by Legs McNeil
That was what I was going for. I know it’s manipulative, but I was at the point where I didn’t know what else to do.
ROB BLACK: Tricia and I got into a fight at a party. She was being, like, a twat, so I sent her home. That’s when she cheated on me with my best friend—this big, fat kid I brought out from New York. Then I broke up with her.
TRICIA DEVERAUX: I was afraid to leave Rob, but I figured, at the worst, he’d beat me a tiny bit—not like he’d kill me or anything. When he found out that Andy and I had slept together, Rob slapped me, really hard, once.
That was it. I was like, “Okay, that wasn’t as bad as I was afraid it was gonna be.” Ha, ha, ha.
SHARON MITCHELL: When all is said and done, heroin habit or no heroin habit, what have I been famous for? Fucking in front of a camera all my life? What the fuck? I don’t want to go bed with that! I don’t want to get in the fucking ground with that as my only accomplishment. I just think it’s psychologically damaging. It follows you around like the plague for the rest of your life.
So when this HIV situation came up, since I was the one in school doing a term paper on HIV research, the board of directors at PAW—Protecting Adult Welfare—thought that I should handle it. Well, I quickly amassed information on testing—what kinds of tests were available—and I got information as fast as I could.
I’m just here to save lives. And get a little redemption out of it. And then maybe, I can go to heaven, you know?
TRICIA DEVERAUX: So I broke up with Rob; he got me fired from a job, but at least I got away from him. By the end of 1997 I was just doing some box covers to advance my dancing career, and doing less scenes. Everything was fine—that is, until I turned up HIV positive.
Celebrity Porn
LOS ANGELES/SEATTLE/LAS VEGAS/AMSTERDAM
1996–1997
EVAN WRIGHT (WRITER): There’s really only one celebrity porn tape, and that’s the Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee video. There have been other celebrity scandal sex tapes, but the Pamela Anderson Lee video is the first one that was distributed over the Internet—that was actually streamed over the Internet.
TOMMY LEE: Pamela and I were chowing down on some dinner and flipping through television stations when we heard our names being mentioned on some news show. On the screen, there was a dude at Tower Video stocking the shelves with videotapes. And we knew just what they were.
RON JEREMY: Pam and Tommy Lee’s first tape was stolen. I know that for a fact, and I know who stole it.
RAY PISTOL: An electrician walked out with the tape. I never asked his name; sometimes it’s better not to know. But I do know the facts. He was in porn—kind of a hanger-on—and he did some work for Pam and Tommy, and they didn’t pay him. So he just snooped around, found this tape, and said, “Well, I’ll just get paid with this.”
TOMMY LEE: Months earlier, we had taken a five-day houseboat trip on Lake Mead as a vacation. As usual, I brought along my video camera. We weren’t trying to make a porno, just to document our vacation. We watched it once when we returned home then put it in our safe. The safe was a five-hundred-pound monstrosity hidden underneath a carpet in my studio control room in the garage, where we recorded part of Generation Swine.
RAY PISTOL: The electrician went to Milton Ingley and offered him the tape. Ingley was a porn director who owned a studio out there in the Valley.
TOMMY LEE: Pamela and I spent that Christmas in London while some work was being done on the house. Afterward, I finished recording in the basement and then dismantled the studio.
When the carpet was torn out, I saw nothing but empty space where the safe had once been. There were no broken locks or windows, so it had to have been an inside job. The only people with the keys were my assistant and the construction crew, which come to think of it, included an electrician who used to be a porn star and knew the porn business pretty well.
RON JEREMY: Milton Ingley had offered the Pam and Tommy Lee tape to everyone in the business. He asked me and Leisure Time first—because Marc Carriere had the John Wayne Bobbitt movie. Marc has so much money, plus Milton knew he had high-speed duplicating machinery. So he figured Marc should be the one to buy the Tommy Lee tape. But Marc Carriere said, “No, it’s unethical. It was stolen, no release, no receipts. It’s not fair.”
TOMMY LEE: The way I figured it, they must have removed the safe with a crane, taken it back to one of their houses, and had it picked or blown open. They were probably after the guns and jewelry in there, but they also ended up with everything personal that was important to us—from family heirlooms to photographs.
RAY PISTOL: Milton Ingley didn’t have any money, so he went to Butchie Peraino—and Butchie actually loaned him thirty thousand dollars to buy the Pam and Tommy Lee tape and to set up distribution. Butchie took Beta machines and camera equipment for collateral, in case he didn’t get paid back. Then the tape was duplicated at LP Duplications.
Butchie didn’t get fully paid back, so he wound up with the collateral equipment—plus some of his money. But not nearly as much as he was supposed to.
TOMMY LEE: I was so freaked out that I fired the assistant and sicced my lawyers on the construction company.
RON JEREMY: So Milton went to Europe and basically started it there. Then some guy pirated his tape, and then everyone pirated it. And then Seth Warshavsky from Internet Entertainment Group—who is a pretty conniving guy, but who’s pretty smart—went legal with it.
TOMMY LEE: The next thing I knew, there was a porn peddler from a company called the IEG phoning me. He said that he had bought the tape and was going to broadcast it over the Internet.
RAY PISTOL: Milton came to me to work out how best to distribute it—which involved a dozen different sites, in a dozen different countries, so that even if they got a restraining order somewhere, you could just keep going on and on.
EVAN WRIGHT: The Internet is a natural for porn because of the anonymity. You don’t have to go into the store and embarrass yourself by asking for your favorite big boob movie. You can just dial one up in the privacy of your own home.
RAY PISTOL: I wanted to spread the Pam and Tommy Lee tape on innumerable sites, but using ten different money points. Fuck—the Pentagon papers was my model! You shut this one down, it doesn’t make a fuck, it’s getting published over here!
I believe Seth Warshavsky was one of the money points—but there were others.
SETH WARSHAVSKY (PRESIDENT AND CEO OF INTERNET ENTERTAINMENT GROUP): We sold it at Tower Video and Wherehouse Video; we sold it pretty much in every major video store in the country. It was on pay-per-view; it was in hotel rooms. I think that’s really one of the things that kind of helped legitimize porn.
JONATHAN SILVERSTEIN (IEG EMPLOYEE): I worked at IEG for close to two years, and over the course of that time IEG exploded in the media because of the Pamela Anderson tape.
RAY PISTOL: Instead of going with the multiple points, they used only about four, and they seemingly got ripped off at every point. But they did get some money out of it, I know that. I masterminded that deal, and then Milton Ingley screwed it all up.
EVAN WRIGHT: Twenty years ago it would have been hard for a Pamela Anderson Lee video to make it to the public because no one would have distributed it. But because of the Internet, it can be distributed worldwide, instantaneously, by anyone. There have always been celebrity scandals and celebrity sex, but now technology enables the public to find out about it much faster.
JONATHAN SILVERSTEIN: Seth was a marketing genius. His intention really wasn’t to air the Pamela Anderson video on the Internet; he was only saying he was going to, for the publicity. He had a good PR firm; it was like a machine for him.
RON JEREMY: So the Pam and Tommy Lee tape was released out of Amsterdam into America. And because Pamela Lee mentioned it on the Howard Stern show, Seth Warshavsky tried to make a public domain issue out of it—and tried to take her to court to release the tape.
JONATHAN SILVERSTEIN: Seth figured that once he put out
a press release, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s attorneys would get an injunction so that Seth wouldn’t be able to air the tape. Seth would save face: He wouldn’t have to air the tape because legally he couldn’t. Seth would just get all the publicity—and that would lead to a lot of traffic to ClubLove, Seth’s website.
EVAN WRIGHT: There was a rumor put out by IEG that Pamela Anderson deliberately leaked the tape to revive a sagging career. That was completely false. I knew Pamela Anderson Lee and her husband, Tommy, from a prior story I did. They’re actually very nice people. Believe it or not, Pamela Anderson Lee was very hurt by that sex tape. Even though it probably helped her career, there was no way Pamela or Tommy enjoyed that tape being put out.
