Was Heath Ledger set up by paparazzi agency Splash News when he was caught snorting coke after the 2006 SAG Awards? A just-filed lawsuit by a former People magazine reporter, identified only as “Jane Doe,” claims her boyfriend at the time and his colleague — Darren Banks and Eric Munn, both Splash photogs — surreptitiously convinced her to to allow them into her Chateau Marmont hotel room. It was there that Banks and Munn allegedly set up a video camera to record the room from the balcony, and then laid out some coke on the coffee table, where all parties involved (except the plaintiff, supposedly) took part in the festivities. Eventually, Ledger found the camera, went ballistic, and was assured the tape would be destroyed.
As we all know, it wasn’t; Entertainment Tonight bought it for $200,000 and promoted the hell out of it, but never aired the footage after half of Hollywood and their publicists threatened to boycott the show.
So why is the former People lass suing now? She claims the tape makes it appear as if she snorted coke, which means she’s after damages for fraud, intrusion, infliction of emotional distress, and privacy violations.
Is Britney Spears’ death wish really worth $120 million to the American economy? (Does a mortgage lender crap his pants?) That’s what Portfolio claimed earlier this week, taking into account sales of her paparazzi photos, tabloid magazine revenue, perfume trafficking, endorsements, the spill-off that Kevin Federline is able to suck up in nightclub appearances, and that other career she has selling records and touring.
Photo agencies X17 and Splash News went on record to say Britney’s pics account for 30 percent and 15 percent of their business, respectively.
Last year, says X17, they shoveled $2.5 million in Britney pics; $500k from those head-shaving shots alone. And while conversations we’ve had with competing agencies lend credibility to those figures for overall revenue, many are poking holes in claims from X17 that a single Britney shot can score upwards of $100,000.
“Nobody in the U.S. is really offering those prices,” says one veteran paparazzi insider. “Britney covers don’t sell as well as you think, and the [celebrity] weeklies know this, so they can’t budget very large sums for these photos. Especially when they’re splashed all over the blogs anyhow. They’re pulling that number out of their ass.”
It’s also well rumored that X17 funds Britney’s bank account (which continues to be juiced up with about $750k a month) in exchange for exclusive access, so it’s in their best interest to boast about price tags.
Splash, meanwhile, said it made off with $200,000 from sales of Brit in a hot tub. But that’s gross sales to all outlets, not to a single buyer.
Ben Bernanke isn’t the only one who has to deal with inflation scares.
Because if X17 can open up an unstyled, out-of-the-box blog, then so too can competitor Splash News. And they did, dammit, putting their library of watermarked paparazzi photos on display for bloggers to steal from and readers to know what they’ll be seeing in the next week’s In Touch. Now instead of acting as “insiders” to Us Weekly’s reportage, they can make up their own stories to fit the bill of their snaps.
Editorial Director
