'Pam and Tommy' Can't Escape Its Exploitation
#162: "Pam and Tommy," "Home Team," "All About Eve," "Nightmare Alley"
Edition 162:
Hey movie lovers!
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In this week’s newsletter: In a week where there wasn’t one single wide release movie, we cannot help but talk about TV. Then I’m forced to admit that a Happy Madison movie exists, recommend one of the greatest movies of all time, and trumpet the streaming release of one of last year’s best movies. In this week’s double “Trailer Watch,” we get our first look at the series about the making of The Godfather and one of the buzziest movies coming out of Sundance.
Pam and Tommy
Something remarkable happened this week. Not a single movie was released wide across the country at the box office this past weekend. Not one!
Blame Omicron, blame the Nor’easter blowing through the east coast, blame Spider-Man making more in its seventh weekend ($11M) than the opening weekend for basically every movie being considered for this year’s Best Picture.
I blame TV…or at least what we currently call “TV,” which every year takes one more bite out of the movie business until it devours it entirely.
This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. The common refrain from viewers that “they don’t make good movies anymore” or from creators that “people won’t come out to see good movies” is countered every time you turn on the television and find dozens of great shows that 10 years ago would’ve just been great movies (I wrote about this phenomenon last year and gave my 9 favs). Recently there’s been “Squid Game,” “Station Eleven,” and (from what I hear) “Yellowjackets,” all of which were initially conceived and written as feature films.
And guess what? These adult drama shows — telling the kinds of stories supposedly no one cares about, at the box office anyway — are super popular!
That’s certainly what Hulu has in mind for its latest home run swing in the mini-series space. Pam and Tommy is a movie in everything except the format. It’s a contained story about the first celebrity sex tape, featuring Pamela Anderson of “Baywatch” fame and Tommy Lee, the drummer for Mötley Crüe, splashy roles for which they bagged if-not-A-listers then very high B-listers Lily James and Sebastian Stan. Seth Rogen (as the person who stole the tape) and Nick Offerman (who distributed it) extend the star power across the board.
The budget seemed to have plenty of room after all that, because they licensed basically every popular song of the 1990s and outfit every character and backdrop with enough 90s period dressing to make you think you’re in an MTV music video.
That pulpiness is kind of the point — it’s the best part of the show, to be honest — because every aspect of this story and the people in it are larger than life.
Whether or not you’ve seen the tape in question, you’re no doubt familiar with Pam Anderson, who has always been viewed more as a symbol or concept than a human being.
It’s a problem the show cannot avoid, and a hurdle it ultimately doesn’t quite clear.
(Her lack of screen time in the first few episodes kind of emphasizes my point, but it also delayed my final judgement on my creeping suspicion that Lily James is acting her way out of her long-standing position as this newsletter’s patron saint (awarded upon the release of Mamma Mia 2). This series will be the decisive moment, and she’s certainly going for it. By the end I’ll know whether she’s got “it” or not.
Any way you present them, both the events in the series and the series itself are exploitation. The show is keenly aware and intentional to point out that Pam and Tommy’s intimate moment was stolen and without their consent sold and viewed by thousands (if not millions) of strangers. However, the only way to adequately tell this story is to revel at least a little bit in the lifestyle that the two lovers had, their drug-filled whirlwind marriage and the obvious, often public physical passion they shared. In doing so, they once again traffic in the inhumane tabloid sticker appeal of Pam Anderson in a red swimsuit.
It leaves the viewer in a precarious place, on one hand drawn to the show for the same content that fueled the aggressive (and harmful) tabloid coverage of them at the time, and on the other hand making us all feel like leering paparazzi.
In that complexity, the show is smart — or at least as smart as a show can be that includes a scene of Lee having a full back-and-forth conversation with his own penis (voiced, appropriately, by Jason Mantzoukas).
Ultimately, the show is saved by its anchor: Sebastian Stan. Compared to Pam, Tommy Lee is a much more uncomplicated figure, whose reputation and legacy was buffeted by the media firestorm and therefore he can be looked at in a much more straightforward way.
