‘I went undercover to understand exactly how the Kardashian dynasty started’
As the Kardashians embark on the 12th season of their eponymous reality series, revisit the Big Bang that created an entirely new universe of celebrity
The 12th season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians premiered this week, an event of a magnitude rivalled only by the return of GRAZIA Australia. In occasion of KUWTK’s continuing reign over the reality genre (which shows no signs of abating anytime soon), we thought it only timely to revisit the Big Bang that created an entirely new universe of celebrity.
In the following exclusive extract taken from journalist Ian Halperin’s new chronicle recounting the Kardashian origin story, Kardashian Dynasty, the author goes undercover to determine who exactly was the ‘Patient Zero’ responsible for the start of the Kardashian era.
The only way I could make sense of the Kim Kardashian sex-tape controversy and find out how these things work would be to go to the source. Aside from posing as a male model, I had also gone undercover as a drug dealer, a private detective, an escort, and a hairdresser’s assistant for various projects. Now I would pose as a sex tape peddler to infiltrate the distributor of Kim Kardashian: Superstar — the adult-film giant Vivid Films.
First, I needed an angle, one that would get me through the doors of Vivid to discover what’s involved in distributing a celebrity sex tape. I briefly toyed with the idea of making my own tape, but there’s only so far I’m willing to go for my craft. And although I am the only Canadian to top the New York Times’ bestseller list in more than seventy years, I wasn’t sure that I qualified as a celebrity.
However, I happen to live in a Miami complex that is chock-full of famous people. One whom I am acquainted with is my fellow author Elizabeth Gilbert, but I was pretty sure that when she wrote Eat, Pray, Love [this] wasn’t what she had in mind for the latter category. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to convince any of the personalities I bump into at the pool each week to bare their assets for the sake of my journalistic career. An actual sex tape was clearly out of the question. But I immediately thought of somebody who was a good enough sport that she might go along with pretending that she had a tape of her bedroom antics up for sale.
A friend of mine was a fairly well-known model who had appeared on Dancing with the Stars — a higher level of celebrity than either Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton had achieved at the time of their cinematic debuts. Still, both women had something else going for them before their tapes started to circulate — their famous names. I needed something else to sweeten the deal. I came up with the perfect bait. With an idea in mind, I made a call to Vivid headquarters.
I informed them that I was calling as a middleman in possession of a sex tape featuring a well-known model — one who had appeared on DWTS — having sex with “one of the world’s top basketball players.” They were definitely interested but noncommittal. They needed to see the tape, of course so I asked my model friend if she would be willing to come with me to the offices of Vivid to make our pitch.
When I flew to LA and got in touch about our jaunt to Vivid, however, she immediately crushed my hopes. She had told her manager about the plan and he had unequivocally forbidden her to participate in the scheme. It could be career poison, he warned. Feeling guilty, she suggested a friend, Laurie*, who she thought would be game. Moreover, she happened to know both Kim and her husband, Kanye West.
I was to meet Laurie at the Churchill Pub on Third Street for breakfast. The tall, mulatto brunette showed up twenty minutes late looking like she had just come from a yoga or gym class. I spotted her and waved her to my table in the back. Laurie started telling me stories about Kanye West back in the day, how he used to have multiple women on the go and how his ego was always “bigger than life.”
“He was always good with the ladies, a modern-day Don Juan. But after his mother died he seemed to change. He became more serious. He wanted to meet the right woman.”
She said she had known Kim for almost a decade, though not well. She used to occasionally hang out with her during her partying days at various clubs in LA, including Skybar and the rooftop at the Standard.
“Kim was always a big scenester,” she said.
“A woman possessed with achieving fame and fortune without having real raw talent. Ever since I knew her she had a master plan and didn’t try to hide it. She knew what she wanted. If there was a big celebrity in the house, Kim would go over to them and schmooze her way to sitting at their table and drinking with them. One night a group of Lakers had a table in VIP and they had several lovely young girls sitting with them drinking. In a matter of seconds, I saw Kim have the security guard open the rope for her and let her in. She sat with Kobe Bryant and his buddies the rest of the night while the three friends she was with had to stay in the regular area. It was incredible because Kim was unknown then. She was always good at getting what she wanted, and quickly.”
“I for one was not surprised Kim married Kanye. Kim was always very open about wanting to meet a man more rich, famous, and powerful than her. She definitely found that guy in Kanye. It’s funny because they really don’t seem compatible.
“I’ve bumped into Kim a few times since they got married and she’s never with him. I think they got married with some sort of agreement to have kids together but to lead separate lives.”
Finally my assistant Grace showed up. Laurie had heard from Kanye’s friends that the main reason Kanye married Kim was to be part of a big family.
“Losing his mother was devastating. He never got over it until he met Kim and loved how big a family she had. He was smitten with Kris Jenner. In fact, I don’t think he would have married Kim if Kris Jenner wasn’t on the scene. In Kris he found a new mother figure. She treated him like her own. He was enamoured with how smart, loving, and business-savvy Kris was. He had found the perfect family to marry into.”
In the car, we rehearsed what we’d tell the people at Vivid. Once we arrived at the white building on Cahuenga Boulevard that houses Vivid, we were greeted by a burly security guard who said we needed authorization to enter. I told him I had something very exclusive for Vivid. Still he wouldn’t let us in. Instead he agreed to phone upstairs to see if they would meet with us.
He got Tessa Allmon on the phone and I asked her if I could speak to the head of Vivid, Steve Hirsch. But on this day Hirsch was too busy. Tessa told me I’d have to call Vivid’s head of PR, Jackie Markham, in New York to discuss the matter. The minute we got outside, I called another publicist, Norah Lawlor, to see if she’d represent the model. Lawlor Media Group’s main office is on Park Avenue, but many of Norah’s clients live and work in Los Angeles.
“Who is it?” Norah demanded when I told her about the basketball star who played a starring role in the tape. I told her I would tell her in time, but I first wanted to know if this was up her alley.
“This is perfect for the tabloids, sweetie. My best friend is the editor of The Enquirer and also Radar. First of all, can you tell me who?”
“No, but it’s huge,” I replied cagily. “A-list.” That got her attention.
“First we need to talk to the Radar people, then I have to speak to TMZ, Daily Mail. Those three first,” Norah said. “I have to go to first people first. It’s a triple-down and then they do deals with this one and that one, release the video, and write about it. It’s a whole thing that happens.”
I asked Norah if it was in the best interests of the model to release the sex tape to further her career.
“Look what it did with Kim Kardashian,” Norah replied. “That’s how she sort of got famous.”
How much would you charge for this? I asked her.
“Probably just a fee. You know, $5000.” Then, if the model wanted “full service,” including an ongoing campaign to keep her name in the media, the rate would be another five thousand dollars per month or more, depending on the services.
“Best is to release it to print first and then TV would come after. This is good, though. I’d love to be involved. That’s what I do. I was trained by the tabloids. There’s not many PR people who know the tabloids. I mean, who can call the editor in chief of The Enquirer? Not many.”
I asked her if the tape was worth something to a media outlet and how much it could fetch.
“I can call and check for you. The only people who really pay are the Daily Mail and The Enquirer. I’d have to feel it out. I mean, listen—as a woman, do I think she should do this? No! But if she wants to be a celebrity, that’s another question. It depends where she wants to go.”
My next call was the Vivid publicist to whom Tess Allmon had referred me. When I reached Jackie Markham at her New York office, I told her that I knew a woman in Miami who had a sex tape featuring a well-known athlete. Would she be interested in taking a look at it?
“Yeah, but the problem is this: When it comes to actually marketing and selling a sex tape, both parties need to sign off.”
“There’s no way around that?” I asked.
“Not that I know of, unless the law’s changed. It would be considered an invasion of privacy.”
“I mean, how did Kim Kardashian get hers out, and all those other people?”
“A third party brought it to Vivid,” she explained. “Vivid got in touch with the Kardashian family and explained the truth, which is if [their representative] doesn’t buy it and pay for it, there’s a good chance that other sites will put it up and not charge for it, and they’ll never get anything.”
“What could something like that fetch?” I asked. “Any idea? If it’s authentic?”
“If it is who you say it is, my guess is an enormous amount of money. I can tell you right now. Kim Kardashian’s movie came out in ’07, and she’s made millions.”
“So this could turn into millions? Is that correct?”
Markham then spent a significant amount of time trying to get the model’s name and my contact info. It was clear she was definitely very interested. She wanted to get her hands on that tape. I could picture the dollar signs in her eyes. I told her that the model had dreams of making “gazillions,” but that it sounded from our conversation like unless she got the basketball player to sign on, she could forget it. I quickly hung up, a little wiser about how these things work. It is clear that Vivid would not have announced plans to distribute Kim’s tape without a clear indication from the family that they would give the go-ahead once they had come to terms on a price.
The so-called lawsuit [that Kardashian filed] and press release about Kim’s dismay appeared to be nothing more than an attempt to portray herself as the victim of an unscrupulous thief. Whether she planned it from the beginning is still an open question, even though the remarkable parallel to her friend Paris Hilton’s own rise to fame seems to leave the answer to that question fairly obvious. However, I asked myself a question I would ask time and again in various forms while chronicling the rise of the Kardashian dynasty:
If indeed Kim or Kris engineered the release of the sex tape to further their careers, so what? Marilyn Monroe once said, “Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.”
If the Kardashians were willing to sell their souls for five million dollars, at least they weren’t selling themselves cheap like poor Marilyn.
