Resignedly Independent: Pamela, A Love Story

For those in search of the modern-day answer to the goddess of love, there is no better example of an American (North American, to be clear) version of Aphrodite than Pamela Anderson. For the entirety of the 90s, Anderson was an emblem of sex… and yes, even love. For her relationship with Tommy Lee was held up as a neo-benchmark of Romeo and Juliet-level intensity—complete with a whirlwind timeline for falling in love. Starting from the moment the two met at a Beverly Hills hotspot called Sanctuary (for which Anderson was an investor) in 1994. At the time, Lee was in a relationship (engaged, in fact) with Bobbie Brown (a.k.a. Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” girl) and Anderson was in a situationship with Baywatch co-star Kelly Slater (himself a notorious philanderer). But that didn’t much matter once ecstasy (administered at a Cancun nightclub) came along to unleash their love-at-first-sight feelings at full force.

Pamela, A Love Story, however, is not just about the marriage that would come to define so much of Anderson’s career and public perception, but rather, the “love goddess’” determination to continue to choose love, and actively search for it—even in the face of all her romantic disappointments. The documentary, directed by Ryan White and co-produced by Anderson’s son, Brandon Lee, opens with Pam unearthing a VHS tape—a “subtle” nod, of course, to the tape that changed the entire course of her life. “God, I’m scared. This is not naked, I hope.” A later close-up on a tape labeled “When Pammy Met Tommy” is accentuated by Anderson remarking, “When I saw those videos, I got so emotional ‘cause I thought, ‘That was it. That was my time to really be in love.’” A shot of Pam and Tommy’s home video on a trip to Venice adds to the bittersweetness of that statement, as though highlighting the notion that a person only gets—if they’re lucky—one great love their entire life (or, as Charlotte York once posited, two great loves). For Pam, it was Tommy—and she admits or alludes to it repeatedly in Pamela, A Love Story. Called as much because Anderson’s entire life has revolved around the search for love… and the love of love. Falling in and out of it over and over again.

“I’m looking for a feeling I can’t find,” she declares from the outset. That “lightning in a bottle” feeling only being captured during her ephemeral period with Tommy. So desirous of recapturing it that she even got back together with him in 2008, though, unlike the Andersonian counterpart that is Elizabeth Taylor (with Richard Burton), she never remarried him. She would save that privilege, instead, for someone even sleazier: Rick Salomon. Better known for being in Paris Hilton’s sex tape than being married to Anderson twice (the first time around, Anderson cited finding a crack pipe by the Christmas tree as grounds for an annulment). So no, not the best look for Anderson’s taste—but then, neither was Kid Rock a.k.a. Bob Ritchie. These two and so many other men are, ahem, touched on in the documentary, but the one person noticeably missing from any mention is Bret Michaels. For whatever reason, that’s just too trashball for Anderson, it seems.

For those “intrigued” (read: mystified) by her choice in men, Anderson is only too happy to oblige viewers in enlightening them on part of the reason why she’s so attracted to, well, let’s just say “a certain kind” of man. Someone who was more or less an extension of her alcoholic “huckster” father. To boot, Pam’s cavalier attitude about alcoholism and abuse undeniably stemmed from seeing her own mother’s behavior. And yes, Carol also married Pam’s dad, Barry, a second time. But Carol was of the “do as I say, not as I do” persuasion, with Pamela recounting, “My mom used to always say to me, ‘I feel bad. I set an example for you. I know your dad’s an asshole but I love him. You don’t love these assholes. Rip the Band-Aid off and just get rid of these guys. ‘Cause you don’t love them like I love your father, or like he loves me.’”

Eventually, Anderson has no choice but to conclude of her taste in men, “I would pick people similar [to my father], I guess, in some ways” and “Maybe because of how I grew up and saw my parents and maybe because of some of the relationships I had, I didn’t equate being in love with… being nice, maybe.”

But she is by no means alone in that boat. Not just in terms of “seeking the father” in another man, but also with regard to many women’s reactions to themselves (i.e., their bodies) being a result of something that was done to them by a man. Usually, at an early age. And Anderson was very much sexualized from an early age, enduring the trauma of being molested by her babysitter for three to four years before Anderson told her to her face that she wished she would die. The next day, she did. In a car accident. Anderson couldn’t help but feel witchily responsible. For, a testament to her benevolent nature is feeling guilty that her molester actually did die. And yet, her karma couldn’t have been that bad if she managed to experience a Lana Turner at Schwab’s type of discovery story while at a football game. Wearing a Labatt’s Beer shirt, the camera focused Pam on the Jumbotron and the beer company soon after hired her for their promotional materials/commercials. This led to Playboy’s photo editor and “secret weapon” Marilyn Grabowski calling Pam up to ask her to pose for the October 1989 issue of Playboy. When it was over, Grabowski suggested Anderson ought to stick around and become a Playmate. The rest, of course, is history. For the string of “charmed life” incidents kept occurring when Anderson was practically begged by the casting agents of Baywatch to star in their show.

