There’s more to Hulu’s Pam & Tommy than sex and scandal

polygon.com:

Imagine a world in which a celebrity sex tape wouldn’t make any money. But in the early internet era of the 1990s, it’s just how it is.As one porn magnate points out in the new Hulu series Pam & Tommy’s,stolen sex tapes invite police to either the video store or theater playing the film, and then the whole thing’s over.

But then the “World Wide Web” came along and … well, there’s a lot of porn out there. Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee were among the first celebrities to have their private affairs shared against their consent, victims of the later-termed “revenge porn” in the burgeoning world of click-to-order bootleg VHS tapes.

Pam & Tommy is most concerned with the how and why of it all: How did that Hi8 tape get from a locked safe to cultural punchline? And why did the public react the way it did? It’s the latest in a long line of TV series, movies, and podcasts that are trying to get to the bottom of such questions. And while Pam & Tommy makes its case, it’s not as cut and dry as the show wants to think.

Pam & Tommy is a show about Pam and Tommy — you guessed this maybe; it’s specifically Pamela Anderson (star of Baywatch, Home Improvement, and more) and Tommy Lee, the drummer for Mötley Crüe. The two were married from 1995 to 1998, during which time their sex tape was stolen, sold, and ultimately widely distributed. The eight-episode miniseries tracks the lead up and the fallout of that home movie, and the impact it had on their lives, as well as the broader culture.

Pam & Tommy comes from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the producing duo behind works as varied as Superbad, 50/50, The Boys, and Invincible, who snatched up the rights to a 2014 Rolling Stone article by Amanda Chicago Lewis, which detailed the crimes