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- [00:01]
Capella University
Imagine what's possible when learning doesn't get in the way of life. At Capella University, our game changing flexpath learning format lets you set your own deadline so you can learn at a time and pace that works for you. It's an education you can tailor to your schedule. That means you don't have to put your life on hold to pursue your professional goals. Instead, enjoy learning your way and earn your degree without missing a beat. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella. Edu.
- [00:32]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Campsite Media.
- [00:40]
Host/Interviewer
We'Re here today with Amanda Chicago Lewis, who is an investigative reporter and an amazing human being and also covers a lot of things that are quite infamous and has in her career. She is well known as the person who tracked down the guy who stole the Pam and Tommy Lee sex tape. And the Hulu series, if you watched it, was actually based on her Rolling Stone article about that. So we are going to be talking about sex tapes quite a bit in this episode. And particularly an article that she also wrote for Wired in 2021 about a guy named Kevin Blatt, a celebrity sex tape broker who she also called the Forrest Gump of 21st century scandal in that article. And he is recently in the for threatening Kanye west to potentially release Kanye West's sex tape that apparently he was working with Kanye to keep quiet. So it's a sleaze fest. We're excited to get into it. Thank you so much Amanda for being here.
- [01:45]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Thanks for having me and thanks for saying so many kind words.
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Host/Interviewer
Yeah, I'm glad you didn't take offense to being a purveyor of analysis of sleaze.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Oh my gosh. I hope that on my tombstone it says something about like resuscitated Pamela Anderson's career though she really did that herself. But I did have a brawl.
- [02:03]
Host/Interviewer
I mean she's, you know, a beacon of light. I love her. She's a lovely human being through and through. She's an optimistic glass half full person and I'm glad that she's having a renaissance and coming out without her makeup on. I mean it is a bit sad that like the only middle aged woman who can go out without her makeup on is the woman who we all agree was like the hottest one from the 80s. So thereby she still looks great. You know, obviously her documentary that she made about was really good. Really, really good. Really, really honest, you know, mostly. And I think that the story that you wrote and what you uncovered about her sex tape, it's become a bit of A trope to be like, oh, she was a villain back then, and she was just supposed to be a sex crazed hoe. And now we think that she was actually a victim. But in this case, Pamela Anderson was truly a victim.
- [02:59]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
She would not want you to say that. She's not even.
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Host/Interviewer
Well, tell me about it.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
When I went back, this was in 2014, and I read all of the media coverage of Pamela Anderson from the very beginning of her career. She's just unapologetically herself at all moments. They're like, oh, like, how many men have you slept with? And she's like, five. I remember that because I think she was 27 when she said that, and I was 27 when I was reading that. And I was like, you've only slept with five men. What are you really you? Pamela Anderson, she was just a normal, comfortable, happy woman. But the thing with the sex tape is that it was literally stolen from their house, which now I think people know. And I'm very grateful that that information has made it to the masses because certainly when I was reporting the story, the narrative publicly, and what I had believed was that they put it out themselves for publicity to get attention and not that, you know, sort of a parallel thing was everyone was desperate for making money off of their image and getting in on their success and their fame. And that force is what drove the popularity of the sex tape and the safe to be stolen essentially in the first place.
- [04:22]
Host/Interviewer
Totally.
- [04:22]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
It's. Yeah. Anyway, so I think, like, people, just people are so. We're so mean to her. And I think it's not that she's a victim, but it's that what the public believed was wrong and made her look really bad when in fact, there was no reason for that.
- [04:41]
Host/Interviewer
Right. She was a woman. With her. I don't know if they were married at the time, but okay. Her husband exploring her sexuality, being silly. It's a very silly sexuality. Ways they were just having fun. You know, they're holding. It's like a handheld little camcorder. It's not as though, you know, I didn't mean victim in that she's being set up to have sex on tape, but she certainly had this stolen and she didn't want it out there. Right. Which is the big question about sex tapes is like, who wants it out there? Who doesn't want it out there?
- [05:14]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Right. And. Well, and the confusion about Pam and Tommy is what led other people in the future to exploit that confusion and be like, oh, no, it was stolen.
