![]() Who knew where the celebrities would be, and when. The biggest paydays came to those who knew how to get the shot. A sensational story in one simple picture. Nothing.Īnd then one day, after a month of going to the cemetery-boom. So Randy hung out at the cemetery all day every day, for 14-16 hours. Simpson murder trial, he was assigned to watch the grave of Simpson’s slain ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson. Randy Bauer, a former photographer who cofounded the paparazzi agency Bauer-Griffin, told me that in the aftermath of the O.J. In fact, a lot of the work is pure boredom, just sitting in cars, really having to go to the bathroom and waiting for someone to come out so you can get your shot. Jill is the kind of person who survives in the paparazzi business.īeing a paparazzo isn’t all crazy action, though. I don’t know what you look like, but your voice is so sexy.’ And I said, oh, yeah, yeah, real hot. And I remember I’d be on the phone with guys and they go, ‘You must be. “I developed the phone sex voice, and I could get people to do anything,” she said. Jill calls herself the tabloid terminator-you can’t kill her off. She’s still working-a lot of times for the Daily Mail. She generated some more press when she called the cops on Heather Locklear for driving erratically, then photographed the police encounter and made $27,000 off the photos. Mostly what came from all that is Jill’s photo agency went out of business and she started working on her own as a pap. ![]() An appellate court ultimately dismissed all of Jill’s claims. She was never arrested or charged but she did end up suing the magazine’s owners and West Coast bureau chief for $55 million. ![]() Then, Us Weekly staff accused her of hacking into their email to get tips, and the FBI raided Jill’s home and agency. She left to start her own paparazzi agency. Jill’s time as an Us Weekly reporter and West Coast editor actually ended in spectacular fashion. Great, I’ll do the same thing back, so get ready.”įor Better and for Worse, the Original Bennifer Birthed the 2000s Tabloids Boom “I’ve had things thrown at me in a car while I was driving because I was on a chase with somebody else,” veteran reporter Jill Ishkanian said. ![]() You probably have a, let’s call it, fluid sense of ethics. You think nothing of hovering over a stranger’s wedding. You are not cowed by famous people or awkward situations. You need a certain fearlessness, and probably a serious case of I-don’t-give-a-shit-itis. This is maybe a good place to mention that being a paparazzo is a batshit crazy job that requires people to have some kind of chip missing in order to do it. Their information was crucial but they needed encouragement, just like any writer on staff. Paparazzi, he said, were often miles ahead of even the magazine’s best reporters as far as knowing what was going on in the entertainment world. Peter started putting more and more photographers on assignment for the magazine, rather than making them work on the spec-that meant freelancers wouldn’t have to pay up front for their own travel fees. Peter is drawing a distinction here between Us Weekly and say, the National Enquirer, which was seen as more downmarket and tawdry. “Traditionally, it had been sort of an adversarial relationship between magazines like Us, or even, to some extent, the tabloids … who worked very closely of course with the paparazzi, but there was that vendor-client relationship of like, ‘Oh, they’re trying to stiff us,’ and you know, ‘That price is too high,’” he said. When Peter started at the magazine, paparazzi weren’t necessarily viewed as valued associates by the Manolo Blahnik–shod magazine editors working out of New York City offices. He estimates that during that silly season period of the tabloid war between Us and People, he was spending six figures per issue on photos. He drank with them at the Spotted Pig in New York, got their source tips on celebs, and bid lots and lots of money on their celebrity photo packages. Peter Grossman was in charge of Us Weekly’s relationship with the paparazzi during the gold rush years of the early 2000s. They lounge beneath lampposts, lips leaking cigarettes, cameras drawn like automatics.” ![]() A Time magazine article described them as “more bullyboys than news photographers. Back then, they were thought of as a European scourge. Which might tell you that even back in 1960, people did not think well of paparazzi. It might have roots in the Sicilian word for a large mosquito, papataceo. “Paparazzo” is onomatopoetic-Fellini said it connoted a buzzing and hovering sound. We have Federico Fellini, the Italian filmmaker, to thank for the word “paparazzi.” In La Dolce Vita, his classic 1960 movie, Marcello Mastroianni plays a celebrity journalist who has some fun in Rome, and is often accompanied on his adventures around town by a photographer known as “ paparazzo.” ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |