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The Portlandian, the Internet's premier source of Tonya News
October 23, 2007 Edition
(C) 2007 Portland Ice Skating Society
http://www.geocities.com/portice
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Well, as you've probably guessed, there's been absolutely no
Tonya news of any consequence over the past few months, but we
thought we were overdue for an issue, so we decided to put one
out anyway. We think the bumper size makes up for the long delay,
with a film review and a lengthy article examining the life and
death of a prominent publicist with a major Tonya connection.
TONYA IN VEGAS
Tonya was spotted signing autographs on May 4, 5 & 6 at the
Galleria mall in Las Vegas, according to one of our SDS
operatives. This wasn't reported widely, with dismal media
coverage - in fact, a single sentence in the Las Vegas Review
Journal:
http://www.lvrj.com/news/7270176.html
seems to be the only mention.
Of course, we all know why that is. It's because there's nothing
NEGATIVE about this particular Tonya story. So naturally it gets
almost no publicity.
Some of the photos that Tonya signed at this event are now
showing up on e-Bay, and some of these also have pictures of
Tonya signing the items in question to prove their authentic (but
how do you know that the woman in the photograph isn't a Tonya
lookalike?):
http://search.stores.ebay.com/tonya-harding
Perhaps they should have a picture of Tonya signing the picture
of her signing the picture of herself just to prove that's
genuine.
TONYA ON JAPANESE TV
YouTube has had the effect of uncovering some foreign footage of
Tonya that has most likely never been seen in English-speaking
countries. This bizarre clip, apparently taken from Japan's
Akashiya TV around 1995 or 1996, shows Tonya on some kind of
comedy show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIrjt2VCP3E
Totally unfathomable what's going on if you don't understand
Japanese (and Tonya barely speaks), but still worth a look. The
end part involves some kind of contest where Tonya and the hosts
have a battle with plastic hammers. Footage of Tonya's "Golden
Blades" concert in Portland is also shown.
BLADES OF GLORY - A TONYAPHILE'S PERSPECTIVE
With the year's biggest skating-oriented film now out on DVD,
we thought it was time for a review.
I won't go into the plot too much as any skating fan will already
know the basic premise: two male skaters - one an artistic,
effeminate nancy-boy type, (obviously modeled on Johnny Weir),
the other a boozy, womanizing macho man (Christopher Bowman?) are
banned for life from men's figure skating after their mutual
dislike for each other degenerates into a full-scale on-ice
punch-up in front of millions of television viewers at a Winter
Olympics-type sports tournament. The effeminate guy, Jimmy
MacElroy, ends up working at a skate shop; the macho type, Chazz
Michael Michaels, skating in a costume at a kid's ice show, a job
from which he is fired after a drunken, vomit-covered rant on ice
in front of some kids. Then an obsessed fanboy who's been trying
to find a way to get Jimmy back into skating (because, as he
explains it, "it's embarrassing stalking a has-been") discovers a
loophole in the rules that enables him to compete as a pairs
skater. After an accidental meeting between Chazz and Jimmy (who
has gone to the kid's ice show in an attempt to find a female
partner for his pairs comeback), another fight erupts between the
twosome which is also captured by TV cameras - but this time it's
spotted by Jimmy's former coach, who realizes he can turn them
into the first all-male pairs team.
The rest of the film follows the familiar territory of most of
these sort of things - the inevitable "male bonding" as the two
guys who hate each other's guts learn to work together in pursuit
of a common goal and eventually become best friends by the
finish; the "Rocky" style training sessions with the grizzled,
washed-up old coach that we've seen before in "Cool Runnings",
"Million Dollar Baby" and dozens of other sports movies. There's
also a subplot involving the pair's bitchy rivals, the brother
and sister team of Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg who will
stop at nothing to get to first place (leading to the inevitable
knee whacking reference - hey, we all knew there'd be one, didn't
we?). Along the way Johnny, er, I mean Jimmy, gets to fall in
love with the Van Waldenberg's sweet kid sister Katie, as
obviously the film's producers couldn't stand to make one of the
main characters ACTUALLY gay, though on reflection this may not
be a bad thing as it avoids the obvious stereotyping. And of
course our dynamic duo win the gold at the next Winter Games (as
if it needed to be mentioned, as I'm sure you've already guessed
that bit).
