Amanda Chicago Lewis
Appearances
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
prove that the sex tape exists and that they have it yeah okay and then now they can write about it to get the press right these people show it to someone show it to someone forward it forward it forward it forward it suddenly everyone within like a week I was in high school. I had seen it within a week because you were just forwarding the tape all around the world.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
And so now all of a sudden – and let's be clear. Now it's revenge porn. This is what we would call it now. For sure. Because with absolutely no permission or knowledge from Paris, truly in an attempt to get back at her for something, actual revenge, Rick Solomon –
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
wanted the tape to be out there even though he was not the person who caused it to be out there in this exact situation he was trying to put it out there and the roommate and the friend sort of got out before him so now this three minute clip of her having sex with him has gone everywhere yeah
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Thanks for having me and thanks for saying so many kind words.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
And people assume it's to promote the show, which is coming out a month or two later, a month and a half later. Right. She's totally mortified. Everybody's suing each other. You know, she gets the guys in Seattle to give her back the original copy. But then The Simple Life comes out and it's an enormous hit. I think you might have even – she canceled a lot of press.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
So you probably got in there right before she canceled all this press.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Yeah, I think that's probably what happened because it came out in, I want to say, end of November, beginning of December of 2003. And it was the first episode of the second episode aired at the same time as like George W. Bush interview talking about the capture of Saddam Hussein and The Simple Life got more viewers. Yeah.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
I think she was backed into a corner. And it's possible she's... I don't think she's spoken about this part publicly. I know that she said the experience of the three-minute clip going around the world felt like being electronically raped. A legitimate porn company... released an extended version of the tape in the spring. And that version sold like $20 million worth of whatever.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Oh my gosh. I hope that on my tombstone it says something about like resuscitated Pamela Anderson's career. Though she really did that herself, but I did have a role.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
So there was a full version of the tape that was legally released. And in order for it to have been legally released, we can deduce that she must have put her signature somewhere.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Well, she didn't copy Paris because Paris got back into a corner.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Like, you know, Pam and Tommy, full stolen release without their permission, two years of them trying to stop it, and then they signed paperwork that... I think they didn't understand and that they were just trying to make the whole thing go away.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
And I think there was some confusion because then there was a later lawsuit about it after they signed that paperwork, which, again, was like two or three years after it had been stolen, already had been seen by millions and millions of people. Then it was released by Vivid, mainstream porn company. Right. Paris, illegal three-minute clip ricocheting around the internet over email.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
And then five months later, four months later or something, the full thing is released by a mainstream porn company.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Sure. Kim, there is never an illegal release. There is never something that comes out in some kind of shady internet corner or send you a VHS in the mail situation. What happens is I think there's an announcement that the tape exists. Very quickly, there's a lawsuit. The lawsuit has no filings.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Now, this might be the moment where I talk about how much time I've spent in the basement archives of the court in Los Angeles looking through all of the lawsuits around celebrity sex tapes. And I will tell you, most of them are quite extensive. There's a lot of filings. The Kim Kardashian sex tape lawsuit, I think there's just one filing like,
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
We're going to sue Vivid, the biggest porn company at that time. And that's it. And then they dropped the lawsuit. Okay, curious. And so very shortly after that, the sex tape is for sale with Vivid. So Steve Hirsch, who was the head of Vivid, later said, I think the New York Post did a oral history of the Kim Kardashian sex tape.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
maybe 10 year anniversary so the tape came out in 2007 so that must have been 2017 and so steve hearst said on the record in that oral history again buried in the oral history that she signed the paperwork to allow the release that was like march of 2007 and then keeping up with the kardashians came out i think in august something like this but wasn't this whole thing put into into action by ray j or who was the prime mover
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
I don't think I can tell you who the prime mover was. The tape existed, meaning like they had had sex and been dating a couple years earlier. Ray J, who poor Ray J truly, I was going to do like a justice for Ray J story at a certain point.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
particularly when they used Ray J to launch the new Hulu version of the Kardashians show. So shout out to Ray J. Much love. But I mean, Kevin Blatt's story is that Ray J approached him and his friend Farley and was like, I have this tape. Let's sell it. And I think was like, I have the signatures. Let's go. And then I think Farley,
