From “b—-es to birds” — that would be the crude but accurate summation of Heidi Fleiss’s journey from being Hollywood’s “Madam to the Stars” to a reclusive collector of macaws, African gray parrots, cockatoos, and other brilliantly plumed creatures in the arid scrubland of Nevada. Furthermore, the words are her own.

If Nick Broomfield’s 1995 BBC documentary, “Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam,” memorably exposed Hollywood’s putrid underbelly, then the new HBO documentary “Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal” does something less immediately compelling but also less expected. It records one woman’s life falling into place even as it’s falling apart. Which is perhaps what happens to many people in their middle years: Seemingly going off course, they are in fact entering their destined trajectory.

The documentary, which premieres at 9 p.m. on Monday, shows how Ms. Fleiss, who served 21 months in a federal penitentiary in the late 1990s for tax evasion connected to her notorious Hollywood prostitution ring, has tried to return to the sex business by opening a groundbreaking “stud farm” (a brothel where men service women) in Pahrump, an unfortunately named county in Nevada where prostitution is legal. (“BROTHEL STRAIGHT AHEAD!” reads one road sign.)

Fortunately, the location for the actual brothel is in the “town” (it has seven streets that are no more than dirt tracks) of Crystal, which does sound more enticing. Ms. Fleiss is confident that women will be only too pleased to drive there from Los Angeles to visit the planned brothel, whose design makes it look like a cross between a New Age spa and an airport lounge. “Times have changed,” she says. “Women make more money, women are more powerful. … It’s time for women to choose.”

Well, maybe. But watching this film makes you wonder if the former Hollywood Madam is ready to make the choice herself, not to mention whether her brothel will ever be built. The fact that she has just made the news again for alleged drug possession makes that seem especially unlikely, but then, so does this documentary. Ms. Fleiss was filmed over a 10-month period by directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, but only sat down for a formal interview at the end of that period, in November 2006, when the documentary begins.

At this point, she announces that she has been sober for eight days (she’s open about her fondness for the highly addictive drug crystal meth), and hopes to remain so. Dressed in a sleek black pantsuit, she looks like a stylish 43-year-old woman with a sly, rebellious streak who has spent too much time at the plastic surgeon’s. Her upper lip, in particular, is grotesquely swollen.

An unexpected element enters the film almost from the start: There are a lot of birds around. And the first topic of conversation in the sit-down interview is how Alexander the Great returned from his conquests with exotic birds, which were then introduced as pets to the privileged classes.

“Are you comparing yourself to Alexander?” she is asked. The question is a non sequitur, but she gamely takes it up. “No,” she replies. “Because I conquered the world when I was in my 20s and he was in his 30s and he’s dead and I’m alive. … I took the oldest profession on earth and did it better than anyone on earth.”

Ms. Fleiss is obviously an intelligent, deeply troubled, and eccentric woman. Born into a successful, apparently happy family in Los Angeles, she twice won a citywide chess championship at the ages of 13 and 14, organized a ring of 20 babysitters at the same age (it was her first experience of learning how to match a client with a customer), and though no good at math, made numbers work for her when she went to the racetrack and won a long-shot bet. Promised a car for her 16th birthday by her parents if she did well in school, she briefly studied hard, received the car, and thereafter learned how to forge report cards. She was not particularly interested in sex as a teenager, but in “something else” — presumably something criminal. “Heidi Fleiss is kind of synonymous with sex and money … but really I’m just a convicted felon,” she concludes. Her self-opinion fluctuates wildly. One moment she’s superior to Alexander the Great, the next she’s just a crook.

The 70-minute film, which is occasionally tedious in a way that nonetheless feels scrappy and real, as well as disturbing and sad, shows that Ms. Fleiss’s L.A. savvy is nothing when she is confronted by a few determined Nevada locals out to prevent her from opening the only brothel for women in the nation. One is “Miss Kathy,” a saloon owner who petitions against her and bluntly states that the only clients she’ll attract will be gay men. Another is the director of the Nevada Brothel Owners’ Association, George Flint, who believes that legal prostitution needs to keep a low profile. Having a controversial figure such as Ms. Fleiss around is just what he doesn’t want.

There’s more bad news. A year after Ms. Fleiss arrives in Nevada, its most prominent brothel owner, Joe Richards, with whom she has forged an alliance, is caught up in an FBI sting operation. Since she is technically a witness to the investigation, her lawyers advise her to put the brothel project on hold.

The reality is that it’s going nowhere anyway. Ms. Fleiss’s neighbor, Marianne Erikson, is a former madam herself. She lives alone, breathing through an oxygen tube, in a house overrun by 70 exotic birds. Ms. Fleiss befriends her, and falls in love with the birds, particularly a scarlet macaw named Dalton. Instead of starting her revolutionary “stud farm,” she inherits the birds following Ms. Erikson’s death, and builds an aviary for them.

Now her house is overrun by birds, and they seem to be the only company she craves. She opens a small Laundromat (“Dirty Laundry”) and collects rocks in the desert to decorate the brothel she still dreams about. Her need for human company appears minimal. She prefers macaws, African grays, solitude, and drugs.

bbernhard@nysun.com