I have to confess I didn't have particularly high expectations
for this film - after all, how many decent figure-skating movies
have there been? I was suspecting that it would just be an hour
and a half of lame and obvious "male skaters are all gay" jokes,
but it seemed to get good reviews and had done good box office
overseas (blowing away stuff like "Grindhouse", which looked far
more interesting), so I figured it must be worth a look. Plus I'd
seen Ferrell's earlier film "Anchorman" on TV a few weeks ago and
found it reasonably funny. Perhaps because of this, I actually
found it more enjoyable than I expected.
Firstly, it definitely helps if you are a follower of skating to
fully get the jokes and play "spot the famous skater" - there's
Sasha Cohen, Scott Hamilton, Brian Boitano, Dorothy Hamill, 1980
Olympian Lisa Marie Allen and others in cameo appearances, and
this has got to be the only time in history we'll ever hear
someone declare to Nancy Kerrigan that she's "officially given me
a boner", as Michaels elegantly puts it. Alot of the humor is
this kind of frat-boy level sexual innuendo on a par with "The
Benny Hill Show", so that PG13 rating is well deserved, but
fortunately it doesn't get too out of hand and is relatively mild
by today's standards.
From a satire point of view it hits most of the right bulls-eyes
- the two gold medals at SLC, the ridiculous flamboyant costumes,
and the obsessive fans, though to be honest, the stalker guy
probably isn't half as scary as some of the Kwan fanatics out
there. It's a pity they didn't do something about cheating
judges, which are an obvious and well-deserved target, or perhaps
have a Samaranch-type Games official in a fascist uniform and a
clueless Speedy-ish idiot in charge of the skating. Figure
skating is a sport that borders on sending itself up at times, so
it's ripe for satire and long overdue for this treatment. The
rest of the humor is mostly slapstick stuff, such as the
hilarious running gag involving Games mascots suffering nasty
accidents. Perhaps the most memorable scene is a gruesome but
sidesplittingly funny sequence involving some skaters from North
Korea, who attempt a radical move known as the "Iron Lotus" with
disastrous results, a move that Chazz & Jimmy later use in their
medal winning performance (could the film's writers have read
some of Chuckie's postings?).
The special effects wizards do a good job of creating some
fantastic skating stunts, a rare example of a film that actually
uses CGI effects in the sort of way they should be used. They're
also very convincing at recreating the atmosphere of an Olympics
sized event - it never feels that this is some low-budget
imitation of the real thing like in TV movies such as "A Promise
Kept" or "Tonya & Nancy: The Inside Story". The film ends on a
spectacular note with the team skating to Queen's "Flash Gordon"
theme in an electrifying and gravity-ignoring performance.
One of the chief problems faced by films like this is the
difficulty of milking what is essentially a single joke over the
length of a feature, which probably explains why there hasn't
been a successful case of a "Saturday Night Live" sketch being
turned into a decent movie since "The Blues Brothers". "Blades of
Glory" inevitably suffers a bit from this problem too, with the
pace of gags slowing down during Jimmy's romance with Katie,
where the film briefly tries to get serious, but it's not too big
a distraction. As you'd also expect for a film of this nature,
alot of it obviously isn't terribly realistic; the "loophole"
that Chazz and Jimmy use to get back into skating sadly doesn't
exist (otherwise Tonya would have used it years ago) and most of
the skating moves they perform don't even comply with the laws of
physics let alone the rules of eligible competition. Without
doubt the most inaccurate part of the film, however, isn't any of
these things but is instead the disciplinary hearing at which the
twosome are banned for life by the "National Skating
Association": we all know that the way the USFSA would conduct a
real hearing like this would be so secret it would make Area 51
look publicity hungry - certainly no TV cameras or popping
flashbulbs as is depicted here.
Despite its flaws, this is an enjoyable film and definitely worth
the price of a DVD rental for any skating fan, though it's
essential that you check your brain (and good taste) at the door
before watching it in order to get the maximum enjoyment out of
it. It won't have you constantly rolling on the floor doubled
over with laughter, but it should give plenty of chuckles and a
few good belly laughs. It's not the definitive send-up of figure
skating - that's yet to be done - but it's certainly the best ice
skating movie for some time and I'd give it *** out of **** stars
- or a good 5.8 on the old scoring system. And in spite of the
aforementioned knee whacking joke, mercifully for a Tonyaphile
there are no cheap shots at Tonya, who is not mentioned by name
at all in the whole movie.
