Pamela: A Love Story

Year 18, Day 198 - 7/17/26 - Movie #5,378 - SQC DOC BLOCK FILM #17

BEFORE: The connection might not be evident here, but Pamela Anderson and Lorne Michaels are both immigrants from Canada, America's non-annoying upstairs neighbor. This makes things tougher when I'm trying to match the doc subjects to U.S. states, but so far I'm managing. There's always a work-around, hopefully, or else I'll have to start assigning states randomly. Conan O'Brien carries over from "Lorne". 

We've got another birthday SHOUT-out today, because it happens to be the birthday of David Hasselhoff, who co-starred in "Baywatch" with Pamela Anderson. Hasselhoff was born on 7/17/52, so he somehow is turning 74 today. And together they suggest the topic for my next "Get to Know a State" segment, which is CALIFORNIA

Date admitted to the U.S.: September 9, 1850 (the 31st state)

Nickname: The Golden State

Claim to fame: Come on, really all of pop culture radiates out of there, Hollywood films and TV shows, though it no longer has a monopoly on that, still the bulk of American movies and TV shows are made there. Plus San Diego Comic-Con is still a thing, too.

Prevalent language: Californian, as seen on "SNL". And Spanish.

State Motto: "Eureka", meaning "I have found it!" Well, it's kind of hard to miss. 

State Flower: California poppy. Should be marijuana.
State Fruit: Avocado. That tracks.

State Fish: Golden Trout

State Bird: California quail

State Mammal: Grizzly bear (it's also on the flag.)

State Tree: Giant sequoia

State Beverage: Not sure, but a nice crisp summer lager like a Pacifico or a Corona would be fine right about not. 

Notable Sports Teams: Umm, all of them? I'm sure they have every sport covered, I know there's Rams, Chargers and 49ers in the NFL, the Lakers and Golden State Warriors in the NBA and Angels, Dodgers, Athletics. Giants and Padres in the MLB. FIVE baseball teams, isn't that a bit much?

But what about the college team with my favorite mascot of all time, the University of California, Santa Cruz Banana Slugs? Look, I don't know if they're great at football, or even if they play football, but their mascot selection game is 100% on POINT. I think if you watch "Pulp Fiction" you can see either John Travolta or Samuel L. Jackson wearing a UC Santa Cruz t-shirt near the end, after they wash off the blood from being in the car. That's a dope shirt. 

Fun Fact: California was once part of Mexico, but in 1846 groups of settlers tried to go rogue and form their own country, the Californian Republic. The U.S. Navy had to invade California and put a stop to that, and once the U.S. had military control of it, it seems like Mexico didn't want it any more and made a treaty in January 1947 to hand it over. And then gold got discovered at Sutter's Mill just one year later? The timing is REALLY suspicious on this.  But then we found out about all the earthquakes in California, but it was too late, Mexico already said "No takebacks".

Yes, I've been to California, but not Los Angeles. I spent years working booths at the San Diego Comic Con, let's say 2003 to 2017, or so. It was profitable for a long time, and then it wasn't. But if you figure I was there 5 or 6 days on each trip, then I've lived in California for three months, total, over the years. One year, 2012, I took a trip up to San Francisco after the convention, I had a connection at Lucasfilm who invited me to tour Skywalker Ranch "anytime", except when I did come up, George Lucas was about to make the formal announcement that he was retiring and selling "Star Wars" to DisneyCorp, so the whole place was on lockdown and I could not visit. C'est la vie, but I went and had a great day all over the city of San Francisco.

So now I've profiled 17 states and I've visited 15 of them. Still not a bad record. 

THE PLOT: Follows the life and career of pop culture icon Pam Anderson, including personal journals and archival footage. 

AFTER: You know, I did watch a couple movies with Pam Anderson in them back in January, I don't know why I didn't panic and watch this one then, too, like I did for "The Saint of Second Chances". I guess I had faith that I'd be able to circle back to this one during the Doc Block. Well this one has more star power to it, and a number of talk show hosts are seen interviewing her, so as I've found, with more talk show hosts, more linking opportunities are possible. 

I also saw her live, in person, outside the premiere of "The Naked Gun" just about a year ago, July 28, 2025, which took place at the theater where I work. Of course, I was much more impressed by the presence of Liam Neeson, because any opportunity to add another "Star Wars" actor to my life list, I'm going to take that. Even "Weird Al" Yankovic was there, but of course I've met him before, and I was not allowed to talk to the stars at this event, but I did e-mail Al some pictures later. Yes, I know his (manager's) e-mail address. The rumor at the time was that Ms. Anderson and Mr. Neeson were dating, but I have not heard this again since, so who knows? 

This film goes back to Anderson's teen years, when she was asked to model for a Canadian beer company and that led to a meeting with Playboy and a chance to come to Los Angeles and pose for naked photos, and then more naked photos, then some naked videos, and that led to a movie where she was frequently naked or in a bubble bath, and well, her career just took off from there. But she never uses the word "exploited", which suggests that she doesn't think that she was - honey, you must not have been paying attention. We've seen that record companies are like a meat grinder with young clueless bands, and that "SNL" is like a processing factory for up-and-coming comedians, but nothing can match the exploitative power of the modeling and nudie mag industry, which requires constant fueling from the young, beautiful girls who find their way to Hollywood and then are unable to leave. 

