Sculptor Helps Heidi Fleiss Slam the Gate on the Peeping Press

Northridge sculptor Russell Michael was putting up a handmade gate in Beverly Hills in September when he looked down at a neighboring property and saw what looked like an encamped army of the more sensationalist press.

Realizing that he was looking at the property of alleged madam to the stars, Heidi Fleiss, who had been arrested in June on pimping, pandering and narcotics charges, he wrote a note and slipped it into her mailbox.

The note said that he could see that people were overrunning her property, and that he thought he could help with her security problems.

Fleiss says she was initially suspicious of anyone offering to help, but finally called him and asked him to tell her his ideas and show her his portfolio. She liked what she heard and saw.

She told Michael people were just walking into her yard and looking into her windows, and that a crew from one tabloid TV program walked out to her pool area and shoved a camera in her face.

Michael says he was eager to help Fleiss secure her home, which was formerly owned by actor Michael Douglas. Fleiss says Michael has created not only a secure gate--one that keeps the curious from being able to peer onto her property--but has created one that is as beautiful as it is dangerous.

She says the gate has sharp metal leaves and vines on the face of it, and that anyone trying to get over it could lose a hand.

So, what started as a one-shot job turned into a friendship and an ongoing working relationship. Michael says both he and wife, Gail, are fond of Fleiss.

And, since contracting to redesign the gate, Michael has also been commissioned by Fleiss to create a wishing well and do some interior work.

Fleiss says she is pleased with his works-in-progress.

“What impresses me is that he is self-taught and works in so many mediums. He uses stone, steel, wood. It’s amazing,” Fleiss says.

Michael says he is not surprised by Fleiss’ agreement to talk about his work to a member of the press, even though she has had such adversarial relationships with certain segments of the media.

“Heidi seems to me to be a person with a generous spirit who, in spite of her problems, is interested in furthering my career,” the 44-year-old sculptor says.

A nice thought, but it does beg the question: How much help does a man who says he earned more than $200,000 last year need?

The Baltimore-born grandson of a sculptor and artist has a number of other commissions in the works, including the sculpting of an elaborate, many-figured fountain for the Fontana di Trevi restaurant in Woodland Hills. The fountain is a stone recreation of the famous fountain in Rome from which the restaurant takes its name.

He recently completed what he says is a $150,000 job for restaurant owner and actor Brian Genessie of “Street Justice” in which Michael turned the interior of Genessie’s Amazon Bar & Grill into a jungle made of steel.

Feisty Lady Attorney’s Novel Puts a New Spin on L.A. Law

Sherman Oaks attorney Mimi Lavenda Latt likes to challenge what she considers the good old boy legal profession.

First she became a lawyer.

Now she’s writing about them, and has just released “Powers of Attorney” (Simon & Schuster, $23), a piece that could put a twist to some male legal briefs.

If the guys are unhappy, she says, she’s not losing any sleep.

Latt, who readily admits to being disillusioned by her profession, says she got interested in fiction writing by the grim realities of her lawyerly life.

“Practicing law is not what I expected,” she says, adding that her success in the field is mitigated by having been graduated from the wrong school and by being the wrong sex.

“I went to the San Fernando College of Law, not Harvard or Stanford. And I’m a female.”

There are a couple of things to consider about this married mother of two who entered law school in 1972 when she was in her 30s. First, don’t be too quick to dismiss a woman who was editor of her law review, graduated cum laude and passed the California Bar on her first attempt.

She says it did come as a shock when she sent out her resume and went job hunting.

“People in the top law firms treated me as if I were a communicable disease,” she says.

She worked at a Westside firm where “I spent most of my time negotiating a truce between two battling partners.”

With her idealism bloodied but unbroken, she settled into a Century City firm, determined to litigate for those who most needed her help.

In one case she fought for the rights of a quadriplegic man who lost custody of his two boys to a mother who had deserted the children for five years.

“It took another five years to get the kids back,” she says. “The judge held all the usual prejudices. Women raise children. A quadriplegic can’t do much.”

Shortly after that case she was sitting in her office, alone, late at night, when the idea for “Powers of Attorney” came--based on the experiences of her female friends in the legal profession.

The book that Latt has come up with has murder, glamour, intrigue, deceit, all the good stuff. And is has not one, but three, glamorous leading lady lawyers as stars.

Overheard

“Why do you keep watching that bad movie if it makes you cry, mommy?”

Seven-year-old girl in Encino to her mother who was watching news reports of fires destroying Southern California.