By the way, make sure you stay through the end credits too, as
there's some funny stuff in there as well involving the obsessed
fanboy stalker.
RIP-OFF ALERT
If there's one thing that gets us really riled up here at the
Special Duties Section, almost as much as the unjust way Tonya
got treated by the skating establishment, it's people trying to
exploit Tonyaphiles and make money off her name by asking
ridiculous prices for things that are available much cheaper, or
even for free, to those who bother to do a little research.
Now, we should emphasize that we've got no problem with people
charging high prices for things if that's what the free market
price really is. We're not some bunch of commies who think
everything should be free. But when people charge much more than
other sellers are asking for the same thing, then the only
conclusion that can be drawn is that they're trying to exploit
people's ignorance of what a crummy deal they're offering. And
that's just dishonest, no matter how you look at it.
Case in point: be warned that there's a guy on eBay trying to
sell a VHS copy of "Breakaway", the low budget action movie that
Tonya had a bit part in after she got booted out of skating, for
$US195 - and it isn't even a new copy:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Breakaway-1996-VHS-Teri-Thompson-Tonya-Harding_W0QQitemZ280057637053QQihZ018QQ
This is just an absolute rip-off. Although the tape has been out
of print for several years (and has not been released on DVD in
English as far as can be determined), there's nothing
particularly rare about it and there is no justification for
paying such an outrageous price. Other much cheaper copies can be
easily found, for instance at the time of writing Amazon has good
used copies on offer for as little as $11:95:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/6304252323/ref=dp_olp_1/002-4817887-6128856
A bit more Googling would probably find others without too much
trouble.
In short, don't be conned into paying through the nose for this
film if you want to see it. It's not rare, there's no need to
shell out big bucks to greedy profiteering ripoff artists to get
a copy.
On the same subject, here's another guy who apparently thinks
that Tonyaphiles came down in the last shower: he's trying to
flog copies of Tonya's 2002 DUI arrest report for $6:99 plus
$5:99 shipping in the U.S., a grand total of $12:98:
http://cgi.ebay.com/TONYA-HARDING-ICE-SKATING-STAR-ARREST-REPORT_W0QQitemZ120117983594QQihZ002QQ
He also has the cheek to insist that you agree not to reproduce
and sell copies of the report, something of highly questionable
enforceability given that as a government document the original
report is public domain and non-copyright. Gee, I wonder if he
bothered to clear the rights to that photo of Tonya crying at
Lillehammer that he's got on the cover of his version? Yeah, of
course he did - and the Pope's probably a Buddhist, too.
Save your thirteen bucks. Here's a better deal: go to The Smoking
Gun:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/hardingdui1.html
and you can download the entire report - all THREE PAGES OF IT -
for nothing (which is frankly about all it's worth). There's no
dodgy anti-Tonya photos on the cover. You can make and sell as
many copies of it as you like. And you don't have to wait for the
postal service to deliver it either.
Oddly enough, it seems that shortly after we posted this
information to the tonyaharding.org forum a few days ago, this
seller pulled all his listings. Coincidence?
TONYA CD AVAILABLE
Linda Lewis has announced that she has decided to again make
available a music CD that Tonya recorded several years ago:
Tonya's CD is now available for purchase. She, along with the
Lewis's niece, Shannon Nicole, recorded this original song,
"When We Shared In Each Other's Lives", written by Linda and
Greg Lewis. It received some National attention, after the
Oklahoma bombing incident, when Tonya and Shannon performed it
on the Hard Copy TV show. Tonya dedicated it to the families
and friends of those tragically killed in that horrible event.
The song is very poignant. The message is for anyone who has
ever had to say Good-Bye to someone. It's hard, but you will
always have the wonderful memories.
To hear part of the song go www.lewisandlewismusic.com click
on music and then specialty music. Scroll down to the version
of the song with Tonya on it. It's available now on CD for
$20, autographed by Tonya.
If you want to spend money on Tonya memorabilia, spend it by
buying your Tonya merchandise from the best source: Tonya
herself. By buying stuff directly from Tonya, you can be sure
it's genuine, and you've got the knowledge that your money is
going to the best cause of all - helping Tonya - rather than
lining the pockets of some profiteering middleman. And that, as
they say in the credit card ads, is "priceless".