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Farley connected Ray J to Steve Hirsch and then they cut Farley out. So I think he didn't make any money on that. Sorry, Farley. Yeah. What I know, Kim was not the person going to the meetings, but it's essentially like you have to understand this. If it's being sold by a real porn company. Right. Yeah.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Everyone who's on camera doing anything sexual or anyone who's on camera needs to have a signature on a piece of paper that is held somewhere. And particularly, you know, the big deal porn company, Vivid at the time, the biggest company. Right, would have just been sued up the walls.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Yeah, it's hard because there's a difference between something that spreads illegally and something that's sold by a legitimate seller. And you see this in all kinds of vice, like quasi-legal industries. there are bodegas all around New York selling joints that are not technically licensed by the state of New York to be selling cannabis, but they're doing it anyway.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
And why would anyone know the difference between that and the recreational cannabis shops, other than the fact that the shops are like much more expensive and the weed might be a little bit better. Yeah. I guess I have made a career off of things that are quasi legal.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
R.I.P. Gawker. I remain sad that this does not exist as it existed at that time. They were sent the Hulk Hogan tape. There were a number of legal issues around the Hulk Hogan tape beyond the fact that they had not signed the paperwork to show it was Hulk Hogan having sex with his friend Bubba the Love Sponge, who was a radio host, his wife. Right.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
And there was a hidden camera in the bedroom that captured them having sex. And Hulk Hogan did not know he was being recorded, which is, haven't even signed the paperwork, didn't know he was being recorded. And so Bubble and Love Sponge is the one who wanted to like- If I recall, I don't remember. There's a whole trial transcript. But I think it might have been something like that.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Or someone else saw. I mean, like once these things exist, someone knows you can make money off of it.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
I mean, this is the other thing about things that are quasi legal. What the public understands about how you make money is generally wrong because this is what it is with Kevin Blatt. You can make money by keeping it quiet, not by putting it out and selling it. And so capture and kill. Exactly. Yeah.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
She would not want you to say that. Okay. Well, tell me about it. When I went back, this was in 2014, and I read all of the media coverage of Pamela Anderson from the very beginning of her career. She's just unapologetically herself at all moments. They're like, oh, how many men have you slept with? And she's like, five. I remember that because I think she was 27 when she said that.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
So they sent the tape to Gawker, probably, I mean, I don't know the details here, but probably trying to do what they were doing with the Paris Hilton tape, which is get attention for something, bring all the eyeballs to a website, and then sell ads against it. Affiliate marketing, who knows, whatever's going on there. And instead, Gawker posted...
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
the tape or posted part of the tape, which you are not allowed to do, which is really like fun gossip site flying by the seat of their pants, not maybe don't have a lawyer on staff or not thinking about we should call a lawyer before we do this or who knows.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
not not a great thing that they did there but not illegal not illegal but not also like outing somebody is not not fantastic um he decides to fund a massive lawsuit yeah because this was an opportunity where gawker did something illegal yeah and it was very easy to prove that what they had done was illegal but the public did not understand that what gawker had done was illegal
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Yeah. So it's it's complicated. I mean, like first, just with celebrity sex tapes, Kim Kardashian's tape is sort of ushered in this era of releasing your own sex tape and calling it stolen, which the public sort of started to figure out by 2012, 2013. I remember there was a teen mom, if you remember that show, person who was on Teen Mom. She had sex with the porn star James Dean. Oh, right.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
And they pretended it was stolen. And it was just so clearly staged. He's a porn star. I mean, it was a whole thing. And so like by then, you know, this is not real, which sort of but it is this
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
weird like squishy truth thing where people were like what's going on now having never uploaded a pornographic video to a site like that myself my guess and my understanding is you have to click something that says i attest that i'm over 18 and blah blah blah you permission i have permission to give you this video i remember maybe in the last five ish years nick kristoff at the times had a whole thing of there's all this child porn on one of the sites so i think
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
look, this is, you know, the perennial question about the Internet. The Internet is sort of in certain ways ungovernable because as much as it's become more corporate and as much as First Amendment lawyers will say, well, it's just like any other medium. It has they have to follow the rules or we're going to sue them.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
The truth is that it's just so much bigger and more complicated and filled with all these shady little loopholes in every area.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
corner that like something can spread something can spread illegally very easily whereas like with pam and tommy one of the guys who had an early access to the tape was literally selling vhs's out of his trunk in grocery store parking lots i mean he made like 70 grand that way you know now you probably wouldn't make very much money off of it though because generally there's not a lot of money in porn right now unless you own one of those giant sites right yeah so
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
I know. And Kevin, I'm sure you're listening. I love you. I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was doing this interview or reach out to see what happened with Kanye. I didn't have the energy. But of course, my friend who also... Anyway, a friend of mine texted me as this was happening. And look, Kevin Blatt is the Forrest Gump of celebrity scandal because he knows how to insert himself. Yeah.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
And I was 27 when I was reading that. And I was like, you've only slept with five men? Really?
