- 6/13/2025
Secrets of the Bunny Ranch Season 1 Episode 1
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00:00I was a working girl, working girl, working girl, courtesan, escort, escort girl, former adult film
00:11star. I'm a sex trade survivor. If I could talk to my 11 year old me watching Cat House, I need a
00:20minute. I would definitely tell little me that not everything you see on TV is a reality. HBO put us
00:28in the living rooms of America with Cat House. The bunny ranch built itself as one of Nevada's most
00:35upscale brothels and the program shows the inner workings of the business behind the brothel. Cat
00:41House was one of the most watched HBO documentaries in the history of the network. At first I thought
00:46it was a sequel to the cat in the hat movie. I was not even close. Prostitutes on TV, who thought that
00:52was gonna sell? Dennis did. It's just sex, relax, it's just sex. We felt like we were stars. Joining
00:58us now live is the owner of the bunny ranch himself, the legendary Dennis Hoff. Dennis
01:04changed the system. Dennis made it a business. He made the women businesswomen. It's not going
01:10away. Sex for sale is here to stay. He was a marketing media genius. But Dennis Hoff's legacy
01:17is extremely mixed. Look, Dennis's world was buying and selling people. That's how he thought of us. He
01:27thought of us as objects that he owned. He made us feel like on the bottom of his feet. And I remember
01:34saying, okay, just do it. And I was scared. But HBO wanted to sell a show. They just didn't
01:44want to show the ugly side of it. I really had no idea that people were being drawn in by the show
01:52itself. Women watch Cat House as young girls, 11, 12 years old, and then decided that they wanted to go
02:00to that place. Chrissy is the reason why you use parental controls on your TV. Because at 15,
02:06she was watching Cat House. And here we are. They made it seem so fun on the show. And what was
02:12really happening was force. Rape. Coercion. Murder. Abuse. Overdose. Control. If someone had told me,
02:23I would have said no. Is this something that we want to beam into homes? The place was about lying.
02:28It was all lies. It's important for us to hold HBO accountable. It's kind of hard to say it was a
02:35documentary when you have a pimp directing scenes in his own brothel.
02:49Put me under the cover. It's for all the world to see.
02:55But I never recall that you never cared about me. So now you're being a girl. I can't
03:06don't want to see. You and all of your eyes. I'm losing to see.
03:13In 2003, a tornado hit my house. And I had just gotten a divorce.
03:28And when you have young children to take care of, I decided to go and work at the Bunny Ranch.
03:34I did what I had to do. And that decision altered my life completely.
03:43I'm Shelly. I was a working girl at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch in Nevada, owned by Dennis Hoff.
03:51I heard about the Moonlight Bunny Ranch from a talk show.
03:54Tucked away in a dusty corner of the Nevada desert, the world famous Bunny Ranch is a legal brothel
04:00where a man can hire a prostitute to satisfy almost any desire.
04:05I remember seeing Dennis Hoff.
04:08Men come to the ranch to do things that their wives can't or won't do.
04:11We can fulfill almost any fantasy at the Bunny Ranch.
04:14It has to be safe. And most of all, it has to be fun.
04:17I think Air Force Amy was on the talk show with Dennis.
04:20Air Force Amy.
04:22I orgasm for a living at the Bunny Ranch.
04:26And I was astounded. I had no idea that prostitution was legal anywhere in the United States.
04:34And so I sent an email with a picture of myself to the Moonlight Bunny Ranch.
04:41And Dennis Hoff himself called me back within two hours and said, I want you out here.
04:49I flew out to Nevada.
04:52I was picked up by Dennis Hoff at the airport.
04:56And Dennis told me that HBO was doing a show and he wanted me to do that.
05:02He walked me in.
05:04And there were cameramen there filming for the HBO show.
05:14Dennis took me out to the bungalow behind the building and wanted sex.
05:19And I had just met this man.
05:21I had flown there to work.
05:23He was the boss.
05:24He was the owner.
05:26And he wanted to have sex the very first day I got there.
05:30And he didn't want to wear a condom.
