TV

Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll: how ironic it is to break the law to see this series

Crazy love, uncontrollable passion and one sex tape that gets out of control.

Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's short marriage story has become one of the most talked about series of the year.

The irony is that just like that sex tape from the nineties, the only way to see "Pam and Tommy" in Israel is in a pirated way

Living Room Fellow

18/03/2022

Friday, 18 March 2022, 09:11

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Trailer for the "Pam and Tommy" mini-series (Hollow / Disney Plus)

See her and Siliki Papadimitrio, and she was the beauty queen of Greece in the 1950s.

An American soldier named David, who was stationed in Athens in those days, met her and fell in love.

He proposed marriage to her the first time he saw her.

Five days later they got married.

If that's not crazy enough, then it's worth mentioning that David did not speak a word of Greek, while Vasily did not speak a word of English.

When they wanted to communicate with each other, they drew small drawings on pieces of paper.

It did not interfere with their love.

She got pregnant six times.

She aborted five times.

For the sixth time their eldest son was born, but he died several days after birth.

They tried again.

Think of the mental strength a woman needs to try for the seventh time to bring life into the world.

Think how much courage it takes.

On October 3, 1962, Thomas Lee Bass was born in Athens.

Tommy Lee in short.

Shortly after Tommy Lee was born, the family left Greece and moved to Los Angeles.

His mother, who was a famous model in Greece, had to work as a maid.

She became the shadow of the woman she was, and the longing for home broke her heart.

She chose to call Tommy's younger sister Athena, after the city she still saw as a home.

Tommy grew up in the shadow of the romantic legend about the encounter between his parents.

About the crazy love.

The extreme romance of falling in love without a common language and getting married without any acquaintance.

He inherited the romantic instinct from his parents, and took it to even more extreme places.

Destructive places.

On New Year's Eve 1995 Tommy Lee was already engaged four times and divorced twice.

He was now engaged to a young model named Bobby Brown.

They decided to cancel the wedding and say goodbye to a bar in Hollywood that was owned by Pamela Anderson (they did not know it at the time).

The first time Tommy met Pamela was the last time he met Bobby.

He loved it that way.

He believed that love haunted him.

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It was like a dream.

Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee (the real ones) (Photo: MTV)

His attempts to woo Anderson were clumsy, so he offered Pamela to share an ecstasy pill with him.

"Under the influence of ecstasy, Joan Rivers looks like Pamela Anderson - so imagine what Pamela Anderson looks like under the influence of ecstasy," Tommy Lee later explained the reason for his crazy infatuation that night.

Their schedules did not work out, but Tommy Lee in love decided to drive after his lover to Cancun, where he stayed for work.

He arrived at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, leaving Pamela with six disturbing messages.

They never even went on a date, and this crazy guy followed her all the way to Mexico to meet her.

When she received the messages she was furious and refused to meet with him.

Her friends were actually moved by the romantic gesture.

"Give him a chance," they told her, "go out with him once, what can already happen."

What happened is that just like his parents before him, four days after he met Pamela, the two got married.

They held the wedding ceremony on the beach in Cancun.

Instead of a wedding dress, Pamela wore a bikini.

Instead of wedding rings, the two tattooed their names on their fingers.

It was like a dream.

Only when they returned to Los Angeles after a few days did they realize that everything was real.

At LAX airport they remembered talking for the first time about sleeping arrangements.

Where will they live as a married couple?

Then they also realized they had forgotten to update their family.

Pamela called to tell the good news to her parents, and they demanded that she divorce immediately.

At the same time, Bobby Brown left angry messages for Tommy after hearing in the tabloids that he was getting married.

It turns out that despite what he realized, he was still engaged to another woman.

All of this long introduction merely describes the short acquaintance story of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.

It's a crazy story, but it does not even scratch the edge of one of the most well - publicized and tumultuous love stories of the 1990s.

A story about love, sex, drugs, alcohol and rock'n'roll - and also pain, violence, loss and a deep intrusion into privacy, one that can end a person's career, and even life itself.

The choice of Hollow, the naughty streaming arm of Disney, to return to this story in an eight-episode TV series, turned out to be a huge success precisely thanks to the decision to dive into each side of this story.

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One of the last lows of the Hollywood patriarchy.

Pamela Anderson (Lily James) with Jay Leno (Adam Ray) (Photo: Screenshot, Hollow / Disney Plus)

The series focuses on the true story behind the couple's sex tape that was (accidentally) stolen by a disgruntled remodeling contractor who sought revenge on Tommy following the withholding of his wages.

In the character of Rand, the spiritually enlightened but morally confused renovator, actor Seth Rogen enters, in what turns out to be the most significant dramatic role in his life.

The casting of one of America's favorite people, who like the real Pamela Anderson comes from Canada in general (the No. 1 producer of lovable Americans), turns out to be a statement of intent.

This is not a series about good and bad.

Rogen's character, who co-created the series with Owen Goldberg, does bad deeds in the series, but her motives are clear and pure, and the beating for her sin - as shown in the series - is also rare.

It's not clear if this is a new makeup method or the use of technological means, but for a moment it seems as if the people who play Pam and Tommy in the series are the real Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.

This is of course not true, in fact, Anderson refused to cooperate with the series, which delves into the great trauma of her life.

For the lead roles were cast Lily James ("Downton Abbey," "Cinderella") and Sebastian Stan (known as Bucky, Captain America's best friend in the Marvel cinematic universe).

Neither of them resembles in reality the characters they embody, and somehow both look on screen just like the original stars.

This fact is just an addition to an impressive gameplay display of both actors, and especially of James that presents a wide range and range of emotions on screen.

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The significant dramatic role in his life.

Seth Rogen in "Pam and Tommy" (Photo: Screenshot, Hollow / Disney Plus)

The first half of the series presents one of the most flowing and fun plots seen on screen in years.

Without going into the spoilers districts, we will note that the second episode has one of the funniest, most ridiculous and mostly vulgar cringe moments that has ever come out of a studio that is somehow connected to the company that Walt Disney founded.

It's not just the plot that flows like champagne and cocaine in Hollywood clubs in the nineties, but the photography, editing and even the musical choices that throw us into the frenetic chaos of the early 1990s.

Director Craig Gillespie, who is in charge of the first three episodes, has already learned experience when it comes to blurring good and evil and turning hated characters into pop heroines.

He did it superbly in "Me, Tonya" and "Crowella."

This time he not only humanizes the infamous characters of Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson, but also sheds tons of color on some of the darkest corners of Hollywood, of which the internet plant as we know it today.

Gillsby's fondness for using "Tracking Shot" - a camera that is always on the move to follow her protagonists - takes the viewer by leaps and bounds into the pop culture of the nineties.

Somewhere towards the middle of the series the atmosphere changes, and instead of "fun" tinkering with the sex tape of a wild couple, we are confronted with the results of that "fun".

It is also the stage where the realities of the 21st century and the Mi-Tu revolution seep into the realities of the 1990s, which suddenly seem prehistoric.

The lightness that characterizes the first three episodes is broken in the next five episodes, which are directed by three different directors.

Suddenly, these have to deal with the darker parts of the script - the paparazzi horror, the anxiety of fame, opportunistic lawyers and the bad sides of advertising - and the radical change.

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Much more violent than what is shown in the series.

Sebastian Stan as Tommy Lee in "Pam and Tommy" (Photo: Screenshot, Hollow / Disney Plus)

This is a story about one of the last lows of the Hollywood patriarchy.

A time when Tonight Show host Jay Leno used to laugh every night in his monologue about women who had become sexual victims - and the whole world seemed to be laughing along with them.

In retrospect, it hurts to watch.

On the other hand, it's also a story about some light moments of humanity within one of the most artificial places in the world.

It is worth noting that some of these moments of light are not based on what happened in reality, or at least very secondary to the negative passages forgotten from the script.

Tommy Lee violently attacked Pamela Anderson, while holding their baby son in her arms.

He ran a six-month prison sentence for this assault.

This fact is mentioned in a line at the end of the series.

If you want to understand a little more about the violent and unbaked side of Tommy Lee, you might want to watch the movie "The Dirt" on Netflix, which depicts the glory days of the band Motley Crew, and is a kind of prequel to "Pam and Tommy".

In the film, which was produced by the band members, Tommy Lee can be seen attacking his first fiancée with his fist.

This is the fur version of the story.

In the book on which the book is based, Tommy describes in his own words the violent case in a much more difficult way.

In another case in the film, he brags about the time he slept with a fainted fan without her knowledge.

Some would say it was rape, possibly because that's why this segment did not enter the film.

Pamela Anderson's own character is also portrayed in the film as more innocent and pure than she really was in those days.

Members of the Motley Crue band said on several occasions that she used to come drunk to their rehearsals, forcing Tommy to drink whole bottles of vodka.

In fact, even before she married Motley Crue's famous drummer, Pamela went out for a time with the band's lead singer, as part of her attraction to "Bad Kids."

The series places her as a bigger victim than Tommy, and perhaps rightly so, but ignores the fact that this is not the first time she's filmed a sex tape.

Two years before she married him, she filmed another one with Poison band lead singer Brett Michaels, who also made her way to the network.

Michaels sued the company that tried to distribute the tape (the same company that distributed Pam and Tommy's tape) and won.

He later accused Anderson of not cooperating with him in trying to prevent the tape from being distributed.

The whole story about the early sex tape is not mentioned in the series at all, quite conveniently.

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His big nose goes to the makeup department.

James as Pamela Anderson in "Pam and Tommy" (Photo: Screenshot, Hollow / Disney Plus)

It is important to note that the series "Pam and Tommy" is currently not broadcast in Israel, and is expected to arrive on an unknown date during the summer, along with the Disney streaming service.

In other words, the only way to watch the series in Israel right now is through illegal pirated services.

That it's a bit ironic given the fact that at the heart of the series is the first illegal video that was downloaded by millions around the world in a pirated manner.

Bottom line "Pam and Tommy" is one of the most significant must-see series of 2022 so far.

She was supposed to be the talk of the day in Israel at this point, but like in the 1990s, we'll have to wait until the uncle from America takes care of us.

Or go online and look for it.

Just note that you are looking for the series, not the sex tape.

She is still there, roaming the net without anyone being able to stop her, reminding us of the least pleasant sides of humanity.

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• Pamela Anderson

• Tommy Lee