The New Orleans movie-making cavalcade continues this month with a story near and dear to local hearts.

On Aug. 31, shooting begins on "The Canal Street Brothel," a not-very-fictionalized account of the curious sexual escapades that unfolded in the heart of Mid-City around the turn of this millennium.

The CBS movie of the week will cover the relationship between three generations of women: The famed Canal Street Madame, Jeanette Maier, who ran the operation; her mother Tommie Taylor, who took phone reservations and cooked the gumbo served up in the brothel kitchen to refuel tired patrons; and her daughter, Monica Montemayor, who grew up in houses of ill-repute, naturally to follow into the family business a prostitute.

The case became a local (and national) spectacle for several reasons, not the least of which has been the ongoing speculation as to just who among our very prominent citizens were patronizing a business where an afternoon rendezvous ran into many hundreds -- if not thousands -- of dollars.

Those with prurient hearts will be disappointed: This movie doesn't solve that mystery.

Cast in the lead roles are Annabella Sciorra ("Jungle Fever," "Chasing Liberty") who bears more than a passing resemblance to Maier; Ellen Burstyn, the four-time Oscar nominated actress (who won in 1974 for "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore") as Taylor; and Dominique Swain, whose starring role in the 1998 remake of "Lolita," opposite Jeremy Irons, gives her at least some insight into the role of Montemayor as a young prostitute.

Producing the film is Ken Atchity, a sometime literary agent whose last film was Angelina Jolie's "Life or Something Like It." Ron Lagomarsino, who recently directed Gary Cole and Sherilyn Fenn in "Pop Rocks" -- also filmed in the New Orleans area for ABC Family, and premiering Sept. 10 -- is behind the camera. And the screenplay was written by Vincent Patrick, who wrote, among his brief list of movie credits, "The Pope of Greenwich Village."

Those familiar with the script say the storyline stays pretty close to the truth of the matter, though it creates some dramatic tensions between the three women which apparently weren't really there. To wit: The movie will show the women turning on each other in the criminal investigation when, in fact, they remained solidly in each other's corners and all still live together on the West Bank today.

Other than that, you know the story: The daytime operation thrived in a finely-appointed Victorian mansion for years without incident. Then the feds, trying to bust up a national prostitution ring and thinking they were going to find passels of drugs (they didn't), set up a phone sting on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, producing howls of outrage and ridicule from everybody from the U.S. Congress to Jay Leno.

Though readers of this paper were able to wade through the sordid details of the investigation and the trampled lives of the three women on a daily basis, middle America was largely introduced to the story in the form of a riveting and highly-rated episode of "48 Hours" -- not coincidentally, a CBS show.

Much of the focus in the movie will also revolve around the sole member of the fourth generation in the family, Montemayer's daughter, who was removed from the family by child protection services, later to be returned. (Opening sequence: A child, playing alone, on the floor of a house while the business of prostitution operates in a flurry around her. That's good TV, people.)

Says Atchity: "The story is this: How are these three women going to get on with their lives and how will they get along? They based their lives on a house of cards; now how are they going to deal with each other? It's a David and Goliath story, with three Davids against the FBI."

For her part, Maier is happy with the way things are turning out, although she'd like to see the focus more on her long and interesting career in the business rather than narrowed down to the criminal investigation and family strife.

In a recent lunch interview at Carmine's restaurant in Metairie, Maier arrived in a flurry of activity, greeting the owners and regulars with hugs and kisses.

Maier, who served a brief time in a local halfway house for her crimes, arrived carrying a big white plastic bag filled with souvenir concessions that she sells out of the back of her pickup truck -- Canal Street Madame T-shirts and bumper stickers. Example: "Give Piece a Chance: Support the Canal Street Madame."

Get it?

She says she's cash-strapped since her legal troubles began a few years ago; a restaurant deal in the French Quarter called the Happy Cooker (get it?) never got off the ground. She says she was offered better financial deals for her story than the CBS project but that she liked the vibe of the thing.

"It's going to be something like 'Steel Magnolias,' " Maier said. "A story of women relating to women. I would have liked to have seen more substance in the movie -- more of my past and my childhood. I have done everything. I have seen everything. But I guess it would take four movies to cover my life."

As for the casting, she was unaware during our lunch that Sciorra would get the role (the deals were inked just this week) and she opined that she thought Angelina Jolie was the right actress for the part.

"She's not into eating meat, like me," Maier said. "She's got a lot of tattoos, like me, and she speaks her mind -- like me. But I told them if they can't find anybody, (that) I've been acting for 20 years. I can do it."