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Host/Interviewer
So the next one that is Famous is also by somebody that I have a vague connection to, who is Paris Hilton. So. So I was assigned a story by Rolling Stone to interview Paris Hilton when she was on the simple life. And 20 minutes before I'm supposed to meet her at some, you know, celebrity sushi restaurant, her publicist calls me up and says, hey, Paris doesn't have her car tonight, so if you can drive her home after the sushi restaurant interview, that would be awesome. And I was like, oh, yeah, I can drive Farah Sultan home, no problem.
- [06:03]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Right?
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Host/Interviewer
So I walk into this restaurant, and it's like, Paris and Casey Johnson, who was the Johnson and Johnson heir that was dating Tila Tequila. And Paris is just in full form, and she's like, yo, you know, what's up? How are you? And I was really young at this time, right? So I'm like, yeah, down to, like, join your fun. Hang here over sushi. And she's just playing with her phone. She was like, oh, my God. I was just like, on a yacht in the Mediterranean. All these people are like, calling me, and I'm like, bitches, I'm in the Mediterranean. I cannot hear you. And then she's like, hey, we're going to my sister Nikki's birthday party at this club. You know, why don't you come? And I'm like, sure. Tara Reid gets in the car. Yo, what's up?
- [06:49]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
You know, you're the designated driver.
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Host/Interviewer
I'm the designated driver for these people. We get to the club sheet, I had a sunroof in my car. She pops out the sunroof and starts yelling, hey, like, bitches over there, what's up? And then she's like, oh, no, I don't know those people. Like, she's fully crazy, right? And awesome, by the way. I should say awesome.
- [07:10]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Whoa.
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Host/Interviewer
She and Tara Reid disappear into a bathroom for, like, 20 minutes. I don't know what happened in there. This whole night happens. Basically, we end up with the guys from Limp Bizkit, and somebody stole our purses. Wake up the next morning, and obviously I have a million messages from the publicist. And she's like, what happened? You told me to drive her home. I mean, I did eventually drive her home.
- [07:34]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Was this all in the story?
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Host/Interviewer
Yes, it's all in the story.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Oh, I have to go. I'm sure I read it at the time, so.
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Host/Interviewer
But then, basically, they're freaking out to the point where I'm like, I don't know why you guys are freaking out about this so much. Her image is to be a Crazy party girl heiress. So what exactly are we talking about? Nothing that bad happened. Freaking out. Freaking out. And I'm like, look, I still need to do the sit down. And they're like, you can go to Kyle Richards house and you can sit with Kyle and Paris and do the sit down. Of course I go there and it's totally weird. She's back in her pretending to be little girl Persona. Everything you see about Paris in public is not who she is. Right. And I'm just like, why are these people being so hella intense about this? This is Rolling Stone. Who cares? And like two days later, the sex tape comes out.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
So this was the fall of 03.
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Host/Interviewer
It was the fall of 03 when.
- [08:27]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
The show was coming out.
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Host/Interviewer
Yes.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
And she was back in LA when you saw her and you wrote it because she found out that the tape was gonna come. She was in Australia when she found out about the tape. So if she was post Australia, she knew about this when she was with you?
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Host/Interviewer
Probably. Okay, yeah.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
I'm like, how long did it take you to write the story?
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Host/Interviewer
Yeah, exactly. I don't know. I mean. Cause if a month passed 20 years ago.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Host/Interviewer
But I might. I know.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
How weird is it that I'm like, well, hold on. Well, because also, there's two moments when the tape, quote unquote, came out.
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Host/Interviewer
Okay, so let's get into this. So I said two days, you know, two days later. I mean, do I remember? This was 20 years ago. It could have been two months later, but in some short amount of time. Right, but you tell me what the.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
I know what the sequence of events.
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Host/Interviewer
I know where Pierce Hilton was when she found out about her siblings.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Such a loser.
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Host/Interviewer
It's like so much so. Okay, you know, the fascinating thing is this catapulted her into. I was just a reporter being assigned to write a two page story off of a dumb reality show she had.
- [09:27]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Right, right, right. I mean, I. This accelerated what was already happening. She was very famous already, and this sort of brought it to a new level. And the combination of it coming out when the simple life was coming out at this perfect moment for reality tv. But that's what happened. But in fact, the tape would not have been worth anything if she had not already been this, like, partying hard, tabloid darling.
