Shooting Stars (8 page)

I met Georgia and JoDeane my first month here, and we've expanded our circle with two more handpicked members: Georgia's sister Alexandra and my roommate Amy.

Alexandra's in the city for music, her passion, and worries that I'm forsaking my dreams for money and adventure. I recently dragged her and Georgia to an evening shoot of Paris, but they both got bored and decided to wait in the car. Georgia's lack of interest in my job, however, doesn't diminish her support for me. “If I were famous,” she told me (and it's no secret, Georgia would
love
to be famous), “I wouldn't mind being photographed as long as the paparazzi stayed far enough away.” JoDeane, an avid tabloid reader and celebrity spotter extraordinaire, wishes I wouldn't impose on the lives of
people
, in particular the celebrities she likes, but she's coming around and has even started tipping me off. Amy, an actor (in L.A., females call themselves “actors” versus “actresses,” which I assume has to do with equality), applauds anyone who can make money in this town and pompously proclaims my skills to all her thespian friends. She wishes she were pap-worthy and laughs with her gut when I tell her my stories. All us girls are in our late twenties to mid-thirties, me being the oldest, and live within walking distance of one another. We hang out several times a week usually at Figaro, which is not conducive to meeting boys but is our
local
(another British term), so we lack motivation to go anywhere else.

But that's a problem. As previously noted, I need to meet a man. And being around all that testosterone lately (especially Aaron's), this is becoming even more obvious.

Barring one short-lived romance, I haven't had a serious boyfriend in over four years. I date here and there, mostly there, and don't sleep around. None of us do. We think too highly of ourselves.

My friends and I were all raised the same. We developed high self-esteem and a sense of entitlement which assured us that we deserve greatness out of life and out of the partners we choose. Each of us wants it all: a fulfilling career, a wonderful family, health, happiness, and excitement. “Settle for nothing less,” says Georgia.

But my eyes are a few years wiser, and more jaded. And I'm beginning to doubt my claim on “entitlement.” I deserve as much as the next person, maybe even a little more (I mean,
damn
I've tried hard), but that doesn't mean it's gonna happen.

* * *

The contrast between my personal life, in which, dare I say, I like to think I could
be
one of the celebrities who live nearby, and my professional life, in which some would probably say I
stalk
them, is a bizarre juxtaposition. Without a doubt, I am beginning to struggle with the feeling of being “just like them” at home, but their slave, or worse, at work.

“I'm gonna bitchslap you.”

“You're gonna
what
?” I splutter, stunned. I don't know exactly what “bitchslap” means, but I'm sure it's not nice.

“I said, I'm gonna bitchslap you,” he says again. He doesn't say it loudly—others aren't far away—but he says it boldly, and he looks me dead in the eyes.

“Hang on a second. Why don't you say that for my video?”

I put down my camera, rummage through my back seat for my point-and-shoot, then turn it on video and start recording. By then, I'm noticeably unnerved and shaking. I point the camera at him.

“What did you say,
Seal
?” I think to use his name for sound-bite purposes.

He doesn't say anything.

“Did you tell me that you were gonna bitchslap me?”

“No, I never said that.”

“I think you did.”

He moves away. I figure he realizes he doesn't want to be here, not with video. Seal's a monster of a guy—a dark, towering man with a cut-up face. No doubt he would knock me out with one bitchslap. But I know I'm in no danger now that I have a video camera.

He leaves and enters a building. I suddenly realize it's some kind of school.
Ahh, that's
the wrong I committed. I was trying to photograph him in front of his kids' school. And for a minute I feel a bit badly about that. It was a Saturday, and we had gone to an empty parking lot. I didn't realize it was a school lot—there were no kids around and no signs indicating it was a school, at least that I noticed. Since I've never worked him, I did what paps always do and followed the celebrity to where he parked.

