Kirsten crosses the street and begins to head back toward her mom’s house.
“Let’s just get out, and, and…do whatever,” my experienced pap-self suggests.
So, we hop out with our long lenses protruding from our jackets and fast-walk-shuffle up the opposite sidewalk to get in front of Kirsten. She is now past her mom’s house moving toward more telephone poles in the opposite direction. We manage to scoot our way ahead of her.
“What now?” Claudia asks.
“Why are you looking at me?” I utter sharply. “Oh, all right. On three: one, two, three.”
We turn together and pull our cameras to our faces. “Hi, Kirsten. Can we get some shots?”
Kirsten stops, stares at us—truly like we are buffoons—then turns, unhurriedly, and shakes her head as she walks away. She knows that she doesn’t have to rush—there’s no way we can get by her, plus move another twenty feet for a shot with our long lenses before she gets inside. Besides, she knows we want her taking down the signs, and she’s now done with that. Kirsten’s a smart celeb. She knows the game.
We know it too, so we don’t even move.
“Bummer,” says Claudia.
“We screwed that one up.”
But please don’t think I feel sorry for Kirsten (even if she is my celebrity look-alike). Our shots would have made her look like a caring, responsible animal owner—to what was there to object? We won’t even bother to work her tomorrow: she lives on a bitch of a curve and will be watching for us. Anyway, the cat story was the one to get.
* * *
After seeing Claudia, my lonely routine becomes even more miserable. She reminded me that I missed CXN a lot. Not only do I have no pap colleagues to see, I have none to talk to. Even Jimmy, the boss, rarely calls. Most days I have to come up with my own stories. By contrast, Bartlet used to call me three or four times every day, and if I couldn’t think of a celeb to work the following day, he’d always figure something out. Bartlet pushed me to work harder and to think harder, and he made me part of a team—an unorthodox one, yet one I really miss.
But with only a few months to go before baby, I’m gonna suck it up and stick it out with iPIX. Bartlet has and continues to refuse to give me 70 percent—it’s a Tall Poppy thing—and 17 percent more in a paycheck is a lot to trade for “a team,” especially now, when baby fund stockpiling is necessary.
* * *
Quite unusually, Jimmy calls today with a plan: “Why don’t you work on Kristen Stewart,” he suggests.
“Who’s that?”
“She’s the next big thing. In the new movie Twilight. Opens this weekend.”
I look her up. Kristen fits the Hollywood criteria—unmistakably gorgeous and still a teenager. She has those delicate features, symmetrical face, and perfect skin that typify most American movie stars. But beautiful people aren’t special here, and her fame will depend on two things: how well the movie does and how exciting her private life is (and how much of it she lets us see). She can get famous without us, but in order to do that, she’ll have to be spectacular.
Kristen lives with her family in the heart of the Valley, the suburbs of Calabasas. Their house is a ’70s-style ranch in the middle of a cul-de-sac which could be anywhere in Suburb, USA. The right side of the lawn is encircled with a dreadful twelve-foot-tall, wrought iron Alice in Wonderland gate. Parked in front of the house are a pickup truck and several hot-rod cars. There’s also a black Mini, which I discover later that her mom, a tough-looking woman with tatted sleeves, drives. The Mini’s plate reads “Mad Hatter,” so we know who’s responsible for the gate.
But I don’t notice any of this my first time here. Rather, when I rock up this Wednesday morning, all I see is Kristen and her boyfriend. I recognize her easily from my Internet research. She’s sitting on her front stoop in her pajamas, about ten feet from the curb, and she’s smoking. I don’t make eye contact and pretend to be chatting on the phone. I am the sole car to circle the street, but since Kristen will become a star only this week, she isn’t yet savvy to what a pap or pap car looks like, and she takes no notice of me.
But if I drive around again, she might. A slight curve in the road presents itself, and I know I can shoot from around its bend. Without delay, I pull into her neighbor’s drive behind two cars. The owners are probably home, but I’ll be quick. Trees now shield my car, and I am sure Kristen can’t see me. I drop my window, find a hole in the trees, and fire off several frames.