So maybe all this good luck “had to” be counteracted by the run of bad luck that would beset her in the mid-90s, when she met Tommy and immortalized their sex life forever on tape. As for her attraction to Lee, Anderson said it best when she remarked, “From the beginning, I’ve been drawn to different types of bad guys.” Lee was the prototype of that trope—with a dash of slobbering puppy dog thrown in. So how could Pam resist? Even if they “didn’t know anything about each other… it ended up being one of the wildest, most beautiful love affairs ever.” Again, a modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Minus the jealous outbursts and the birthing of two kids, both of whom are active participants in the documentary—nobly demanding that their mother’s honor be restored.

Pamela, too, is seeking to “take back the narrative,” as it keeps being said. One that’s been taken away from her ever since the distribution of that accursed tape. For even though she was written off as someone who “liked” to be seen naked by the masses, she reminds her viewers that posing for Playboy began as a way to take her power back, regain control of her own sexuality after having it manipulated and tainted by perverts like her babysitter and the twenty-five-year-old guy who raped her when she was twelve. The video was yet another form of rape, with Anderson stating to White’s camera lens, “Playboy was empowering for me. But, in this case, it felt like a rape.” The release of Pam & Tommy, she’s sure to mention later, also brought up that same feeling again. As she rails against the Hulu series that would seek to dredge up one of the worst, most harrowing experiences of her life, it bears noting that the way the show portrayed their courtship and the scenarios leading up to the stolen safe are exactly how she describes it in Pamela, A Love Story. Minus the part where she says she has no idea who stole the tape (it was Rand Gauthier). Though she might not want to admit it, the series is precise in its historical accuracy, including Lily James portraying Anderson during the brutal series of depositions that went on amid the legal battle to cease distribution of the content. Pam recalls of this period, “During the deposition, I remember looking at them and thinking, ‘Why do these men hate me so much? Why do these grown men hate me so much?’” Well, the psychological answer is obvious: men hate all “whores” when they start to “act out of turn.” Try to demand the “rights” of a woman more virginal and chaste.

Even Pam herself has been infused with the chauvinistic rhetoric about herself, laughing off jokes about being slutty and now, too “old” to be slutty (clearly, she needs to start hanging out with Madonna more often). Case in point, while cooking together in the kitchen, Pam’s mom, Carol, shimmies to suggest the cliché of “sexiness” as she asks, “Where’s all your nice-fitting dresses?” Presently wearing an amorphously-shaped “house dress,” Pam replies, “No one needs to see my body anymore.” Carol reminds, “You can see right through that thing, I’ll have you know.” Pam insists, “Well, a silhouette is much thinner than the real thing.” Having been indoctrinated for so long to view herself as an “object” only worth the youth and beauty she can radiate (hence, the visible amounts of plastic surgery), she echoes Laney Berlin (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) on the season one episode of Sex and the City called “The Baby Shower” when she asks the camera, “You wanna see [my boobs]?” Backpedaling, she self-deprecatingly adds, “No, I’m kidding. You don’t wanna see them now. They’re in rough shape.” Anderson’s allusions to being on death’s door by Hollywood standards also comes when she jokes of being back in Ladysmith, Canada, “Maybe this is just the time I was supposed to be home, I guess. I’m like a spawning salmon, just coming home to die.” A statement she then laughs off, and yet, there’s more than a shred of truth in her “grim” (read: real) outlook. With this constant self-denigrating acknowledgement of her current “physical state,” it bears noting that it seems only now, at her “advanced” age, when the offers of sex and romance have dwindled, that she appears “willing” (read: resigned) to be alone—almost as if solely because she is no longer “at her peak.”