Stan rises to meet this challenge, turning his performance all the way up to extreme levels as the druggy, thrill-seeking, well-endowed rock star. The fact that the character never tips into full-on parody is a testament to his ability. In early episodes, his primal energy is so intense that the attraction can almost be understood (as can the repulsiveness).
Few elements of the show rise to his level of can’t-look-away energy, which causes a show that should ripple with electricity (like “The People vs. O.J. Simpson”) to unfold in a way that feels very…traditional. Like, dare I say, a TV show.
Which causes me to wonder, and maybe this is just the cinephile in my heart, whether this series would’ve just been better compressed into a two-hour movie. There! I said it!
Something New
Home Team (Netflix): Reviewing this movie is a favor to my friend Will, and everyone else who (jokingly, I hope) insisted I had to watch this Happy Madison production of the Sean Payton story. The real life Payton was suspended for a year from his job as an NFL head coach, so he helped coach his son’s high school team, the basis for this Bad News Bears story about a father trying to connect with his son.
Except it was made by Adam Sandler’s shingle, so it’s required to be aggressively stupid and juvenile, starting with the casting of Kevin James in the lead role. Somehow, Happy Madison has managed to perfect the art of the hate watch, and the dozen or so examples of absolutely embarrassing moviemaking shown here would only further my point that Sandler’s group is purposely thumbing its nose at what most of us consider “good.”
An early (and strong) candidate for worst movie of 2022.
Something Old
All About Eve (1950, Criterion Channel or $VOD): I was reading up on some Oscars previews and was reminded that only three movies in history have racked up a record-14 nominations: Titanic, La La Land and…All About Eve, which is even more impressive considering those first two were legitimate blockbuster sensations, and Eve is still the only movie in history to score acting nominations for four different female performers (a record that will never be broken).
There’s really no other way to say this is one of the greatest movies ever made, and one of the most essential movies any aspiring cinephile has to see. It’s hard to get much more Old Hollywood royalty than Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe (in a bit part) and director Joseph Mankiewicz (brother of the titular Mank). But the archetypes of this movie still get referenced in casual conversation, and its template has been used for tons of movies in the years since. And aside from that, it’s still just an awesome movie to watch. Highest recommendation!
Something to Stream
Nightmare Alley (Hulu AND HBO Max): Due to some contractual mishaps, this awards contender is now streaming on both Warner’s and Disney’s streaming platforms. And just like I did last week with The Last Duel, I feel like it’s my duty to inform you that one of the best movies of last year is now streaming, and you should definitely watch it. Here’s my full review from December. The simply astonishing production design and cinematography, complimented with a crazy-stacked cast, bring life to this undeniably bleak neo-noir drama about a circus hand (Bradley Cooper) who flies a little too close to the sun. It’s a dark, intense movie that has grown in my estimation and stuck in my memory since the first time I watched it, and I’m becoming increasingly angry that it seems to be getting ignored by most awards bodies to this point.
Trailer Watch: The Offer
I already had the “Trailer Watch” locked and loaded below and then I saw this and HAD to include it. It’s our first look at the Paramount+ series following the making of “The Godfather” and holy moly I’m so in. Miles Teller stars (having replaced cannibal Armie Hammer), we’ve got Matthew Goode as a shockingly good rendering of Paramount chief Robert Evans, Giovanni Ribisi as mob boss Joe Columbo, “Ted Lasso” star Juno Temple, Colin Hanks, and Dan freaking Fogler as Francis Ford Coppola?! April 28 cannot come soon enough.
Trailer Watch: After Yang
This was one of the most hyped movies coming out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, a meditative look at the little moments in life that mean the most, from Korean writer/director Kogonada (one namer!). I had a chance to see it last week and jokingly said, “it’s like the plastic bag scene from American Beauty became a feature length film,” which is true but undersells Kogonada’s ability to pull off the pretentiousness in truly affecting manor. Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith (who you may recognize from Queen & Slim) play parents in a sci-fi future where it’s not uncommon to hire a sophisticated AI ‘replicant’ to be a companion for your children. This family’s helper shuts down unexpectedly, and in trying to repair it they discover it is far more human than they could’ve imagined.
This is an arthouse film to a tee, a designation that will either excite you or warn you away from this movie when it gets released to the public “soon.”