Shooting Stars (10 page)

Even though she could valet, Jodie instead parks like a regular person in the deck. We park nearby and follow her and Kit on foot into the mall.

“Get out your cell,” orders Simon. “I'll watch her.”

Simon doesn't trust me not to make eye contact. Frankly, I don't either. As noted earlier, eye contact, or lack of, is one of the most important skills a pap develops. Once you make eye contact (unless it's the distracted, fleeting kind as previously discussed, versus the stare-down kind), you're done. In the car, on a follow, for instance, you often need to ID the driver, make sure it's the celeb you think it is. Sunglasses, side-view or rearview mirrors, and tinted windows all help conceal your interest, but you need to be able to recognize the celeb by the back of his or her head (which I can't do yet). A cell phone can help: while engrossed in a fake conversation, you're able to dart your eyes in an unfocused manner while putting the subject close enough to your periphery to identify him or her. This also works well when checking out restaurants and stores. The hostess or salesperson won't bother you if you're on your phone, and if you're actively chatting (to
no one), it is an excellent way to stand still and look around for your next shot.

A celebrity's eye contact toward you is equally telling. If you're trying to figure out whether a star is on to you, Simon says, watch for his or her stare. Sometimes you'll notice a celeb trying to catch your eye in his or her side-view mirror. “Don't stare back,” Simon says. “It's possible they aren't sure. Then, proceed with caution. You're a suspect.”

Jodie and Kit sit at an outside table and order lunch. Simon and I shoot the meal from behind a hat kiosk about fifty meters away. We keep up a solid conversation about hats, and the salesgirl either doesn't notice or doesn't care. Simon switches out a lens just as Kit gets on his mom's lap, so we have to rely on me for that shot. (It ends up being the one they run in
Us Weekly
the following magazine cycle.) After lunch, Jodie and Kit ride the train around the mall. Their moments are affectionate and intimate, and there is no denying serious love between mama and son. My camera begins to feel like a violation of that love. At one point, I ask Simon if we can leave. “This isn't fun,” I say.

He tries to reassure me. “These pictures are good for her. They show she's a good mum, and that's important for her career.”

This is the first time I feel guilty doing what I do. But soon, I will understand more about the symbiotic relationship of celebrity and paparazzi, and the truth behind Simon's words will become clear, so today will also be the last time I feel guilty.

After the train ride, we “let” Jodie go. “We nailed it. It's exclusive,” Simon says, and follows with his mantra, “Let's not get greedy.” Getting greedy in this situation could result in being kicked out of the Grove by security or getting seen by Jodie. Nothing terrible, but no need to annoy anyone if we can help it. The chief risk, however, is getting jumped by other paparazzi. Paps trolling the Grove scan as much for other paps shooting as they do for the celebrities themselves, and since tabloids love celebrities with kids on their arms, we want to keep Jodie—and her son—exclusive.

7
. Americans, who make up about 10 percent of paps, would also fall into the new-school category.

In my desire to soak up information (and make money), I partner with CXN's staffers as much as J.R. will let me. Though my percentage is cut from 60 to 30 when I work with another photographer, 30 percent of something is better than 60 percent of nothing, which is more or less what I get when I work on my own right now. (A year from now, Simon and Bartlet nickname me “Jen-Full-Sixty” because I never want to work with anyone. They say it's because I want all the money for myself.)

I'm put with Aaron for most of the week. I like being with him. It's comfortable, and we have that elusive chemistry that makes breathing shallow and bodies warm. (Well, I have that chemistry for
him
. It's not clear whether it's reciprocal.)

Today J.R.'s assigned us to Hilary Duff. I've worked her only that one unfortunate time. But she doesn't worry me today, not with Aaron here. I'm starting to notice that when I work with a partner, anything seems possible.

Hilary lives in the eastern corner of the Valley in Studio City, an easy ten-minute drive from my house. I arrive at 8:30 a.m. Aaron comes a little later and brings the coffees. We park at the end of the street where we can see Hilary's
drive
, i.e., driveway (British), yet still attempt a stealth follow. Her neighborhood is full of curves and side streets, which will require us to keep a close tail or risk losing her. But the little or no traffic there makes it obvious there is one stubborn car always going her same direction. She won't have to be clever to suss us out.

