Original subtitles

I was a working girl.

- Working girl. - Working girl.

- Courtesan. - Escort.

- Escort girl. - Former adult film star.

I'm a sex trade survivor.

If I could talk to my 11-year-old me,

watching Cathouse...

I need a minute...

I would definitely tell little me that...

not everything you see on TV is a reality.

HBO put us in the living rooms

of America, with Cathouse.

[News] The Bunny Ranch bills itself as one of Nevada's

most upscale brothels,

and the program shows the inner workings

of the business behind the brothel.

Cathouse was one of the most watched HBO documentaries

in the history of the network.

At first, I thought it was the sequel to

the Cat in the Hat movie.

I was not even close.

Prostitutes on TV.

Who thought that was gonna sell? Dennis did.

It's just sex. Relax, it's just sex.

We felt like we were stars.

[News] Joining us now live is the owner of the

Bunny Ranch himself, the legendary...

[laughing] Dennis Hof.

Dennis changed the system.

Dennis made it a business.

He made the women businesswomen.

[Dennis] It's not going away.

Sex for sale is here to stay.

He was a marketing, media genius.

But Dennis Hof's legacy is extremely mixed.

Look.

Dennis's world was buying and selling people.

That's how he thought of us.

He thought of us as objects that he owned.

He made us feel like [beep] on the bottom of his feet.

[sobs] And I remember saying, "Okay..."

[inhaling] "Just do it."

I was scared.

But HBO wanted to sell a show.

They just didn't want to show the ugly side of it.

I really had no idea that people were being

drawn in by the show, itself.

Women watched Cathouse as young girls.

11, 12 years old.

And then decided that they wanted to go to that place.

[Dennis] Chrissie is the reason why you use

parental controls on your TV. because at 15,

she was watching Cathouse,

and here we are.

They made it seem so fun on the show, and...

what was really happening was force.

- Rape. - Coercion.

- Murder. - Abuse.

- Overdose. - Control.

If someone had told me, I would've said no.

Is this something that we want to beam into homes?

The place was about lying. It was all lies.

It's important for us to hold HBO accountable.

It's kind of hard to say it was a documentary

when you have a pimp directing scenes

in his own brothel.

♪ [moody pop] ♪

♪

♪ You put me under the covers. ♪

♪ For all the world to see. ♪

♪ But I never recovered. ♪

♪ You never cared about me. ♪

♪ So now you're being uncovered. ♪

♪ I kept all the receipts. ♪

♪ You and all of the others. ♪

♪ Under a fantasy. ♪

[rumbling thunder]

[sirens]

In 2003, a tornado hit my house.

And, I had just gotten a divorce.

♪

And when you have young children to take care of...

I decided to go and work at the Bunny Ranch.

I did what I had to do.

And that decision altered my life.

Completely.

- I'm Shelly. - Marker.

I was a working girl at the

Moonlite Bunny Ranch in Nevada.

Owned by Dennis Hof.

I heard about the Moonlite Bunny Ranch from a talk show.

[Tyra] Tucked away in a dusty corner of the Nevada desert,

the world-famous Bunny Ranch is a legal brothel...

where a man can hire a prostitute

to satisfy almost any desire.

[Shelly] I remember seeing Dennis Hof.

[Dennis] Men come to the Ranch to do things

that their wives can't or won't do.

We can fulfill almost any fantasy at the Bunny Ranch.

It has to be safe, and most of all, it has to be fun.

[Shelly] I think Air Force Amy was

on the talk show with Dennis.

[Host] Air Force Amy.

[Amy] I orgasm for a living at the Bunny Ranch.

[Audience] Woo!

And I was astounded. I had no idea

that prostitution was legal

anywhere in the United States.

And so, I sent an email

with a picture of myself to the

Moonlite Bunny Ranch, and Dennis Hof himself

called me back within 2 hours, and said,

"I want you out here."

When I flew out to Nevada,

I was picked up by Dennis Hof at the airport...

♪

And Dennis told me that HBO was doing a show,

and he wanted me to do that.

He walked me in.

♪

And there was cameramen there

filming for the HBO show.

♪

Dennis took me out to the bungalow behind the building,

and wanted sex.