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Host/Interviewer
Yeah, it wasn't the simple way.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Yeah. Like increasing over the course of the year. Ish. Before she was already becoming this tabloid darling. She got this reality TV show in the works. They had shot the reality TV show. I think it had done really well at upfronts in maybe September or something. And so maybe like two years earlier, when she was 19, she had slept with this guy, Rick Solomon. I wanna say it was Shannen Doherty that he dated. It was.
- [10:22]
Host/Interviewer
Okay, great.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Okay. So he had this reputation for sleeping with starlets. He was drinking a lot. He was doing a lot of drugs. He's sober now, so I can say that. And he's a gambler. Like, he's a poker player. A successive gambler. He later married Pamela Anderson. Like Rick Salman. Fascinating character.
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Host/Interviewer
Wow.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
And he loved filming his encounters. And I think this is maybe a novelty in the 90s and the early 2000s, back when it was not everybody, you didn't have a video camera in your pocket. Like, people would bring out the camcorder and then they would watch it later. And it was a private thing, and it was definitely a rich person toy. And so it was a celebrity toy. And some people were into that. Who cares? People are into that now. And so Rick Salman filmed a lot of his sexual encounters.
- [11:08]
Host/Interviewer
Ah. So not just with Paris.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Oh, he had, like, a library, if I recall correctly.
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Host/Interviewer
Does that library come out?
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
No, this is this. Because I think what happened was Paris had the TV show coming out and she had all this tabloid coverage. So I called Rick Solomon for this story, for the Wired story that we're here to talk about. How did I get his number? How did I get him to talk to me when the story was coming out? But it's so buried in the middle of this Wired story that I don't think tabloids picked up on it. No one really came off on it, but I was like, this is really interesting. Rick Solomon has never talked about this on the record before.
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Host/Interviewer
Goes back to like. Yeah, I mean, this stuff is important. Or is it?
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Yeah, it's really. It's just. It's important in the history of the Internet and also, I think in the history of, I don't know, like, feminism of the last 30 years and pop culture dramatically changed.
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Host/Interviewer
Yeah.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
So Rick Solomon got angry at Paris because she crashed his Escalade and did not apologize. This is the inciting incident that caused the Paris Hilton sex tape phenomenon.
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Host/Interviewer
Nice.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Okay. She crashes the Escalade. He gets upset. She does not apologize. She does not pay for it to be fixed. He's like, fine. Well, fuck you. So he goes and he gets the sex tape, and then he goes to.
- [12:28]
Host/Interviewer
Visit Larry Flynt, as when does.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
And he's like, let's put this out. Like, fuck her. And, you know, Larry Flynt. I Feel like I remember. I can, like, remember what the office looked like almost, because I can remember Rick Solomon's description of the Office.
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Host/Interviewer
Is it, like, golden?
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
What are these, like, fake memories? In my mind, it's like white doily, rose gold, crushed velvet energy. But, like, is that a. My memory of a memory of someone who actually was there?
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Host/Interviewer
History is written by many authors. Yeah.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
So. And Larry Flynt was like, where's your paperwork? Because you can't sell porn without A, signatures from the people who are on camera saying they're over 18, and B, copyright release. And so Rick could sign the copyright release because he's the one who shot it. But Paris hadn't signed anything. So Larry Flynn was like, no, I can't put this out for you. And then Rick Salman's friend, maybe like, sometime roommate, grabbed the tape and sold it for 50 grand to these guys in Seattle who were like, early sort of Internet porn pioneers, right? Those guys were like, okay, we cannot distribute this because we do not have the paperwork for it now. They don't even.
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Host/Interviewer
Rick's.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Now they don't even have bricks. So they have none of the paperwork that you need. However, a celebrity sex tape, as we know from, you know, Pam and Tommy, can attract a ton of attention, and the public is totally confused about whether or not you are allowed to just put this out there. So we will announce that we have it. We will tell people we are going to stream it or put it on the website, and then everyone will come to our website and we will sell ads against that.
- [14:07]
Host/Interviewer
Yes.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
And their website, which was called sexbrat.com.
