Shooting Stars (4 page)

“Nuzzle up in there,” he says, softly pushing me into the pack.

I wish to blend in, but know I do not. I feel like the new kid at a school where no one speaks my language. The pap crowd rocks like gentle waves, up and back, and eventually I make my way in and off to one side. I'm elbow-to-elbow with bunches of non-Beverly-Hills-looking guys wearing baseball caps and droopy gangsta-like trousers, all toting massive cameras. No one speaks to me and no one makes eye contact, but I can
feel
I am noticed furtively. Aaron, who stands with Brian on the other side of the heap, winks at me every once in a while.

We wait an hour. Just when Gwen Stefani is about to come out—and we know this because the Ivy's security team posts up on the patio like military guards—the paps hush and cameras move into position. Gwen walks out and down the steps leisurely, smiling, head held high. She's even lovelier in person than she is in the magazines—all eyes and lips on baby white skin. It's a shame though that her equally luscious husband, British singer Gavin Rossdale, isn't accompanying her. Gavin, like Dempsey, is another spectacular male who appears, from my occasional tabloid perusals, to be extremely in love with his wife. I shoot nonstop, and while my camera's faltered
chug-a-chug-chug
doesn't sound like Aaron's, I get shots—a few of which will end up in focus. Aaron and Brian get pictures from their angles, and we'll put them together in one set. Maybe we'll make nothing, or maybe we'll make a few hundred. “Gas money,” Aaron says.

Big money,
I think. I haven't made more than a hundred-a-day in years.

Gwen departs, and the paps scurry off in every direction, like ants after their hill has been stepped on. Except for Brian and Aaron. They stay on the sidewalk and keep chatting.

“Three sets
in the bag
,” Aaron says referring to Halle's, Patrick's, and Gwen's pictures. “Let's just enjoy it.” Then he scoops two more lint-flecked sunflower seeds out of his pocket and pops them into his mouth.

I stand at Aaron's side awkwardly, listening to him talk to Brian about work and celebrities but not being included in the conversation or knowing exactly how to join. Brian won't even look at me.

Aaron tells me later that when Brian first saw me, he remarked, “
She's
a pap? How's that gonna work?”

Aaron explains: “Don't get me wrong, Jen. We all think it's nice to have
birds
around [girls, he means]. We just aren't sure how to ‘integrate' you.”

I don't see this as an immediate concern. I mean, I've never had problems making friends before. But as one of approximately six female shooters among hundreds of Los Angeles paparazzi, I will soon discover how hard “integration” really is.

The respite outside the Ivy is short. Aaron's Nextel beeps. It's J.R. with a tip: Matthew Perry is at the ArcLight cinemas.

“Awesome! I love
Friends
!” I gush.

Aaron and Brian look at me like I have three heads. “He's worthless,” Aaron says. “But there are worse ways to end the day.”

I can tell that even if “Matthew is worthless,” Aaron is still running high on Halle, Patrick, and Gwen-drenaline.

“You coming?” he says to Brian.

“Hell, yeah.”

* * *

At the famous Hollywood theater off Sunset Boulevard, Brian takes an obscure hiding place on the second story of the parking deck, and Aaron and I position ourselves on the ground level. Even though I tell him, “I really want to see Matthew,” he faces me twenty feet away from the theater's exit, toward him and his camera. Aaron plans to shoot—literally—through the crook of my elbow, and apparently if I face out,
that will look strange to Matthew, and he will know subconsciously that something is off and may cover his face. “No celeb's ever gonna notice you with your back toward them,” Aaron says.

We don't have to wait long. Matthew exits before the movie lets out, we take shots, and he never sees us. I get to see the back of his head once he passes.

“And that's how it's done,” says Aaron.