TWO DECADES OF AGGRESSIVE PRACTICE: THE RISE & FALL OF DAVID HANS
SCHMIDT
And while we're on the subject of profiteering middlemen, David
Hans Schmidt, who was Tonya's agent for a few months back in the
mid-1990's, has been found dead at his home in Phoenix, Arizona,
after apparently committing suicide. Schmidt was involved in the
marketing of the now infamous "Wedding Night Video" and later
tried to devise an unsuccessful comeback campaign for her. He was
best known, however, for peddling smutty photos of various
celebrities, often obtained by means of dubious legality, an
occupation that earned him the title of "Sultan of Sleaze", a
nickname he wore as a badge of honor. Accordingly, we present
this summary of his rather bizarre life and his involvement with
Tonya.
According to his web site, hansnews.com, Schmidt was born in
Rochester, Minnesota, in 1960. He didn't get along well there,
frequently getting into trouble at school, and also with his
strict German-Lutheran parents. He took up boxing after seeing
the film "Rocky" and later served in the Army as a paratrooper.
He also claims he placed 11th for the 19 and under age group in
the 1980 Boston Marathon. He then studied at Rochester College,
Augsberg College in Minneapolis and Bowling Green State
University in Ohio. While at Augsberg and BGU he got into writing
columns for the local newspapers, often specializing in stirring
up controversy.
He then headed back home and took up a position with the family
grain farming business, but conflicts with his father meant it
didn't last. Taking the old advice of "Go West, Young Man",
Schmidt hitched a ride to Phoenix where his writing ability
landed him a job as a reporter for "The Arizona Republic"
covering business and politics. It was there where he got his
first introduction to the public relations business. As he
himself put it, "he quickly figured if these bimbos can do it,
he can do it better". He also claims that he worked for Arizona
Governor Ed Mecham shortly before his impeachment, though nobody
seems to be able to verify this. In 1987, Schmidt founded his own
PR company. Although he supposedly had some major corporate
clients, it was not as a mainstream PR man where he would make
his biggest impact. As his site says: "his time with Governor
Mecham taught him one important thing: that scandal and
controversy are king in the news media".
MONEY FOR NOTHING
In January 1992, Schmidt was to undergo a revelation that would
change his life - and western popular culture - forever. While
shopping for groceries at a local store, he saw an issue of
"Star" magazine containing an article about Gennifer Flowers, a
woman who claimed to have had an affair with Bill Clinton.
Schmidt learned that the tabloid had paid $125,000 for the
interview. If a magazine would pay that much for just an
interview, Schmidt reasoned, surely a men's magazine like
Penthouse or Playboy would pay at least a million dollars for her
to pose nude. Schmidt quickly tracked down Flowers in Dallas and
persuaded her to sign a contract giving him the exclusive right
to represent her. When he got back to his office a fax was
waiting from her lawyer, saying that Playboy had made an offer.
Armed with this offer, Schmidt approached rival Penthouse. By
playing the two magazines off against each other, Schmidt was
able to close a deal with Penthouse. Although the details of the
deal have never been released, Schmidt's share would have
probably amounted to at least several tens of thousands of
dollars for a few hours work. It was almost "money for nothing",
as Dire Straits would say.
THE GREAT SKATING SWINDLE
Schmidt's next big score was one that every Tonyaphile is
familiar with - a videotape that has become known simply as "The
Wedding Night Video", one of the first of the numerous celebrity
"sex-tapes" that have now become a dime a dozen.
"I'll never forget driving around with Jeff Gillooly in Portland,
Oregon and telling him, 'Jeff, if you can get me any skin on the
old lady, I'll make you a millionaire.'", Schmidt said in an
interview with Playboy in 2000. The tape was later sold to
Penthouse and went on to become one of its most popular titles,
according to Schmidt.
This, however, is inconsistent with an interview he gave to the
Phoenix New Times in 2002, where his explanation makes no sense
at all:
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2002-10-31/culture/in-this-corner/full
Schmidt: I was Jeff Gillooly's agent, and I told him, "You
want to make some money? You've got to get me some skin on
the old lady." He called me up the day after they were
married and said, "I got a 30-minute wedding-night video of
Tonya." I took it straight to Bob Guccione at Penthouse.