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Host/Interviewer
Oh, God.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Right.
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Host/Interviewer
I remember that.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
This is like a pre charli xcx brat, but sexbrat.com and then they hired Kevin Blatt, our man, to do the publicity for this. Because at this point, Kevin Blatt had essentially become the go between for the porn world and mainstream media.
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Host/Interviewer
Right? So Kevin Blatt is. We're talking about the celebrity sex broker that we referenced at the top. Who is this guy? Where did he grow up? What's his deal?
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Oh, Kevin Blatt. I have spent so much time with Kevin Blatt. He is from Cleveland, Ohio. This is just a true hustler from the jump. And he knows how to turn $2 into $200. And he's really good at getting in with people and charming people. And he's, you know, he's a sales guy. He turns stuff around. And so he had gone out to LA with his brother. They got involved in early porn stuff. Really good at just sort of like getting rich people to throw him some money for not a lot of work and just ingratiating himself with everyone. Yeah, the people in Seattle who had this Internet porn company call him and they're like, can you do publicity for us to make money off of this? You know, pretending that we're gonna sell the tape.
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Host/Interviewer
Right.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
He's like, obviously, yes. This is what he does. If you have a celebrity sex tape, if you don't have the permission of the people who are on the tape, you cannot sell it through a mainstream real porn outlet. However, you can do one of two things. One, you can, like, release it illegally. So whatever is the way to do that on the Internet at the moment. You know, if it's like torrenting or if it's 8chan, or if it's Pam and Tommy, it was, you know, random website. Here's a address that you send a money order to. It's like a T shirt company in Canada and we will mail you a vhs. But we got the money to do this from the mafia and we're breaking the law. So at the era of Paris Hilton, it was sort of like this threat that we'll do this or the other way to do it is just to tell people that the tape exists. Kevin Blatt, our man.
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Host/Interviewer
Yeah.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Hush money fixer who calls himself a celebrity sex tape broker, emails a three minute clip. Because that's about how big of a file you could email in 2003 to two people. Someone at Us Weekly and someone at Entertainment Tonight to prove that the sex tape exists and that they have it.
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Host/Interviewer
Yeah.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Okay. And then now they can write about it to get the press right. These people show it to someone, show it to someone, forward it, forward it, forward it, forward it. Suddenly, everyone, within like a week. I was in high school, I had seen it within a week because you were just forwarding the tape all around the world. And so now all of a sudden, and let's be clear now, it's revenge porn. This is what we would call it now, because with absolutely no permission or knowledge from Paris, Truly, in an attempt to get back at her for something actual revenge, Rick Solomon wanted the tape to be out there, even though he was not the person who caused it to be out there in this exact situation. He was trying to put it out there, and the roommate and the friend sort of got out before him. So now this three minute clip of her having sex with him has gone everywhere.
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Host/Interviewer
Yeah.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
And people assume it's to promote the show, which is coming Out a month or two later, a month and a half later.
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Host/Interviewer
Right.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
She's totally mortified. Everybody's suing each other. You know, she gets the guys in Seattle to give her back the original copy.
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Host/Interviewer
Okay.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
But then the Simple Life comes out and it's an enormous hit. I think you might have even. She canceled a lot of press. So you probably got in there right before she canceled all this press.
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Host/Interviewer
You know, actually, now that I'm thinking through this, it might have been that I knew her as this crazy heiress partier. And the Simple Life was announced and I booked the interview to come out and coincide with release. So it probably wasn't out yet.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Yeah, I think that's probably what happened. Makes more sense because it came out in, I want to say, end of November, beginning of December of 2003. And it was the first episode or the second episode aired at the same time as like George W. Bush interview talking about the capture of Saddam Hussein. And the Simple Life got more viewers.
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Host/Interviewer
Oh my go. We're such a, such a, such a smart country. Yeah, but then she wants a piece of it or what happens?
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
I mean, I think she was back into a corner. And it's possible she's. I don't think she's spoken about this part publicly. I know that she said the experience of the three minute clip going around the world felt like being electronically raped. A legitimate porn company released an extended version of the tape in the spring, and that version sold like 20 million, $20 million worth of, you know, whatever. So there was a full version of the tape that was legally released. And in order for it to have been legally released, we can deduce that she must have put her signature somewhere.