Our shooting day is over. It was fruitful, but I shouldn't expect that every day, Aaron warns. We also still have a couple of hours of editing ahead of us, but that's OK with me. I'm falling in love. We go to Starbucks, and I watch Aaron knock out a preliminary cut and edit on his laptop. We probably have a hundred shots of Halle, Gwen, and Matthew altogether, but only edit and send in the best ten or so of each. Brian will do the same with his shots. I have just five of Dempsey and we send in two—two that are actually medium-sharp! The editors at the agency will combine the sets and take another crack at editing. “They like to feel useful,” Aaron says, “so they usually make a few adjustments. Mostly they just resize though.” By midnight, or sooner, the pictures will be posted to CXN's website and sent out via email to all major magazine and blog editors and to CXN's affiliate agents around the world. By eight the next morning, the pictures may end up on one or many blog sites—PerezHilton, TMZ,
People.com
—and magazine editors and TV producers will start calling if they want to buy any for their next hard copy issues or tabloid shows.

I never find out what our shots of Halle, Gwen, or Matthew went for. “They never tell you,” Aaron explains. “You gotta look for it in your sales report in three months. By then you won't remember today.” But the next day J.R. calls to congratulate me on my first sale, one of my Dempsey pictures. “A big one for a fourth-page,” he says. “Fifteen hundred dollars to
Us Weekly.
Should be on the newsstands next week.”

Aaron doesn't want his credit on that photo. “It was all you,” he says. So after CXN takes its 40 percent, I'll make $900. Big money! And again I think,
I'm gonna succeed.

I might not be into reading the tabloids, but at this price, obviously somebody is. And I recognize for the first time who is actually chasing the celebrities.

Paps start the day
doorstepping
—they go to a celebrity's house, wait for the celebrity to leave, then follow him or her. It's been a week since we shot Halle. She's out of town now, and I know only two other celebrity addresses: Britney's and Paris's. Aaron tells me that Britney is way too hard for me right now, so if I want to doorstep, I should work Paris. “She's easy and nice,” he says, “and
always
money.” He also tells me that before her sex tape came out, she would sit outside the Ivy trying to get photographed but no one would take her picture because she didn't sell. “She had to take matters into her own hands.”

I spend the morning with my neighbor, Donna, who lives in the unit under me at the Lyman Village Los Feliz apartments. Donna is new to L.A. and spent last week chumming around with me on Robertson looking for celebrities. This morning she announces, “I'm just gonna be your sidekick for a while. Cool?” Living off savings from a lucrative massage therapy career—the legitimate kind—Donna thinks paparazzi-ing is as much fun as I do. I'm thrilled to have the company.

Right now, we are sitting outside Paris's Tuscan-style villa on a warm December afternoon hoping for some daytime movement while trying to figure out if the starlet is hosting a Christmas party this evening. Of course, we wouldn't be invited guests, but J.R. says you often get lucky at Paris's parties with “debauchery on the front lawn.”

Paris's pattern, we're told, is to go in and out all day, so although we may not know for sure if she is home, she's an all-day target. From nine to noon, however, we see no movement except for workers cleaning up
empty vodka bottles (J.R. says she has a lot of parties), and paps who swing by every quarter hour only to leave a few minutes later.

After phoning J.R., we move off Paris and head to Robertson. At three o'clock, I spend an hour taking pictures of Tori Spelling strolling her miniature mutt Mimi LaRue around in a trolley. Tori is on Robertson filming her reality TV show and doesn't seem to mind that twenty-five paparazzi are tripping over her carriage and each other trying to get her photograph.

A gangbang of this style is comparable to shooting a red carpet event.
³
Each star walking a red carpet will stop in front of a row of photographers, smile and turn, reposition, smile and turn, etc., until presumably all the photographers have gotten a shot. Tori, on Robertson, does this. She walks slowly, patiently, constantly looking up and smiling, waiting for all of us to get shots. This paced shooting is gratifying in that even
I
get nice pictures. The financial reward, however, is questionable:
if
one is lucky enough to sell a frame when there are a dozen or more look-alikes, the large number of similar shots on the market destroy its value. The shot is worth pennies.

It will take me about a year to determine if gangbangs are cost-effective. “Pennies” actually means “one or two hundred dollars,” which is a lot for me at the moment. Also, I find out later that there are exceptions. For instance, even in a gangbang, there could still be
the shot
, and you may get it. After about a year in the business, I end up deciding that if the total time (parking, waiting, and shooting) can be completed in under an hour, it's probably worth it. Otherwise, keep moving 'cause you may find something better.

* * *

By four, Donna and I are beat and we head for home. While inching along on slow-moving Sunset Boulevard, Donna pushes for a two-minute detour by Paris's house. “One more look?”

