You saw the tape. We know you did. Heck, everyone (including us) saw the sex tape involving Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee when it was released to the then-new World Wide Web in 1996. It wasn’t a set-up, porny thing; it was literally these two megastars in love with each other, living their lives. Oh, and it was likely where the term “big dick energy” came about. Now there’s a dramedy miniseries about how that tape got stolen and got out for everyone to see.
PAM & TOMMY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: We push in on a tube TV playing The Tonight Show. On the show, Jay Leno (Adam Ray) asks Pamela Anderson (Lily James) about the sex tape everyone is talking about.
The Gist: Cut to a mansion where a carpenter named Rand Gauthier (Seth Rogen) is putting together a bed. As he uses his nail gun, he can’t help but hear the guy who hired his contractor buddy Lonnie (Larry Brown) to renovate his bedroom. It’s Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan), the drummer of Mötley Crüe, and he’s having very loud sex with his wife, Pamela Anderson.
Rand, who considers himself a bit of an amateur theologian, has been relatively sanguine about all the changes Tommy wants to make, but this latest change, moving the bed 10 feet to the left after the entire thing has already been installed, might be his last straw. But according to Tommy, MINO (Money Is No Object). But soon Tommy’s requests become unreasonable, especially because he hasn’t paid for any of the overages, and Rand is just about broke and can’t cover the costs anymore.
So, when Lonnie and Rand demand money up front for any changes, Tommy turns on them and fires them for their “shoddy work.” He not only doesn’t pay them what he owes, but he decides to keep Rand’s tools for good measure, pointing a shotgun at Rand’s face when he decides to come back to get them (he saw a toolbox in a porn he was whacking off to, and it reminded him he forgot it), saying that Rand had left with the work unfinished.
Rand was thinking that karma would take care of Tommy, but after the shotgun incident, he decides to become the karma. Knowing that there’s a massive safe full of guns and other valuables in Tommy’s garage, he stakes out Tommy and Pam’s comings and goings and devises an elaborate plan, which includes posing like the couple’s big sheepdog.
He somehow manages to pull it off, and among the various items that he can hock, he finds a Hi8 tape. The one person he knows that can play such a tape is “Uncle” Miltie (Nick Offerman), who owns a very busy porn studio — let’s just say the two of them worked together in the past few years. What they find on that tape sends their minds reeling.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? This may be an odd comparison to make, but much of the feel of Pam & Tommy, written by Robert Siegel (The Wrestler), and whose first three episodes are directed by Craig Gillespie (I,Tonya) is Scorsese-esque, to say the least. Lots of tracking shots, zoom ins, and close-ups. Add in the smart soundtrack, rife with ’90s hits as well as classic rock and pop, and the show very much gives us a Goodfellas feel… if Goodfellas co-starred Tommy Lee’s talking penis (Jason Mantzoukas).
Our Take: Pam & Tommy is based on a 2014 Rolling Stone article about the stolen sex tape, and the show covers the basic facts of that story. But Siegel takes a lot of liberties with Gauthier’s story, as well as Pam and Tommy’s story, mainly because there are so many entertaining possibilities in between all of those basic beats. What we found while watching the first three episodes, though, is that we were a whole lot more interested in Gauther’s story than that of the famous couple whose tape he stole.
Don’t get us wrong; Stan and James do a fine job of making us feel that we’re really looking at Lee and Anderson. Stan captures Lee’s raging misogyny coupled with the maturity level of a middle schooler, and Allen shows how Anderson was alternately ditzy and then smart and savvy about her career. But their whirlwind story, about how they got married four days after they met, about their explosive first marriage (and equally explosive second marriage a decade later), and the sex tape itself are pretty widely known.
The entire second episode is dedicated to how Pam and Tommy met; aside from the talking penis scene — which was borrowed from Lee’s memoir — we kept wanting to see Rand and Uncle Miltie try to figure out how to get this tape out there and make millions.
Rogen is great as Gauthier, tamping down his big personality to make Rand into a guy with an undercurrent of rage and a desire to live the porn star life, as we see in his relationship with his porn star wife Erica (Taylor Schilling), which also blew up after a few years. Offerman is appropriately slimy as Miltie, and he riffs off Rogen well.
This is a case where it seems that Seigel just couldn’t find enough drama with Gauthier, whose childhood as the son of actor Dick Gautier wasn’t exactly a bed of roses, so he figured inserting Pam and Tommy’s fiery marriage into the mix would bring that drama. But it actually does the reverse; the couples’ scenes drag the show down, despite the decent writing and fine performances.
Sex and Skin: Did we mention the talking penis? And, of course, we see lots of topless shots of James as Pam, though we’re pretty aware that those are likely stunt breasts, as it was likely a challenge to mimic Anderson’s enhanced DDs in the height of the silicone era.
Parting Shot: Rand and Miltie watch the video and are very, very surprised by what they see.
Sleeper Star: In Episode 3, Andrew Dice Clay plays Louis “Butchie” Peraino, the mob financier who lent Rand and Miltie money to distribute the video via the then-relatively-new World Wide Web. He’s only in one scene, but, man, he’s intimidating. And he uses a voice that’s closer to his real voice than his classic Dice voice.
Most Pilot-y Line: Did we mention the talking penis?
Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite the fact that the Pam and Tommy part of Pam & Tommy drags the show down, the side of the story involving how the stolen tape got out to the internet — and potentially, how the vagaries of the early internet left Rand and Miltie penniless — make up for it.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