- [19:47]
Meghan Trainor
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- [20:16]
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- [20:51]
Host/Interviewer
This is infamous from Campside Media. So that brings us to her mentee, Kim Kardashian tape, which, you know, everybody will tell you that they know that she released that tape right? At the time, she was Paris's personal stylist or whatever. You know, they were homies, they were hanging out. She was not anybody who was well known outside of Beverly Hills, although her father, having been O.J. s lawyer, was pretty prominent. Her mother was a super go getter. She knew all the people there were to know. Right. Is that the truth? Like what, what happened there? The thing people say is, like, she copied Paris because she knew this was the way to get famous.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Well, she didn't copy Paris because Paris got backed into a corner, right? Like, you know, Pam and Tommy, full stolen release without their permission. Two years of them trying to stop it. And then they signed paperwork that I think they didn't understand and that they were just trying to make the whole thing go away. And I think there was some confusion because then there was a later lawsuit about it after they signed that paperwork, which again, was like two or three years after it had been stolen already had been seen by millions and millions of people. Then it was released by Vivid, mainstream porn company, Paris, illegal three minute clip ricocheting around the Internet over email. And then five months later, four months later or something, the full thing is released by a mainstream porn company. Right.
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Host/Interviewer
So neither of them are great situations.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
Sure, Kim. There is never an illegal release. There is never something that comes out in some kind of, you know, shady Internet corner or send you a VHS in the mail situation. What happens is, I think there's an announcement that the tape exists. Very quickly, there's a lawsuit. The lawsuit has, like, no filings. Now, this might be the moment where I talk about how much time I've spent in the basement archives of the court in Los Angeles looking through all of the lawsuits around celebrity sex tapes. Oh, my God. And I will tell you, most of them are quite extensive. There's a lot of filings. The Kim Kardashian sex tape lawsuit. I think there's just one filing. Like, we're gonna sue Vivid, the biggest porn company at that time, and that's it. And then they dropped the lawsuit. And Curious, very shortly after that, the sex tape is for sale with Vivid. So Steve Hirsch, who was the head of Vivid, later said, I think the New York Post did a oral history of the Kim Kardashian sex tape, maybe 10 year anniversary. So the tape came out in 2007, so that must have been 2017. And so Steve Hirsch said on the record in that oral history, again, buried in the oral history, that she signed the paperwork to allow the release. That was like March of 2007. And then keeping up with the Kardashians came out, I think, in August, something like this.
- [24:01]
Host/Interviewer
But wasn't this whole thing put into. Into action by Ray J or who was the prime mover?
- [24:09]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
I don't think I can tell you who the prime mover was. The tape existed meaning, like, they had had sex and been dating a couple years earlier. Ray J. Who? Poor Ray J. Truly, I was gonna do like a justice for Ray J story at a certain point, particularly when they used Ray J to launch the new Hulu version of the Kardashians show. So shout out to Ray J. Much love, but, I mean, Kevin Blatt's story is that Ray J approached him and his friend Farley and was like, I have this tape. Let's sell it. And I think was like, I have the signatures. Let's go. And then I think Farley connected Ray J to Steve Hirsch, and then they cut Farley out. So I think he didn't make any money on that. Sorry, Farley.
- [25:00]
Host/Interviewer
Yeah.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
What? I know Kim was not the person going to the meetings, but it's essentially like, you have to understand this. If it's being sold by a real porn company, right, Everyone who's on camera doing anything sexual, or anyone who's on camera needs to have a signature on a piece of paper that is held somewhere. And particularly, you know, the big deal porn company Vivid, at the time, the.
- [25:30]
Host/Interviewer
Biggest company, right, would have just been sued up the wall.
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Amanda Chicago Lewis
You can't. Yeah, it's hard because there's a difference between something that spreads illegally and something that's sold by a legitimate seller. And you see this in all kinds of vice, like quasi legal industries. I mean, there are bodegas all around New York selling joints that are not technically licensed by the state of New York to be selling cannabis, but they're doing it anyway. And why would anyone know the difference between that and the recreational cannabis shops other than the fact that the shops are, like, much more expensive and the weed might be a little bit better? Yeah, I guess I have made a career off of things that are quasi legal and being like, this is what's.