TOMMY LEE: We had Pamela’s lawyers send them a cease and desist order—but for some reason it didn’t arrive on time. Our lawyers and managers advised us that the best way to minimize the damages was to sign a contract saying that—since the company had us by the balls—we would reluctantly allow a one-time Webcast so long as they didn’t sell, copy, trade, or rebroadcast it.
We thought we had won. Hardly anyone would see the video on the Internet, and we could recover the tape and start over.
JONATHAN SILVERSTEIN: The day it all went down, it had been back and forth between Seth’s lawyers and Pam’s lawyers, and they were supposed to fax something over and they never did. So at some point Seth just said, “Fuck it. Air it.”
That really exploded Internet Entertainment Group and turned Seth into the adult media mogul that he became. ClubLove was getting thousands of sign-ups a day. People were joining the site just to see this thing. Thousands of sign-ups a day is huge.
RON JEREMY: That’s the thing with the Internet—it’s a good thing to have in this world, but unfortunately it takes away a lot of privacy, right?
Some people claim that Pam said, “Might as well make money on it.”
RAY PISTOL: Milton Ingley dropped two hundred of the Pam and Tommy tapes on me and said, “Here, do something with these.” It wasn’t my payment for anything; he just did it. He said, “Nobody’s got these in the country, so do with them what you want to.” I think I’ve got one left around here somewhere; the rest of them we sold for good money.
TOMMY LEE: Pamela and I were getting in fights all the time. Trying to have children, continue the careers that consumed us, make a new relationship work, and deal with the nonstop barrage of bullshit in the press was more of a challenge than we ever could have expected.
EVAN WRIGHT: Nobody believes me even though I probably know, better than anybody else, the background of that tape. I know that they did not want that tape put out.
We have this love-hate relationship with celebrities, but actually I knew Pam and Tommy, and they were hurt. It was a very hurtful thing.
TOMMY LEE: Then the judge in the case shut Pamela and me down on every privacy issue and allowed the sale of the tape because he ruled that the content was newsworthy. It pissed me off—because I don’t ever want my kids to go to a friend’s house and find a video in the VCR of their parents fucking.
SETH WARSHAVSKY: I didn’t feel sorry for Pamela Anderson. She’s a sophisticated woman. She’s an actress. She’s somewhat intelligent; she could be extremely intelligent. I just don’t know her. But she was definitely surrounded by extremely competent counsel.
EVAN WRIGHT: That was the defense at IEG—the way they were able to put out the Pam and Tommy Lee video was because their lawyers argued that Pamela and Tommy had relentlessly publicized themselves anyway, talking about the sex tape and sex acts in explicit detail before IEG put out the tape. Celebrities are exhibitionists, too.
RON JEREMY: The Pam Anderson/Tommy Lee tape sold over a hundred and fifty thousand tapes.
TOMMY LEE: I finally broke down and watched the thing. I couldn’t see the big deal; it’s really just our vacation tape. There’s only a little bit of fucking on there. That hasn’t stopped Ron Jeremy, though, from trying to get me to make a fuck flick for him. I guess if my career as a musician ever fails, I can always be a porn star.
SETH WARSHAVSKY: I think the sex video was a phenomenal push for Pamela’s career. I mean, if you do a search on Pamela Anderson, you’ll see a couple hundred articles prior to the release of that video, and then thousands of articles after its release.
I think IEG really made Pamela the most talked about celebrity in the world.
JONATHAN SILVERSTEIN: Seth got press for other things, but the Pam and Tommy tape was really the launching pad because it got covered on 48 Hours and Howard Stern. This was huge news—but all that did was bring other people out of the woodwork who had interesting and controversial material, too, you know?
TOMMY LEE: I tried to keep my cool after the drama. But it kept getting harder while the news kept getting worse. Then the Internet Entertainment Group started selling a tape of Brett Michaels from Poison with Pamela.