And I had just met this man.

I had flown there to work.

He was the boss. He was the owner.

And he wanted to have sex

the very first day I got there,

and he didn't want to wear a condom.

So, I was absolutely horrified.

That was my first day at the Ranch.

I was afraid to tell Dennis no.

I had no idea what I was getting into.

Nobody seems to care if a prostitute gets raped.

[Dennis] I believe in the product.

I love the product. I use it daily.

[Shelly] I saw the ugly side of Dennis.

[camera shutter clicking]

But the world, on Cathouse,

only saw the fun side of him.

[Dennis] Girls, how about a toast here?

Here's a toast to the best family,

the Bunny Ranch family.

[Shelly] Because they didn't know the real Dennis.

♪

Dennis was all about...

being violent.

♪

♪

Dennis Hof was actually born in Phoenix, Arizona

in 1946.

His parents were immigrants,

and they came to America for a better place.

So, Dennis Hof actually grew up with very little money,

and Dennis resented that, which made him

want to be more of a successful individual.

He started by sweeping the gas station floor

and then ended up buying a gas station.

After that, he decided to get into timeshare sales.

[Shelly] Dennis sold timeshares

before he owned the Bunny Ranch,

and he used to always say...

that he was still selling timeshares,

it was just a triangular-shaped...

piece of land.

Pretty terrible to say, but uh, it was true.

He was still selling timeshares,

just it happened to be women.

♪

[Vernon] Dennis and his father decide to travel cross-country,

and as they go through Reno,

Dennis finds out about these brothels.

He fell in love with the idea of...

that type of business...

The rest is history.

[camera shutter clicking]

♪

Before Dennis, the prostitution industry

was kind of like in the shadows for decades.

But he mainstreamed it.

I'm the new breed of brothel owner.

I'm a straight guy.

I pay my taxes, I do the right things.

I come from, from a business background.

I'm educated.

That's the new breed of brothel owner.

The old school is over.

♪

Hello, I'm Air Force Amy.

I'm the most celebrated courtesan of modern times.

[Crew] Air Force Amy interview. Take one. Marker.

[Air Force Amy] Wait a minute. I got hair in my mouth.

I worked for Dennis Hof...

and helped put the famous Moonlite Bunny Ranch

on the map.

♪

I left home at a very, very early age,

and I started hitchhiking around the country.

I learned real early how to be resourceful.

And I learned also that sex was a commodity.

So, my first 10 years in the industry,

most of the brothels were really, really bad.

The last place I worked had one window

in the whole place that big, okay?

On weekends, they would lock up the payphones

because they didn't want you calling home and talking,

and getting upset and leaving.

It was awful.

We used to call it [beep] Prison.

♪

So, when I first got to the Bunny Ranch,

I just got catapulted- Pew!- into the 20th century.

And everything was upbeat, upbeat,

upbeat, upbeat, upbeat.

♪ [dance]

Fun, fun, fun, fun.

♪

Brothels are not, by law, allowed to advertise,

but they can still go in the media.

They can appear on TV shows,

they can talk about their businesses,

but they can't put up an ad in the newspaper.

So, Dennis was very savvy.

He used the media.

"Oh, I can't put an ad up? Great.

I'll go on CNN and talk about it."

[Host] Dennis Hof. Bunny Ranch owner.

[Amy] That was just a stroke of genius right there.

And who would have ever thought-

who had the balls

to put prostitutes on TV?

Who thought that was gonna sell?

[Dennis] After the airline sticks it to you...

Come stick it to us!

[Amy] Dennis did, and it did!

We would go on every talk show.

At the time, it was talk shows, right?

There was Jenny Jones...

[Jenny] But what's the right word for-

is prostitute okay now?

[Amy] I got Most Outrageous Guest of the Year

on Jenny Jones. There was Tyra Banks.

[Tyra] Joining us also is Dennis Hof.

He owns the Moonlite Bunny Ranch.

[Amy] Oprah.

[Oprah] While she waited for a client,

Brooke gave us a tour of the Bunny Ranch.

[Brooke] There's approximately 30 rooms,

and they're always full.

Dennis made himself the authority on prostitution.