- [26:11]
Host/Interviewer
Legal and this is not. I mean, you could have fun as an attorney, I think, with all these gradations of gray. Meghan Trainor, laundry retrainer.
- [26:28]
Meghan Trainor
Meghan Trainor, you're tossing out my gunky laundry detergent bottle.
- [26:33]
Host/Interviewer
Ooey. It's got that booty that juicy boom boom that don't hide alive.
- [26:41]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Arm and hammer power sheets toss like this?
- [26:44]
Host/Interviewer
Cause I toss like this. I wash like this It's a no mess laundry blitz Arm and hammer power sheets more power to you.
- [26:55]
Capella University
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- [26:59]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Who's paying for the mattress Topper?
- [27:01]
McAfee
You mean the bean bag chair?
- [27:03]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Aren't we getting a mini fridge? Can we create a pool on PayPal? It lets us collect the money before we buy.
- [27:09]
Host/Interviewer
Oh, yes, that's smart.
- [27:11]
McAfee
Glad we can agree on something.
- [27:13]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Easily.
- [27:14]
Capella University
Pool split and Send Money with PayPal. Get started in the PayPal app. A PayPal account is required to send and receive money.
- [27:20]
Host/Interviewer
A balance account is required to create a pool. This is infamous from Campside Media. I do think we should talk about the Hulk Hogan sex tape for a second, which in our world was a massive teutonic shift because it shifted the journalism around gossip in a really profound way, or at least a perception of what you could report. And that was, you know the website Gawker? That was a big sort of very funny, very knowing, very literate gossip site. Something you never see really anymore reported on, even maybe showed the Hulk Hogan sex tape again. Posted by an editor who was having severe substance problems and is now in recovery.
- [28:06]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Yeah.
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Host/Interviewer
So what happened?
- [28:07]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
RIP Gawker? I'm so. I'm remain sad that this does not exist as it existed at that time.
- [28:12]
Host/Interviewer
Me too.
- [28:13]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
They were sent the Hulk Hogan tape. There were a number of legal issues around the Hulk Hogan tape beyond the fact that they had not signed the paperwork to show it was right. It was Hulk Hogan having sex with his friend Bubba the Love Sponge, who was a radio host. His wife.
- [28:34]
Host/Interviewer
Right.
- [28:35]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
And there was a hidden camera in the bedroom that captured them having sex. And Hulk Hogan did not know he was being recorded, which is. Haven't even signed the paperwork. Didn't know he was being recorded.
- [28:47]
Host/Interviewer
And so Bubble of Love Sponge is the one who wanted to like, if.
- [28:50]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
I recall, I don't remember. There's a whole trial transcript, but I think it might have been. I think it might have been something like that or someone else saw. I mean, like once these things exist, someone knows you can make money off of it.
- [29:01]
Host/Interviewer
Sure. Yeah.
- [29:02]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
And in fact, the way to make it recycled. I mean, this is the other thing about things that are quasi legal. What the public understands about how you make money is generally wrong. Because this is what it is with Kevin Blatt. You can make money by keeping it quiet, not by putting it out and selling it. And so capture and kill. Exactly. So they sent the tape to Gawker. Probably. I mean, I don't know the details here, but probably trying to do what they were doing with the Paris Hilton tape, which is get attention for something, bring all the eyeballs to a website and then sell ads against it, affiliate marketing, who knows, whatever's going on there. And instead Gawker posted the tape, or posted part of the tape, which you are not allowed to do, which is really like fun gossip site flying by the seat of their pants. Not maybe don't have a lawyer on staff or not thinking about we should call a lawyer before we do this. Or who knows?
- [30:01]
Host/Interviewer
Just thinking, everybody gets away with it, so why wouldn't we? And we'll get clicks. And then billionaire Peter Thiel, who is very angry that Gawker has reported that he's gay, which we could also say was not. Not a great thing that they did there.
- [30:15]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
But not illegal.
- [30:16]
Host/Interviewer
Not illegal, but not. Also like outing somebody is not. Not fantastic. He decides to fund a massive lawsuit.