Frankly, I’m not too excited as I get the shots. As I’ve mentioned, mags don’t generally like pictures featuring cigarettes. Besides, Dule, my iPIX colleague, shot Kristen and her boyfriend just a few days earlier when she was wearing a better outfit and the two of them were kissing. That set printed, but anything more of Kristen needs to be really good, at least until Twilight breaks and people know who she is.
After a few seconds of shooting, I zoom in on the back screen of my camera to check the frames and ensure my settings are right, as I always do if there’s time. Low light and a longer-than-preferable distance have rendered the images on the grainy side, but after two years on the job, I read light quickly and usually correctly, so at least they are well exposed.
In the zoom, I also see that she is not smoking a cigarette. Rather, Kristen has a small, glass pipe that she is lighting with one hand while holding the thumb of her other over the carb (the hole) and taking a deep inhale.17 I don’t look at any more frames or fiddle with my settings. I know it doesn’t take long to get high. Pulling my camera back to my eye, I continue to shoot, watching her pass the pipe to her boyfriend before they go inside. It all happens in less than a minute.
“Luck,”—according to philosopher Seneca Roman—“when opportunity meets preparation.” About four times a year, a pap will get a big hit. These days that means anything over five grand in initial sales and residuals. “Opportunity” will come…if you put in the time and know what to do when it arrives. Paris Hilton will walk your way flaunting the Holy Bible, Justin Chambers will cross the street perfectly aligned with his five kids in one frame, or Jessica Alba will pose in a bathing suit on the beach for a photo shoot. My big hits weren’t because I was “lucky” in the traditional sense of the word; rather, they were because I was prepared when opportunity crossed my path. That’s the philosophy behind the daily Britney gangbangs: Rodeo2 paps will work Brit for months and months and only make a few hundred here and there. Then, the day when she shaves her head, they’re there, they’re ready, and they make bank.
If I had rocked up on Kristen’s doorstep my first year in the business, I wouldn’t have gotten the shot. I would not have known, so instinctively, how to set up my camera on this cloudy grey morning from seventy-five feet away; I would not have picked the right ISO or f-stop; I would not have chosen nor owned the right lens. And if I had not picked, by gut and experience, the correct lens and settings on that first try—before I checked the frames—I would have missed the shot. Besides, if I were in my first year as a pap, Kristen would have busted me: my car would have driven by too slowly, too suspiciously, twice; the small hole in between the trees, accessible only by pulling into a neighbor’s driveway, wouldn’t have registered on my radar as an option; and, no doubt, I would have given Kristen a solid, several-second eye-fuck alerting her to a voyeur. These things can’t be taught. They must be experienced.
Eventually, as a pap you start to just know things—like which path people will walk from the store to their car; which way they’ll face when they get out of their car; where they’ll exit a parking structure; or where they’ll stand to pump gas. You begin to know that when they check into a hotel, they will peer out their balcony or they will go for a walk on the street. Or, if they’re part of a new couple, you know they will eventually kiss. And at the same time you are becoming aware of human tendencies, you come to know your camera, seeing through its eye like you see through your own. Eventually, you become a fully trained operative.
* * *
W
hen you get something incredible—and exclusive—and nobody else knows about it, then you generally work it to death.
It’s Thanksgiving week, and since Kristen’s pot pictures are exclusive and there’s little chance they’ll get scooped, we’re holding their release. During the holidays, mags basically shut down, letting a host of good, publishable pictures pile up. When pictures pile up, prices go down, and some shots and celebs get overlooked because there are too many choices.
Also, without the pictures floating around, other paps aren’t alerted to her presence, so Kristen and I have the week to ourselves.
After a few days of following the teenage hippie around unnoticed, I begin to like her. She drives the pickup. It looks like my old one, not like the 1960s one she drives in Twilight. Kristen reminds me a lot of her seductive trailer-trashy character in the movie Into the Wild—a bit rough around the edges but a gem nonetheless. She’s disgustingly beautiful—impossible not to rubberneck—but she’s refreshingly not Hollywood. She never went to high school, dropped out before the ninth grade, and was introduced to acting because her parents were both film crew.
