Pam and Tommy’s Sex Tape: What Happened to It? Who Now Owns Its Rights?

Pam and Tommy's Sex Tape What Happened to It- Who Now Owns Its Rights

Pam & Tommy‘ chronicles the whirlwind romance of actress Pamela Anderson and musician Tommy Lee, who married just days after meeting.

Unbeknownst to the couple spending wonderful days savouring their new romance, their dissatisfied carpenter obtains a very private tape of theirs.

The show is based on true events and examines the far-reaching consequences of the leaked recording on the lives of all individuals involved.

On a larger scale, the eventually popular film provided an early look of the internet’s far-reaching implications on personal information, not to mention the media frenzy that the incident sparked.

So, what happened to the tape that was in the safe? Now, who has it? Let’s have a look.

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Pam and Tommy’s Sex Tape: What Happened to It?

Rand Gauthier (played by Seth Rogen on the programme) worked on Lee and Anderson’s mansion in 1995 and stole their safe as retaliation for supposedly overdue dues totaling $20,000.

He discovered the tape inside and, having previously worked in the adult movie industry, handed it over to his acquaintance Milton Ingley, an adult filmmaker.

They promptly made a few copies after seeing the tape and realising they had a goldmine on their hands, and then allegedly damaged the original Hi8 tape by burning the casing and slicing the tape into small pieces.

In order to prevent detection, the actual cassette with the original recording was destroyed soon after it was stolen.

Naturally, the tape’s private footage stayed and eventually circulated like wildfire. However, the beginning was slow, and after receiving several rejections from production houses who refused to acquire the tape without (Anderson and Lee’s) release papers, Gauthier and Ingley knew they’d have to find a new way to reach out to potential buyers.

This was when the internet came into play, and a website was quickly created that detailed how to pay the $59.59 for a VHS copy of the video, which Rand then would mail out.

As a result, the tape gained notoriety and became a well-known underground oddity, but it also reportedly produced $77 million in genuine sales.

The couple didn’t know the safe was stolen until January 1996, when they filed a police report. Meanwhile, Gauthier’s fortunes began to rapidly deteriorate once others started selling duplicates of the tape.

Gauthier couldn’t stop other bootleggers because he didn’t hold the rights to the video and the video spread.

Penthouse magazine soon got their hands on it, although they were first forbidden from depicting sequences from the film since Lee and Anderson owned the rights to it (having shot it themselves).

However, the film had become so publicly available that it was nearly impossible to stop it from spreading.

The video’s rights were allegedly sold to Seth Warshavsky, the founder of Internet Entertainment Group, who allegedly aired the now-famous video for five hours straight.

Warshavsky allegedly struck a deal with Vivid Entertainment’s Steven Hirsch to produce VHS, DVD, and CD-ROM copies of the video shortly after.

As a result, by February 1998, practically anyone could buy the once-private tape of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee from a retailer.

What Happened to Pam and Tommy’s Sex Tape

Who Owns The Rights Of Pam and Tommy’s sex tape Now?

Although the original Hi8 tape has long been destroyed, the video has become inextricably linked to the internet and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Its rights were purportedly controlled by Waeshavsky until roughly 2003 when they went to his associate Cort St. George, who was in charge of the video’s web rights at the time.

However, in 2011, St. George reportedly let the licence lapse, claiming the video as a source of ill luck.

As a result, the controversial film is still widely available. The eye-opening, then unexpected events that occurred in the aftermath of its release have become part of pop-cultural history.

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