And he said that's how it works.

He goes, "Media begets media."

Once you do one story on prostitution,

networks go, "Let's interview that guy."

Pretty soon, he's the guy.

[Dennis] I'm selling sex like other people

are selling soda pop.

[Amy] And when Dennis got into the industry,

it was really popular...

and cool to be a pimp.

You had Snoop Dogg, you had Pimp My Ride,

you know, pimps were really, really glamorised,

so Dennis had his hat in the ring at the exact right time

because it was cool to be a pimp.

[cheering]

In the early 2000s,

it was a time that was sort of selling itself

as being all about women's sexual liberation.

There's Heidi Fleiss whose job as a madame

is being talked about as the ultimate success story

of an intendent woman entrepreneur.

There's Paris Hilton's leaked sex tape

becoming a pop culture staple.

And then there's the photoshoot of Britney Spears

that is clearly invoking some kind of

Lolita fantasy for men.

And so, sex itself becomes a thing to be celebrated.

[honking]

HBO at that time also had this show called

Taxicab Confessions, where they put

hidden cameras in a taxicab and picked up people.

And it just dawned on me, I said,

"Let's put hidden cameras in a brothel and capture the

conversations of why men and women go there."

So, I called the Bunny Ranch, and I said,

"Dennis, can I come do that?"

"Sure!" [chuckling] "Come on out!"

♪

So, we drive to the Bunny Ranch,

and Dennis says, "George, you know what I want?"

I go, "What do you want, Dennis?"

He says, "I want to be a household name."

And I said, "I'll do my best."

So, I show up at HBO's Documentary Division,

and Sheila Nevins was in charge of that,

and Patti Kaplan does all their directing.

They had done Real Sex together, that show,

and other documentaries.

And Sheila Nevins says,

"We think it's a wonderful idea."

So, I turned the reins over to the HBO folks,

you know, Sheila and Patti, and they did the rest.

♪

[Amy] So, the genesis of Cathouse

was it didn't seem

very much different than all the TV and media

that we were already doing.

♪

So, sex and entertainment at that time

covered two sides.

One side was that all porn denigrates women.

And then there was another side that said

porn empowers women, or-

and can empower women if it's done correctly.

And in this kind of ferment, this little show...

[laughs] came onto HBO.

♪

[Shelly] Dennis wanted me to be a big part of

the Cathouse show.

But I didn't know that young girls

would come to work there that probably would've

never even thought of working at the

Bunny Ranch if they hadn't seen the show.

So, looking back, I should've never agreed to do it.

[Host] First, reality TV took us inside the home

of the Osbournes. Then there was

The Anna Nicole Show.

Now, a provocative new HBO documentary is

showing viewers a very different kind of house.

Cathouse was supposed to be the first time ever

they filmed live negotiations

from inside a brothel.

A Pamper Party, we do, um, lots of massage,

sensual music, sensual massage.

Everything is totally to pay attention to you.

It's all about you.

[Tom] I was the director of photography.

- The gaffer. - The coordinating producer.

One of the sound mixers for HBO's Cathouse.

♪

I was contacted by New York producers saying,

"Can you do this job, can you be there?

It's going to be very hands... on."

I didn't know anything other than

there's going to be a lot of sex workers in this shoot,

and it's gonna be odd and weird,

but they're paying, so I will go.

[Tom] So, I was shooting a lot of documentaries.

I had an old friend by the name of Patti Kaplan,

who was the director, producer of the show.

So, Patti thought of me

when she had to shoot

in the Cathouse.

[Host] Why did you want to make this documentary?

Was there some sort of message

that you were going after?

Was there some sort of morality

that you wanted to explore?

[Patti] I think, actually,

the approach was extremely nonjudgmental.

No, there wasn't a morality to explore.

It was more like, this is an environment

that people are quite unfamiliar with.

So, let's get inside and see how it works.

Honestly, when they came to me and said

you're gonna be spending months

at a brothel, I'm like, "Great!"

And then, I'm like, "What?"

You just think you go into a brothel and you have sex.

[Client] Okay.

[Jill] But it was mostly about the way the girls

worked with the men and how they negotiate

and they come up, you know, with a price.