Given that Tonya married Jeff in 1990, well before the scandal
and even before the triple axel, such a tape would have had
absolutely no commercial value at that time. It would just be
another bad amateur porno movie. Indeed, Schmidt himself didn't
start peddling smut until over a whole year after the wedding (he
did the Gennifer Flowers deal in early 1992). It also doesn't
tally with what he told Playboy back around 2000 in which he said
this conversation took place several months AFTER the scandal.
Yet pictures from the tape appeared in print in mid-February
1994, so obviously the tape must have been leaked very shortly
after the scandal.
Some of his other claims he makes in that article sound hard to
believe to say the least, like that he was working on "Celebrity
Boxing III" (which was never made) and that Tonya made a pass at
him. But that was the trouble with Schmidt. You could never tell
the truth from the hype.
The WNV's release marked the first time an amateur porn tape not
originally intended for mass consumption was marketed in a major
way. "I knew I had gold in my hands," Schmidt told Playboy of his
reaction when he first learned of the tape's existence. "I'm
still getting royalty checks."
The same couldn't be said for Tonya. Joe Haran, who was editor of
Tonya's fan club magazine at the time, tells a different story in
the November 12, 2001 edition of "The Portlandian", where he says
that Penthouse pretty much blackmailed Tonya into doing a deal:
http://www.geocities.com/portice/port45.htm
It wasn't the last connection between Schmidt & Tonya: in July
1996 he appeared on the "Geraldo" show with her, pushing a
comeback he dubbed "Tonya II". Ultimately, however, Schmidt
lacked the clout and connections in the closed-shop world of
figure skating to bypass the USFSA mafia and devise an effective
comeback strategy for Tonya, and the only skating work he was
able to obtain for her was a short skate during the intermission
of a hockey game in Reno, Nevada, in February 1997. Nevertheless,
this event received huge coverage in the media. Tonya dumped
him shortly afterwards after he ripped her off over the proceeds
from the Reno gig. He did apparently play a role in organizing
the infamous face-off between her and Nancy Kerrigan on the Fox
"Breaking The Ice" special that aired a year later. In 1997
Schmidt celebrated the tenth anniversary of his PR business by
appending the tag line "Celebrating A Decade of Aggressive
Practice" to his firm's letterhead.
THE SULTAN OF SLEAZE
In the wake of the "Wedding Night Video", Schmidt rapidly gained
a reputation as the "go-to guy" if you were a good-looking woman
involved in some kind of scandal or had photos or footage of a
famous person doing something stupid with their pants down.
During the next few years Schmidt represented Divine Brown, a
prostitute who had been caught with British actor Hugh Grant, and
arranged nude photo shoots for Katerina Witt and Paula Jones (who
had once accused Clinton of sexually harrassing her, and who
subsequently was Tonya's opponent on Fox's "Celebrity Boxing" in
2002). Not all of those whose images he peddled were willing
accomplices, though. In addition to Tonya, numerous minor
celebrities became his victims, with Colin Farrell, Dustin
Diamond (of "Saved by the Bell"), Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit and
- you guessed it - Paris Hilton, all suffering humiliation at his
hands. He purchased the contents of a storage locker belonging to
Hilton which had been sold off after she forgot to pay the bill,
revealing what he described as "a King Tut's tomb of scandal".
Nothing and nobody was sacred: in 2003 he brokered a deal to sell
unauthorized topless photos of war hero Jessica Lynch, who at the
time was still recuperating in hospital, to Hustler magazine
publisher Larry Flynt. Flynt, however, ultimately decided not to
print them - it seems that even a pornographer like Flynt does
have some scruples. The same couldn't be said of Schmidt.
Increasingly Schmidt's methods of sourcing product to pimp
became of more borderline legality as he constantly strove to
outdo himself with bigger and bigger deals for more and more
outrageous material. Explicit photos of Jamie Foxx were obtained
by Schmidt from workmen who found them in a dumpster at Foxx's
house (he was later forced to return them). The Durst footage
came via hackers who had gained access to Durst's computer.
Oddly, Schmidt was outraged when the hackers subsequently welched
on a deal and posted his own personal details on the internet -
the irony of a man whose entire career was based on violating the
privacy of others having his own privacy violated went completely
over his head.