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
He's also Jewish and he is proud of being Jewish. So... I am not going to cast aspersions on his intentions in this situation, but let's just remember that he's very good at getting attention.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
But I also think he was probably legitimately pissed off at Kanye's, you know, Nazi turn, whether sincere or not, on either of their parts. I mean, like, both Kanye and Kevin Blatt are total attention trolls. Sure. But so, right, Kanye's in his Nazi era. Kevin Blatt was like... No, I hate you. And I'm really this this Jew. I mean, you could probably read the quote.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
I don't have it in front of me, but it's something really funny and perfectly Kevin Blatt. That's like this Jew is, you know, pissed off and I'm going to put out your sex tape. And the fact that Kanye had a sex tape is is well known. He he rapped about it on, I think, Life of Pablo album. It's like I had a laptop that I was fucking bitches on.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
she was just a normal comfortable happy woman but the thing with the sex tape is that it was literally stolen from their house which now i think people know and i'm i'm very grateful that that information has made it to the masses because certainly when i was reporting the story the
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
And then he paid his cousin $250,000 to get it from him. Right, this is in the song Real Friends. Yeah, so wait. Cousin, not a real friend.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Wait, wait, hold on. Oh, wait, wait, wait. I think this too. Blow a whistle is a too short reference because too short is his close friend. Yeah.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Oh yeah, and then he says he has a small dick, right? Yeah, exactly.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
The content of the tapes and potentially the size of the member have not been public. Right. And now, you know, Kevin is threatening, I guess, to talk about it. And... Thank you. I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
narrative publicly and what I had believed was that they put it out themselves for publicity to get attention and not that sort of a parallel thing was everyone was desperate for making money off of their image and getting in on their success and their fame and that force is what drove the popularity of the sex tape and the safe to be stolen essentially in the first place. So totally. It's yeah.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Anyway, so I think like people just people are so we're so mean to her. And I think it's not that she's a victim, but it's that what the public believed was wrong and made her look really bad when in fact there was no reason for that.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Right. And while in the confusion about Pam and Tommy is what led other people in the future to exploit that confusion and be like,
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
And she was back in LA when you saw her and you wrote it because she found out that the tape was going to come. She was in Australia when she found out about the tape. Okay. So if she was post-Australia, she knew about this when she was with you.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
I'm like, how long did it take you to write the story?
