Warning: SPOILERS for Pam & Tommy Episode 1 - "Drilling and Pounding"
In Pam & Tommy, Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan) refused to pay his contractor Rand Gauthier (Seth Rogan) the money he owes for the renovations to his Malibu mansion but he obviously had the money. Hulu's Pam & Tommy details the shocking true story of how Rand stole a sex tape of Tommy and Pamela Anderson and sold it for millions. Pam & Tommy makes it clear that Rand did it as revenge for Tommy stiffing him on the money he owed.
Pam & Tommy opens in mid-1995 after Lee and Anderson's whirlwind wedding after four days. The Mötley Crüe guitarist and his Baywatch babe wife decided to renovate Lee's Malibu estate as their honeymoon pad, although Tommy bragged to his hangers-on that he was making the ultimate rock star love nest. Tommy's "vision" included an elevated bed that he suddenly decided to have Rand tear and down and rebuilt on the other side of the bedroom. Not long after, Lee, who likes to talk to his penis, dropped the bombshell that he wants a waterbed instead, which would cost even more. Gauthier and his fellow contractor, Lonnie (Larry Brown), were forced to absorb the costs. Instead of paying them, Lee ignored them while constantly insisting "money is no object" and mocking Rand at gunpoint that he's good for the money. When Rand accidentally walked in on Pamela, an enraged Lee claimed the contractors' work was shoddy and that they were ripping him off so he fired Lonnie and Rand. Adding insult to injury, Lee even kept Rand's toolbox out of spite.
There's never any doubt in Pam & Tommy that Lee was enormously wealthy and could have paid Rand if he wanted to. As a founding member and drummer of Mötley Crüe, Tommy Lee was part of one of the biggest hair metal bands of the 1980s. Tommy bragged that he sold 50-million albums by Pam & Tommy's 1995 timeframe. Indeed, Mötley Crüe released five albums throughout the '80s, including the chart-topping hits Girls, Girls Girls and Dr. Feelgood, which earned the band millions. In addition, the Crüe made hundreds of thousands more from their live albums and compilations. By 1995, Lee had personally earned over $20-million from his rock star career and he could afford to live as large as he did. By contrast, Lee's new wife Pamela was earning $600,000 per episode of Baywatch, which netted her $6.6-million a year at the peak of her career.
Surrounded by the decadence of Tommy Lee's riches from Mötley Crüe, Rand and Lonnie were well-aware that the rock star could afford to pay for his lavish desires, but he didn't. The contractors claim they were promised to be paid upfront by Lee but he didn't follow through yet he still expected them to continue laboring on his "vision." Tommy also sabotaged their work by changing his mind mid-stream and demanding wildly expensive changes while not properly compensating Rand and Lonnie. If that wasn't bad enough, Pam & Tommy depicts Lee as a drunken, drug-taking, unstable bully who regularly ordered the construction workers around naked and wearing only tiny underwear when he wasn't amusing himself by pointing firearms at them.
There's enough truth in Pam & Tommy to make Lee's ridiculous and infuriating antics believable. Tommy was part of a generation of destructive and hedonistic rock stars and his behavior was typical of his era. However, by 1995, rockers like Tommy Lee and his band, Mötley Crüe, were unable to sell records after popular music culture shifted towards grunge bands like Nirvana and alternative music in the early 1990s. But considering the outrageous way Tommy Lee spent money, he could easily have afforded to make good on his debts to Rand Gauthier and Lonnie but he simply didn't want to. Tommy Lee was in his heyday in Pam & Tommy and he believed he could do or not do anything he wanted, including pay his contractors the money he owed them.
Pam & Tommy is streaming on Hulu.