On Cathouse, we had a very

particular kind of task.

We wanted to make the

environment look natural.

We wanted it to feel like

that was what you would experience

if you walked into the room.

We also want the faces to look good.

There's a certain amount of glamor.

And, in order to create that glamor,

we need to actually use lights.

[Tom] Cathouse was a fascinating little social experiment.

[Tom] That dealt with the way people's sexuality

was being expressed.

[Client] Ah. [laughing]

[Host] Cathouse premieres tomorrow night on HBO

right after the season finale of The Sopranos.

I think that programming Cathouse right after

the season finale of The Sopranos,

and season 4 of The Sopranos so it already has, like,

this kind of robust, built-in audience,

it says something about the network's desire

to want this documentary to do well.

[DeAnne] I remember watching The Sopranos.

At the end of the show, suddenly, like,

I'm in a brothel in Nevada and there's

all this craziness going on.

There was a lot of nudity and a lot of sex.

[Client] Yeah, God damn!

[Deanne] It was like a traffic accident

that you can't avert your eyes from.

[Racquel] It very much sort of focuses on the women,

but they're constantly talking about how much

they love working at the Bunny Ranch,

how much they love sex.

I would do this until I was 60 if I could.

I really would. It's just that fun.

[Racquel] And you sort of come away from it thinking, oh,

what a lovely sort of place for these young women

to find, you know, economic empowerment.

[Host] What do you think people will walk away from,

at the end of this, watching this documentary?

[Patti] Uh... [Host] Disgusted, intrigued?

Wanting to sign up to be pros-

[Patti] I think much less disgusted

than they may have been.

There's a perspective, you know, that,

needless to say, about selling sex

that doesn't make a lot of people comfortable,

but I think the environment is so pleasant.

[Racquel] The tone of this documentary is...

it really just reads as, like, a PR puff piece.

[Dennis] This is compelling television.

Nobody's seen the innerworkings of

a working girl... [Patti] It is compelling.

[Dennis] ...and a client. It's unbelievable television.

[Ted] Both Patti, the director, and Dennis,

had a pretty clear idea of what they wanted to do

before it happened.

They would really plan it out together.

[Shelly] It wasn't a documentary.

We were told what to do.

The Cathouse show was set up.

♪

[Cathouse] Who likes boobies?

[laughs]

[Shelly] This was the first scene

that I ever filmed for Cathouse.

[Cathouse] When it comes to actual oral sex...

We had to teach a class about sex

to a bunch of men, and...

I just remember being very nervous.

You know, sometimes guys will just dig in,

and it may be painful,

the girl's not worked up enough.

You got to start out slow.

[Shelly] That is not a client. That is Jesse,

and he was a driver and a bartender

at the Bunny Ranch.

[Jesse] There I am.

[Cathouse] Usually try to get them to [beep]

beforehand, and uh...

How?

Uh, just by uh, [beep] and rubbing and touching.

Everyone in the scene that was supposed to be customers

were actually friends of Dennis

or people who worked at the Bunny Ranch.

[Cathouse] What do you like about boobs?

I like nibbling on them a little bit.

[Jesse] This was something that they

concocted for the show.

♪

[Ted] This was definitely not

what I thought it was gonna be.

The reason I wanted to work

on this series was because...

of the people that I was working with.

I knew that they were serious documentarians,

and did, you know, really quality work

and I could learn a lot from them.

But here we had documentary people

controlling who appears on camera

and what's going to happen when, and...

it was a constructed reality

that was for entertainment purposes.

[Air Force Amy] They want their scene.

They want what they want.

They've got it in their head what they want it to be,

and they're gonna manipulate you to get it,

whether it's good or bad for you.

[laughing]

[Amy] Regardless of what it does to your image.

I'm madly in love with Cathouse.

I'm just madly in love with whores.

This is an interview with Sheila Nevins,

head of the documentary unit at HBO.

I love them, they're honest.

They're great actresses.

The greatest actresses in the business

are in this expensive whorehouse.

I mean, to act like this guy matters to you?

[beep], you got to be really an actress,

studio actress to do that.

[Shelly] Patti liked my look.