05:32So I was absolutely horrified.
05:36That was my first day at the ranch.
05:39I was afraid to tell Dennis no.
05:43I had no idea what I was getting into.
05:48Nobody seems to care if a prostitute gets raped.
05:51I believe in the product.
05:52I love the product.
05:53I use it daily.
05:55I saw the ugly side of Dennis.
05:57But the world on Cat House only saw the fun side of him.
06:05How about a toast here?
06:07Here's a toast to the best family, the Bunny Ranch family.
06:10Because they didn't know the real Dennis.
06:15Dennis was all about being violent.
06:18Dennis Hoff was actually born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1946.
06:30His parents were immigrants.
06:32And they came to America for a better place.
06:35So Dennis Hoff actually grew up with very little money.
06:38And Dennis resented that, which made him want to be more of a successful individual.
06:46He started by sweeping the gas station floor and then ended up buying a gas station.
06:51After that, they decided to get into timeshare sales.
06:55Dennis sold timeshares before he owned the Bunny Ranch.
06:58And he used to always say that he was still selling timeshares.
07:03It was just a triangular-shaped piece of land.
07:08Pretty terrible to say, but it was true.
07:12He was still selling timeshares.
07:14Just it happened to be women.
07:19Then Dennis and his father decide to travel cross-country.
07:23And as they go through Reno, Dennis finds out about these brothels.
07:27He fell in love with the idea of that type of business.
07:34The rest is history.
07:39Before Dennis, the prostitution industry was kind of like in the shadows for decades.
07:45But he mainstreamed it.
07:47I'm the new breed of broth loaner.
07:49I'm a straight guy.
07:50I pay my taxes.
07:51I do the right things.
07:52I come from a business background.
07:55I'm educated.
07:56That's the new breed of broth loaner.
07:58The old school is over.
08:04Hello.
08:05I'm Air Force Amy.
08:07I'm the most celebrated courtesan of modern times.
08:12Air Force Amy interview.
08:13Take one, Margaret.
08:15I got a hair in my mouth.
08:17I worked for Dennis Hoff and helped put the famous Moonlight Bunny Ranch on the map.
08:25I left home at a very, very early age.
08:28And I started hitchhiking around the country.
08:31I learned real early how to be resourceful.
08:35And I learned also that sex was a commodity.
08:40So my first 10 years in the industry, most of the problems were really, really bad.
08:47The last place I worked had one window in the whole place that big, okay?
08:50On weekends, they would lock up the pay phones because they didn't want you calling home and
08:55talking to me and getting upset and leaving.
08:59It was awful.
09:00We used to call it a prison.
09:02So when I first got to the Bunny Ranch, I just got catapulted into the 20th century.
09:11And everything was up-beat, up-beat, up-beat, up-beat, up-beat.
09:16Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun.
09:20Brothels are not by law allowed to advertise.
09:24But they can still go in the media.
09:26They can appear on TV shows.
09:28They can talk about their businesses.
09:29But they can't put up an ad in the newspaper.
09:32So Dennis was very savvy.
09:34He used the media.
09:36Oh, I can't put a ad up?
09:37Great.
09:37I'll go on CNN and talk about it.
09:40Dennis Hoss, Bunny Ranch owner.
09:42That was just a stroke of genius right there.
09:44And who would have ever thought, who had the balls to put prostitutes on TV?
09:50Who thought that was going to sell?
09:52After the airline sticks it to you, come stick it to us.
09:56Dennis did, and it did.
09:59We would go on every talk show.
10:01At the time, it was talk shows, right?
10:02There was Jenny Jones.
10:04But what's the right word for, uh, is prostitute okay now?
10:07No.
10:08I got most outrageous guest of the year on Jenny Jones.
10:11There was Tyra Banks.
10:13Joining us also is Dennis Hoff.
10:15He owns the Moonlight Bunny Ranch.
10:17Oprah.
10:18While she waited for a client, Brooke gave us a tour of the Bunny Ranch.
10:22There's approximately 30 rooms, and they're always full.
