How does it feel to see your intimacy spread out? The miniseries Pam & Tommy, whose first three episodes have been available on Disney+ since Wednesday, retraces the affair of the first sextape in history, that of Pamela Anderson, played by Lily James (Mama Mia!), stunning, and Tommy Lee, played by Sébastien Stan (Falcon and the Winter Soldier), which shook the world in the mid-1990s. Why did this affair make so much headlines?
In the mid-1990s, Pamela Anderson was a world star. It all started for her in 1988, when Pamela Anderson, a fitness instructor, appeared on the giant screen of a BC Lions stadium and on all Canadian televisions wearing a Labatt brewery t-shirt. Her advantageous physique provoked such enthusiasm that the brand decided to make her its muse.
Pamela Anderson, a global sex symbol
Spotted by Playboy, she made the cover of charming magazine in 1989 and became the playmate of the month for February 1990. The call of the sirens of Hollywood was not long in coming, in 1991, she made her acting debut in the sitcom Daddy Handyman.
His role as CJ Parker in Baywatch, a series dedicated to the daily life of rescuers at sea and designed so that viewers can admire the appearance of actors and actresses in bathing suits, will make Pamela Anderson a world star. Every week, more than a billion viewers in 142 countries watch the buxom platinum-blonde actress run down the beach in a tight red swimsuit. “That’s the genius of this soap opera!” I say: let them run! Without stopping ! “, laughs Chandler in episode 17 of season 2 of Friends, which was then a hit on NBC.
In 1995, when she met Tommy Lee, drummer in the group Mötley Crüe, Pamela Anderson was at the height of glory: her video entitled The Best-Of Pamela Anderson stays on top of sales for three months in the United States and is about to hold the title role in the adaptation of the comics Barbwire At the movie theater.
Tommy Lee, a sulphurous rocker
Love at first sight was such between the siren of the small screen and the tattooed rocker that the two lovers married ninety-six hours later in Cancún, Mexico, on February 19, 1995. At 33, Tommy Lee, co-founder with Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx has already sold some 20 million records.
On stage, the group of glam metal has forged a sulphurous reputation as “devil worshippers” with the use of satanic symbols, as on the cover of Shout At The Devil, and huge shows mixing lights, pyrotechnics, Lee’s drums hanging from a rotating platform, and half-naked girls dancing on stage.
In the city, their heavy consumption of drugs and alcohol made the tabloids of the press: Vince Neil almost killed himself while driving while intoxicated, Nikki Sixx almost died twice from an overdose of heroin.
Tommy Lee’s second marriage, at just 24, on May 10, 1986, to actress Heather Locklear was highly publicized, as was his divorce from the star of Melrose Place in 1993.
In the mid-1990s, the union of these two stars, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, sounded like the incarnation of the maxim “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll”. All the paparazzi’s lenses are on them.
Rand Gaultier, a humiliated man
The sex tape affair began in 1995 when Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson fired craftsmen responsible for renovating their Malibu mansion, refusing to pay for work deemed poorly done. Among them, Rand Gaultier, played in the Disney + series by Seth Rogen, ulcerated by the desires of the two stars, is ready to give up on the 20,000 dollars (17,600 euros) that the couple owes him, according to him.
But when he comes to collect his tools and Tommy Lee points a gun at him, he sees red: “I had never been threatened by a weapon. It screwed me up, ”he says in the investigation of RollingStone published in 2014, from which the series created by Robert Siegel is inspired.
The craftsman has only one idea in mind, revenge. He decides to steal the safe he knows is hidden in the garage. Rand Gaultier does not suspect that it contains a homemade video recorded by the couple during their honeymoon. The man meticulously prepares his larceny. The burglary takes place a few days before Halloween in 1995.
Milton Ingley, a porn star
Long before Pornhub and consorts, and just before the marketing of the first DVDs, the K7 porn market was flourishing. Rand Gaultier, who had shot a few hardcore scenes, approached his contacts and met Milton Ingley, an adult film director known as “Uncle Miltie”, played in Pam and Tommy by Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation).
The K7 with a duration of 54 minutes has 8 minutes of sexual acts. “This is the best video I’ve seen in my life. What’s cool with this band is that we’re with them, we live their life with them,” summarized Howard Stern in 1997 about the sextape. In short, a real sex scene a few years before the live aquatic antics of Loana and Jean-Edouard in the swimming pool of loft story. But, without the agreement of the two stars, no one in the pornographic industry, nor even in the mafia, wants to take the risk of officially marketing the stolen K7.
In 1996, only 40 million people in the world had access to the Internet, but the Web, with its seemingly anonymous transactions, seemed like the perfect black market for getting tape to consumers. Rand Gauthier and Milton Ingley decide to make copies to sell them online for 59.95 dollars (52 euros) through sites like pamsex.com, pamlee.com and pamsextape.com. These sites showed how to send a money order to the New York branch of a Canadian t-shirt company, which then wired the money to an account in Amsterdam. The original K7 is destroyed as a precaution.
Seth Warshavsky, a young Internet prodigy
Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson realize the disappearance of the K7 at the beginning of 1996. While their intimate antics circulate under the coat, the couple brings a civil lawsuit against all those who could have a copy.
Penthouse released its June 1996 issue with Pamela Anderson on the cover, a detailed description of the K7, with excerpts from the exchanges between the two spouses. The article reveals in particular that the actress, who has always denied having touched drugs, smokes a joint there.
Despite the court injunction against Milton Ingley ordering him to stop copying and selling the tape at the beginning of October 1997, it seems that all of Los Angeles has seen the infamous K7. variety even wrote a review!
25-year-old Internet whiz Seth Warshavsky contacts Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson to post the tape on his Club Love site. The couple, who failed to prevent the K7 from being smuggled out, handed over the rights to the K7 on November 25, 1997. The couple believed that this agreement did not authorize Seth Warshavsky to sell the K7 in stores and under -estimates the viral reach of this brand new medium. According to Rolling Stones, the video earned some $77 million online in less than a year.
Seth Warshavsky strikes a deal with Steven Hirsch, owner of leading adult video supplier Vivid Entertainment, to manufacture VHS, DVD and CD-ROM copies. In February 1998, the K7 went on sale in all adult stores.
Pamela Anderson, ‘most downloaded star’ of all time
The internet porn pioneer hunts down all copyright infringers on the web, convincing them to pay him a fee for permission to play the tape. In 2000, the Guinness Book of World Records said Pamela Anderson was the “most downloaded star” of all time.
This wasn’t the first time celebrity antics had been leaked. Long before Kim Kardashian’s or Paris Hilton’s, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s sex tape proved that such content could go viral around the world and generate considerable earnings.
Rand Gaultier missed his target, the K7 allowed Tommy Lee to sit his rock’n’roll legend appearing as a sex god, particularly well endowed. Pamela Anderson’s career has been shattered.
“I no longer have any rights because I spent most of my public life in a bathing suit and had the guts to pose for Playboy. Sluts do not have the right to decide what is done with the images of their bodies…”, pronounces Pamela Anderson in Pam & Tommy, a series that could have been trashy, voyeuristic and vulgar, but which turns out to be particularly brilliant and relevant at the time of the revenge porn.