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I know. How weird is it that I'm like –
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Right. Right. Right. I mean, I this accelerated what was already happening. Right. She was very famous already. And this sort of brought it to a new level. And the combination of it coming out when The Simple Life was coming out at this perfect moment for reality TV. But that's what happened.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
But in fact, the tape would not have been worth anything if she had not already been this like partying hard tabloid darling. Yeah, it wasn't thought. Oh, simple lay. Yeah, like increasing over the course of the year-ish before. She was already becoming this tabloid darling. She got this reality TV show in the works. They had shot the reality TV show.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
I think it had done really well at Upfronts in maybe September or something. And so maybe like two years earlier when she was 19, she had slept with this guy, Rick Solomon. I want to say it was Shannon Doherty that he dated. It was. Okay, great. Okay, so he had this reputation for sleeping with starlets. He was drinking a lot. He was doing a lot of drugs. He's sober now, so I can say that.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
And he's a gambler. He's an obsessive gambler. He later married Pamela Anderson, like Rick Solomon, fascinating character. Wow. And he loved filming his encounters. And I think this is maybe a novelty in the 90s and the early 2000s. Back when it was not everybody, you didn't have a video camera in your pocket. Like people would bring out the camcorder and then they would watch it later.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
And it was a private thing. And it was definitely a rich person toy. And so it was a celebrity toy. And some people were into that. Who cares? People are into that now. And so Rick Solomon filmed a lot of his sexual encounters.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
No, no. Because I think what happened was Paris had the TV show coming out and she had all this tabloid coverage. So I called Rick Solomon for this story, for the Wired story that we're here to talk about. How did I get his number? How did I get him to talk to me when the story was coming out? But it's so buried in the middle of this Wired story that I don't think tabloids picked up on it.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
No one really came off on it, but I was like... This is really interesting. Rick Solomon has never talked about this on the record before.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
It's really. It's important in the history of the internet and also I think in the history of, I don't know, like feminism of the last 30 years. Sure, and pop culture. Which has dramatically changed. Yeah. So Rick Solomon got angry at Paris because she crashed his Escalade and did not apologize. Yeah. This is the inciting incident that caused the Paris Hilton sex tape phenomenon.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Okay. She crashes the Escalade. He gets upset. She does not apologize. She does not pay for it to be fixed. He's like, fine. Fuck.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
you so he goes and he gets the sex tape and he goes to visit Larry Flint as one does and he's like let's put this out like yeah fuck her and you know Larry Flint I feel like I remember I can like remember what the office looked like almost because I can remember Rick Solomon's description of the office
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
But are these like fake memories? In my mind, it's like white doily rose gold crushed velvet energy. But like, is that a my memory of a memory of someone who actually was there?
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
So and Larry Flint was like, where's your paperwork? Because you can't sell porn without a signature from the people who are on camera saying they're over 18 and be copyright release. And so Rick could sign the copyright release because he's the one who shot it. But Paris hadn't signed anything. So Larry Flint was like, no, I can't put this out for you.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
And then Rick Salmon's friend, maybe like sometime roommate, grabbed the tape and sold it for 50 grand to these guys in Seattle who were like early sort of internet porn pioneers.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Those guys were like, okay, we cannot distribute this because we do not have the paperwork for it. Right. Now they don't even have Ricks.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
So they have none of the paperwork that you need. However, a celebrity sex tape, as we know from, you know, Pam and Tommy, can attract a ton of attention. And the public is totally confused about whether or not you are allowed to just put this out there. Right. So we will announce that we have.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
it we will tell people we are going to stream it or put it on the website and then everyone will come to our website and we will sell ads against that yes and their website which was called sexbrat.com oh god i remember this like a pre charlie xcx brat but sexbrat.com and then they hired Kevin Blatt, our man, to do the publicity for this.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Because at this point, Kevin Blatt had essentially become the go-between for the porn world and mainstream media.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Oh, Kevin Blatt. I have spent so much time with Kevin Blatt. He is from Cleveland, Ohio. This is just a true hustler from the jump and he knows how to turn $2 into $200 and he's really good at... getting in with people and charming people. And he's, you know, he's a sales guy. He turns stuff around. And so he had gone out to L.A. with his brother. They got involved in early porn stuff.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Really good at just sort of like getting rich people to throw him some money for not a lot of work and just ingratiating himself with everyone. Yeah. The people in Seattle who had this internet porn company call him and they're like, can you do publicity for us to make money off of this, you know, pretending that we're going to sell the tape. Right.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
He's like, obviously, yes, this is what he does. If you have a celebrity sex tape, if you don't have the permission of the people who are on the tape, you cannot sell it through a mainstream real porn outlet. However, you can do one of two things. One, you can like release it illegally. So whatever is the way to do that on the Internet at the moment, you know, if it's like
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
torrenting or if it's 8chan or if it's Pam and Tommy it was you know random website here's a address that you send a money order to with like a t-shirt company in Canada and we will mail you a VHS but we got the money to do this from the mafia and we're breaking the law so At the era of Paris Hilton, it was sort of like this threat that we'll do this.
Infamous
Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?
Or the other way to do it is just to tell people that the tape exists. Kevin Blatt, our man, hush money fixer who calls himself a celebrity sex tape broker, emails a three-minute clip, because that's about how big of a file you could email in 2003, to two people, someone at Us Weekly and someone at Entertainment Tonight, to