Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s whirlwind romance made them tabloid fodder, nevertheless it was a stolen dwelling video that made them notorious. The brand new Hulu miniseries Pam & Tommy, premiering Feb. 2, makes an attempt to unpack the true story behind “the best love story ever offered,” a stranger-than-fiction story about intercourse, greed, and copyright.
To decipher what’s actual and what’s not in Pam & Tommy, starring Lily James and Sebastian Stan, we should begin with what everyone knows to be true: In 1995, the Baywatch star and Mötley Crüe drummer made a non-public recording whereas on trip on Lake Mead that was later stolen by a disgruntled contractor named Rand Gauthier (performed by Seth Rogen). It grew to become probably the most well-known intercourse tape of all time incomes an estimated $77 million—and the primary viral video of the early web age.
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The eight-episode sequence, primarily based on the 2014 Rolling Stone article, Pam and Tommy: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Notorious Intercourse Tape, makes an attempt to place a post-#MeToo lens on a narrative that undoubtedly deserves recent eyes. Not not like how the FX on Hulu documentary Framing Britney Spears made folks rethink the therapy of the pop star, Pam & Tommy desires you to query how the intercourse tape affected Anderson’s profession and her relationship with Lee, who she divorced in 1998 following his arrest for home abuse. (The pair, who shared sons, Brandon and Dylan, would go on to remarry in 2008, and divorce once more two years later.) Each have mentioned the stress of the intercourse tape scandal put a pressure on their marriage. “We had a wild and loopy starting that was an excessive amount of for each of us,” Anderson advised Folks in 2015. (Anderson and Lee weren’t concerned within the making of Pam & Tommy.)
The Hulu sequence may additionally go away you questioning whether or not the pair’s 54-minute dwelling video ought to be thought of a intercourse tape. In any case, it solely contains eight minutes of intercourse. The remainder reveals Lee admiring his tomatoes, Anderson getting a tattoo, and the pair hanging out in a jacuzzi. “It’s, like, tremendous healthful; it’s romantic,” Rand’s ex-girlfriend Erica (Taylor Schilling) says of the fairly endearing footage. Anderson appears to agree with that evaluation, telling Andy Cohen in 2020 that it “was not a intercourse tape,” however a “compilation of holidays that we have been bare on.”
The classification of the footage could also be up for debate, however one can’t deny that Pam & Tommy is stuffed with weird twists and turns that appear too bizarre to be true—and but, a lot of them are. Right here’s what to find out about what’s truth, fiction, or somewhat little bit of each in Pam & Tommy.
Did Tommy Lee threaten Rand Gauthier with a gun, as Gauthier claims?
Gauthier was engaged on an in depth renovation of Lee and Anderson’s Malibu mansion within the spring of 1995 when, he claims, the couple abruptly fired him with out paying him the $20,000 he was owed for the venture. Quickly after being let go, Gauthier returned to the house with one other contractor to gather their instruments. In line with Gauthier, Lee allegedly pointed a shotgun at them and demanded they “get the f-ck off my property.” Within the present, Rogen’s Rand returns alone, however can also be threatened by a gun-wielding thong-wearing Lee. (Lee has not commented publicly on Gauthier’s claims.)
Gauthier advised Rolling Stone in 2014 that he had deliberate to jot down off the sunk prices of the unfinished job, however modified his thoughts after that incident. “I used to be by no means actually that fashionable with folks,” he mentioned. “However I had by no means been held at gunpoint. It screwed with my head.”
That second was the catalyst for Gauthier’s choice to hunt vengeance on the drummer. The contractor advised the journal that he stole the secure as a method of letting Lee know he wasn’t a rock god, he was a person identical to him. He assumed he would pawn Lee’s gun assortment and Anderson’s jewellery, however a non-public tape of the couple having intercourse turned out to be probably the most beneficial factor in there.
Gauthier believed the video would carry him fame and fortune. (Spoiler: it didn’t; the electrician and marijuana grower mentioned that just about nobody believes he’s the one who stole the tape.) However he now thinks that by exhibiting the world the then-fading rocker’s spectacular genitalia, he gave Lee his second act. “I made his profession, is what occurred,” Gauthier advised Rolling Stone.
Did Rand Gauthier pose because the couple’s canine to get into Pam and Tommy’s dwelling?