And yet, it was no picnic at her peak either, as White dredges up archival interviews of Pamela being asked various questions about her tits (from grossheads like Matt Lauer and Jay Leno), at which time one is reminded of the same thing happening to Britney Spears (and as a teenager no less), all presented back-to-back in Framing Britney Spears. Amid this series of similarly-themed clips, Pam is right to announce, “I think it’s inappropriate to ask women those kinds of questions. There has to be some line that people don’t cross.” But people—namely, men—always felt they had a “right” to cross lines with Anderson. That she was “asking for it” with a career forged in nudity. However, that was just a jumping off point (or so she had hoped) from her perspective, remarking, “I always hoped something would come along where I would do something which would be more interesting to people than my body.” Alas, Americans can be so superficial. Something Anderson might not have fully realized with her Canadian guilelessness. Complete with earnest pronouncements about love, including, “I just want to be loved by one person, and I want to spoil that person rotten.” This said in reference to dating Mario Van Peebles, who she was planning a birthday party for at the time of that particular journal entry (all of them read by a Pam “soundalike”). And yet, that didn’t stop her from scurrying on over to Scott Baio’s house after writing said journal entry. Of so freely admitting in writing to playing the field, she giggles, “Why would I even write that down? ‘Cause God forbid you do a documentary one day in your life and find out what kind of a whore you are.” Once more, with the internalized misogyny regarding her then avant-garde sex positivity practices.

With Pamela, A Love Story, Anderson also comes across as being dead-set on asserting her independence—that she is with these (deadbeat) men because she chooses to be, not because she has to be. Ergo declaring, “I’m not the damsel in distress. I’m very capable. And some men hate you for being something else.” And when she doesn’t turn out to live up to the image of the “whore” in their Madonna/whore compartmentalizing brain, things always tend to get unpleasant. This being why Pamela nonchalantly rehashes of her previous dynamics with the “very hetero, masculine men” she’s attracted to, “…sometimes they start grabbing you by the hair and throwing you into walls and, like, stripping your clothes off. Craziest stuff would happen,” she concludes. Once more, minimizing and deflecting are her overt survival techniques. Not to mention repeatedly getting married as a means of distraction from the loss of her one true great love, Tommy. That’s part of why she married contractor/her bodyguard Dan Hayhurst in 2020, commenting in the documentary, “He’s a good Canadian guy. Normal. I just thought, ‘Maybe I need to try that.’ Again, sometimes I don’t know if I’m alive or dead.” She rose from the dead long enough to divorce him at the beginning of 2022 though.

No matter, because another journal entry reads, “I’d rather have loved for an instant than [have] a miserable life.” And yet, a large bulk of Anderson’s life has been objectively miserable. Even if the aim of the documentary is to assert that its subject is no victim. That she is simply someone who “love[s] to live a romantic life every day… want[s] to be really in love and… didn’t want anything less than that.” Enter Tommy—“sweet,” stalker-y Tommy. Who ousted Kelly Slater easily, as Pam had to call and tell him that she wouldn’t be joining him to meet his family in Florida as she had gotten married in Cancun. Besides, in addressing Kelly Slater’s own “playboy” ways, Anderson says, “You don’t own anybody. Nobody owns anybody and you just let them be who they are. Sometimes it’s better…not with you.” As it would turn out, the same would go for her relationship with Lee. Which should have at least been financially profitable for all the trauma she was subjected to (and still is) as a result.

So it is that when the subject of Pamela’s overall financial disarray is acknowledged in the documentary, White flashes to footage of her being asked by Howard Stern, “You’re not good with money, are you?” She confirms, “I’m not good with money.” Stern’s sidekick, Robin, mentions, “You’re a very famous person and everybody would imagine you’d have a lot of money.” Chuckling away the pain again, Pam quips, “Well, a lot of [other] people have made a lot of money off of me.” There it is: making herself into the whore she assumes everyone sees her as. Like a white girl whose credit card has been cut in half by Daddy, Anderson shrugs, “I just couldn’t wrap my head around the business part of branding myself. I’m not that person when it comes to money. I just want my credit card to work and I wanna be able to get my nails done.” Besides, a woman who values love (or at least the pursuit of love) above all else couldn’t possibly be concerned with such trivial things as little green pieces of paper. As her youngest son, Dylan Lee, says, “She loves getting married, you know. Maybe it’s her favorite thing in the world is falling in love. And then, like, I guess loves the idea of falling out of love, too.”

Despite this “passion for passion,” Anderson can’t shake the remorse she has for raising her children in an erratic environment re: father figures. “I always felt guilty ‘cause of my kids, I wanted to show them a traditional relationship.” This said more than somewhat ironically as an image is shown of Kid Rock and his son posing with an uncomfortable-looking Brandon and Dylan as Pam stands behind them in her wedding gown. She adds, “Or a marriage, or a man that’s consistent, and giving them good examples in their life.” But they certainly appear well-adjusted enough—and “evolved” enough, for that matter, to not only stand by their mother through everything, but go out of their way to make sure she’s truly seen and understood.

