October 22, 2005 Page 1 of 2 Public sympathy was with Britney Spears when a paparazzo was shot in her vicinity.
Public sympathy was with Britney Spears when a paparazzo was shot in her vicinity. Picture: AFP AdvertisementAdvertisement
The celebrity-paparazzi war is getting nastier on both sides, with a little help from a Los Angeles security company, writes Andrew Gumbel.
It's payback time for the paparazzi. The concept of photographers taking pictures of celebrities and earning their living by getting them published in glossy magazines and on internet fan sites has got a little more complicated. Now, at least one Los Angeles-based security company has come up with the idea of taking photos of the paparazzi and posting them on the web, all the better to earn new commissions from celebrities in search of protection and privacy.
Thus it is that Sunset Protective Services, an outfit run by two retired police officers, advertises prominently for something it calls "paparazzi abatement". The company's website features a picture of the car wreck that claimed the life of Princess Diana in Paris in 1997, along with the caption: "Don't let this happen to you." The somewhat less than grammatical text continues: "We photograph, follow, document and generally make life miserable to be a paparazzi."
To prove its point, Sunset Protective Services offers a rogues' gallery of snappers sitting in their cars, pointing cameras and looking generally unhappy to have someone else's cameras turned on them. One picture on the website shows a photographer apparently being pulled over by the police. Another is captioned: "An independent shutterbug with scrapes and bruises." And indeed the photograph shows a young woman with unspecified injuries to her right forearm.
The implication is clear, and not necessarily all that pleasant - you mess with celebrities, and Sunset Protective Services will mess with you.
There is nothing new about celebrities and their retinues getting nasty, aggressive and even violent with over-intrusive photographers. Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin and others have shown little restraint in raising their voices or waving their fists.
What has changed is the undercurrent of violence that is beginning to emerge on both sides of the celebrity-paparazzi divide. Several young actresses, in particular, have complained that photographers have either scared them, or entrapped them, or provoked car accidents in their zeal to capture a candid off-duty photograph.
The driver of a mini-van that collided with a Mercedes driven by teen star Lindsay Lohan was subsequently charged with assault with a deadly weapon. The unpleasantness appears to have increased on the other side as well. In August, a photographer walking up a street towards a Malibu house where Britney Spears was holding a birthday party was shot in the leg with a plastic pellet. The injury was not serious, but the incident alarmed photographers.