Seal and Heidi, married at this juncture, are papped frequently and they don't seem to mind it—or at least they put up with it. But paps inform me later that Seal is a control freak, and his terms are that you can photograph him if you stand
off
school property shooting
onto
it, but you can't enter the lot. Actually, those terms are quite reasonable; I just didn't know them at the time. In my opinion, Seal could have just said, “You gotta leave—this is a school.” Instead, he said, “I'm gonna bitchslap you.”

I will come to find it infrequent that a celebrity gives me flack. They know the game (and are often in on it, as you'll come to realize). Besides, they prefer the police or the public do their dirty work. Seal's British though, and Aaron says that across the pond, the paps and the celebs hash it out on their own. He says there are plenty of brawls that never make the news.

Still, the Seal altercation was rather unusual. I will come to find that of celebrities, generally it will be
women
who give me a hard time. For any number of reasons, female celebrities seem to take out their frustration on their female paparazzi counterparts. Once, Hilary Duff—who loves it
most
of the time—berated only me with insults when a half dozen male paps are also shooting her. Another female pap, Carol, said she had Marcia Cross get in her face—right up to her nose, so as not to
be recorded on the nearby video—and whisper, “Fucking trashy bitch.” The worst I ever heard about came out of Nicole Richie's mouth. She reportedly told a girl pap, “Your pussy stinks,” when the pap came within earshot.
Ouch
!

But in this case, Seal, fully male, was the one to berate me.

In the end, I got the shot and the video, but nobody bought them. The tabloids didn't like the look in Seal's eyes, Bartlet told me, and they weren't interested in what he “may have” said to me.

But I know what he said, and I have made a point to never see Seal again. Paps are people too, and now I know one way that celebrities can get us to leave them alone: be really, really mean.

* * *

Speaking of mean, let me introduce you to the
heroes
.

“Heroes. Miserable rats,” mutters Simon.

Heroes are what paps call people who should be minding their own business but mind yours instead. They are the people who believe they've made the world a better place because of their heroic acts. Heroes are the guys (and girls) who call us “bottom feeders,” tell us to “get a real job” and to “leave the stars alone.” They
block
for the celebrity even when the celebrity doesn't want to be blocked. Sometimes heroes are the valet guy and sometimes they are the security guard. Often, though, they're just a bystander.

Simon was on a Starbucks's patio getting heckled by a hero while he waited for Tori Spelling to exit. When she came out, she looked straight at the hero and said, “Shut up.” Then she looked at Simon and said, “Thanks.”

Everybody loves Tori.

Paris is the ultimate hero-buster. She flat-out tells security guards to get out of the way when they're blocking our shots. Whenever I need a confidence boost (often), I work Paris. She walks unhurriedly, doesn't have an unattractive angle, and drives an easy-to-spot, baby
blue Bentley with no tint. The only problem with working Paris is that normally it turns into a gangbang. She really does
consistently
drive down Robertson
slowly
in her Bentley picking up paparazzi until she has a line of twenty cars following her. But Paris is a self-made star; she knows what she's doing. She leveraged her looks, money, her “Hilton” name, and
us
to get there. Frankly I'm in awe of her. She can do little wrong in my book.

* * *

To be clear, Hilary Duff is no Paris Hilton or Tori Spelling.

Actually, none of the paps are too sure what Hilary is doing these days, post–
Lizzie McGuire
, or why she still sells. Aaron says she might sing now. “She needs us and she knows it,” he comments. He also tells me that she used to call the paps when she was going out, so not to feel sorry for her when she gets moody.

Her doorstep (i.e., “she”) leaves early, and I am there. Hilary is being driven in her Range Rover by a security guard. In no way can my twenty-year-old station wagon keep up with the V-trillion engines most celebrities have; the guy blows me again and again.

I circle the neighborhood looking for the car, and by happenstance, not skill, continue running back into it. Hilary is apparently going somewhere nearby. After I re-find the Range for a third time, security gets frustrated, pulls over, picks up his phone, and calls the police. It's funny, I've never had anyone call the police on me, but I have no doubt that's what he's doing.

