HOT TOPIC: Psst! Wanna sell an image?

Celebrity sex tapes a disturbing trend with residual benefits

By Mike Pearson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 20, 2008 at 3 p.m.

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When R. Kelly was acquitted of sleeping with an underage girl last week, I was initially relieved.

No one wants a pedophile on their iPod.

Then I found myself puzzled.

Not at the acquittal, but the fact that Kelly brought the trouble on himself by indulging in a long-standing, common practice among celebrities: sex tapes.

Even the most prurient among us has to wonder whatever happened to common sense. Sure, video cameras have made amateur pornography commonplace, but celebrities have more to lose than most of us. Yet many can't seem to resist giving an X-rated performance that comes back to haunt them.

There was a time when news of a celebrity taped doing the nasty was big news. Now it's tantamount to saying the local grocery store is returning tomatoes to its shelves.

Remember the Rob Lowe scandal in the late '80s? Like Kelly, he was accused of having sex with an underage girl. Like Kelly, he was videotaped. And, like Kelly, that tape made the rounds, although back then the Internet wasn't nearly as viral as today.

Some celebrities owe their career to sex tapes. Literally. Paris Hilton's initial notoriety had nothing to do with her family's hotel holdings or her drunken driving arrests. It stemmed from the sex tape she made with then-boyfriend Rick Salomon, who sold it to Red Light Entertainment. Hilton threatened to stop distribution, then changed her mind. In 2006, her attorney told The New York Times that, yes, Paris gets residuals from the tape.

That video (A Night in Paris) remains the best-selling celebrity sex tape of all time, with more than 600,000 copies in circulation.

Since then, the number of celebrity sex tapes has snowballed. Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee claim a recording of their honeymoon tryst was stolen and leaked to the media. Unable to derail a runaway train, they agreed to share in the profits. (Anderson made a subsequent tape with Poison lead singer Bret Michaels.)

Actor Colin Farrell's sexual romp with 2002 Playmate Nicole Narain ended up in court (she wanted to sell it for $3 million; the judge forbade its release), but not before several sites posted it. Copies continue to circulate.

Kim Kardashian released a video of her romp with rapper Ray J, and sex tapes featuring Tom Sizemore, Fred Durst and Dustin Diamond are readily available.

Diamond - Screech, to you Saved By the Bell fans - went on Entertainment Tonight and swore he would fight tooth and nail to prevent the tape's release. Then someone reminded him that his 15 minutes of fame were up 15 years ago, and he agreed to let it be distributed for a percentage of the profits.

And what to make of the sex tape featuring Kid Rock and former Creed frontman Scott Stapp being serviced by groupies on a tour bus? They fought the release and won. Creed has been called a Christian rock band, so you have to wonder if Stapp's participation put him in the "damned" column.

You'd think that death might protect a celebrity from exploitation. Think again. There's now a grainy tape of Jimi Hendrix having sex with a groupie in the '60s on the market. I kid you not. And it was only a few months ago that a purported sex tape of Marilyn Monroe was offered for auction before being debunked.

Then there are tapes you wonder why any sentient being would want to watch. Amy Fisher sued to stop the release of a tape she made with her former husband Lou Bellera. I mean, she went to prison for shooting Mary Jo Buttafuoco in the face. Does she imagine seeing her naked would inspire anyone to heights of passion?

Tonya Harding and her husband tried to market a sex tape several years ago, as did former pro wrestler Chyna Doll (Joanie Laurer) and her husband.

What's next? Star Jones releasing a tape featuring she and her estranged husband doing unspeakable things on a roller coaster? (Please God, aren't earthquakes and floods enough punishment?)

Americans seem torn between puritanism and voyeurism. In private, we race to the Internet to see what's new, while in public we decry Miley Cyrus for showing a bare shoulder in Vanity Fair as if she's re-created a scene from Sodom and Gomorrah.

Perhaps we're lucky that sex tapes are a fairly recent invention. Imagine if video cameras were available in colonial America. Would we want to see Benjamin Franklin (allegedly a randy fellow) doing the deed with Betsy Ross?

Safe to say there will be more celebrity sex tapes in our future. Based on my research, just one bit of advice: Better lighting, please.

pearsonm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2592

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