10:24Dennis made himself the authority on prostitution.
10:27And he said, that's how it works.
10:28He goes, media begets media.
10:31Once you do one story on prostitution, networks go, let's interview that guy.
10:35Pretty soon, he's the guy.
10:37I'm selling sex like other people are selling soda pop.
10:42And when Dennis got into the industry, it was really popular and cool to be a pimp.
10:48He had Snoop Dogg.
10:49He had Pimp My Ride.
10:50You know, pimps were really, really glamorized.
10:53So Dennis had his hat in the ring at the exact right time, because it was cool to be a pimp.
10:59In the early 2000s, it was the time that was sort of selling itself as being all about women's sexual liberation.
11:07There's Heidi Fleiss, whose job as a madam is being talked about as the ultimate success story of an independent woman entrepreneur.
11:13There's Paris Hilton's leaked sex tape becoming a pop culture staple.
11:17And then there's the photo shoot of Britney Spears that is clearly invoking some kind of Lolita fantasy for men.
11:22And so sex itself becomes a thing to be celebrated.
11:26HBO at that time also had this show called Taxi Cab Confessions, where they put hidden cameras in a taxi cab and picked up people.
11:36And it just dawned on me.
11:37I said, let's put hidden cameras in the brothel and capture the conversations of white men and women go there.
11:43So I called the Bunny Ranch.
11:45And I said, Dennis, can I come do that?
11:48Sure.
11:48Come on out.
11:51So we drive to the Bunny Ranch.
11:53And Dennis says, George, you know what I want?
11:55I go, what do you want, Dennis?
11:56He says, I want to be a household name.
11:58And I said, I'll do my best.
12:02So I show up at HBO's documentary division.
12:05And Sheila Nevins was in charge of that.
12:07And Patty Kaplan does all their directing.
12:10They had done Real Sex Together, that show, and other documentaries.
12:14And Sheila Nevins says, you think it's a wonderful idea?
12:17So I turned the reins over to the HBO folks, you know, Sheila and Patty, and they did the rest.
12:24So the genesis of Cat House was, it didn't seem very much different than all the TV and media that we were already doing.
12:34So sex and entertainment at that time covered two sides.
12:40One side was that all porn denigrates women.
12:44And then there was another side that said porn empowers women and can empower women if it's done correctly.
12:50And in this kind of ferment, this little show came on to HBO.
12:59Dennis wanted me to be a big part of the Cat House show.
13:03But I didn't know that young girls would come to work there that probably would have never even thought of working at the Bunny Ranch.
13:11They hadn't seen the show.
13:12So looking back, I should have never agreed to do it.
13:20First, reality TV took us inside the home of the Osbournes.
13:23Then there was the Anna Nicole show.
13:25Now a provocative new HBO documentary is showing viewers a very different kind of house.
13:30Cat House was supposed to be the first time ever they filmed live negotiations from inside a brothel.
13:39At Pamper Party, we do lots of massage, a sensual music, sensual massage.
13:45Everything is totally paying attention to you.
13:47It's all about you.
13:49I was the director of photography.
13:51The gaffer.
13:52The coordinating producer.
13:53One of the sound mixers for HBO's Cat House.
13:57I was contacted by New York producers saying,
14:00can you do this job?
14:01Can you be there?
14:02It's going to be very hands-on.
14:05I didn't know anything other than there's going to be a lot of sex workers in this shoot.
14:10And it's going to be odd and weird, but they're paying, so I will go.
14:15So I was shooting a lot of documentaries.
14:17I had an old friend by the name of Patty Kaplan, who was the director-producer of the show.
14:23So Patty thought of me when she had to shoot in the Cat House.
14:30Why did you want to make this documentary?
14:31Was there some sort of message that you were going after?
14:33Was there some sort of morality that you wanted to explore?
14:37I think, actually, the approach was extremely nonjudgmental.
14:41No, there wasn't a morality to explore.
14:44It was more like, this is an environment that people are quite unfamiliar with.
14:48So let's get inside and see how it works.
14:51Honestly, when they came to me and said,
14:53you're going to be spending months at a bronco,
14:57I'm like, great.
14:58And then I'm like, what?
14:59You just think you go into a brothel and you have sex.
15:03Come ahead, you sit right here.
15:05Maybe down here.
15:06And Mom, come sit over here.
15:07Come chat with us.
15:09So he's never had sex before.
15:11Mom, it's time.
15:13But it was mostly about the way the girls worked with the men
15:16and how they negotiate and they come up, you know, with a price.
15:20She's been writing about $1,000 for an hour.
15:23Would you guys be interested in that?
15:25On Cat House, we had a very particular kind of task.
15:38We wanted to make the environment look natural.
15:42We wanted to feel like that was what you would experience if you walked into the room.
15:47We also want the faces to look good.
15:51There's a certain amount of glamour.
15:53And in order to create that glamour, we need to actually use lights.
15:58Cat House was a fascinating little social experiment.
16:02I would really like you to just, like, get aggressive, jumping and stomping and all that kind of stuff.
16:06And that dealt with the way people's sexuality was being expressed.
16:14Cat House premieres tomorrow night on HBO right after the season finale of The Sopranos.
16:19I think that programming Cat House right after the season finale of The Sopranos
16:23and season four of The Sopranos, so it already has, like, this kind of robust built-in audience,
16:29it says something about the network's desire to want this documentary to do well.
16:36I remember watching The Sopranos at the end of the show.
16:40Suddenly, like, I'm in a brothel in Nevada, and there's all this craziness going on.
16:47There was a lot of nudity and a lot of sex.
16:49It was like a traffic accident that you can't avert your eyes from.
17:01It very much sort of focuses on the women, but they're constantly talking about
17:06how much they love working at the Bunny Ranch, how much they love sex.
17:09I would do this until I was 60 if I could. I really would. It's just that fun.
17:14And you sort of come away from it thinking, oh, what a lovely sort of place
17:18for these young women to find, you know, economic empowerment.
17:22What do you think people will walk away from at the end of this, watching this documentary?
17:27I think they're...
17:28Disgusted, intrigued, wanting to sign up to be positive.
17:31I mean, what is it?
17:32I think they're much less disgusted than they may have been.
17:34And there's a perspective, you know, needless to say, about selling sex
17:38that doesn't make a lot of people comfortable.
17:40But I think the environment is so pleasant.
17:43The tone of this documentary is, it really just reads as like a PR puff piece.
17:49Because this is compelling television.
17:51Nobody's seen the inner workings of a working girl in a client.
17:55This is unbelievable television.
17:56Both Patty, the director, and Dennis had a pretty clear idea of what they wanted to do before it happened.
18:03They would really plan it out together.
18:06It wasn't a documentary. We were told what to do.
18:10The Cat House show was set up.
18:17Who likes boobies?
18:21This was the first scene that I ever filmed for Cat House.
18:25When it comes to actual oral sex, we had to teach a class about sex to a bunch of men.
18:32And I just remember being very nervous.
18:35You know, sometimes guys will just dig in.
18:38And it may be painful.
18:40The girl's not worked up enough.
18:41You got to start out slow.
18:43That is not a client.
18:44That is Jesse, and he was a driver and a bartender at the Bunny Ranch.
18:50There I am.
18:51I usually try to get them beforehand and, uh...
18:55How?
18:56Uh, just by, uh, f***ing rubbing and touching.
19:00Everyone in the scene that was supposed to be customers were actually friends of Dennis or people who worked at the Bunny Ranch.
19:07What do you like about boobs?
19:08I like to nibble it out of real quick.
19:09Yeah.
19:09This was something that they concocted for the show.
19:19This was definitely not what I thought it was going to be.
19:23The reason I wanted to work on this series was because of the people that I was working with.
19:32I knew that they were serious documentarians and did, you know, really quality work.
19:39And I could learn a lot from them.
19:41But here we had documentary people controlling who appears on camera and what's going to happen when.
19:47And it was a constructed reality that was for entertainment purposes.
19:53They want their scene.
19:54They want what they want.
19:55They've got it in their head what they want it to be.
19:57And they're going to manipulate you to get it, whether it's good or bad for you.
20:02Another technique is what Amy is saying.
20:05I'm trying to...
20:08Regardless of what it does to your image.
20:11I'm madly in love with Cat House.
20:13I'm just madly in love with the whores.
20:15This is an interview with Sheila Nevin, head of the documentary unit at HBO.
20:20I love them.
20:21They're honest.
20:21They're great actresses.
20:22The greatest actresses in the business are in this expensive whorehouse.
20:26I mean, to act like this guy matters to you?
20:30You've got to be really an active studio actress to do that.
20:33Patty liked my look.
20:35I'm Shelley Duchesne.
20:36She liked the fact that I was tall and thin and large breasted and long blonde hair.
20:44And she didn't like my eyes.
20:46At one point, Patty Kaplan told me I needed to have my eyes done.
20:50And the cameraman got mad at her and pulled her out in the hallway and said,
20:54don't you dare talk to her that way.
20:56Don't you tell her she needs plastic surgery.
20:58All right, boys.
20:59Well, our time is up and we have to go now because we're all horny.
21:03Cat House was basically just promotional video for the Bunny Ranch.
21:08The fact that I was a softcore porn actress is humiliating.
21:13But Dennis told me I was going to be a star, that I needed to be on this show.
21:19I'd make tons of money.
21:21I would be famous.
21:23It would make everyone rich.
21:26It didn't make me rich.
21:28I was victimized.
21:30And Dennis Hoff was the main victimizer.
21:39I was very scared the first time I was in a lineup.
21:43I didn't know what to expect.
21:47The bell gets rung.
21:49So the bell would ring when a person would come to the door
21:52and they'd run down the hallway.
21:54The women would come running down these two long hallways in their four-inch heels.
22:00And they came in and stood in this thing called the lineup,
22:04where they tried to attract the attention of the guy who came in.
22:08I both felt pick me and don't pick me because I was nervous.
22:14One of the first things we did was shoot the lineup that Dennis wanted women to do when a new client comes in.
22:20And it's a demeaning process.
22:22You know, pick your Barbie.
22:23Do you want disco Barbie?
22:25Do you want this Barbie?
22:26Do you want sexy Barbie?
22:27But Patty immediately said, well, it's a stage.
22:30Give them a spotlight and let them show themselves off.
22:33And what Tom and I saw was, no, this is not showing off.
22:38This is human beings on sale.
22:40But if they did too much to attract the attention,
22:43that is, if they talked beyond, hello, my name is,
22:48or if they revealed too much or they did a little too much action,
22:52it was dirty hustling.
22:54I remember one episode of Cat House.
22:57It said, there's no moving and line up.
22:59And then they cut away to a shot of me just moving through all this stuff.
23:02We don't want them to do things to give an unfair advantage.
23:05You know, grind or anything.
23:07I could be the brunt of a joke.
23:09It's okay.
23:10But it became more difficult for me as I became more famous
23:14because people would think that, oh, she's too famous.
23:17She's going to cost too much.
23:19Oh, thank God.
23:21This is not going to cost you nearly as much as you thought.
23:24Because we all say our names and they go, Air Force Amy.
23:27And I think I'm getting picked, but I'm not.
23:29They just recognize me.
23:31So not only do they know who I am, they didn't pick me.
23:35When I was picked, I went to the horrible little room I had.
23:40I was new there, so I just got the worst room there was and negotiated.
23:46And then I had sex.
23:48I didn't know if I would be able to do what was expected of me for the money.
23:54I had just got there.
23:56I had no idea what I was doing.
24:00I had men that did not want sex.
24:03I had one that hired me just to watch me smoke.
24:06He had a smoking fetish.
24:08And he wanted me to lay on the bed in a seductive pose in my lingerie and just smoke cigarettes.
24:15That's all he wanted to see.
24:17But most of the time, just regular clients come in wanting sex.
24:22And there are repercussions that came from that.
24:26There were people that judged me for working there.
24:29And there were things that went on that I would not want a young girl experiencing.
24:35There are some really sick guys out there that really want some really gross, disgusting things.
24:41Men 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.
24:51There were young girls that were coming to work there that probably would have never even thought of working there if they hadn't seen the show.
24:58I was 30 when I worked there.
25:00I had already been married and divorced and had experienced life and sex.
25:05And it's just horrifying to think that girls so young would want to do that.
25:11Over the weeks that I worked there, I realized that HBO really never wanted to dip further than just below this first public relations level.
25:24Dennis groping people, I mean, that was a daily occurrence.
25:30And they were supposed to like it.
25:32And they pretended to like it.
25:34I own the candy store.
25:36I'm eating all the candy. I love it.
25:38Nobody asked, do you ever not want Dennis to touch you when he's touching people?
25:43That was not part of the remit of Cat House.
25:47They wanted to sell a show.
25:50They wanted to make money off of that show.
25:54And they wanted to make money off of the girls having a great time.
25:58They just didn't want to show the ugly side of it.
26:02Patty would tell us ahead of time what we were going to do.
26:06OK, there's going to be a clown.
26:08He's going to come in the door.
26:10He's going to have balloons.
26:12He's going to pick Shelly.
26:14They're going to sit at the bar, talk to him for about five or ten minutes, and then take him to the room.
26:24I was expected to sleep with the clown.
26:28They thought that it would be interesting for the show.
26:32What you see is what you get.
26:36I mean, we don't show exactly, but we get pretty close.
26:40We're very tasteful even when we're in a whorehouse.
26:44When I think about working on the show Cat House, 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.
26:58The show tried to replicate that sort of sense of silliness, if you will, because it's a fantasy world.
27:07And I bought into the fantasy, but then so did Sheila and so did Patty.
27:12You know yourself. I know you will.
27:14It's us projecting an image. It's us promoting the girls.
27:18It'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.
27:24It's his business to keep it as attractive as possible, but sometimes it was painful to watch.
27:37Patty told me that I would only get paid for sex scenes, that I would not get paid for all the other scenes.
27:45One of the reasons that reality television can be so successful is because you're dealing with a lot of unpaid labor.
27:55And yet they make tons of money for the networks that they air on.
28:00And knowing that the women in Cat House were not compensated for really being the heart of the show.
28:09It's just another form of exploitation.
28:12HBO wasn't much different than a pimp because I was barely paid anything.
28:17If I was recognized everywhere I went after the show came out, it would have been nice to have a little bit of money to show for it.
28:25I was actually losing money being on HBO because I wasn't working when I was doing the filming for the show.
28:32Cat House dealt with an interesting set of specifics in dealing with human beings and the fact that you are selling a human connection.
28:41The working girl is doing that.
28:43But that is between two people.
28:45The fact that HBO is monetizing that sexual transaction in a way that exploited the women.
28:51It was making me regret my involvement in the Cat House.
28:55As we were following the action that happens, we would end up sometimes in the room.
29:02And at one point we were with Isabella Soprano and her client at the time.
29:07And we ended up being in the room while she was having sex with the client.
29:17This is the first time I'm watching this.
29:20This should have been the point where we scooted out of that room.
29:24I was like, I did not sign up for this.
29:29I'm not here to shoot porn.
29:31I'm here to shoot a documentary.
29:33This is not what I would normally be doing at work.
29:35Like, I was expecting soft core photo stuff, not full on pornography.
29:43This is when you're like, why did I take this job?
29:46That first scene of me cracking the whip that opens every episode, that was something I did not want to do.
29:55Because I felt that men were already intimidated by me, that I was too strong of a personality.
30:00That was the last thing I wanted to do.
30:02And it opened every episode.
30:04When the girls and I were touching each other in the parlor or making out, those were Dennis' ideas.
30:13Dennis wanted to make it look like we were all just waiting to have sex and we were nymphos.