Gauthier spent the summer season of 1995 planning the proper heist, however his most ingenious transfer concerned a white Tibetan yak fur rug. Similar to his onscreen counterpart, Gauthier used the carpet to disguise himself because the couple’s pooch so as to bypass the safety cameras that he had put in. In some way, his canine impression, which had him crawling throughout the garden on his fingers and knees, labored. Chalk it as much as grainy footage. “The feed is just like the f-cking moon touchdown,” Rogen’s Rand jokes within the first episode.
Gauthier advised Rolling Stone in 2014 that the break-in was a solo job—although some, together with Lee, questioned how he was in a position to transfer the 500-pound secure all by himself. The electrician additionally claims that he snuck into the couple’s bed room after disabling the cameras. On the present, Rand offers the unsuspecting lovers the center finger as they sleep, however the actual Gauthier has by no means mentioned whether or not he flipped them the chicken.
Was Rand Gauthier a porn star?
The Rand we meet in Pam & Tommy is a down-on-his-luck contractor who very a lot believes in karma. Previous to taking the job engaged on Pam and Tommy’s mansion, he dabbles in porn—a connection that later helps him leak the couple’s non-public video. Within the present, we see Rand work as a handyman on grownup movie units, and later turn out to be an actor in occasional tasks together with his then-girlfriend Erica.
The true Gauthier was the son of Get Good actor Dick Gautier. (Gauthier added the ‘h’ to his final title as a method of separating himself from his estranged dad.) Within the late ‘80s, he dated porn star Erica Boyer (née Amanda Gantt) and thru her, he received concerned within the grownup movie scene. He began by constructing units and finally earned 51 performing credit below the title Austin Moore. His movies embody 1992’s Miracle on 69th Road, 1994’s Willie Wankers and the Enjoyable Manufacturing unit, and 1995’s Large Boob Bikini Bash, in accordance with IMDb. Gauthier didn’t, nevertheless, seem in Metropolis Lickers II, which is Pam & Tommy’s made-up sequel to the 1996 porno Metropolis Lickers.
There’s, nevertheless, some reality to an insinuation on the present that Gauthier received his begin in grownup movies due to his small penis. He advised Rolling Stone in 2014, “I simply want my gear had been somewhat bigger for the trade.”
Did Goldschläger carry Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson collectively?
Whereas Pam & Tommy accelerates the timeline of Lee and Anderson’s whirlwind romance, it actually did begin with a shot of Goldschläger, the cinnamon schnapps that has gold flakes floating in it.
Anderson despatched Lee the complimentary drink when he visited the Hollywood membership Sanctuary, of which she was half proprietor, on New Yr’s Eve in 1994. It was love at first sight for him—although, he wrote within the 2001 Mötley Crüe autobiography, The Filth, that ecstasy additionally helped his imaginative and prescient. “On ecstasy, Joan Rivers seems like Pamela Anderson, so think about what Pamela Anderson appeared like,” he mentioned. “She was so stunning, I couldn’t even carry myself to consider defiling her with ideas of lust. I simply stared at her all evening, and he or she simply stared again.”
The very first thing Lee did when he met Anderson was lick the aspect of her face “from chin to temple” simply as Tommy does on the present. “She f-cking laughed and, with out lacking a beat, turned away and licked the face of the woman subsequent to her,” Lee recalled when describing his debaucherous meet-cute with Anderson in The Filth. “Everybody began passing licks across the desk.”
Did Tommy Lee truly observe Pamela Anderson to Mexico?
On the present, the musician instantly follows Pam to Cancun after sparks fly. In actual life, their romance took somewhat longer to get off the bottom. Lee did observe the Baywatch alum to Mexico, nevertheless it was practically a month after their first temporary encounter. In The Filth, Lee remembers touchdown in Mexico and calling each resort in Cancun in hopes of discovering the V.I.P. actress, which he claimed didn’t ingratiate him to his crush. “She wasn’t even going to return my name, she was so pissed. However her associates have been on my aspect this time. They noticed how laborious I used to be working and begged her: ‘Exit with him for one drink. It couldn’t damage,’” Lee wrote. “Effectively, it did damage, as a result of 4 days later we have been married.”
After spending a complete of 96 hours collectively, Lee proposed. “I took off my pinky ring, put it on her finger and requested her to marry me,” he recalled in The Filth. “She mentioned sure, hugged me and caught her tongue down my throat.” (Enjoyable truth: Lee’s dad and mom, David Bass and Vassiliki Papadimitriou, married inside 5 days of assembly practically 40 years earlier.)