[Cathouse] Hi, I'm Shelly Dushell.

[Shelly] She liked the fact that I was tall, and thin,

and large-breasted, and long blonde hair,

and she didn't like my eyes.

At one point, Patti Kaplan told me

I needed to have my eyes done,

and the cameraman got mad at her,

and pulled her out in the hallway, and said,

"Don't you dare talk to her that way."

"Don't you tell her she needs plastic surgery."

[Cathouse] Alright, boys, well, our time is up,

and we have to go [beep] now because we're all horny.

[Jesse] Cathouse was basically just promotional video

for the Bunny Ranch.

[Shelly] The fact that I was a softcore porn actress

is humiliating.

But Dennis told me I was gonna be a star,

that I...

needed to be on the show, I'd make tons of money.

I would be famous.

It would make everyone rich.

It didn't make me rich.

I was victimised...

and Dennis Hof was the main victimiser.

I was very scared the first time I was in a lineup.

I didn't know what to expect.

[bell chiming]

This bell gets rung.

So, the bell would ring

when a person would come to the door

and they'd run down the hallway.

[Tom] The women would come running down these

two long hallways in their four-inch heels,

and they came in and stood in this thing

called the "lineup," where they tried to

attract the attention of the guy who came in.

[Shelly] I both felt pick me and don't pick me,

because I was nervous.

[Robin] One of the first things we did was

shoot the lineup that Dennis wanted women to do

when a new client comes in.

And it's a demeaning process.

You know, pick your Barbie.

Do you want Disco Barbie?

Do you want this Barbie? Do you want Sexy Barbie?

But Patti immediately said, "Well, it's a stage.

Give them a spotlight and let them show themselves off."

And what Tom and I saw was,

no, this is not showing off. This is...

human beings on sale.

[Tom] But if they did too much to attract the attention,

that is if they talked...

beyond, "Hello, my name is,"

or if they revealed too much or they did

a little too much action, it was dirty hustling.

[Crew] Marker.

[Amy] I remember one episode of Cathouse,

it said there's no moving in lineup.

And then they cut away to a shot of me just moving,

doing all this stuff.

[Dennis] We don't want them to do things

to give an unfair advantage.

You know, grind or anything. [laughs]

[Amy] I could be the brunt of a joke. It's okay.

But it became more difficult for me

as I became more famous

because people would think that, oh,

she's too famous, she's gonna cost too much.

[laughing]

[Amy] Because when we all say our names,

and they go, "Air Force Amy!"

And I think I'm getting picked, but I'm not.

They just recognize me.

So, not only do they know who I am,

they didn't pick me.

[Shelly] When I was picked,

I went to the horrible little room I had.

I was new there, so I just got

the worst room there was.

And, uh, negotiated.

When I had sex,

I didn't know if I would be able to...

do what was expected of me for the money.

I had just got there.

I had no idea what I was doing.

♪

I had men that did not want sex.

I had one that hired me just to watch me smoke.

He had a smoking fetish.

And he wanted me to lay on the bed in a seductive pose

in my lingerie and just smoke cigarettes.

That's all he wanted to see.

But most of the time,

just regular clients come in wanting sex.

And, there are repercussions that came from that.

There are people that judged me

for working there, and...

there were things that went on that I would not

want a young girl experiencing.

There are some really sick guys out there that

really want some really gross, disgusting things.

Men that want to be peed on,

and pooped on,

and to be hurt, and to be humiliated,

or they want to hurt and humiliate you.

There were young girls that were coming to work there

that probably would've never even thought of

working there if they hadn't seen the show.

I was 30 when I worked there.

I had already been married and divorced,

and had experienced life and sex,

and it's just horrifying to think that

girls so young would want to do that.

[Tom] Over the weeks that I worked there,

I realized that HBO

really never wanted to dip further

than just below this first public relations level.

♪

Dennis groping people.

I mean, that was a daily occurrence.

And they were supposed to like it.

And they pretended to like it.

[Dennis] I own the candy store.

I'm eating all the candy. I love it.

[Tom] Nobody asked, "Do you ever not want Dennis

to touch you?" when he's touching people.

That was not part of the agreement of Cathouse.

[cheering]

[Shelly] They wanted to sell a show.

They wanted to make money off of that show,

and they wanted to make money off of the,

the girls having a great time.

They just didn't want to show the ugly side of it.

♪

Patti would tell us ahead of time what we were going to do.

"Okay, there's going to be a clown."

"He's gonna come in the door."

"He's gonna have balloons."

"He's going to pick Shelly."

"They're going to sit at the bar."

"Talk to him for about 5 or 10 minutes,

and then take him to the room."

♪

I was expected to sleep with the clown.

They thought that it would be

interesting for the show.

[laughing]

What you see is what you get. I mean,

we don't show- [clapping]-

exactly, but we get pretty close.

We're very tasteful even when we're in a whorehouse.

♪

When I think about working on the show, Cathouse,

I think of it as a job that's not my favorite,

but I'm not ashamed of any of the work that I did on it.

The show...

tried to replicate

that sort of sense of silliness,

if you will, because it's a fantasy world.

And I bought into the fantasy,

but then so did Sheila and so did Patti.

[Dennis] Enjoy yourself. I know you will.

It's us projecting an image.

It's us promoting the girls.

It's us doing things like we're doing right now

to let the world know that the Bunny Ranch

is the party place of America.

[Phillip] It's his business to keep it

as attractive as possible.

But sometimes, it was painful to watch.

Patti told me that I would only get paid for sex scenes.

That I would not get paid for

all the other scenes.

One of the reasons that reality television

can be so successful is...

because you're dealing with a lot of unpaid labor.

And yet, they make tons of money

for the networks that they air on.

And knowing that the women in Cathouse

were not compensated for...

really being the heart of the show,

it's just another form of exploitation.

[Shelly] HBO wasn't much different than a pimp

because I was barely paid anything.

I was recognised everywhere I went

after the show came out.

It would've been nice to have a little bit of money

to show for it.

I was actually losing money being on HBO

because I wasn't working

when I was doing the filming for the show.

[Robin] Cathouse dealt with an interesting set of specifics

in dealing with human beings, and the fact that

you are selling a human connection.

The working girl is doing that.

But that is between two people.

The fact that HBO is monetizing that sexual

transaction in a way that exploited the women,

it was making me regret my involvement in Cathouse.

♪

As we were following the action that happens,

we would end up sometimes in the room.

And at one point, we were with

Isabella Soprano and her client at the time,

and we ended up being in the room

while she was having sex with the client.

♪

This is the first time I'm watching this.

This should have been the point where we

scooted out of that room.

♪

I was like, "I did not sign up for this."

"I'm not here to shoot porn."

"I'm here to shoot a documentary."

This is not what I would normally be doing

at work, like...

I was expecting softcore photo stuff.

Not full-on pornography.

This is when you're like, "Why did I take this job?"

♪

That first scene of me cracking the whip

that opens every episode, that was something

I did not want to do, because I felt that

men were already intimidated by me,

that I was too strong of a personality.

That was the last thing I wanted to do.

And it opened every episode.

♪

[Shelly] When the girls and I were

touching each other in the parlor

or making out, those were Dennis' ideas.

Dennis wanted to make it look like we were all just

waiting to have sex and we were nymphos.

So, Dennis somewhat became the director because

he was coordinating what he wanted to see

in the scenes.

And...

I didn't always see Patti Kaplan around.

[laughing & chatter]

It's kind of hard to say it was a documentary

when you have a pimp directing scenes

in his own brothel.

Watching the show, HBO definitely wanted it

to look like a fun place to be,

and so I can see where it would be

tempting for a young girl to watch the Cathouse show

and think it would be something fun,

but they don't understand the reality of it.

They aren't seeing what it really is like

behind closed doors with Dennis.

♪

[Tom] In a brothel, you don't have

HR lines to respect.

So, every interaction with women was paternal.

It placed him in a superior position to her.

He was her boss and her "Daddy."

- Daddy. - Daddy...

- Come and play with us! - Alright, girls! Let's go.

- Daddy! - Daddy!

Daddy!

[Shelly] It made me uncomfortable to call him Daddy.

And it was weird to see the other girls call him Daddy.