“Why don’t we offer the shots to the studio instead of the mags?” I suggest to Jimmy one afternoon. The studio can’t want a pot-smoking heroine as its image when the Twilight series is geared toward teenagers. It makes sense to me that they would pay more to have them in their possession, thus never released to the public.
“Can’t,” says Jimmy. “That would be considered extortion. Besides,” he reminds me, “the studios don’t protect their actors like they used to.”18
For now, the strategy which Jimmy and Will opt for is to try to sell direct to large international publications for exclusive market buy-outs, keeping in mind what we know about the American market: they may not buy the photos at all.
* * *
So, the Monday after Thanksgiving, just after Twilight comes out, iPIX releases the pot-smoking pictures. They held the set for five days. Five days is about the max an agent wants to sit on pictures. They’re scared to take the risk the set might lose value. A few weeks old means old news.
As expected, few in the United States are interested. The noted exceptions are Star Magazine, which put a shot on its cover in the upper corner—not a full cover, but a cover nonetheless—and TMZ, which picked up the set in an exclusive online deal. (Run by lawyer Harvey Levin, TMZ may print trash, but at least it’s true trash. TMZ staffers don’t make up stories about breakups or hookups, and they’re as “investigative” as it gets in the world of tabloid journalism. I’m a fan.) I think the National Enquirer—which Jimmy reads devotedly to “get the facts”—prints it too. But no other glossy mag in the United States makes mention of it.
But the real sales for a picture like this will be in Europe and Australia. The Twilight books are just as big in those countries, and unlike the States, the Commonwealth has no problem exposing celebrities’ drug habits.
Here’s what happens: Will, iPIX’s seller, calls Europe and says, “We have Kristen Stewart smoking pot.” And, like me, they say, “Who’s that?” Turns out, Twilight won’t be released in Europe for two more weeks—two weeks after its U.S. release, and three weeks after the shots are taken. Will has to explain that Twilight is about to be “the next big movie,” and Kristen Stewart is about to be “the next big thing.” OUCH. If European and Australian mags run the pictures pre-Twilight release, their readers won’t be interested—they won’t know Kristen either. If the mags wait to run the pictures three weeks later, after the movie’s release, they’ll be scandalous. But since the pictures are already on the market in the United States, they’ll also be old news. As much as Europe and Australia love the pictures, there is no place for them. Kristen-Stewart-smoking-pot-on-her-doorstep becomes a big fat non-event.19
* * *
The girls and I, and our extended friends and boyfriends gather for a gastronomic Thanksgiving. We celebrate a week late for scheduling reasons, but the turkey is just as good and a hell of a lot cheaper. Right after supper, Alexandra suggests, “Let’s go find out the sex!”
The five of us—Alex, Jo, Georgia, Amy, and I—hop in the car and drive ten minutes to Treasured Moments Ultrasound, the 4D video sonographer in Glendale. I pay $49 and for ten minutes, we watch my tiny four-month-old baby boy wiggle around in my growing womb. Yes, I said boy. Finally I was going to have a permanent man in my life—albeit a teeny tiny one—who I would love unconditionally. His nose seems a bit squished (like mine), but besides that, he is perfect. Lullaby music plays in the background, and we goo and gaa over this miniature version of me.
Oh my goodness, he’s a boy. I haven’t thought of boy names. I was so sure he was gonna be a girl. What do I know about boys?
“Baby boys need daddies,” I cry to JoDeane.
“And someday he’ll have one,” she reassures me.
* * *
My body is entering the a-little-overweight-and-frumpy stage. My stomach pooches out just enough that my pants won’t fasten, and since maternity outfits would give my condition away to the paps, those are not an option. (After my rocky start in the business, I still don’t trust most of the paparazzi so I attempt to keep my personal life as private as possible. Just like many of the celebs, I suppose.) I live in baggy clothes. The 24/7 nausea has finally lifted, and although the level of fatigue I experience is still astounding, it’s manageable as long as I get ten hours of sleep each night. Work’s not so bad these days, and I even join my friends for dinner occasionally.
Last week, I broke the news to my family and everyone else except for the paps (and Bo). While my family members uttered the obligatory congratulations, Mom was the only one who was truly excited. As I had feared, I could hear everyone’s thoughts: How the hell is she gonna pull this off? I hope she’s not looking for money. That hurt; I won’t pretend it didn’t.