I reluctantly agree. Up the hill, round the curve to the mini-mansion…

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” screams Donna, pointing at a blond girl getting into the passenger side of a black Audi. “It's her. It's her. It's Paris. Hurry. Turn around. Go! Go!”

Adrenaline floods me. I turn
on
. I attempt a quick U-turn, a laborious effort on the narrow hill in the 1987 Mazda station wagon my brother gave me when I moved to L.A., and pull in behind her.

I don't see any other paps. I know what this means—“An exclusive, Donna! We have an exclusive!”

I follow Paris down Kings Road, and we head west on Sunset.

My crackling nerves need more than driving to release their tension. I bang on the dash. Donna keeps screaming: “Yes! Yes! Yes!” It's like we're in some hideously exhilarating
Bourne
chase but with real people—famous ones—real payoffs, and limited risk of death.

I call J.R. and attempt to sound cool and collected. “So, Paris just left, and Donna and I are behind her.”

“Fabulous,” he says in his “slurred” British accent. “Follow her.”

And then what?!
I've never followed anyone by myself.
Do I stay in my car and shoot? Get out? Where do I stand? Do I use a flash?
Excitement fills my blood, though common sense tells me it's highly unlikely I'm gonna pull this off. Of course, I don't want J.R. to think I can't do the job, so I don't ask any questions.

We turn left off Sunset, onto La Cienega, then head west again on Santa Monica Boulevard. When we hit Robertson, we take another left, south…heading straight toward “pap headquarters.” Aaron says Paris always drives down Robertson to get paps to follow and photograph her. We pass the center of operations. We see the paps but they don't see us. Still exclusive.

Donna unplugs my camera battery from the cigarette lighter and puts it in my camera. It was dead after Tori, even though I'd turned it off each time she went into a store.

I call Aaron. “I don't think I can shoot,” I say. “I'm shaking too much.”

He tells me that the rush is a good thing. “It's why we do the job.” (I
find this an interesting comment. Aaron doesn't say, “It's
how
we do the job”; rather he says, “It's
why
we do the job.”) Then he explains what will happen. “Paris always takes a few seconds to get out of the car. She'll brush her hair or something. She wants you to be ready.”

I won't be ready.

Aaron says he'll come and help, which makes me feel warm on a couple of levels, but he doubts he'll make it before she stops somewhere. “The entry shots are all you. You can do it,” he counsels. At least I think that's what he says. I can still barely understand Aaron's “Scottish.”

The girl who's driving Paris does two U-turns in horrid traffic on Beverly Boulevard (so, of course, I must too), then someone yells the vulgar C-word out their window—at me!

Dude. I'm just following!

I notice the passenger in the Audi light up. I call Aaron again. “Paris doesn't smoke, does she?”

Is it possible Donna and I both mistook a doppelgänger for the world's most recognizable star?

“
Fags
[i.e., cigarettes], no. Pot, yes,” he says just as Donna and I get a big whiff of reefer in our windows.

And then…it happens. And it's just me. I'm petrified, but somehow I do it. Paris stops. I stop. I get out of my car, walk to the front of hers, and wait for her to move. A horn begins to honk, nonstop, because I left my car blocking the alley. I wait for Paris to finish primping in the car's mirror.

When she opens her door, she gets out leisurely, one leg at a time. I'm about twelve feet in front of her and take pictures until she reaches me. Then I step aside. Paris and her friend go into a small building. I don't know if I remember to say, “Paris, do you mind if I take a few frames?” Aaron told me to say that. It's more polite.

The horn is still blaring, and the guy in the blocked car is now aggressively swearing. I go move my station wagon. When Aaron pulls up, I'm shaking but can't quit smiling either. It's an insane rush. He was right.

“Another exclusive! Congrats!” he says as he gets out and gives me that
same forever-hug. Then Aaron beeps J.R. to tell him what's just happened, as is protocol—CXN likes to know what pictures are coming in. J.R. responds by inviting both Donna and me to the company Christmas party scheduled for that evening. I don't think he forgot to do that before, like he says he did, but I don't care. Now
with my two exclusives
he's starting to notice me.