I remember growing up in Malibu, well I don’t remember all of those years. It was the sixties. We’d see stars at the supermarket, gas station, post office, out walking on the beach or at a community meeting discussing whether or not we should have sewers. No one was bugging them. No one chased them. They were your neighbors.
When it was Academy Awards time, they’d be picked up in a limo and whisked away to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium where they’d walk the red carpet, and smile for the cameras. The next day they were home weeding the garden.
This was an era before the Internet, TMZ and the twenty-four hour news cycle. Even though the studio system had collapsed the tabloids hadn’t completely taken over the supermarket aisles and the culture wasn’t completely obsessed with the comings and goings of anyone with the vaguest claim to being a celebrity.
Sure there were faux stars and minor celebrities. The Monkees come to mind and all the occupants sitting in the guest boxes on the game show Hollywood Squares -- the original B-C and D list. There were flash in the pan, one hit wonders who came and went and publicists who tried to get their clients some ink (remember ink?) or pictures in the papers. Or, keep their pictures out of the paper. Something that was much easier to do then. Speaking from my own experience, the County Sheriffs assigned to Malibu were known to drive an inebriated local home instead of locking them up. Most wouldn’t have dreamed of giving some newshound a picture or a story. Even if they did, the editors could be dissuaded from running some stories.
Triggering these thought bubbles was the opportunity to view two recent documentaries about the Paparazzi phenomenon. One, “Teenage Paparazzo”, a film about a prodigy of sorts, a fourteen year-old “Pap,” was directed by Adrian Grenier, who plays Vince in the HBO series Entourage. It puts Grenier in the field as he attempts to see the world from the point of view of those who prey on him as a celebrity.
The other, “Smash His Camera,” by Leon Gast, known for his Oscar winning documentary about Muhammad Ali “When We Were Kings,” traces the career of one of the earliest practitioners of the black arts of the Paparazzi, Ron Galella.
Watching these in the wake of Andrew Breitbart’s video assault on Shirley Sherrod, the Chelsea Clinton wedding clamor and the nail biting drama of Lindsey Lohan’s time in the slammer I wondered if we should see these in a wider context -- the tabloidization of the media. Not an original thought but it made me feel I was performing a public service watching these two highly enjoyable and actually, thought-provoking films.
Ron Galella was at the forefront of this media transformation and now it’s something that even a kid can do. But when Galella first got out of the service and turned his sights on New York’s glitterati in the early 60s he had the field to himself.
This hard working, everyman from New Jersey, was probably a difficult child who rebelled against coloring in the lines. As an adult he decided not to stay behind the rope lines at events. He wanted to capture those candid, unscripted moments that to him were more real. Like a good beat reporter he developed sources among limo drivers, doorman and nannies who tipped off about where his targets, stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Marlon Brando, were staying, eating and partying. He had a system that could involve faking invites and credentials and knowing all the entry points in every New York hotel. He recommends going in through the kitchen. No one ever seemed to stop him.
His time consuming stakeouts, sometimes lasting hours, produced millions of black and white photos, some iconic, that newspapers and magazines snapped up. This allowed him to build a home in Jersey decorated in a style that Tony Soprano would love.
Gast was drawn to Galella’s attitude, “ he had a drive. He’s a workaholic. As Muhammad Ali was.”
His dogged persistence appears harmless in the film but he got under people’s skin. Tracking Marlon Brandon, who was out for a walk to get some Chinese with Dick Cavett, caused the mumbling actor to lose it. As Galella got in his face, Brando cold cocked him, breaking his jaw and knocking out five teeth. Galella decided to wear a football helmet the next time he saw Brando.
Brando broke his jaw but it appears it was Jackie O who broke his heart. His fixation with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis between 1967 and 1982 resulted in a harassment suit, a countersuit, and spurred debate about the limits of a free press that still stirs heated emotions. It also produced a number of memorable images, including his most famous shot of Jackie that captured her walking across the street. Mid-stride she turns her head and smiles as the wind tousles her hair. Galella got her to turn towards him by having the cab driver honk his horn. It was magic.
“Jackie is his Mona Lisa,” said Gast. “What you have here is a love story. It’s ‘Beauty and the Beast.’” It didn’t work out for Galella but the vitriol of Richard Burton who “threatened to kill him” or Elaine Kaufman, owner of the once trendy restaurant Elaine’s, “who threw a garbage can at him” (which made a good photo) seems misplaced. “Ron said you have to be thick skinned.”
Flash forward from tramping the sidewalks of New York with the seventy–seven year-old Galella to keeping up with fourteen year-old Austin Visschedyk as he skateboards around Hollywood bagging shots of Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
Entourage star, Adrian Grenier saw Austin in the Pap pack and was not only struck by his tenacity but the idea, that “he was being taught at such an early age some of the base and animal things practiced by the tabloid media,” resonated with him.
This came at a time when Grenier was looking at his “own role in the media and taking a hard look at myself and what I wanted to put out in my work,” he said.
Focusing on the world of celebritainment as practiced by the hungry hordes who make a living capturing the comings and goings of Hollywood’s latest heart throbs seemed like a good way to explore the media’s “world of mirrors.” He’d been thinking about these questions while reading anthropologist Thomas De Zengotita’s book, Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It.
Zengotita looks at the impact of media saturation and how it can be navigated and understood. “He talks about our modern mediated experience like it’s the Blob (from the 1958 sci-fi horror film) you can’t kill it and anything you do just makes it bigger,” said Grenier.
In Grenier’s film, we see the Pap pack, or Blob, swarm around a beach house as he and Paris Hilton wait inside, curtains closed. Like the frightened citizens in fictional Phoenixville, Pennsylvania who were menaced in the film, they can’t make it go away. They go out to confront the inevitable. You’ll have to watch “Teenage Paparazzo” to see if they survive.
Neither Gast nor Grenier have seen the other’s film, something they plan to do when they get together in New York, but you can see Teenage Paparazzo when it premieres on HBO, September 29. To see Smash His Camera you’ll have to wait for the DVD that will include bonus material of Ron Galella talking about his experiences.
I asked Grenier if we’ll see another movie about Paparazzi in the future. “Now that there is an explosion of celebrity, and everybody has a camera, the money’s gone but it’s evolving.”
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