You're the coolest Daddy I've ever had!

[laughing]

[Host] Why do your girls

have to call you Daddy, for example?

[Dennis] They don't have to call me Daddy.

My girlfriend calls me that.

[Host] What, it's just a weird coincidence that they all do?

[Dennis] My girlfriend does that.

[Host] Well, the thing is, you do treat women

like objects to an extent.

[Dennis] Not true. [Host] They're commodities.

[Dennis] The demand is there.

They want to fulfill the demand.

[Phillip] Dennis always used to say that

just like anybody selling a product,

he has to know...

the value of the product.

But I don't recall Patti ever asking

any of the women who worked at

the Moonlite Bunny Ranch how they felt about

sleeping with Dennis, their boss.

[Shelly] I thought it was absolutely revolting

that I was expected to sleep with the boss,

and that the boss could go around and just

sleep with anyone and it was considered normal.

But I was afraid to tell him no.

I was scared.

[rumbling thunder]

Dennis would promote you if you slept with him.

He would brag about you.

♪

Dennis had a very active sex life

with the working girls.

And, a lot of the working girls

would offer themselves up to him.

There were girls that slept with him that

didn't want to sleep with him, but thatt they had to.

[Shelly] Dennis preyed upon the women

that were most easily victimised.

I was afraid to not

go along with what he wanted.

I learned a long time ago to not fight back...

because I, myself,

was sexually abused as a child.

So, I learned to...

build a wall and not think about it.

I literally visualised putting brick by brick up.

I remember doing that when I was around

12, 13 years old. It shaped me.

I probably would have never thought about working

at the Bunny Ranch if I hadn't had an old man

touching me when I was a little bitty kid.

And so, whenever I was in a situation

where I was having sex and didn't want to,

I was doing it for money,

I was able to disassociate from the situation and

build that wall up and pretend that I...

I wasn't doing that.

So, that's what I did with Dennis.

I didn't know what else to do.

[Shonda] He had a great presence on TV,

but behind closed doors,

Dennis was a rattlesnake.

[Tom] After a while, having shot there

for one ten-day period and then

coming back again, I realised that

I was becoming more and more

repulsed by Dennis Hof.

[Robin] Dennis found it very easy

to treat every woman he came across

in that same demeaning and sexualised way.

[Tom] I began to see below the surface,

into the other layers of what was going on there.

The darker side.

But as a documentarian,

if somebody is in front of my camera,

my job is to find the human being in the person

even though I may detest what that person does.

He felt like he was improving a girl's career.

And he actually used that as a come on.

You know, "You need to sleep with me

because it'll help your career."

[Shelly] And you got privileges.

He would take you out to dinner.

He took me to the Billboard Awards.

[Sonja] He gave 'em everything he could possibly give 'em.

And the other girls were envious of that.

Whoever was his girlfriend at the time,

she'd be the one going on the junket

and hitting all the shows.

So, for all the advertising that I did get,

it wasn't handed to me.

Not by any means.

I worked, worked, worked, worked, worked, and...

tried to make the most money to get this spot,

this thing, this thing, this thing.

But then his girlfriend would get the same thing.

Did Dennis and I ever date? No...

No.

[Shelly] It was kind of a sick, twisted relationship

that I had with Dennis

because I wanted him to like me,

but I did not want to have sex with him.

[Robin] I don't think that he had any idea

what these women go through,

or how or why they ended up working for him.

♪

[Shelly] Some days I feel a little bit shaky, and I think,

"Oh my gosh, what if he picks me?"

And since I've been here,

I found that just having a couple of drinks...

relaxes me and lets me...

not be quite as, uh, shaky.

♪

I didn't have the power in the first few years

to say no to Dennis.

♪

I tried my best to avoid him.

I would try to be busy.

I was glad when I was booked and I was making money

rather than being available for him,

and then he would just grab another girl

and go out back.

♪

He liked that power, that he had that control.

And Dennis was very violent

when he had sex, liking to slap and choke.

It was hard to get him to stop.

[thudding impact]

♪

Once I finally quit going along with what he wanted,

I was no longer in his good graces.

He was no longer

referring me to the big clients,

and he started to talk bad about me.