- [30:24]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Yeah. Because this was an opportunity where Gawker did something illegal.
- [30:29]
Host/Interviewer
Yeah.
- [30:30]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
And it was very easy to prove that what they had done was illegal, but the public did not understand that what Gawker had done was illegal.
- [30:37]
Host/Interviewer
So basically today, what is the situation? Because as we know, amateurs are doing sex tapes all over the place.
- [30:46]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Yeah. So it's complicated. I mean, like, first, just with celebrity sex tapes, Kim Kardashian's tape sort of ushered in this era of releasing your own sex tape and calling it stolen. Right. Which the public sort of started to figure out by 2012, 2013. I remember there was a teen mom, if you remember that show person who was on Teen mom, she had sex with the porn star James Dean.
- [31:14]
Host/Interviewer
Oh, right.
- [31:15]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
And they pretended it was stolen and it was just so clearly staged. He's a porn star. I mean, it was a whole thing. And so, like, by then, you know, this is not real. Which sort of. But it is this weird, like, squishy truth thing where people were like, what's going on now? Having never uploaded a pornographic video to a site like that myself, myself, my guess and my understanding is you have to click something that says, I attest that I'm over 18. Blah, blah, blah, I have permission to give you this video. I remember maybe in the last 5ish years, Nick Kristoff at the Times had a whole thing of there's all this child porn on one of the sites. So I think, look, this is, you know, the perennial question about the Internet. The Internet is sort of, in certain ways, ungovernable, because as much as it's become more corporate and as much as First Amendment lawyers will say, well, it's just like any other medium, they have to follow the rules or we're going to sue them, the truth is that it's just so much bigger and more complicated and filled with all these shady little loopholes in every corner that something can spread, something can spread illegally very easily. Whereas, like, with Pam and Tommy, one of the guys who had an early access to the tape was literally selling VHS out of his trunk in grocery store parking lots. I mean, he made like, 70 grand that way. You know. Now, you probably wouldn't make very much money off of it, though, because generally, there's not a lot of money in porn right now unless you own one of those giant sites.
- [32:50]
Host/Interviewer
Right? Yeah. So what just happened with Kevin and Kanye? Oh, my God, I love that. That popped up just before we were doing this interview.
- [33:00]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
I know. And, Kevin, I'm sure you're listening. I love you. I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was doing this interview or reach out to see what happened with Kanye. I didn't have the energy. But of course, my friend, who also. Anyway, a friend of mine texted me as this was happening. And look, Kevin Blatt is the Forrest Gump of celebrity scandal because he knows how to insert himself.
- [33:22]
Host/Interviewer
Yeah.
- [33:22]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
He's also Jewish, and he is proud of being Jewish. So I am not going to cast aspersions on his intentions in this situation. But let's just remember that he's very good at getting attention.
- [33:36]
Host/Interviewer
Right.
- [33:36]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
But I also think he was probably legitimately pissed off at Kanye's, you know, Nazi turn, whether sincere or not, on either of their parts. I mean, like, both Kanye and Kevin Blatt are total attention trolls.
- [33:50]
Host/Interviewer
Sure.
- [33:50]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
But so, right, Kanye's in his Nazi era. Kevin Blatt was like, no, I hate you. And I'm really this Jew. I mean, you could probably read the quote, I don't have it in front of me, but it's something really funny and perfectly Kevin Blatt. That's like, this Jew is, you know, pissed off, and I'm gonna put out your sex tape. And the fact that Kanye had a sex tape is well known. He rapped about it on, I think, Life of Pablo album. He. It's like, I had a laptop that I was fucking bitches on, like. And then he paid his cousin $250,000 to get it from him. Right. This is in the song Real friends.
- [34:30]
Host/Interviewer
Yeah.
- [34:31]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
So wait, Cousin, not a real friend.
- [34:32]
Host/Interviewer
Flat said, I'll be damned if I'm gonna sit back and watch this proliferation of Nazism and fascism take over this country again and not saying anything. It's time to blow a whistle on these people.
- [34:42]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Wait, wait, hold on.
- [34:43]
Capella University
Oh, wait, wait.