I hop in Aaron's car, grab my coffee, and proudly unfold the “Hollywood
Stars Map” I bought the previous day on Sunset Boulevard, thinking it might give me a leg up.

Aaron nudges close to me on the seat and studies the map. “Celebs change their addresses as often as their
lippy
[lipstick]. They're all wrong. You wasted ten bucks.”

An hour into the
sit
, an officious, heavyset man walks over from a nearby house. He approaches Aaron's car and knocks on his driver's side window. Aaron cracks it slightly.

“What are you doing?” the man asks.

“Not much. How about you?” Aaron says cheerfully, clearly not answering his question.

“I know what you're doing.”

“What's that, mate?”

“If you don't leave, I'm gonna call the police.”

“Cool,” Aaron says like he's just ordered pizza, and rolls up the window. “Nosy fucking neighbor,” he says to me. “Must be a bitch not being able to buy the street in front of your four-million-dollar mansion.”

Aaron tells me a story. “Was on Jessica Simpson last week,” he says. “The gatekeeper goes for a piss. Saw him leave, so went in with the next car. I'm sitting on her street for an hour, just down from her house, when some neighbor comes up and asks me what I'm doing.”

When Aaron speaks, I still have to concentrate hard to understand his thick accent. I piece words together as best I can so I don't have to keep saying “what?” I've noticed that when I say “what?” too much, Aaron quits talking.

He continues. “I told him, ‘It's a scavenger hunt, mate. I'm giving clues. Everyone's picking up maps from me to get to their next place.' The guy couldn't think of what to say. He just left me alone.”

I love that Aaron does stuff like this. I mean, why are people so concerned with things that are not their business? If the guy had thought Aaron was a robber, OK then he should have called the police, but he didn't think that. Everyone in affluent L.A. neighborhoods knows that when a blacked-out SUV is sitting in front of a celebrity's house, it's a
paparazzi. In fact, we probably
prevent
robbers from hitting up the richest people in town. We are better than a neighborhood security watch. Just get a celeb on your street and you're set.

The cops never show up at Hilary's, and at around 11 a.m., J.R. chirps. He's just seen a blog, and Hilary is in New York. We've been sitting on nothing.

It's too late to jump on another celeb's doorstep, so Aaron decides we'll head to town instead. On the way, Toby, a new “friend” (a loose term when speaking of acquaintances in this business) from a competing agency, Rodeo2, beeps me with a tip: “Brit's at the Chateau.”

Many paps like to give tidbits of information and let you piece together the rest. It's part of the game for them.

I beep Toby back immediately—
How long has she been there? How big a gangbang?
I want to ask—but Toby's already on with someone else and I get the long, flat tone of his busy Nextel.

Aaron decides it's “worth a go,” but we don't rush. We stop at McDonald's for another coffee. “If she's gone, no big loss,” he remarks over the Nextel while pulling into the drive-through.

Aaron says this because everyone gets pictures of Britney—in fact, she's hard to avoid—but the Brazilians “own” her and they make most of the money. The Rodeo2 “Brazilian team”—that's what they call themselves—put in the time, sitting on her in rotating schedules all day, every day, and most of the night. Because of that, they are there for her “big events”—when she carried her baby in the front seat of the car, for example. Or the day she shaved her head or, later on, when a bald Brit beat the shit out of a Rodeo2 car with an umbrella for no apparent reason. (Afterward, she sent a handwritten apology note to Rodeo2, which the agency posted on its website. And later she explained it in
People
magazine by saying it was prep for a movie role, which to my knowledge never materialized.)

Britney's “BFF team” consists of about twelve Brazilians headed up by Mario, an older man who collects money bimonthly from Channing, Rodeo2's hands-on French owner, and then doles out the cash to his
minions as he sees fit. With this sizable team, the Brazilians are sometimes able to block other paps on a follow to keep Britney exclusive.

