo sex scandal in 1963 England.  Bridget Fonda played a great Mandy Rice-Davies.

Leaving Las Vegas, novel by John O'Brien. Brutal, disturbing, yet somehow beautiful and moving.

One of my all time favs Leaving Las Vegas.

_Belle de Jour" by Bunuel, starring Catherine Deneuve (1967) (available on DVD)-- but be prepared, it is a Bunuel film, though it is less avant garde than his _Exterminating Angel_ or _Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie_

_BUtterfield 8_, by Daniel Mann, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Harvey, and  Eddie Fisher.

I found the book "Madam 90210" by Alex Adams and William Stadiem fasinating -- about Madame Alex and the high end Hollywood call girl scene.

The books "You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again" and "Once More With Feeling" both as told to Joanne Parrent are interesting and quick reads. And the these two books name names (i.e. the late John Riter was a stud, Vanna White is bi, James Caan loves DATY, Warren Beatty is real "quick," Laker owner Jerry Buss like his girls real young, Marcus Allen is hung like a horse).

Years ago, I remember reading a book review of a book (I think it was called "All The Girls ...") about one man's experiences with providers all over the world. Anybody ever read this book?

Emile Zola, _Nana_ (1880)

David Graham Phillips, _Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise_ (1917)-- made into a movie in 1931 w/Garbo & Gable (however, the film bowdlerizes the book).

Theodore Dreiser, _Sister Carrie_ (1900)-- a bit of stretch, since she is more of a "kept woman."

------

The above are novels-- I'd also recommend the following study:

Laura Hapke, _Girls Who Went Wrong: Prostitutes in American Fiction, 1885-1917_ (1989)

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

Reepressing movies and "realism"...Nuts!

Of course-- there are many sentimental portraits of the "call girl with a heart of gold," which could almost be called an archetype, since you can go all the way back to Mary Magdalene in the New Testament.

But it sounds like what you are looking for not so much a sentimental fantasy like _Pretty Woman_, but rather a realistic, yet positive and sympathetic representation of providers.

There must be some in films, but right now what comes to mind is the book mentioned in one of my earlier posts, Phillips' _Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise_