From the Magazine

Hollywood Vs. the Paparazzi: It's War!

Gangster paps. Celebrity fake-outs. Secret payoffs. Violent skirmishes. Hollywood's paparazzi wars are turning ugly. Radar reports from
the front lines

By John Connolly and John Cook

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PEEP SHOW In the last 15 years, the number of paparazzi in L.A. has increased more than tenfold

The evening of March 13 was just another Tuesday night for Lindsay Lohan. She spent a few hours at Butter in Manhattan—where the line for nobodies stretches around the block and blood orange Bellinis go for $14—sporting a brave face on the eve of her ne'er-do-well father's release from prison. Around 3 a.m., she and some friends hopped in her mother's white 2004 BMW as the paparazzi gave chase. Pursued by at least two cars, she careened through lower Manhattan, putting the Beemer's famed facility for cornering to the test. Pulling into the valet lane in front of Hotel Gansevoort in the West Village, she found herself blocked in and surrounded by photographers.

To judge by video aired by Access Hollywood, the scene rapidly devolved into mayhem, with gawkers and paparazzi shouting Lohan's name as she sat trapped in the driver's seat. Then, depending on whom you ask, one of two things happened: Either Lohan decided to run over a paparazzo named Giovanni Arnold, or Arnold, who was perched on the hood of Lohan's car snapping pics, smelled a lawsuit and took a dive in front of her BMW as she edged forward. "Oh my God! Lindsay, you hit somebody," the photographers shouted, addressing the starlet like concerned friends.

Arnold wound up at St. Vincent's Hospital, where he was treated for a bruised knee, and clips of the incident were on the Internet within hours. Days later, Lohan's mother, Dina, told Harper's Bazaar that "Diana will happen again" (referring to the Princess of Wales' death during a paparazzi car chase), and hinted darkly that her daughter might be next.

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FULLY LOADED On any given day, 300 to 400 paps roam the streets of L.A. on behalf of 20 or so agencies

The Hotel Gansevoort incident was just one in a seemingly endless series of confrontations in recent months between the paparazzi and the celebrities whose every move they chronicle.

Just this past November, Lohan suffered cuts and bruises after being rear-ended by a paparazzo in Los Angeles at 2 a.m. on her way home from a night of clubbing. In February, Britney Spears had a well-documented breakdown, the highlight of which was her umbrella-swinging rampage against photographers from the X17 photo agency. According to X17, Spears had just been prevented by Kevin Federline from seeing her children when she went after a photographer's car, spitting and screaming, "Go fuck yourself!" Just hours before, while stopped at a gas station, an obviously distressed Spears had sat passively in the passenger seat of a Mercedes as a photographer snapped half a dozen shots through the windshield while attempting to console her: "How you doing?" Click. "You doing okay?" Click. Click. "I'm concerned about you though, okay?" Click. And in March, in a Los Angeles church parking lot of all places, a security guard leveled a pistol at another X17 photographer on Britney detail after the cameraman ignored a traffic cop's instruction to stop and wait for Spears's vehicle to leave before exiting the lot. That same week, Princess Di's son Harry allegedly lunged at a photographer while leaving a London nightclub and wound up sprawled on the pavement. Lohan's mother is right: Someone will likely be killed again. And when they are, the shot will be priceless.

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MONEY SHOT Flynet tracked Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz to Hawaii for a $300,000 payday

As recently as 15 years ago, there were just 25 or so "paps," as they're known in the business, plying their trade in Los Angeles. But the dramatic success of Us Weekly and its imitators—Star, Life & Style, In Touch Weekly—not to mention ever-metastasizing tabloid TV shows like Access Hollywood, has injected tens of millions of dollars into the sector and, in the process, fundamentally reshaped the contours of fame. Now, on any given day, 300 to 400 paps (the term is also a verb, as in, "Jessica is in Hawaii this week, let's pap her") roam the streets of L.A. on behalf of 20 or so agencies. Together they generate more than 120,000 images per week, which are pumped directly to the computer screens of tabloid photo editors via password-protected websites. (Even Radar has been known to indulge from time to time.)

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PAGE 4 / 5

HAPPIER TIMES After Daniel Smith died, the last known photograph of Anna and her son went for $350,000

Actual figures are hard to come by, but according to one source, AMI's struggling Star magazine brings up the rear, spending $60,000 per week on pap shots; the flashier People and Us Weekly spend much more. A good image, purchased non-exclusively, runs from $1,500 to $2,000 for print publication. For exclusive rights, a shot of middling interest—like Hayden Christensen and new girlfriend Rachel Bilson together—might garner $15,000. For particularly explosive photos, frantic auctions can drive the price 20 times higher.

Two years ago, Us Weekly paid $500,000 for a set of photos of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie strolling along the beach in Africa. Shots of Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake together, on a surfing jaunt to Hawaii, earned $300,000 for Flynet Pictures, an agency run by paparazzo Scott Cosman, who happens to be married to an Us Weekly reporter. And those are just U.S. rights; by reselling the rights in other markets, agencies can double or even triple their take. The chance for a big score has attracted a new generation of paps armed with point-and-shoot digital cameras and a desperate desire to get rich quick, and their aggressive tactics are shaking up the field.

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CAN YOU SPOT THE FAKE? The shot at left of Denise Richards and Richie Sambora was allegedly staged in advance by a photo agency that paid Richards for cooperation. At right, candid pics from a rival agency

Celebrity has always been a Faustian bargain: The star gets wealth and recognition; in exchange, the world gets to eavesdrop on his or her life. La Liz had to deal with it in her heyday as surely as La Lohan does today. But in her prime, Elizabeth Taylor faced a relatively small rogue's gallery of hard-drinking Hollywood bottom-feeders who prided themselves on cat-and-mouse tactics. When Lindsay Lohan walks out of her front door in the morning, she can expect to find a veritable pack of former gang members, illegal immigrants fresh from the slums of São Paulo, and ex-cons staring her in the face. In 2005, after Todd Wallace, a pap following Reese Witherspoon and her children during a visit to Disney's California Adventure theme park, was arrested for allegedly assaulting two park employees, he was found to have a rap sheet longer than his list of photo credits: battery, burglary, grand theft, and a total of four years in a California prison.

In response, targets like Pitt and Jolie have beefed up security, hiring firms full of retired LAPD to turn the tables by harassing, trailing, and investigating the paps themselves. The result is a bizarre continuation of the long-running street battles between cops and criminals in Los Angeles—only instead of Compton and East L.A., the theaters of war are the seaside cliffs of Malibu and high-end boutiques along Robertson Boulevard. The police cruisers and low-riders have been replaced by imposing black SUVs, and the guns have morphed into cameras. But the point of it all remains the same: money.

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(This is an excerpt from the June/July issue of Radar magazine. To get a risk-free issue, click here.)

Photos of Lindsay Lohan by Jill Greenberg

05/14/07 1:36 PM

Oooh I've just had a GREAT idea for a new t-shirt to add to my range based on this article!

Thanks radar!

Posted by: QueenofSuburbia on July 5, 2007 5:40 AM

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Hollywood Vs. the Paparazzi: It's War!

Gangster paps. Celebrity fake-outs. Secret payoffs. Violent skirmishes. Hollywood's paparazzi wars are turning ugly. Radar reports from the front lines

Gangster paps. Celebrity fake-outs. Secret payoffs. Violent skirmishes. Hollywood's paparazzi wars are turning ugly. Radar reports from
the front lines