Heidi Fleiss’ Ex-Beau Goes Multimedia
Heidi Fleiss’ ex-boyfriend, Ivan Nagy, is joining the new technology crowd.
With last summer’s publicity surrounding his association with the alleged madam to the stars abated, the TV and film director hopes to reinvent himself as a multimedia entrepreneur.
Last week, he formed a company called MacDaddy Entertainment. The firm’s first product? A CD-ROM called “Heidi’s Girls.â€
“This is Mr. Multimedia himself,†Nagy said Thursday in a telephone interview from his Century City apartment. “The Digitolla of CD-ROM, that’s my new title.â€
CD-ROMs are compact discs that hold digital images, sound, graphics and text and play on devices hooked up to personal computers. While the consumer market for the shiny discs remains small, Nagy believes his product is sure to draw attention.
The “Heidi’s Girls†disc includes 150 photographic images of five women posing in bedroom suites at several of Los Angeles’ most luxurious hotels.
“It was only appropriate,†Nagy said. “Where else would you shoot a Heidi girl but in a hotel suite?â€
Fleiss has pleaded not guilty to pandering and cocaine charges; court action on her case has been postponed several times.
One version of Nagy’s disc--the “Euroversionâ€--contains nude images. In the other, the women are in lingerie.
While the disc is not interactive except for a sorting mechanism that allows the user to view the images by category, Nagy’s partner, computer whiz Allan Adler, says consumers with some basic equipment will be able to superimpose other images on those from the discs.
Adler, who runs Samy’s Digital Imaging store in Los Angeles, persuaded Nagy to do the project about three weeks ago after a client of his suggested the idea. Adler handled the digitization of the images and supervised the computer programming end of the production.
Fleiss said Thursday that she was unaware of the project and did not know who was involved with it.
“They’re probably his girlfriends,†said Fleiss, who celebrated her 28th birthday Thursday. “What’s my response? Who cares. He’s pathetic; what can I say?â€
The women’s real names are not used on the disc. Nagy claims each of them was associated with Heidi and that he contacted them with an offer to pose for the disc when the project got off the ground a few weeks ago.
Introduction of the disc next week may become another chapter in the ex-lovers’ quarrel, which has been played out in the headlines over the last several months. But Nagy says he has plans for several more products that are more technically sophisticated and have nothing to do with Heidi.
“I am certainly not basing a company on Heidi Fleiss. We’re just kicking it off with this. It will introduce the company name to everybody because of the press attention we will get,†he said.
The company name, Nagy acknowledges, is a homonym for mackdaddy, an Old English term for a pimp. He said he chose it because it “sounded good.â€
Nagy said his investment comes to about $150,000. A news conference to introduce the disc is scheduled in New York on Tuesday. From there, Nagy will fly to San Francisco to demonstrate the disc at MacWorld, a computer trade show. Later next week, he’ll be in Las Vegas to show off “Heidi’s Girls†at the Consumer Electronics Show.
“My life has been totally turned upside-down this year,†Nagy said. “But I’m good at going with the flow, and this is where the flow is taking me.â€
Times staff writer Shawn Hubler contributed to this report.
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