It was this desperation to constantly top his previous
achievements at all costs that ultimately led to his downfall.
Like many criminals, Schmidt became arrogant, increasingly coming
to believe that he was bulletproof and could get away with
anything. He was the king, "da man", the Sultan of Sleaze, the
undisputed leader in his field. And he didn't need anything
boring like the law getting in his way.
If Schmidt's attitude could be summed up by a song, it would
probably be Freddie Mercury's immortal lines "I want it all, and
I want it now". But Karma was about to come and knock on his
door.
RISKY BUSINESS
Ironically, it was more footage of a wedding couple that proved
to be Schmidt's undoing. The fall came when he attempted to pull
the same dirty tricks that had worked on minor stars on a real,
genuine A-list celebrity: Tom Cruise. Easily the most high-
profile name he had dealt with, Schmidt proved to be well out of
his league. A computer geek by the name of Marc Lewis Gittleman
contacted Schmidt with photos he had obtained of Cruise's wedding
to actress Katie Holmes after one of Cruise's official
photographers had approached him for help in recovering the
images from a faulty computer hard drive. Gittleman did so, but
kept copies for himself and then contacted Schmidt after Googling
his name on-line.
In May 2007, Schmidt approached Cruise's representatives at the
Rogers & Cowan public relations agency with a view to selling the
7600 photos back to Cruise in return for a fee of over a million
dollars, threatening that if they didn't play ball, he would take
the photos elsewhere. When Cruise's people pointed out that his
proposal was effectively blackmail, Schmidt was unfazed:
"Sometimes we have to shitcan legality, because you don't know
what we will do. Of course Tom has the legal force to go after
us, but if he does, we'll dump it on the world wide web". The
tactic did not work - unlike his previous victims, Cruise had no
need to work with Schmidt in order to get publicity, and since
the photos were Cruise's copyrighted property Schmidt didn't have
a legal leg to stand on with his threats to release them. At a
meeting in July with Cruise's people, Schmidt discovered that one
of those attending was an FBI agent, and he was arrested and
charged with extortion. The FBI report records that Schmidt
appeared to be "under the influence of some unknown substance" at
an earlier meeting.
Schmidt quickly spilled the beans and Gittleman was also
arrested. Strangely for a computer "expert", Gittleman had made
no attempt to hide his location, posting his messages to Schmidt
from his own e-mail account.
Early in September, it was reported that Schmidt had agreed to
plead guilty to the extortion charges in exchange for a lighter
sentence. The plea deal, however, was never to make it to court.
THINGS TO DO IN PHOENIX WHEN YOU'RE DEAD
Around 3pm on Friday, the 28th of September 2007, David Hans
Schmidt was found dead at his home in Phoenix after police had
noticed a monitoring device attached to him had shown no movement
for some time. He had hanged himself in the shower and his death
was ruled a suicide by the coroner.
With his jet-setting, high-profile lifestyle, Schmidt presented
an image that personified the American Dream: that of a
successful, self-made entrepreneur who had become rich by
innovating and following his own set of rules rather than just
going along with the crowd. It was all a facade. The Cruise
incident had pretty much destroyed his business model and dried
up his income. He owed $100,000 in child support and had recently
filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to an article in the
"Arizona Republic" newspaper most of his possessions, including
his house and car, were due to be repossessed at the time of his
death. And beneath the brash self-confidence lay wild mood
swings: he was very "up" when doing a deal, but often sank into
deep depression, particularly after his arrest. His mother
revealed in an interview that he suffered from bi-polar disorder
and in a phone call to gossip columnist George Rush he confessed
to having attempted suicide by the same method two weeks before
his death. Schmidt's business and personal life was a shambles.
Queen's "I Want It All" had now metamorphosed into something more
like "Life in the Fast Lane" by The Eagles - a driver on a
freeway to oblivion desperately searching for the nearest off-
ramp.
Schmidt's legacy on popular culture has been twofold. Firstly, he
broke down the barrier between porn stars and "normal"
celebrities. In the past, the two were separate - if you'd
appeared in an X-rated film, you were a pariah and (with the
exception of one or two people such as Traci Lords, who managed
to re-invent herself as a B-grade horror movie actress) no
mainstream casting agent would touch you. And if you were a
"mainstream" actor who got caught on tape doing something
embarrassing it was pretty much the kiss of death to your career,
as Rob Lowe discovered when he was caught cavorting with an
underaged girl in 1988. Today, the stigma of appearing in a
pornographic movie is gone and a "sex tape" seems to be regarded
as welcome publicity by many d-list no-talents eager for an easy
way to get their fifteen minutes in the spotlight.