Instants later, one of L.A.'s finest shows up. This is my first of what will be
way too many
interactions with the Los Angeles police force. The officer blocks my car—“They love doing that,” Aaron says—and starts in with the hassle: “Your registration is invalid.” (
No, it isn't, or you would give me a ticket.
) “You have an outstanding citation.” (“Really, for what?” I ask, honestly surprised. There is no response.) Eventually I realize he's trying to get me to admit to something, anything I might have hidden
in my closet. Finally, he leaves with the threat, “I've written down your details.” I'm pretty sure he can't do anything with “my details” and is just trying to intimidate me, but he's succeeded. I won't sleep tonight.

After spending two years driving around the streets of L.A., I think it's unlikely the paparazzi will ever become as bountiful as the Los Angeles police force.

Still, we are too many.

According to Simon, the proliferation of paps, and in turn gangbangs, has occurred over the last four or five years. Simon started papping before the proliferation and has seen the business transition both in ethnicity—Europeans to Hispanics—and in numbers—from fifty to five hundred.

“I just don't like the way they're taking over the business,” Simon says about the gangbangers. “Why can't they come in moderation? Fuck it, they pull in the cousins and the brothers and the uncles. They're like locusts, they are.”

Although it sounds harsh, his harangue is told with a hint of love. Simon is the nicest guy in the business. Everyone says it. He never gets upset when his
job
is
jumped
or when someone blocks him out. “That's the game, luv. Gotta accept it,” he tells me. Even when the police hassle him, Simon just says, “Cops got a job to do too. Let's move on.”

But new paps, myself included, pose a problem for the veterans, or old-school paps as they like to call themselves. French and British “classically trained” newspaper photogs—Aaron, Simon, and most CXN paps—are considered old-school. Their predecessors came to the United States in the '80s and '90s and basically started the American paparazzi and tabloid industry. Many of them pulled in half a million dollars a year.

New-school paps—Latinos for the most part, mainly Mexican and
Brazilian
⁷
—started to shoot in the early 2000s. But they did not come with organized, cumbersome work visas like the British and French. Rather, they came in droves. These paps were just “here,” ready to work. Then they recruited their families and their friends and their friends' families. New-school paps stole shots—and paychecks—from the Europeans and overall drove prices down by increasing the supply of pictures on the market. So when a celeb might have gotten shot once a month by an incognito pap before, now she was getting shot once a week, or more, and by several guys at once. As you can see, the increase in paparazzi has not been good for
anyone,
celebrity or paparazzi. (It is, however, good for you, the public. You now have much more to see. Free enterprise at its finest.)

The addition of new-school paps has also changed the rules. For example, Simon tells me that it used to be when you rocked up to a doorstep and someone else was already there, you'd leave. Staying would be considered jumping, and bad etiquette. But nowadays there are just too many paps and too few celebs for that to be practical, and jumping protocol has changed.

Today, “jumping” means moving in on a
story
when the celeb and paparazzi have
already left
the doorstep. The story—i.e., the celeb and accompanying pap (or paps)—is either on the road or at a location.

Most likely, a story will
not
get jumped if it is
not
in town—i.e.,
not
in Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, or another area of high pap concentration. If a story gets jumped
outside
of town, then it is a pap's right to block other paps if he or she is able. On the other hand, if a story goes
to
town, or as it passes
through
town, jumping is a pap's biggest threat. The paparazzi blanket town, so if you and your story are spotted and jumped in town, there's not much you can do.

Once a pap is jumped by another pap, the risk of the story being jumped again goes up exponentially. The more paps on a story, the more likely it is that other paps will spot it, or call in their friends. Once jumping starts, it doesn't take long to accumulate a gangbang.

Here's what it's like to run across a celebrity gangbang, which I will become quite familiar with in the ensuing months: