Lou And Amy And Joe And Evanka: Coming to terms with your celebrity sex tape

Two couples, both alike in dignity
In Chatsworth and Long Island where we lay our scene
From ancient scandal break to new celebrity
Which one deems wholesome and the other obscene

Joey Buttafuoco said, “I didn’t know the place was wired for cameras.”

Lou Bellera, husband of Amy Fisher, said, “We wanted to make a video of a couple in love.”

Both men and their wives were the stars of sex tapes released within three months of each other, distributed by the same company, Red Light District, that sold sex tapes of Paris Hilton, Pam Anderson, and “Saved By the Bell”‘s Dustin “Screech” Diamond.

But only one couple admits they did it on purpose. Bellera and Fisher shot their movie in front of a stationary camera Bellera had set up in their home and rented ones on Long Island. The Buttafuocos claim they were literally caught on tape in May, 2007.

“Here’s how it happened,” Evanka Buttafuoco, 45, told me. “Joseph had been out of jail for a month and we went over (adult director) Rob Spallone’s house for a barbecue. (Spallone) was shooting something down by the pool and he had release forms that everyone entering the house had to sign. So we signed them. It was a standard thing like when you go to a club and have to sign a ‘You may appear on film’ form.”

Evanka told me this after I had already watched the movie and had determined that it had been staged.

“So – and this was my fault – I wanted to take Joseph upstairs for a quickie, and we just searched around upstairs,” Evanka said.

“And that was the room (Spallone) had set up with webcams or whatever,” Joey Buttafuoco said.

The couple have a 40-minute sex scene, Evanka in high heels and leading the action. Joey, 52, seems grateful. He says “I love you” several times. This is the part that’s real.

Spallone, so the story went, later combed through the “webcam” footage and discovered the Buttafuocos’ tryst, and sold it to Red Light District using the blanket permission of the releases the Buttafuocos had signed on entering.

I met the Buttafuocos on Hollywood Boulevard. We talked outside the Jimmy Kimmel Show theatre.

“So that wasn’t staged?” I asked.

“No,” Joey said. “We had no idea.”

Joey met Evanka when the latter brought her friends’ Land Rover into his Chatsworth car shop. He gave her his card, which didn’t list his last name. Having worked for 17 years in car repossessions, Evanka exhausted most of the means at her disposal to turn up any information about him, but found nothing. Finally, when he took her to dinner, she first heard the story of Amy Fisher, “The Long Island Lolita.”

“But that is so far behind us now,” Evanka said. “Everybody is friends now. We just had dinner with Lou and Amy and we wish them the best.”

Since losing his business for insurance fraud – resulting in the jail time that ended just before the filming of their tape – Joey has been a host on the Internet radio station Let’s Talk Recovery.

“I’ve been sober since 1988,” Buttafuoco said. “I didn’t even use (drugs) all through 1992 and everything that happened then.”

Because of the tools he learned to use in his recovery, Buttafuoco said, the release of the sex tape hasn’t sent him over the edge.

“I’m the only one who’s mad at Rob Spallone,” Evanka said. “Joey’s still friends with him.”

Rob Spallone did not respond to e-mail requests for his side of the story.

After meeting the Buttafuocos, who were a charming couple, I watched the tape again and knew without a doubt that it had been staged. Webcam technology has not evolved to the point that it is capable of complex zooms.

“Yeah, they had a guy with a camera at the foot of the bed,” a source with knowledge of the filming of “Joey Buttafuoco: Caught on Tape” said. “Maybe they just wanted some documentation of this time in their lives. Evanka’s pretty hot.”

Celebrity sex tapes are cheap to produce and, by virtue of their “caught on tape” marketing, are forgiven for any technical glitches. Paris Hilton’s 1 Night in Paris sold millions but appeared to have been shot using the night vision goggles from “Silence of the Lambs.” Vivid’s Kim Kardashian: Superstar tape sold very well for the company despite having very little actual sex in it.

One element of celebrity sex tape culture is deniability. Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton both have disavowed knowledge that their tapes were being marketed by the rapper Ray J. and Rick Salomon, respectively.

Accepting money for appearing in a sex tape can be swept under the rug by denying you knew the tape was being made (Hilton) or that it would be sold (Kardashian and the Buttafuocos), because the bigger shame in a cool-obsessed culture is appearing to be attention-seeking.

But Fisher and Bellera embrace their sex tape, as evidence by quotes like the following:

“I look even better in person than I did on the video,” Bellera, 55, said. “But Amy looks great no matter what.”

Every commercial porn title must gather signed documentation that its stars are over 18 and that they have agreed to be filmed for the working title of the movie in question. They must also provide identification like driver’s licenses. Every “reality” porn, from Couples Seduce Teens to Bang Boat to (to a lesser degree) Girls Gone Wild has a file cabinet full of performer releases stating that each actor knew what was happening.

That the Buttafuocos didn’t knowingly provide this information would have been grounds for a fantastic lawsuit if the events of May, 2007 had happened as the couple said they had.

“We came to a settlement (with Rob Spallone and Red Light District),” Joey Buttafuoco told me that day. “That’s why we’re more or less actively promoting the movie.”

From Long Island, Amy Fisher talks about her own sex tape (which, according to the managers of several local video stores and online outlets like Gamelink and Adult DVD Empire, is easily outselling the Buttafuoco tape) as a cathartic experience.

“People come up to me and tell me how good it was,” she said. “People seek me out. A lot of my publicity because of 1992 (both couples use “1992” as shorthand) has been negative, but this has really been positive.”

Bellera and Fisher have promoted the tape extensively and in only a few occasions, Bellera says, have interviewers failed to be polite.

“We tell people that we want to talk about today and to be positive,” Bellera said. “And I establish ground rules before every interview.” Fisher walked off the set of the Howard Stern show when the shock jock took a call from Joey Buttafuoco’s still-sngry daughter.

“But we cleared that one up later,” Bellera said.

Both couples know that their celebrity is not from Buttafuoco’s Internet radio job or Fisher’s post-prison stint as a Long Island newspaper columnist, but both try not to dwell on the source of the celebrity that made their sex tapes a marketable commodity.

“Anything having to do with my ‘story’, so to speak, I can never earn a dime on,” Fisher said. “I have learned through the years to make lemonade out of those lemons. I keep a positive attitude and make the best out of what I have to work with.”

But why the Buttafuocos denied knowing their romp was being recorded and the Lou Belleras freely admitted it seems odd. Maybe the Buttafuocos weren’t happy with the finished result and wanted to disavow it? They shouldn’t have – they seem like they’re very happy together.

“I suppose it’ll be good to look back when I’m 70 and say ‘My 45-year-old ass looked good,'” said Evanka.

Previously: Kim Kardashian Superstar; Screeched; Joey Buttafuoco Caught on Tape; Amy Fisher and Lou Bellera: How to quit worrying and learn to love your sex tape
See also: Amy Fisher, Joey Buttafuoco