Secondly, he made voyeurism an acceptable pastime amongst the
community. In the past, voyeurs were considered to to be
perverts, dirty old men spying through keyholes. Thanks to David
Hans Schmidt, we're now all voyeurs, eagerly awaiting the next
celebrity sex video to leak out so that we can laugh at
somebody's humiliation. It's now perfectly acceptable to be a
peeping Tom, at least if the person you're leering at is somebody
newsworthy. We've now entered a brave new world of "journalism"
where celebrities are considered fair game for anything and seem
to have absolutely NO privacy rights whatsoever.
We suspect that it'll probably only be a matter of time before
somebody decides to make a movie of Schmidt's pathetic career.
After all, Hollywood loves sleaze and indeed seemed to be quite
happy to allow Schmidt to ply his trade so long as he didn't
interfere with the big fish. I think, though, that we can safely
assume that Tom Cruise will not be interested in playing the
leading role.
CODA
On the 10th of September, a bizarre message appeared on Jim
Maxey's tonyaharding.com web site.
Now, we're not talking here about the "normal" strange messages
that you find over there - the ones that involve Tonya with a
whip, a gas mask and a strap-on rubber appendage trampling with
her ice skates on guys dressed in women's underwear - those are
just par for the course for Maxey's crowd. No, we're talking
about something REALLY way out. The message, purporting to be
from one "Jeff Stone", read as follows:
Standard Message #: 2386
Subject: Call David Schmidt
From: Jeff Stone, 40 yr old Male
Date: Monday, September 10, 2007 @5:50 PM pacific time
Rating: 5
Tonya‚
David Schmidt contacted me thru my office. Why he thinks I
have a way to contact you is beyond me. It has been fifteen
years. Ironically‚ both my kids love to skate! Anyway‚ David
has a check for you. Call him at 602 751 7759. Hope all is
well with you and yours. Good luck in your endeavors
Jeff
I'm sure we all know who "Jeff Stone" is.
Hoax? Or was this some attempt by Schmidt to make amends with
Tonya and pay back the money he ripped off from her before he
killed himself? We'll probably never know. It seems odd that
Schmidt couldn't have found a better way to send Tonya a message,
indeed why not just leave the message on Maxey's site himself?
And it's been 13 years, not 15, since the scandal, so whoever
wrote this message isn't too good at math.
On the other hand, if it is a hoax it's certainly a rather
unusual one. Why mention DHS when Tonya hasn't seen him for
years? And the phone number is correct. It all sounds very
"Twilight Zone". One thing's for certain though: if it was
genuine, it's probably too late now, given that Schmidt had no
money when he died.
At this point, we're probably expected to say that we're sorry to
hear of the demise of David Hans Schmidt. We're supposed to say
that he was a decent, upstanding guy despite all his flaws. We'd
like to say that, but we can't, because it wouldn't be honest.
We've never had much time for people who hypocritically praise
dead people they were bad-mouthing only shortly before when they
were alive. The reality is that David Hans Schmidt was a bum and
a parasite who spent the last 15 years of his life sponging off
other much more talented people such as Tonya and causing misery
for them. His effect on popular culture - the acceptance of lurid
intrusion into the intimate lives of celebrities as legitimate
entertainment - has not been a positive development. That
somebody of such high education and obvious potential squandered
his life and ended it the way he did is a tragedy, but it's a
tragedy entirely of his own making. We can only hope that he has
finally found some sort of peace somewhere.
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VISIT THESE GREAT TONYA WEB SITES:
PortIce - http://www.geocities.com/portice
David House - http://www.tonyaharding.org
Charlie Main - http://www.charliesweb.com/tonya/tonya.html
Puppetboy - http://www.tonyaharding.us/tonya/
Valerie Smith - http://www.olywa.net/radu/valerie/LilHam.html
Swan Lake - http://members.tripod.com/~TonyaHarding/index.html
Blades of Gold - http://members.tripod.com/tmhfan/index.html
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