RON JEREMY: Now, where does this Brett Michaels and Pam Anderson tape come from all of a sudden? At one point, as far I as know, only three copies existed in this world. Actually, maybe four. Brett had one, Pam had one, Brett’s friend had one, and I got one from a source that no one even knows about.
The tape is Brett Michaels and Pam having sex. I saw it early on, when very few people had ever seen it. But the Brett tape was made first; it goes back to 1991.
LARRY FLYNT: There were two videos involving Pamela Lee. One they said was stolen from their home. The other one was not stolen from their home, so that one could legally be sold anywhere.
So when it gets to the question of privacy—people should have privacy in their home. But if you’re a public figure, you give up any right to privacy because you’re there because of your profession or an act you committed. So if you don’t want to give up your privacy, don’t get into public life.
These guys who get on TV and harp about the paparazzi or somebody stealing videos? It goes with the territory. They can’t have it both ways.
SETH WARSHAVSKY: I think it was a business decision on Pamela’s part. Whether she thought it would further her career because of the publicity the video generated around her or whether she thought that it would be beneficial for her to look like a victim, I don’t know. And to our surprise, Pamela sued us—after signing the agreement. So I never felt sorry for her.
EVAN WRIGHT: It’s funny: Thirty years ago, when you talked about porn stars, they were strictly these infamous figures, like Linda Lovelace.
Today, Pamela Anderson Lee is basically a porn star. Rob Lowe was a porn star for a while. Then Esquire did an article a little while back where they had Jenna Jameson—a well-known porn star—posing next to her recipe for mashed potatoes.
RON JEREMY: Now, all of a sudden, this new tape is legal. Pam has to be behind it because Brett Michaels is very much against it. He went on the Howard Stern show saying he’s against the tape, and he’s gonna stop it, and he did. His lawyers did a court injunction and stopped the tape.
EVAN WRIGHT: I remember hearing this statistic, and I think it’s true: In the late 1990s, NASA did live Webcasts of the streams of images from Mars. At about that time, the Pamela Anderson Lee video was also being streamed on the Internet. And I think more people were trying to watch close-up pictures of Pamela Anderson Lee’s crotch than were watching the images of Mars.
SETH WARSHAVSKY: The Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee video was the largest-selling adult video in history. It was really a perfect example of porn becoming more mainstream in America.
EVAN WRIGHT: I think a lot of people thought Pamela Anderson Lee looked really hot.
Outbreak
LOS ANGELES
1998
TRICIA DEVERAUX: I won an AVN Award for best girl/girl scene—and I enjoyed myself a lot in that scene. Then the next day, which was my birthday, I went back to Los Angeles and got an HIV test at the Norton Clinic.
That Friday, I got a call from Jim South saying that my HIV test had come back indeterminate.
SHARON MITCHELL: I ro
omed with Tommy Byron and Marc Wallice for a while in the San Fernando Valley when I first moved out here. Tommy Byron’s great. He’s very quiet and very clean. Very neat.
But Marc would sneak in and mess around in my underwear. I would open up my underwear, and it’d be all stretched out, you know? I couldn’t wear it.
I mean, I knew it was Marc’s kink, so eventually I just started buying larger underwear.
TRICIA DEVERAUX: So I ran out, got in my car, and drove to a clinic on Venice Boulevard. They opened the door and said, “We’re closed.”
I had been there before, and I said, “No, you don’t understand! My test came back indeterminate!”
All of a sudden, this really nice, big, black lady just took me in her arms and said, “It’s okay, honey. We’ll take care of you.”
And she pulled me inside and drew my blood, and they ran the ten-minute test, and it came back indeterminate again. So she called her supervisor and asked what to do.
SHARON MITCHELL: The Free Speech Coalition is a trade organization for adult entertainment manufacturers and producers, so they can provide legal defense education about laws and censorship in the United States. Somehow I got elected to the board of directors. Bad place to put a newly sober loudmouth chick that just wants to help the talent. I mean, I’m definitely not going to be a winner on this board, right?