Did Rand really dress up as a dog to steal the safe? Did Pam and Tommy
lose a baby during the whole ordeal? And what really happened in Mexico?
Here are some moments when "Pam & Tommy" wasn't totally honest.
In the mid-1990s, "Baywatch" icon Pamela Anderson,
portrayed by Lily James, met heavy metal drummer Tommy Lee, played by Sebastian Stan,
of Mötley Crüe. They quickly fell madly in love, got married, started a family,
and also made a very intimate tape of themselves on a boat in Nevada's Lake Mead.
The saga of the Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee tape began with Rand Gauthier.
The contractor was seeking revenge and monetary payback for being cheated out
of thousands of dollars owed him by the couple for work he did on their home.
As a result, Gauthier stole their private Hi8 tape and allowed it into the world at large.
In "Pam & Tommy," Gauthier is portrayed by Seth Rogen as something of a doofus, who is fascinated
with world religions and karmic justice, but is also a less-than-fit guy with a mullet.
"I'm a bit of an amateur theologian. I study religion."
The real Gauthier wasn't such an everyman. According to Rolling Stone,
"By the Nineties, Gauthier had gleaming tan muscles, broad shoulders, an eager,
trusting smile and a voice that’s equal parts surfer and Ernie from Sesame Street."
In other words, he was physically more of a macho stud, befitting his
background as an adult film actor. However, according to Rolling Stone,
several aspects of Rogen's portrayal ring true, as the real Gauthier was allegedly
a conspiracy theorist who spent a lot of time hanging around adult film studios.
The miniseries also states on several occasions that Gauthier worked as a carpenter,
first and foremost. While Anderson and Lee recall him installing their security system,
they also refer to him as a carpenter, which he calls himself when gaining entry to the
Anderson-Lee home to retrieve his tools. He even shows off his carpentry knowledge and skills,
discussing the scarcity of Madagascan pine. But Gauthier wasn't a carpenter. Instead,
it was his work as an electrician, which Rolling Stone corroborates,
that brought him into the home from where he'd steal that fated video cassette.
In showing how Rand Gauthier stole the safe that contained the Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee tape,
the makers of "Pam & Tommy" got some details right, and fudged a few others. For example,
Rolling Stone confirms Gauthier really did dress up like Lee's giant fluffy white dog,
by concealing himself in a furry rug, to sneak onto the property. However, the way in which
he got the safe out of the property didn't quite go the way it was depicted on screen.
The episode in question shows Gauthier enter the couple's garage, and simply see the safe
he knows is full of valuables like guns and jewelry. In actuality, Gauthier reportedly
had to undo a large recording console weighing hundreds of pounds, as well as several racks
of tall and heavy equipment, in order to gain access to the carpeted wall that hid the safe.
Once he had loaded the massive safe into his van and taken it to a remote location,
Gauthier did spend a lot of time cutting it open to get to the valuable items inside.
During that period of discovery, he found the unmarked Hi8 tape of Anderson and Lee.
In the series, Seth Rogan's Gauthier is seen finding it by mistake in his apartment,
having ransacked the safe and dumped its contents on the ground.
He nearly steps on the tape and destroys it, but Gauthier actually found it right away.
Early in "Pam & Tommy," Rand Gauthier works on an elaborate bedroom project for Tommy Lee
at his home, alongside the general contractor, a shy guy named Lonnie, played by Larry Brown.
Lee owes both guys a lot of money for the job, but Lonnie makes Gauthier do all the negotiating.
When the job goes south, it's Gauthier, not Lonnie, who hatches a revenge
scheme to break into Lee's home for not paying him, holding him up at gunpoint,
and for keeping his tools. In "Pam & Tommy," Gauthier shares all of his plans with Lonnie,
initially an accomplice who later backs out and then disappears from the narrative entirely.
"You're getting cold feet on me."
"We could go to jail."
Onscreen, Gauthier ultimately executes the burglary of a heavy safe and the getaway
all by himself. Events didn't transpire this way in reality, though. According to Rolling Stone,
Gauthier worked with a general contractor named Troy Tompkins,
and he actually went along on the tool recovery mission and was also held at gunpoint by Lee.
Some sources allege that Tompkins even drove the waiting getaway van for Gauthier.
"Pam & Tommy" shows Rand Gauthier approach Milton Ingley, or "Uncle Miltie," as portrayed by Nick
Offerman, an adult film producer that Gauthier previously worked for as a crew member and actor.
"Pam & Tommy" shows them pounding the pavement looking for a distributor for the tape. According
to Rolling Stone, the pair allegedly destroyed the original tape and left the remains near Six Flags
Magic Mountain. As a result, they reportedly shopped around copies of the tape instead.
This part of the narrative was left out of Hulu's version.
"Pam & Tommy" also suggests that Gauthier and Ingley first approached adult film studio
Vivid Entertainment about distribution. In the show, an executive rejects the chance
to distribute the tape fearing legal repercussions from Anderson and Lee.
This implies that Gauthier and Ingley were slightly incompetent and green,
going to the biggest name in adult films. In reality, they first offered the tape to someone
with experience handling something close to the task at hand: X-rated movie star Ron Jeremy.
The second episode of "Pam & Tommy" follows the couple's rapidly progressing romance,
wedding, and Mexican mini-vacation. The overall story is true, but some
of the details were changed for the series.