I'm not going to say Pam Anderson seems out of touch here, but it's like she's unable somehow to process how she got from Point A to Point B, like she's in a fog or she can't believe her luck that she got hired to be Playmate of the Month or got to star in a movie like "Barb Wire". Honestly, though, since she can't even tell us what that movie was ABOUT, yeah, I'm going to say she seems a little out of touch with reality. Like, how do you star in a movie and not be able to know what happens in the movie, you were THERE! When she's talking about being on "Baywatch", she refers to the skill she had for running in slow-motion, I can't even tell if she's joking because obviously she just ran at regular speed and they shot with a high-speed camera, which slows down the action. So she's either riffing on a joke that she doesn't get or she really thinks she ran down beaches super slowly. Umm, how does THAT save the lives of drowning people? 

She's also been married four times, once to rocker Tommy Lee, which everyone knows about, and once to Kid Rock, which everyone has forgotten about. There was a professional poker player after that and when this doc was made she was married to her bodyguard, but then it seems they grew apart after quarantining together during the pandemic. Well, that can happen. But I saw something on Instagram the other day about what people say when their friends get married for the second time, they say things like, "Everyone's allowed a mistake. Maybe keep it a little smaller this time though. And when a friend gets married for the fourth time, people say, "Maybe just hit the courthouse and send out an e-mail, you can't keep putting people through this emotionally and financially." And when a friend gets married for the fourth time, they say, "Respectfully...maybe marriage is not your thing." If a friend should get married for the fifth time, though, it's OK to say, "Honestly, now it's kind of inspiring. You've shown a level of optimism the rest of us can only dream of."

So Pamela Anderson is kind of displaying an optimism that most of us can only dream of, after so many marriages most people would be down on all relationships because it would seem that none of them, NONE OF THEM, work out. Well, over time, that would be true, none of them last forever, for one reason or another. Hey, it's not about how many times life knocks you down, it's about how many times you get up again. She has two sons with Tommy Lee, and they've been co-parenting them together for years, so why not just get back together? Certainly there must be a reason that's not stated outright here, or she just has bad memories of some kind of abuse. But this is another constant factor in her life, because she talks about being molested by a (female) babysitter when she was young, and then of course Playboy Inc. totally exploited her (even if she doesn't realize it) so you know, maybe moving back to Vancouver to be near her parents was the right move. (Her parents got remarried at some point, history of course doesn't repeat itself but it sometimes rhymes...)

Of course, she didn't stay in Vancouver, she took an opportunity to come to Broadway and rehearse to take over the Roxie role in "Chicago" for eight months, and she got pretty good reviews for that. We can assume that somehow led to the "Naked Gun" movie, but that must have happened after the documentary wrapped. So she's back on the scene, but we're just not sure for how long. I think maybe the healthiest thing to do would be to stop watching old tapes from past relationships, considering the history around her and Tommy and videotapes. But what do I know, I'm going through all my old photos and re-posting them on Instagram for Throwback Thursday and Flashback Friday...

Directed by Ryan White (director of "Good Night Oppy")

Also starring Pamela Anderson, Brandon Thomas Lee, Dylan Lee, Rob Bowman, Gregory Butler, Jeff Gorti, Dan Hayhurst

with archive footage of Julian Assange (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), Scott Baio (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Joy Behar (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Michael Berk, Yasmine Bleeth, Dean Cain (last seen in "Out of Time"), David Charvet, Katie Couric (last seen in "Martha"), David Chokachi, Tony Curtis (last seen in "Being Eddie"), Fran Drescher (last seen in "Marty Supreme"), Kathie Lee Gifford (last seen in "Child Star"), Bob Guccione, David Hasselhoff (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Hugh Hefner, David Hogan, Jimmy Kimmel (last seen in "Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story"), Larry King (last seen in "Big Miracle"), Matt Lauer (also carrying over from "Lorne"), Dennis Miller (ditto), Tommy Lee (last seen in "I Am Sam Kinison"), Jay Leno (also last seen in "Being Eddie"), David Letterman (ditto), Robin Quivers (ditto), Howard Stern (ditto), Ed Masry, Bret Michaels, Piers Morgan (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Nick Offerman (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), Alexandra Paul, Sean Penn (last seen in "One Battle After Another"), Regis Philbin (last seen in "Valerie"), Kid Rock, Seth Rogen (last seen in "Flipside"), Rick Salomon, Kelly Slater, Sylvester Stallone (also last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Jon Stewart (last seen in "Rather"), Mario Van Peebles (last seen in "Heartbreak Ridge"), Seth Warshafsky, Vivienne Westwood

RATING: 5 out of 10 inappropriate questions from talk-show hosts