30:19So Dennis somewhat became the director because he was coordinating what he wanted to see in the scenes.
30:28And I didn't always see Patty Kaplan around.
30:32It's kind of hard to say it was a documentary when you have a pimp directing scenes in his own brothel.
30:42Watching the show, HBO definitely wanted it to look like a fun place to be.
30:49And so I can see where it would be tempting for a young girl to watch the cat house show and think it would be something fun.
30:56But they don't understand the reality of it.
30:59They aren't seeing what it really is like behind closed doors with Dennis.
31:07In a brothel, you don't have HR lines to respect.
31:12So every interaction with a woman was paternal.
31:15It placed him in a superior position to her.
31:19He was her boss and her daddy.
31:22Daddy! Daddy! Come and play with us!
31:25Oh my girl, let's go!
31:27Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!
31:29It made me uncomfortable to call him daddy and it was weird to see the other girls call him daddy.
31:35The coolest daddy I've ever had.
31:38Why do your girls have to call you daddy?
31:41They don't have to call me daddy. My girlfriend calls me daddy.
31:44It's just a weird coincidence that they all do.
31:46My girlfriend does that.
31:47Well, the thing is, you do treat women like objects to an extent, don't you?
31:50Not true.
31:51They're commodities.
31:52The demand is there. They want to fulfill the demand.
31:55Dennis always used to say that just like anybody selling a product, he has to know the value of the product.
32:03But I don't recall Patty ever asking any of the women who worked at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch how they felt about sleeping with Dennis, their boss.
32:13I 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.
32:24That I was afraid to tell him no. I was scared.
32:36Dennis would promote you if you slept with him. He would brag about you.
32:44Dennis had a very active sex life with the working girls and a lot of the working girls would offer themselves up to him.
32:53There were girls that slept with him that didn't want to sleep with him but thought they had to.
32:58Dennis preyed upon the women that were most easily victimized.
33:05I was afraid to not go along with what he wanted.
33:09I learned a long time ago to not fight back because I myself was sexually abused as a child.
33:17So I learned to build a wall and not think about it.
33:22I literally visualized putting brick by brick up.
33:26I remember doing that when I was around 12, 13 years old.
33:30It 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.
33:40And 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 wasn't doing that.
34:03So that's what I did with Dennis. I didn't know what else to do.
34:10He had a great presence on TV, but behind closed doors, Dennis was the rattlesnake.
34:16After a while, having shot there for one 10 day period and then coming back again, I realized that I was becoming more and more repulsed by Dennis Hoff.
34:28Dennis found it very easy to treat every woman he came across in that same demeaning and sexualized way.
34:36I began to see below the surface into the other layers of what was going on there, the darker side.
34:44But 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.
34:53He 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.
35:00And you got privileges. He would take you out to dinner. He took me to the Billboard Awards.
35:08He gave him everything he could possibly give him. And the other girls were envious of that.
35:14For whoever was his girlfriend at the time, she'd be the one going on the junket and hitting all the shows.
35:19So for all the advertising that I did get, it wasn't handed to me. Not by any means.
35:27I work, work, work, work, work, work, and try to make the most money to get this spot, this thing, this thing, this thing.
35:34And then his girlfriend would get the same thing.
35:38Did you and him ever date?
35:40Did Dennis and I ever date? No. No.
35:44It 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.
35:54I don't think that he had any idea what these women go through or how or why they ended up working for him.
36:02Some days I feel a little bit shaky and I think, oh my gosh, what if he picks me?
36:08And since I've been here, I've found that just having a couple of drinks relaxes me and lets me not be quite as shaky.
36:24I didn't have the power in the first few years to say no to Dennis.
36:29I tried my best to avoid him. I would try to be busy.
36:36I was glad when I was booked and I was making money rather than being available for him.
36:42And then he would just grab another girl and go out back.
36:47He liked that power that he had, that control.
36:51And Dennis was very violent when he had sex, liking to slap and choke.
36:58It was hard to get him to stop.
37:00Once I finally quit going along with what he wanted, I was no longer in his good graces.
37:11He was no longer referring me to the big clients and he started to talk bad about me.
37:19He said I had an alcohol problem.
37:21He would turn against girls that said no to him.
37:25And after a few years, I decided it was time to leave the Moonlight Bunny Ranch.
37:32I really had no idea of the reach of the Cat House series on HBO.
37:44I mean, it did really well and people were being drawn in by the show itself.
37:50Chrissy is the reason why you use parental controls on your TV.
37:54Because at 15, she was watching Cat House and here we are.
37:58If I could talk to my 11-year-old me watching Cat House,
38:04I would definitely tell little me that not everything you see on TV is a reality.
38:10So the idea that an 11 or 12-year-old would decide, oh, that looks like fun.
38:14That's disturbing that young girls would do that.
38:19But I also think that that is the way society works is we emulate something and we see something
38:23and then we end up doing it.
38:25How did you find each other?
38:27HBO.
38:28The first HBO special that aired, I watched it.
38:32The illusion was always there.
38:34Dennis kept the place on a cheerful, glitzy, happy level.
38:38Because this is our family. We are a family.
38:40This is the best family a person could have. I love you all.
38:43So the darker side was kept very private and very much away from the cameras.
38:48And that became an image that was then bought and sold on television.
38:55When I watched Cat House, I wanted to believe that there could be such a thing as a happy, well-adjusted sex worker.
39:05And re-watching it, it's so clear that's not the case.
39:10But at the time I was willing to buy whatever narrative HBO was selling.
39:16If 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.
39:32Even though we're making it as glamorous as possible, I would have said no.
39:37It is important that I feel my responsibility within it.
39:42That if I denied my responsibility, it would still be there, but I would be lying about it.
39:48So the fact that I feel guilty about it is there. There's nothing I can do about that.
39:55When HBO first aired the series, I really felt used because I knew Dennis was making money off of it and I didn't realize it would be so focused on just sex.
40:09I 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.
40:18So I did feel bothered by the fact that Dennis and the HBO show used women as property to make money.
40:27Tune in to the Bunny Ranch.
40:29Cat House on HBO.
40:39The Cat House series over the next season or two began to attract younger women to the Bunny Ranch.
40:57Around the time that I caught a glimpse of Cat House, I was probably like 11, 12.
41:02I think I was probably maybe 11 or 12, maybe.
41:07And I would watch it with the volume turned down low.
41:10And I was like, if it's that easy, then, you know, I really want to think I want to try it.
41:16He loved young girls.
41:18These girls did not see what was coming.
41:20HBO was glamorizing this life.
41:23Who's pimping who here?
41:25It isn't this big sorority.
41:28I didn't feel safe.
41:30911, where's your medicine?
41:32Um, we need an ambulance.
41:34I've never, ever seen anything like this before.
41:37There are people that have died.
41:39She's dead.
41:40She's been dead for hours.
41:42There are people that have been murdered.
41:44Four people found dead.
41:46One of them was a prostitute and one of the stars of HBO's Cat House.
41:50Dennis told me that she was pregnant with his child.
41:53It just blew up like an atomic bomb.
41:56I'm gonna tell you the real story about the Lamar Odom party.
42:01He should have known that stuff is not good, but he wanted more.
42:05I was like, Lamar.
42:06And I tried to shake him and he didn't do anything.
42:09Lamar Odom overdosed and I didn't know what to do.
42:15Prostitution and it's not a job.
42:18It is a nightmare.
42:19I was literally having sex with strangers for nothing.
42:24I was molested and beaten and raped by Dennis Hoff.
42:28And some girls are still there.
42:32Dennis was in this for Dennis.
42:35Dennis was a rat bastard pimp.
42:37He had no empathy.
42:39He could be a real piece of .
42:41Yeah, I believe there's foul play.
42:43100%.
42:44Please search for it!
42:46Dennis Hoff was running for office.
42:48It was a power play.
42:51I honestly feel that Dennis Hoff was murdered.
42:55I got no justice.
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