Pamela Anderson tells Tommy Lee she's going to Cancun, with the actor attending a meet-and-greet
with representatives of TV stations that air her hit syndicated series, "Baywatch."
According to the New York Post, Anderson's trip to Mexico was actually for a photo shoot.
Lee turns up in Cancun and tracks Anderson down. After partying at a club, they head
back to Anderson's well-appointed hotel room. In the episode, Lee later tells a friend that,
despite spending four straight days together, they were waiting until they were married to
have intercourse. While the real Anderson and Lee did get married just four days
into their Mexico trip, they allegedly didn't wait to consummate that marriage.
In "Pam & Tommy," Lee realizes that his safe is missing when he attempts to put a sonogram of
their baby inside it. They're understandably livid and call the cops. It's Anderson who then realizes
that the tape of their erotic boat adventure was in the safe along with her wedding bikini,
guns, and jewelry. However, it didn't quite happen like that in real life.
Lee told Esquire that not long after he noticed the safe was gone in early 1996,
a representative of Internet Entertainment Group called him. Lee explained,
"He said he had bought the tape and was going to broadcast it on the internet."
Not long after, Lee recalled watching TV with Anderson one evening,
and getting a huge shock. As Lee said,
​​"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."
"I think we started a weird trend, but we never made a dime off that tape."
"Pam & Tommy" shows the immense toll the theft of the private
video had on Anderson's emotional and physical well-being. After they realize
their tape has been stolen and copies are being purchased and viewed by strangers,
Anderson experiences such high levels of stress that she suffers a miscarriage.
While Anderson did indeed miscarry her first pregnancy with Lee, that didn't occur in 1996,
during the videotape scandal. According to Entertainment Weekly,
Anderson's baby loss occurred in 1995. She gave birth to a son, Brandon, in June 1996,
around the time that "Pam & Tommy" takes place. As for Anderson's breakdown moment,
when she takes an anti-theft device from Lee's car and smashes the windshield
of a paparazzi photographer, that's apparently pure fiction.
A few moments throughout "Pam & Tommy" establish that Tommy Lee is on a downward trajectory
in terms of fame and influence. For example, he wistfully stares at old awards congratulating
Mötley Crüe on album sales, dourly watches a Mötley Crüe "Behind the Music" that ties
the band's decline to the rise of grunge. He gets arrested after beating up a fan in the
bathroom at The Viper Room, and gets livid when label Elektra Records demotes them to Studio B
at their longtime recording studio in favor of rising alternative rock act Third Eye Blind.
This point in "Pam & Tommy" takes place in 1996, so Lee couldn't have seen that "Behind the Music"
episode because it didn't air until 1998. He really did get arrested at The Viper Room in 1996,
per the Chicago Tribune, but it was for accosting a photographer, not a fan. And Mötley Crüe likely
never butted heads with Third Eye Blind. While both were acts signed to Elektra Records,
Third Eye Blind created its debut album at Toast Studios in San Francisco, among other locations.
The album that Mötley Crüe would have been recording at the same time, "Generation
Swine," was recorded at multiple studios, none of which overlapped with Third Eye Blind.
Late in the series, as a sign that Lee's star is fading, a record store employee is shown placing
copies of that very album, meant to be Mötley Crüe's "Generation Swine," into a clearance bin.
However, that record wasn't a flop, and it was certified gold for sales of 500,000 copies.
Likely as a way to humanize the complex character of Rand Gauthier, "Pam & Tommy" writers created
a whole subplot involving the man and his former wife, an adult film star named Erica
Boyer. However, very little of Rand and Erica's subplot seems to be pulled directly from reality.
A flashback shows Gauthier meeting Boyer a half decade earlier,
when he's summoned to her apartment to perform some handyman tasks. According to Rolling Stone,
their first encounter wasn't so random, as they were set up on a blind date.
Later in the timeline, Gauthier, needing a place to hide when hired goons come looking for him,
bunks with his soon-to-be ex-wife Boyer and her partner, Danielle, for a few months.
In the real world, Gauthier moved into the home of
a male adult film director who isn't represented in the limited series.
According to Rolling Stone, Rand Gauthier ultimately settled his $50,000
debt to Butchie Peraino for a loan to cover distribution and manufacturing of the tape,
by working violent collections. That is shown in "Pam & Tommy," as is an exchange between Gauthier
and Seth Warshavsky of internet company Club Love. Because he needs the best quality video possible,
Warshavsky offers Gauthier $10,000 for the original Anderson-Lee Hi8 cassette.
In the show, because Peraino offered to clear his debt for $10,000, Gauthier accepts the deal.
He retrieves the tape, hidden inside a ceiling panel in his former apartment,
but instead of paying off Peraino, he gives the $10,000 to ex-wife Erica Boyer as a thank you.
"Who is this guy again?"
"Butchie Peraino."
In truth, Gauthier and Warshavsky never had any sort of interaction.
And there's another detail that prevents the transaction from being factually feasible.
At the beginning of the whole sordid true story, Gauthier and Uncle Miltie shopped around copies
they'd made from the original tape, which they almost immediately destroyed. There was
no "original" tape for Warshavsky to acquire, and thus no money for Gauthier to hand off to Boyer.
Because his debt was paid off in trade, Gauthier also probably didn't need to meet with Lee late
at night in a parking lot to ask for the sum he and his contractor were originally owed.
The interaction, which ends with Lee lighting a stack of cash on fire, likely didn't even happen.
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