It’s unclear whether or not his impromptu proposal included a Carmen Electra diss because it does on the present, however Lee and Anderson have been married in a small seaside ceremony on February 19, 1995. He wore khaki cutoffs, she wore a white bikini, which was one of many objects saved contained in the secure. The ceremony ended with Lee throwing his new bride into the ocean.
Did Pamela Anderson idolize Jane Fonda?
In episode 3, as Pam prepares for the publicity tour behind her 1996 movie Barb Wire, her publicist asks whose profession she admires, to which the actress replies Fonda. “When she first began out, she was simply this woman subsequent door … then she did Barbarella and he or she grew to become this big intercourse image,” Pam explains. She notes that Fonda flipped the script and began taking severe roles earlier than turning into an activist and finally constructing a health empire. “She was all these completely reverse issues ,” Pam continues. “She by no means tried to please anyone. She was identical to, ‘You recognize what, I’m this badass-sex-bomb-anti-war-workout-video-selling-actress-chick and in case you have an issue with it f-ck you.’ What’s cooler than that?”
Whereas there isn’t any proof that Anderson idolized Fonda or her profession, the present’s comparability attracts attention-grabbing factors. Fonda’s trajectory from intercourse image to Oscar-winning activist may have been a highway map to success for the Playboy model-turned-actress’ post-Baywatch profession. Now, it’s laborious for anybody to assert that Barb Wire’s abysmal opinions and field workplace numbers have been the results of the intercourse tape being stolen. (It made lower than $3.8 million its first weekend on a $9 million funds.) However the scandal did seem to harm Anderson’s probabilities of being forged in two different notable Hollywood movies: Austin Powers and L.A. Confidential. These roles might need given Anderson a possibility to point out what else she may do as an actress. Kim Basinger received an Academy Award for her efficiency as L.A. Confidential’s femme fatale Lynn Bracken.
Does Tommy Lee’s penis have the flexibility to speak?
After all not. However a scene in episode 2, by which Tommy declares his love for Pam in a heart-to-heart together with his penis (voiced by The Good Place’s Jason Mantzoukas) was impressed by Lee’s 2004 memoir, Tommyland. The e book opens with a dialogue between Lee and his member, fittingly named “Dick,” who chimes in all through the autobiography to co-narrate moments all through the rocker’s life.
Whereas director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) advised Selection that working with the scene’s animatronic penis was “simply awkward,” Stan discovered it surprisingly straightforward to divulge heart’s contents to the faux phallus. “By the top of it,” he mentioned. “I handled it prefer it was an intimate buddy dialog that one might need once they’re falling in love.”
Does Tommy Lee actually hate Seattle’s music scene?
All through Pam & Tommy, the heavy metallic rocker reveals nothing however disdain for the capital of grunge and the style that the sequence insinuates thwarted Mötley Crüe’s comeback. We see his band get bumped from the largest studio by Third Eye Blind. He’s additionally fully dismissive of Sleater-Kinney, Carrie Brownstein’s band that’s signed to the Seattle indie label Sub Pop. If that wasn’t sufficient, he actually screams, “F-ck Seattle,” at one level.
The true Lee, nevertheless, solely had love for Nirvana and the opposite bands that put that metropolis on the map. “I welcomed [Nirvana] with the largest open arms on the planet,” he advised Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in 2020. “I used to be, like, ‘Sure. Any person’s f-cking stirring it up.’ Thanks.” On the time, “all the things was simply sounding the identical,” he continued. “And I find it irresistible when somebody throws a f-cking grenade into the combination and goes, ‘Nope. We’re going this manner.’”
Did Louis “Butchie” Peraino torture Rand Gauthier with cherries?
When Mr. Peraino (Andrew Cube Clay)—not Butchie, by no means name him Butchie—can’t discover Rand’s porn producer companion Milton “Uncle Miltie” Ingley (Nick Offerman) together with his cash, he will get Rand to talk up by pressure feeding him cherries soaked in Everclear, a potent alcohol with a foul status. This was the actual Peraino’s calling card, in accordance with Gauthier, who advised Rolling Stone in 2014, that the crime boss who bankrolled Deep Throat had him over for dinner, received him drunk and introduced out Everclear-soaked Bing cherries as a method of getting him to disclose his secrets and techniques.