He said I had an alcohol problem.

He would turn against girls that said no to him.

And after a few years, I decided it was time

to leave the Moonlite Bunny Ranch.

♪

I really had no idea of the reach of

the Cathouse series on HBO.

I mean, it did really well.

And people were being drawn in

by the show, itself.

[Dennis] Chrissie is the reason why you use

parental controls on your TV because at 15,

she was watching Cathouse, and here we are.

If I could talk to my 11-year-old me

watching Cathouse,

I would definitely tell little me that...

not everything you see on TV is a reality.

[Robin] The idea that an 11 or 12-year-old would decide,

"Oh, that looks like fun,"

that's... [sighing]

...disturbing that young girls would do that.

But I also think that that is the way society works,

is we emulate something and we see something,

and then we end up doing it.

[Host] How did you find each other?

HBO.

The first HBO special that aired, I watched it.

[Tom] The illusion was always there.

Dennis kept the place

on a cheerful, glitzy, happy level.

[Dennis] This is our family. We are a family.

This is the best family a person could have.

I love you all.

[Tom] So the darker side was kept very private

and very much away from the cameras.

[cheering]

[Tom] And that became an image

that was then bought and sold on television.

[Racquel] When I watched Cathouse,

I wanted to believe that there could be

such a thing as a happy,

well-adjusted sex worker.

And, rewatching it,

it's so clear that's not the case.

But at the time, I was willing to buy

whatever narrative HBO was selling.

If someone had told me

that what you're going to do is basically

create a narrative television production

in the style of a documentary

and try to sell people on its reality,

even though we're making it

as glamorous as possible,

I would've said no.

[Tom] It is important that I feel my responsibility.

That if I denied my responsibility,

it would still be there,

but I would be lying about it.

So, the fact that I feel guilty about is...

is there. I, I-

there's nothing I can do about that.

When HBO first aired the series,

I really felt used

because I knew Dennis was

making money off of it, and I didn't realise

it would be so focused on just sex.

I knew we worked in a brothel,

but I was hoping it would have more of the

relationships of the girls and

how our lives were.

So, I did feel bothered by

the fact that Dennis and the HBO show

used women as property to make money.

[Promo] Tune into the Bunny Ranch...

[Dennis] Cathouse on HB-hoe!

♪

♪

[Tom] The Cathouse series,

over the next season or two began to attract

younger women to the Bunny Ranch.

[Dolly] Around the time that I

caught a glimpse of Cathouse,

I'd say I was probably, like, 11, 12.

I think I was probably, maybe 11 or 12 maybe.

And I would watch with the volume turned down low.

And I was like, if it's that easy, then, you know...

I really want to think I want to try it.

[DeAnne] He loved young girls.

These girls did not see what was coming.

HBO was glamorizing this life.

Who's pimping who here?

[Dolly] It isn't this big sorority.

I didn't feel safe.

I've never, ever seen anything like this before.

[Jennifer] There are people that have died.

[DeAnne] She's dead. She's been dead for hours.

[Jennifer] There are people that have been murdered.

[News] 4 people found dead.

One of them was a prostitute

and one of the stars of HBO's Cathouse.

[Sonja] Dennis told me

that she was pregnant with his child.

It just blew up like an atomic bomb.

I'm going to tell you the real story

about the Lamar Odom party.

He should've known that stuff is not good,

but he wanted more.

I was like, "Lamar!"

And I tried to shake him and he didn't do anything.

Lamar Odom overdosed,

and I didn't know what to do.

[Jennifer] Prostitution, it's not a job.

It is a nightmare.

[Rebekah] I was literally having sex

with strangers, for nothing.

[Jennifer] I was molested, and beaten,

and raped by Dennis Hof.

And some girls are still there.

♪

Dennis was in this for Dennis.

Dennis was a rat bastard pimp.

[DeAnne] He had no empathy.

[Dolly] He could be a real piece of [beep].

Yeah, I believe there was foul play. 100%.

Police! Search warrant!

[Sonja] Dennis Hof was running for office.

It was a powerplay.

[Jennifer] I honestly feel

that Dennis Hof was murdered.

But I got no justice.