Pamela Anderson and her dog in ‘Pamela, a love story’.
Netflix
In recent years, tea documentary film kingdom has been tea place of cultural revaluation of famous women torn by the invisible hands of misogyny. A series of documentaries and investigative pieces about Britney Spearsalong with the fan-initiated #FreeBritney movement, led to the end of the pop superstar’s cruel tutelage. a document about janet jackson reassessed his outrageous punishment in the wake of that Super Bowl wardrobe mishap, while a two-part docuseries at Sundance this year examined the nauseating sexualization of children and the commodification of Brooke Shields.
Netflix now she’s shining a light on the mistreatment of the ’90s icon pamela anderson in Pamela, a love story, a new documentary debuting on January 1. 31-the same day the memories of him, With love, Pamela hit shelves. Directed by Ryan White (the Guardians), is a corrective that allows Anderson to guide viewers through his life. In her words, Anderson recalls her early years in rural Canada, which included several dark episodes: she was abused by her childhood babysitter, and her friend’s boyfriend’s older brother, who was 25, raped her when she was 12, and its discovery. on the jumbotron at a BC Lions Canadian Football League game. Her story sums it up Playboy ascent, Baywatch Stardom, animal rights activism, and redemptive role of Roxie Hart in the Broadway musical Chicago! Its chronological approach, with Anderson sometimes narrating his childhood and adult diary entries, and the feeling of flying on the wall give it an intimacy usually lacking in efforts like this.
One of the biggest focuses of the documentary, of course, concerns the leaked VHS tape of Anderson and her then-husband, the Mötley Crüe drummer. tommy lee, engaging in a series of sexual acts aboard a yacht and elsewhere. she was the first celebrity sex tape going mega viral online and made Anderson a media joke. The scenes of Matt Lauer, Howard Stern and Jay Leno pushing her on the treadmill will make you giddy. Anderson maintains that the tapes were “stolen” from her home and that the leak ruined not only her career but also her credibility in the public eye.
“After that, I felt like that also solidified the image of the cartoon. You become a caricature,” she shares in the film. “I think it was the deterioration of the image that I had… At that moment I knew that my career was over.”
As Anderson, now 55, recounts, she and Lee had just had a baby and were six months into building their new house when someone (she still doesn’t know exactly who) robbed Lee’s gun safe, despite which was “the size of a refrigerator” and located behind a carpeted wall. The safe was filled with weapons and Lee’s personal memorabilia, as well as a series of tapes of them being “silly” and playing on camera during their honeymoon phase.The tapes were then spliced together, giving the impression of a “sex tape” versus a series of personal moments.
“One day, we received something in the mail. He was wrapped in brown paper. Tommy opened. It was a VHS tape,” Anderson recalls. “Tommy told me to go upstairs and he saw it. I didn’t see it, I never saw it. Later, he came upstairs and said, ‘This is going to be disturbing. This is a VHS tape of us having sex.’”
Penthouse founder Bob Guccione offered to buy the rights to the tape for $5 million in cash, but Anderson and Lee said, “Fuck off, give us our tapes back.” Unfortunately, it was the 1990s and the Internet had just come to life. The tape not only spread like wildfire, but was also mass-produced by Seth Warshavsky of Internet Entertainment Group (IEG), who distributed the video without the couple’s consent.
“This was stolen from our house,” Anderson says. “There is no way that people can steal something from your house and sell it to the whole world.”
She and Lee ended up suing Warshavksy and IEG for selling the tape, in what was at the time a major privacy rights case. During the trial, Anderson was pregnant and worried that her stress would affect the health of her baby, since she had already suffered a miscarriage. That didn’t stop the opposing team’s lawyers from tearing her apart in court, in particularly misogynistic fashion.
“The lawyers basically said, you are in Playboy. You have no right to privacy,” Anderson recalls. “They asked me about my sex life. And I kept thinking, ‘How do they question me about my sexuality, my preferences, my body parts and where I like to make love when it’s stolen property?’ She made me feel like she was a horrible woman. I was just a piece of meat. This shouldn’t mean anything to me because I’m basically a whore.”
She continues: “It felt like a violation. I don’t want to bring up something really heavy from my childhood, but when I was attacked by this guy, I thought everyone would know. When the tape was stolen, I felt that way. And the statements were so brutal. I remember looking at them thinking, ‘Why do they hate me so much? why these grown man Do you hate me that much?!’”
Ultimately, to protect the health of their unborn child and to relieve Anderson of his hellish treatment, the couple agreed to end the case, though Anderson claims, “We never made a dime.” [the tape]. And I hate when people say that we decided on something. We never decided on anything. We just told everyone to get lost… You can’t put a monetary number to the pain and suffering that caused.”
Discussing the sex tape saga and its subsequent treatment by the media, Anderson is visibly shaken. She tells the producers that she’s not feeling too well and takes a walk around her property to clear her head.
Unfortunately, the whole thing was dug up again with the arrival of pam and tommyhas hulu miniseries produced by Seth Rogen, starring Lily James as Anderson and Sebastian Stan as Lee, and chronicling not only their love story, but also the theft and mass production of the sex tape. We see her in the documentary dealing with the launch of the series in real time.
“It really gives me nightmares. I did not sleep anything yesterday. I have no desire to see it,” she offers. “I’m not going to see it. I never saw the tape; I’m not going to watch this. Who knows how they will portray it? No one knows what we were going through at the time. They should have had to have my permission.”
She continues: “This feels like when the tape was stolen. Basically, you are just a thing that belongs to the world, that is, you belong to the world. I feel like it’s just… just ignore them. Let it go.”