And what’s plain to see is that she’s been searching for Tommy in every subsequent relationship. Her attachment to that great love crystallized as she watches another random VHS from her archives popped into the player. It turns out to be footage of the birthday decorations Pam put together for Tommy’s birthday as TLC’s “Diggin’ On You” plays in the background (needless to say, the apex of a 90s soundtrack). This time, Brandon is next to her watching as well, and Pam starts to get emotional, telling Brandon and White, “I think I need to take a break, let’s take a break.”

Pam then schools us on the two types of love: eros and agape. This making the concept of love “very conflicted.” She’s also sure to mention that “Robert A. Johnson says, ‘Romantic love is not sustainable.’ And as soon as I read that I was like, ‘Ugh. This is the worst thing I’ve ever read.’ It’s so disappointing. Why can’t we live a romantic life every day?” It sounds a lot like Kate Moss retroactively asking her mother, “Why not? Why the fuck can’t I have fun all the time?”

After reemerging from her “break,” Pam tells Brandon, “I was just thinking about it upstairs. I was thinking, you know, and it’s probably gonna get me in a lot of shit for saying this, but I really loved your dad. Like, for all the right reasons and I don’t think I’ve ever loved anybody else.” This, too, harkens back to Madonna saying that Sean Penn has been “the love of her life, all her life” when asked the question in 1991’s Truth or Dare. Tellingly, Madonna has never been able to sustain a monogamous relationship either. Holding back more tears after admitting this, Pam finally declares, “It’s fucked.”

In the wake of this epiphany, we’re shown a scene of Anderson in the bathtub with the voiceover, “I think what it all comes down to is that I never got over not being able to make it work with the father of my kids. And even though I thought I could recreate a family or fall in love with somebody else, it’s just not me. So I think that’s probably why I keep failing in all my relationships.”

Like Elizabeth Taylor, who could only really be happy with Richard Burton, but was simultaneously miserable with him, Anderson also assesses, “I think I’d rather be alone than not be with the father of my kids. It’s impossible to be with anybody else…but, I don’t think I could be with Tommy either. It’s almost like a punishment.” But for what? Being a woman who dared to be sexual? To relish what her body could get her and where it could take her in life? In this and so many other ways, it’s clear that all of Pamela’s self-loathing still comes from a place of patriarchal oppression.

Listening to a podcast in her bathtub, Pamela feels a little too targeted when the woman speaking announces, “…how our wanting to love, our yearning for love, our loving itself, becomes an addiction… [and that’s when it’s time to attend an SLAA meeting]. We who love obsessively are full of fear. Fear of being alone.” And yet, Anderson is convinced that she’s at last “okay” with being alone. Not that it actually has to do with her inherent belief that she’s too “old and decrepit” for passionate, all-consuming romance now. So it is that, throughout the documentary, we see scenes of Pamela picking flowers, pruning them, arranging them. She can not only buy herself flowers, as Miley says, but she can pick them for free. She has become her own romancer out of necessity rather than true willingness.

Deemed by her surrogate father, of sorts, Hugh Hefner, as the Marilyn Monroe of the 90s (but then, so was Anna-Nicole Smith), it’s only fitting that White should choose to do a close-up on some of the books in Anderson’s collection: Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, A Joseph Campbell Companion and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Not exactly what one would expect of a dumb blonde—the same way no one ever imagined Monroe was such an avid reader, writing her off as nothing more than an oversexed sex symbol.

It was with being underestimated in mind that Anderson chose to star as Roxie Hart in a 2022 production of Chicago (her last major career moment before the combined release of this documentary and her autobiography, Love, Pamela). Regarding her fear of doing something so different (Broadway), Pamela insisted, “Don’t overthink it. I don’t overthink anything. Thinking is overrated.” Ah, signs she’s been in the U.S. for far too long, not to mention a philosophy that has been obviously proven by some of her previous romantic choices.

As the credits to Pamela, A Love Story roll, we’re shown outtakes where she says things like, “I figured I’d just do, like, no makeup, no whatever. Who cares?” But of course she cares. Her entire life has been built around caring (and thus, loving) too much…she’s a Cancer, after all. And it is because she has cared too much and been burned so many times that she has to pretend, even if only for a little while, that it’s as she says during the outtakes of the credits: “I never want a husband again, ever… That sucks, too.” Perhaps that’s why, while promoting the documentary on Jimmy Kimmel Live, she said she would actually get married again. If someone will “have” her.