- [34:44]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
I whistle is a too short reference because too short is his close friend.
- [34:49]
Host/Interviewer
I think this Jew should go public with the details of the sex tape I intercepted for Kanye the Nazi right before he met Kim K. It's a hell of a story and one of the worst performances, I'm sure, of his troubled life, so.
- [35:04]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Oh, yeah, and then he says he has a small dick, right? Yeah, I think that's what it.
- [35:06]
Host/Interviewer
Yeah, exactly. But he didn't want to have it out there. He put it down because years ago.
- [35:13]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Somewhere between 2012 and 2016.
- [35:15]
Host/Interviewer
Yeah, but not because he was starting to date Kim and he didn't want it out there just because he didn't want a sex tape of him out there. Kanye was like, no, that's not good for me.
- [35:24]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
The content of the tapes and potentially the size of the member have not been public.
- [35:29]
Host/Interviewer
Right.
- [35:29]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
And now, you know, Kevin is threatening, I guess, to talk about it, and Kanye replied. Somebody, like, tagged Kanye on Twitter, and then Kanye, quote, tweeted it, and now everyone is attentioning themselves to death.
- [35:45]
Host/Interviewer
Yeah. Well, there you go. That's our culture. So, like, where does this all. Where does this sex tape over it go in five years, 10 years? Like, where are we going with this?
- [35:55]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Well, I mean, we're in a very different place from where we were 20 years ago in the sense that porn is extremely commonplace. In the 90s, porn was still illegal in a lot of places. Just watching it or making it or distributing it.
- [36:08]
Host/Interviewer
Yeah.
- [36:09]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
And so now porn is everywhere. It's kind of unstoppable. You know, I think children, it's very easy to find and watch porn. So I think we are a little bit numb to it. I also think it's less about. I mean, the funny thing about Kevin calling himself a celebrity sex day broker is it's almost. That's a misnomer to kind of bring in the kinds of. Of things that he actually can do something with, because he's not distributing celebrity sex tapes, which I think then was a porn genre, quote unquote, you know, Like, I think Vivid had, like, a series celebrity sex tapes. They were not stolen but the stolenness was something that people were attracted to until everybody was like, oh, that's kind of messed up. But I think there will always be celebrities, even if very minor ones, and influencers and people who only have a niche audience. And there will always be things that the celebrities don't want the public to know, whether it's the truth about their Persona or their sex habits or their drug habits or their infidelity or what have you. And then there will be hangers on or angry ex lovers or family members who are mad. I mean, I love the. In the Wired article, I quote, like, when Kevin Hart, the comedian's friend, sold his sex tape or was trying to sell his sex tape, the emails around it, he said something about how there were 10 women with him in the hotel room that night. There were Kevin's friends there, too, but they only wanted to have sex with Kevin Hart. So I'm like, this, you know, entourage member was like, no groupies for me. I'm selling your sex tape and telling everybody you cheated on your wife. Which then Kevin Hart turned into, like, part of his bit, you know, There.
- [38:07]
Host/Interviewer
Will always be envious hangers on. Exactly.
- [38:10]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
We'll be like, how can I make. I'm not making enough money off of your thing. And so I'm gonna call Kevin Blatt and we're gonna figure out how I can get paid to keep quiet about your secret.
- [38:21]
Host/Interviewer
Exactly. He is like the cockroach at the apocalypse who's still around. But we love you, Kevin. All right, thank you so much, Amanda Chicago Lewis and incredible writer. Check out all of her work on a website called amandashicagoluis.com and thank you so much for being here.
- [38:40]
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Thank you for having me.
- [38:41]
Host/Interviewer
All right, we'll be back next week. Thanks again, everybody.
- [38:47]
Ben Wallace
Next week on Infamous, we'll be back with a brand new story. We're following the money straight into the murky world of bitcoin. Journalist Ben Wallace joins us to talk about his search for the person or people behind the world's most famous cryptocurrency and the wild theories about who they might be. Like, is it Elon Musk? Plus, we'll talk about what exactly did happen with the Hawk to a girl and her meme coin. As always, thank you so much for listening. We can't make this show without you. If you like it, please leave a rating and review. It helps us out a lot. See you next week.