I was sitting at a picnic table the other day talking to Pamela Anderson.
Mind you, the blond bombshell was 4,000 or so kilometres away.
Anderson was in a Vancouver hotel room doing interviews to promote her new TV series "Pam: Girl on the Loose" (airing Sunday evenings on E). I was sitting in the shade at a picnic table at a cottage on Ontario's Bruce Peninsula, frantically jotting down the broken conversation while struggling to get clear cellphone reception.
Not being able to see Anderson during an interview is just plain wrong. Barely being able to hear her is perhaps less tragic but also wrong when her words are why you are being assigned to write the story in the first place.
Plus - and this didn't surprise me because I have spoken with her in the past - she's a great interview. No publicist comes on the line beforehand with a "don't go there" list. Ask Anderson any question and she answers it.
For example: "Do you think Tommy Lee will always be a character in your life?"
The question is asked because Lee, the aggressively tattooed Motley Crue drummer who is the father of her two children, pops in an out of "Girl on the Loose" despite the fact Anderson has been in several relationships since their sometimes stormy union.
"I can't get rid of him!" Anderson says. "He's relentless - he doesn't go away!"
Anderson says Lee wouldn't even take the hint when she told him she had just got married. "That sucks," Lee told her. "Get rid of him." Which she did. Anderson's latest marriage, to Rick Salomon, lasted four months.
The B.C. native knows that people will always be more intrigued by her personal life than anything she has to say. That's why she agreed to do this eight-episode series, which she insists is not a reality show but a documentary.
She says she doesn't really watch other celebrity reality shows - she mainly watches sports on TV or her son's favourite network, the Military Channel. Still, her production partners are the same people who have produced reality shows with Tammy Faye Bakker, Monica Lewinsky, Heidi Fleiss and Tori Spelling.
So even if she doesn't watch it, Anderson gets that "this is what people watch. This is modern television."
Anderson is nothing if not pragmatic. She's been on several scripted series -"Baywatch," of course; her syndicated all girl detective series "V.I.P."; and her short-lived Fox sitcom "Stacked." All have taken full advantage of Anderson's physical assets as well as her tabloid reputation. None of these roles has thrown a scare into, say, Meryl Streep.
"I never really considered myself much of an actress," she volunteers. "I like filmmaking and I'm a bit of an exhibitionist. I've found a way to combine both passions."
Besides, as she says, "it's pop culture."
Anderson, also an executive producer, was given full artistic control on this series. She gets behind as well as in front of the camera and shoots everything on 16 mm and 8 mm film instead of video, achieving a grainy, over-saturated, '60s effect.
"I never shoot with a video camera," says Anderson, who I guess doesn't count that infamous porn tape she shot with Lee.
The 41-year-old gets that she is as much of a pop icon as Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup can or his Elvis or Marilyn pop art portraits, and shoots herself accordingly. Split screens, overlapping dissolves and other camera tricks add to the retro look. (Although, scrawling hand-written words on screen in purple letters rocket it all up to the Perez Hilton-influenced Internet age.)
Of course, Anderson also gets that people want to see her in the flesh as well as on the loose. There are plenty of glimpses of Anderson's curves in the two episodes I screened, including her posing in the buff for her friend/photographer David LaChapelle.
There are also plenty of mentions of Anderson's favourite cause, PETA. The devoted animal-rights activist says getting that message across was part of her motivation to do this series.
Anderson the producer also wants people to see her as a dedicated mother, so it is a bit ironic that she's willing to show her body on camera but not her kids. You do get a sense they are around, as when they travel with her on a business trip to Dubai (she's involved in a hotel development there). You see the back of their heads, arms and legs, but never their faces.
"They're around all the time but not exploited," she says. "I don't want cameras always around them. I want them to be raised as normally as possible in this abnormal environment."
Her base is Malibu where, as you see on the series, she is building an environmentally friendly "green" house. Home, though, will always be Vancouver, where she is also developing property.
"When I come here, I'm so happy I'm home," she says. "I'm a girl from here, and I'm pretty proud of what I have accomplished."
