Mel Gibson isn’t the only person interested in Britney Spears‘ love life as of late: TMZ has been keeping tabs on the pop star and her secret rendezvous with a mystery man. Sadly, that mystery man is all too recognizable — it’s Adnan Ghalib, former paparazzo and Spears hanger-on.
TMZ’s “sources” have reported that over the last few months Adnan has been entering the gated community where Brit and father Jamie live, but no one can say exactly what’s going on. But we can! Adnan missed the spotlight, Britney missed her enabler, and it was time for a special reunion. And yes, there are text messages involved.
When news broke of “The Matthew McConaughey Paparazzi Surfing Scandal,” heretofore referred to as the “incident,” the story was shaped in a very particular way: It was the band of surfers on the beach, out to protect their sand and their celebrity leader, that taunted the paparazzi, leading to the skirmish that was caught on video. But what if it was the other way around — the paparazzi actually started the fight that caused a broken nose and $10k in damaged camera equipment? And because the photogs were the ones recording everything, they got to edit the video in such a way that made the beer-drinking surfer fellas look like the culprits? And that everybody who would report on this sort of thing, from mainstream entertainment press to blogs like this one, reported the “paparazzi as victims” version because we’re so reliant on these agencies’ photos for content?
To the conspiracy theories! CONTINUED »
Beach blanket belligerence!
A group of paparazzi and the Malibu surfers who attacked them last weekend – to protect the privacy of Matthew McConaughey, say the surfers – have taken to Web site comment boards to taunt and threaten one another with promises of future attacks. What began as just standard American race-bating has become promises of a photographer vs surfer beach rumble, set to go down this Saturday. Unfortunately, we don’t think there’s enough time between then and now to come up with a way to knock Southern California into the briny depths, so, if you’re in the area, go and watch these idiots smash each other’s hollow heads like so many tan jack-o’-lanterns. And take pictures!
After the jump, some of the really witty verbal jabs.
To escape the paparazzi after giving birth, Jamie Lynn Spears supposedly hired a body double to exit the Mississippi hospital from one door while making a sneaky dash from another.
This report comes from OK! magazine, which, you might recall, has a $1 million exclusive deal with the 17-year-old celebrity sister for the first pics of her baby and all the soundbites that go along with something like that. So perhaps it wasn’t Spears who hired the body double, but OK! magazine, which is very keen on protecting its investment.
While paparazzo Josh Levine levies a $2.5 million lawsuit against Woody Harrelson for allegedly assaulting him and breaking his video camera two years ago, some other photogs might be heading to court over this weekend beach battle with a group of surfers, who were either intent on protecting their hidden beach enclave from overcrowding, or view Matthew McConaughey as their leader who must be protected at all costs. CONTINUED »
Two eyebrow-raising Hollywood scandals popped up this week, one including an actual eyebrow! Must we make Tinseltown worry about anything other than budgets and insuring Lindsay Lohan?
First up, the battle between Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment and paparazzo Ronnie Adams, who snapped a photo of Robert Downey Jr. on the set of big-budet action flick Iron Man while the movie was still filming.
As producers for the big and small screen continually battle back against potential spoilers, the studio demanded Adams remove the photo from his website, where he had posted it. He refused, but they eventually got to his web host, who yanked his account.
And then … his photo resurfaced. In Iron Man.
That’s according to Adams’ lawsuit, which claims that after all its complaining, Marvel used the copyrighted photo – after removing Adams’ watermark – in a scene in the movie, showing a newspaper article headlined “Who is this Ironman.” Fiscally savvy Adams, filing suit against the studios, now wants to get remunerated for his unsolicited efforts in contributing to this “pivotal scene.”
So that’s one photo scandal. This next one features Tom Cruise and Nazis! And an eyebrow! CONTINUED »
That photographer whose foot was supposedly run over by Britney Spears in the middle of a paparazzi scrum? Yeah … so he purposefully had his foot crushed by her car as she tried backing away from the camera madness, it’s been decided. Why would a photog do such a thing? Because lawsuits are easy to follow, and fame is easy to come by. But the district attorneys office wasn’t buying it: After reviewing footage of the incident, they concluded, “There was much commotion and noise at the time and there is no proof that the suspect was aware of what had happened.” So Britney is off the hook, and, for once, she has the paparazzi’s footage to thank for it. Or blame for it. Or both!