It also made me feel guilty. Yes, it’s true, I am alone in this world. Is it fair for me to bring in another, a child loved unconditionally but raised by only one person?
JoDeane’s husband Andy reassured me, “That’s more than a lot of kids have. He’s gonna be just fine, Jen. You’re gonna love him more than most moms and dads combined.”
Andy’s right. For years now, I’ve craved a baby like an addict craves a hit. Now, I’m just worried I’ll love him too much.
17. Later, in an interview with Vanity Fair, Kristen Stewart reflected on that shot and how it and Twilight instantly changed her life. (“Kristen Stewart on the People Who Critique Her Red Carpet Poses: ‘I Don’t Care About the Voracious, Starving Shit Eaters,’” Vanity Fair, June 5, 2012.)
18. I’ve since wondered if Kristen wishes the paparazzi would have made her that offer a few years later when a paparazzo snapped her cheating on her later real-life boyfriend, Rob Pattinson, a.k.a. vampire Edward Cullen.
19. Had we held the set longer, I might have made twenty or thirty grand. As it was, I made about five or six. But expecting iPIX to sit on pictures for three weeks without alerting anyone of their existence would be like getting a starving dog to ignore his Kibbles ’n Bits breakfast to wait for a T-bone steak dinner: it just wasn’t gonna happen. On another note, the “KStew” set is a great example of one of those “ugly” stories that I told you the magazines fear. It’s a story that people often hear and talk about, but one they don’t ever actually see. Everyone believes it’s true—enough people have seen it online or heard about it on the radio—but the hard proof is missing. American magazines are just not interested. Another example: Kate Middleton’s topless photos. We all heard about them, but unless we concertedly Google searched, few of us ever saw them. (The photographer of these photos would have made boatloads more had Kate been in a bathing suit.) To be clear, “ugly” photogs (like drug, topless, and infidelity exposures) are available—the Internet has far fewer inhibitions—but in the current media environment, they don’t print in many magazines nor on reputable blog sites (i.e., those which actually pay us), and in turn they
are not all that valuable.
Year 3
Chapter 23
In the paparazzi world, as with Thanksgiving, little happens over Christmas. Mags take a break and lay out stock stories in advance. Most celebs are out of town. It’s a good time to not work. I spend the holidays at home in Atlanta showing the family my baby bump and trying to figure out whether spending time at home, post-baby, is an option. (To my delight, it turns out, it is. Everyone’s softening.) I drag a suitcase full of hand-me-down baby clothes back to L.A. with me.
By early January, I’m almost six months pregnant. If I don’t share the news with the paparazzi myself, someone will do it for me. Anyway, now is the perfect time: I am gorgeous. My new wardrobe full of tight-fitting tank tops accentuates a stunning yet still petite baby bump protruding from an otherwise lean body. (And at five-foot-nine, I’ve never had anything petite in my life!) I find often that both men and women stare at me and smile to themselves. Femininity, something I haven’t felt since becoming a pap, blankets me like a dusting of baby powder. And, let’s not forget, I glow!
Simon, Aaron, and Claudia, my closest pap friends, already know. (No, Bo still doesn’t; I haven’t decided whether I’m telling him yet.) It’s only appropriate my agency find out next. After making sure Jimmy is in the office one late afternoon, I pop by to show him the bump. “Spread the word,” I tell him. “I don’t wanna have to do it.”
By the next morning all of iPIX knows, and by the afternoon, all of CXN. Of course, Bartlet calls, sore that he wasn’t in the loop earlier. He loves gossip, and his questions and comments keep coming: “So, who’s the baby’s daddy?…You’re gonna use that guy—suck support out of him, right?…With baby baggage, you can forget about ever finding a husband….” Suddenly, I am a Tall Poppy in all its glory! It frustrates Bartlet that I’m so happy about becoming a single mom, and he’s very annoyed that he can’t get the dad’s name out of me: “I know it’s not Simon,” he says. “Simon’s too smart for that.” (He doesn’t even posture that it could be Aaron. Our “liaisons” will be news to him, and he’ll hate that he never knew.)
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