Britney is loyal to them too. (Except for that beating.) Sadly, she doesn't seem to have many friends right now, at least not ones who stick around, and it appears that she honestly looks at the Rodeo-ers as her friends. To this point, Donna and I worked her doorstep last week, arriving early at her Hollywood Hills home at around 10:30 a.m. (Britney never leaves until the afternoon, but if you arrive after eleven, all the parking places are gone.) At three, Britney's security team lead came out to the two dozen cars waiting on the shoulder of Mulholland and started asking around, “Who here's with Rodeo2?” Mario came forward for a private discussion, and over the next hour, Rodeo2 cars fell off the doorstep one by one like planes in an air show. When this happens—someone has inside information—everyone
not
in the know is left in a conundrum:
Stay and wait? Follow a Brazilian?
(Not that that's doable or allowable.) What we do know is that when no Brazilians are outside Britney's, she's probably not home. We found out the following day that Britney did come out but not in a car we knew, so we didn't follow. She gave an exclusive to her friends from Rodeo2—nothing salacious, just something inside a tanning salon, but solid worldwide money nonetheless. And bonus for Rodeo2, everyone else's day was shot, either waiting for nothing on Mulholland, or late-day
bottom feeding
, as Simon calls it, in the city.

And just so you know, Britney could do this—sneak out—any day. Instead, she usually comes out in her convertible with the top down or in one of her other well-known cars. If her security comes out in a car without her—to get gas, clean the car, etc.—the security will roll down all four windows as they pass us, letting us know that we do not need to follow. Make no mistake: Britney and company are in full control. OK, perhaps not of the starlet herself, but definitely of us. And as I'm learning, there's no question that paparazzi, security, and celebs—at least in Britney's camp—are all on the same team.
⁸

When Aaron and I finally get to Chateau Marmont, a boutique hotel and restaurant in the center of Hollywood, Britney's already gone. I'm sure Toby's on the follow. After my fifth chirp, he picks up his Nextel, shouts out a Beverly Hills address, and hangs up. It's like I'm dealing with a twelve-year-old boy. I find the game exasperating, but Toby is my only non-CXN pap “friend” and I need him. He gives me lots of gangbang tips; in exchange, I listen to an hour each day of his personal
Jerry Springer
-ish relationship stories. We do this either in person, outside Britney's subdivision (where we first met—Toby never works anyone else), or if I'm working elsewhere, he calls (my preference so I can multi-task). I'm fascinated to discover people like him exist: Toby is a chubby American guy with a red face and a big heart who dates and desperately wants to marry his girlfriend, a professional phone-sex operator. (“I'm not jealous of her job,” he notes. “I just get upset when she sees her kid's father.”) People in this town never cease to amaze me.

Aaron and I arrive at the address Toby gives us, an apartment complex. Britney's just shaved her head, so she's even more tabloid-hot than usual, and a dozen paps are already here. Another fifteen roll in over the next few minutes, and we presume Toby tipped off half of those. Tipping off the competition seems counterintuitive, but Toby's motivation is that he'll get tipped back by any or all of us at some point. Besides, he shoots video and only calls in still photographers, so none of us are his direct competition. He just dilutes the pot for the rest of us.

Whenever you're working a gangbang, which I quickly discovered after my first ride-along months ago is always the case with Britney, you wait outside your car. There is no reason to hide—everyone, including
the celeb, knows you're there—and you never know if the celeb will walk down the street, pop out on the balcony, or do somersaults on the lawn. You must be prepared for anything.

It's this day, standing outside the Beverly Hills apartment complex, that I meet Adnan Ghalib, a Brit of Arab descent, whose name (not changed) you may recognize: Adnan becomes slightly famous a year from now when he dates Miss Spears herself, then decidedly infamous when she dumps him and he ends up with a forty-five day jail sentence for a hit-and-run.

Adnan gets out of a gold convertible Mercedes—a $100,000 car according to Aaron—and runs back and forth across the lawn shouting, “Fuck you, Fuck you, Fuck you,” to no one in particular. (Aaron says, “That's just Adnan. Gotta love him.” My thoughts are not so kind. I think he looks like an idiot.) Adnan's dressed in True Religion jeans, which for some reason are a favorite with the paps, a tight white T-shirt, and lots of rings and gold necklaces. He has a thin line of facial hair that extends from his bottom lip to his chin. Adnan's super cheesy, no doubt, but not bad-looking if you, like me (and apparently Britney), go for the Middle Eastern look. When Adnan sees Aaron, they both cry, “Mate!” and come together with a strong handshake. I stand by while they talk about which celebs are and are not giving it up these days, and eventually Aaron introduces me. Adnan nods vaguely in my direction.