That harshly criticized issue of The Atlantic, featuring Britney Spears on the cover and a paparazzi expose inside, that had the magazine’s loyalists aghast at how owner David Bradley could bring his well-respected title to such a low, was a newsstand disaster. It moved just 24,000 copies at the newsstand, or less than half what it moved in previous months. Lesson learned? Leave the celebrity shlock to the tabloids. Thankfully editor Justin Smith denied that the story had anything to do with an attempt to boost circulation, make the magazine profitable, and increase newsstand sales, because that defense is going to come in handy right about now.
To fight back at the paparazzi, Lily Allen, who has long attracted their lens, but especially so after gaining weight, and most especially when she decided to lunch with Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson, snapped pictures of the crazed photographers, then posted them on her MySpace blog. That’ll show ‘em!
Actually, that bit of advice didn’t even work for Edwin W. Merino, 30, the Los Angeles photographer who’s been hanging around pregnant 17-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears a bit too much for her liking. Which is why Spears and fiance Casey Aldridge complained about his stalker-y ways around their home in Liberty, Miss., for which he was arrested. This is not Merino’s first claim to fame, however. Working in the paparazzi biz for the past five years, he’s also one of the photogs who snapped Britney without wearing any underwear. Which, these days, is about as notorious as having a Facebook account.
Returning from her Costa Rican jaunt with Mel Gibson, Britney Spears touches down via private plane, exits the hatch, and has exactly 0.000039841 seconds before the paparazzi is screaming at her. [ET]
Who’s going to be the first paparazzi agency to score pictures of Britney Spears and Mel Gibson on holiday together in Costa Rica? Entertainment Tonight has video of them boarding a plane, but nobody has tape of them since they arrived in CR.
Ryan Phillippe became a paparazzi go-to when rumors of his marital woes with Reese Witherspoon bubbled up. Now, he’s a mainstay, but at least he’s learning some lessons: If he’s going to be photographed and put in the tabloids, then the least he can do is wear T-shirts with the web addresses of charities to generate some free advertising.
But what effect does the paparazzi’s hounding have on his kids, daughter Ava and son Deacon?
“She’s aware and it creates in her a lot of anxiety, which is partly my fault. When Ava was very young, I was young too. And brash. I’d get… I wouldn’t like to say violent, but visibly angry at the paparazzi back then. She was my first child, and my instinct was to protect her. I remember one time that I’m not at all proud of, I was holding my daughter and handed her to Reese and ran off to chase this one guy down and hit him. I would never do that now. I think the attitude I had at the time did create in her a lot of the fearfulness she has today. […] It breaks my heart to think about it, hearing her say, ‘My friends at school saw a picture of me in a magazine and they made fun ’cos I was carrying a blanket.’ A little girl having to consider how she looks before leaving the house? I have a privileged life and hate to complain but there’s something vile about that.” [London Times]
Aww, the poor thing! No, really, we feel bad for the little tyke. But when Ryan speaks about his relationship with celebrity so openly, what’s the natural course of action? For the gossip blogs to pounce. CONTINUED »
One of those tabloid shows we profess not to watch has become, of late, an infomercial for the website Hollywood.TV. What’s that? Just a wee Mr. Paparazzi competitor.
Founded by Sheerez Hasan, Hollywood.TV gets the shows that license its clips to carry a bug for the site, which also provides blogs with free embeddable YouTube clips. It’s unclear whether the entertainment programs pay to use this footage on air, but it’s likely no cash exchanges hands, or very little — it’d be uncommon for an Access Hollywood or Entertainment Tonight to be forced to advertise a clip’s source if they paid for the rights. (This is different from print or online, where photos, and many videos, must be credited.)
Also in the mix is CelebTV.com, which started as a forgettable player but now packages news segments from its “studio” where “on-air hosts” walk you through celeb events like Britney Spears’ latest car accident.