Like his onscreen counterpart, Gauthier paid Peraino again by making collections for him. Whereas Rogen’s Rand appeared hesitant about hurting folks, Gauthier bragged to Rolling Stone concerning the methods by which he received Peraino his cash. He claimed he would throw espresso cups filled with ammonia within the faces of the debtors earlier than breaking their collarbones.
Did Pamela Anderson actually clap again at Jay Leno for his intercourse tape jokes?
In episode 5, a pregnant Pam seems on The Tonight Present earlier than the discharge of Barb Wire and is requested concerning the tape by host Jay Leno. “What tape?” she jokes. When he then asks what the “publicity” has been like, the digital camera closes in on Pam’s face and he or she will get actual concerning the toll the ordeal has taken on her.
“It’s horrible,” she says. “To have one thing so intimate stolen from you, you recognize, one thing non-public from inside your marriage and have it taken with out your permission, uncovered to the world. It’s devastating. That is devastating to us.” She then smiles and the late-night present cuts to industrial as if she didn’t simply naked her soul.
The sequence completely recreates Anderson’s look from her 1996 look on The Tonight Present, however she didn’t truly say this to Leno throughout this specific look. As a substitute, she talked concerning the joys of being pregnant and her frustrations over stalker-like paparazzi. However when she returned to the present two years later, she referred to as out the host for making jokes at her and Lee’s expense with a well-recognized line. “You’re presupposed to be my good friend and also you leap on the bandwagon, everybody’s making enjoyable of us,” Anderson mentioned. “It’s not humorous. That is devastating to us.”
Did Rand Gauthier ever apologize to Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee for stealing the tape?
In Pam & Tommy, Rand realizes his mistake and makes an attempt to make issues proper with Lee, Anderson, and karma. Sadly, the couple, who’re attempting to flee the watchful eye of the paparazzi, practically run him over. Gauthier has not mentioned whether or not he ever tried to make amends with the pair. Nonetheless, he advised Rolling Stone in 2014 that Lee had probably tried to get in contact with him by way of Fb. A web page below the title “Tommy Lee” allegedly despatched him the message: “Hey you f-cking f—ot.”
Like his character, Gauthier now sees issues involving the tape somewhat in a different way, telling Rolling Stone the video is “cute. They’re in love and a pair they usually’re simply having enjoyable with one another, and I feel that’s nice,” he mentioned. “I’m jealous. I want I had one thing like that.”
Did Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee signal their rights to the video away without spending a dime?
On Nov. 27, 1997, Anderson and Lee signed the copyright of the intercourse tape over to Membership Love founder Seth Warshavsky for nothing, however they did so fairly unwittingly. They reportedly believed that they have been giving Warshavsky, an early investor in web porn, permission to point out the tape on-line solely, however the launch was deliberately broad. “I bear in mind negotiating and pondering, ‘There isn’t any method they’ll ever signal this,’” Warshavsky’s then-lawyer Derek Newman advised Rolling Stone in 2014 concerning the wording of the doc.
However they did. In The Filth, Lee revealed that their “legal professionals and managers suggested us that one of the simplest ways to attenuate the damages was to signal a contract saying that, for the reason that firm had us by the balls, we might reluctantly permit a one-time Webcast as long as they didn’t promote, copy, commerce or rebroadcast it.” The couple noticed this as a win. Lee mentioned that they thought “hardly anybody would see the video on the Web, and we may get better the tape and begin over.” How improper they have been.
Warshavsky was in a position to make a cope with Vivid Leisure, the corporate that might later put out intercourse tapes that includes Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton, to legally promote copies of the film on DVD, VHS and CD-ROM. By February 1998, the video was out there in grownup video shops, raking in a whole bunch of 1000’s of {dollars}. Now, it’s estimated to have made greater than $77 million; none of which reportedly went to Anderson or Lee.
There are some, nevertheless, who imagine that the couple made a non-public deal to share in any earnings made. In 2014, Rolling Stone reported that “a number of folks declare that is the case, together with a former Vivid Leisure worker.” Porn star Ron Jeremy additionally advised the journal that he as soon as requested Anderson if she obtained any cash for the tape to which she smiled and mentioned, “Effectively, you recognize.”
Lee and Anderson have at all times denied that they obtained any compensation in reference to the video. “I made not one greenback. It was stolen property,” Anderson mentioned throughout a 2015 look on Watch What Occurs Reside With Andy Cohen. “We made a deal to cease the shenanigans.”