And CelebTV.com’s recent email to tabloid TV producers explains just how this arrangement works: Plug the hell out of CelebTV.com, and you get the video for free. CONTINUED »
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.
LAPD Chief William Bratton has no hope for a city councilman Dennis Zine law’s protecting celebrities from paparazzi. Such a law – one we’ve dubbed the “Leave Britney Alone” law, which aims to create a “personal safety zone” for registered celebs – would be too ambiguous and impossible to enforce. Rather, he suggests using existing jaywalking laws to keep over-aggressive cameramen at bay. And also: Speed limits.
Not that a British court ruling will affect American policy much, but the jury in an inquest as to the cause of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed’s deaths ruled the limo’s driver, Henri Paul, and the stalkerazzi were to blame. They’ve been assigned blame for “unlawful killing, grossly negligent driving of the following vehicles and of the Mercedes” that fateful August 1997 night. (The twosome were also assigned some blame, for not wearing their seat belts.) And though the Brits paid $6 million for six months of trial proceedings, where some 250 witnesses testified, plus $16 million for a two-year investigation, the ruling will have little to no affect on criminal sanctions against any of the accused, since the crime was committed in France.
It appears paparazzi agency X17 and its ethically questionable founders Brandy and François Navarre – who don’t care much when their photographers nearly kill people – are reaching some sort of settlement agreement with Eva Longoria and Tony Parker, who launched a $40 million suit libel against the pap company in December after X17 claimed Parker cheated on Longoria with French model Alexandra Paressant.
This nondescript apology – originally riddled with grammar and spelling mistakes, even referring to themselves as “X7,” but since corrected – was buried on X17Online.com:
In December 2007, X17online.com published over ten articles concerning Tony Parker and a woman named Alexandra Paressant. Various of the articles asserted that, after Mr. Parker was introduced to Ms. Paressant by Thierry Henry at this wedding to Eva Longoria, Mr. Parker engaged in sexual relations with Ms. Paressant. Since the publication of these articles, X17online.com and X17, Inc. have discovered that Mr. Parker has never met with, or spoken to, Ms. Paressant nor has he ever had sexual relations with her. X17online.com and X17, Inc. regret having been misled by Ms. Paressant and her representatives and apologize to Mr. Parker for any damage or inconvenience this may have caused him or his wife.
Even more interesting: It’s paparazzi photo purchaser TMZ.com who took a turn dumping on the agency over the weekend.
In the fallout from X17’s irresponsibility, the ones piling it on the most are their own commenters, who are leaving notes like, “Guys, guys. Don’t be so hard on x-17. It’s gotta be hard to see all the facts when you’re stuck up Britney’s ass 24 hours a day,” “ROFLMFAO!!!!!! YOU BEEN SLAPPED DOWN ASS HOLES. I HOPE BRITS DAD AND MOM GET YOUR ASSES TOO FUCKERS,” and one particular doozy. CONTINUED »
Courteney Cox’s Dirt makes fiction of the paparazzi. Adrian Grenier makes light of the paparazzi. Emo-pop band A Cursive Memory makes a music video with the paparazzi.
We aren’t too fond of this tweenage angst music, especially when the lyrics include the spelling out of words, but the band’s homemade-looking video for their song “Everything” includes cameos from Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Diddy, Nick Carter, Kim Kardashian, Alfonso Ribeiro, Masi Oka, Hayden Panettiere, David Spade, one of the Olsens, a certain blogger, and a smattering of other importants, and strikes a brilliance chord.
It required 300 hours of footage, we’re told, which even earned them a spot in last week’s TRL countdown, which, this must mean, still exists.
Though an outing in L.A. will attract a crowd of photogs, Paris Hilton must now decamp abroad to draw a paparazzi maelstrom as she did with her presence in Turkey, which had cameramen throwing punching and law enforcement brandishing clubs to calm the uproar. Why all the madness? Paris was there to judge the Miss Turkey 2008 contest. And the girl needs all the paid appearances she can get; Grandpa Barron is donating all but 3 percent of his $2.3 billion to charity.
Editorial Director
