by James Frey
A year into the job, the magazine’s sales started to slow down. The market had become overcrowded there were new magazines every day, the Internet was drawing away a large portion of the magazine’s audience. The magazine needed to make layoffs he was one of them he was crushed. He had been proud of his job and it was fun and it allowed him to pursue his dream. He cried when he left the office cried when he got back to his apartment cried when he called his mother, when he told his sister. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do. He wanted to stay in New York he still hoped to get on Broadway, there was no way he’d be able to do it without a job to pay his bills. He didn’t want to wait tables or serve coffee. He had been in New York for seven years. He decided to leave.
He went to Los Angeles. There were more opportunities for actors, for every one job in New York there were fifty in LA. He started a Web site with a gossip blog, he hoped he could generate enough interest to attract a couple advertisers, which would allow him to work on his own schedule, go to auditions, control how he lived his life. He named his site after a popular gossip column, used a variation of the numbers that also indicated a humorous, satanic intent. He looked at other blogs and tried to figure out what worked and what didn’t, the better ones broke original stories and updated themselves more frequently, posting a few new pieces every hour. He started working his old contacts, making new ones, started linking to other gossip sites, letting them link to him. He didn’t have an Internet connection in his new apartment, so he went to a local coffee shop that had free wireless Internet access, and worked from one of their tables.
He found an audience quickly, advertisers came because of the audience, money to pay his bills came because of the advertisers. He started devoting more time to the blog, getting to the coffee shop before it opened at 6:00 AM and sitting on the ground in front of the door so he could get into the wireless network, updating more regularly, sometimes four or five times an hour. People started e-mailing him, he got more scoops, better stories, the media started to notice his site, pay attention to it, get their news from it. An evening tabloid entertainment show did a piece on him and called the site The Most Hated in Hollywood. The next day traffic to the site shot up, two three four times more than it had ever been, and the gossip column that he had named his site after threatened to sue him. He had never been sued, didn’t want to be sued, didn’t have attorneys, didn’t know what to do. He was worried after getting back on his feet in LA that everything he had done was going to disappear in a mammoth judgment.
He changed the name of the site. There was a socialite he loved she had a catchy recognizable name she had been involved in a sex tape scandal, an arrest scandal, she had multiple rich famous boyfriends, her every move was documented by journalists and paparazzi. He came up with a Hispanic version of her name that was also catchy, funny, smart. He took advantage of being called The Most Hated in Hollywood and put it right on the front of the site, he rebranded himself as the Queen of All Media. He set up the Web addresses so that traffic was directed from the old Web address to the new one. And people kept coming. More and more every day. And the stories kept coming. More and more every day.
He started breaking many of the biggest media, gossip and entertainment stories in the country. Starlet goes to rehab he knew about it first.
Actor about to leave his wife he knew about it first. Socialite switching boyfriends he knew, rock star and movie star breaking up he knew, boy band member living in the closet he knew. He had advantages over traditional magazines and TV shows in that as soon as he knew something and could verify it, he could put it up on his site immediately, there was no waiting for another issue to be printed or for the evening’s broadcast. People kept coming, more and more, a million a day two million a day three million a day. He started doing TV appearances and other journalists started writing stories about him. Instead of using his real name he started using the name of his site the more it was printed and repeated the more it was recognized the more people came the more people wrote about him the better the stories he got. Celebrity has a sex tape it’s about to be made public he knew, a feud between the two stars of a TV show he knew. People kept coming.
He’s now as famous as many of the people he writes about, the paparazzi follows him, the media covers him. Between six and eight million people a day come to his Web site, ad revenues are huge, and his brand is worth millions and millions of dollars. Beyond any of that, he loves what he does, loves meeting celebrities, loves covering them, loves breaking stories, loves being the first to know, loves the process of running the site, loves the attention he gets from it. He still works from a table at the same coffee shop where he started, he works twelve-, fourteen-, eighteen-hour days. Fans come by to see him and take his picture and shake his hand, celebrities come by to talk to him and shoot themselves with him for their reality shows. He gets sued regularly, though never for libel or defamation, but now has lawyers who deal with it he’s never lost a case.
He can make or break records and bands by posting their songs on his sites with links and positive reviews. And despite all of the success and attention, he’s still the same, the same kid who loved to gossip, the same high schooler with a sharp tongue, the same college kid who dreams of acting. He has a TV show a talk/reality show that’s going to be on cable he hopes it will lead to roles in network shows, studio films, and eventually, the place he always wanted to be but never dreamed he would find via gossip the Internet and breaking stories, Broadway.
A funeral. Eight people stand around a grave. The coffin is cheap the cemetery run-down the stone small the priest never met the deceased. Her parents are there, her two sisters, two people who starred in a sitcom with her when she was between the ages of twelve and fifteen, a former agent, a man who says he dated her but really sold her drugs. She drove her car into a tree. The press said it was an accident. The people gathered around her know better, every single one of them knows better, and every single one of them blames themselves in some way. She was nineteen.
They met on the set of a film. They are both in their twenties, both famous actors, when they met they had both recently gone through very public highly documented breakups with other actors, they had both vowed never to date an actor, or even someone famous again.
They played brother and sister. They had immediate chemistry that was absolutely contrary to any sort of acceptable brother/sister relationship.
They hung out together, ate together, relaxed in each other’s trailers. They talked about what they felt and agreed to wait until the film was over.
They couldn’t wait. It happened at the end of a long day. They were in his trailer. Some of the crew members heard them. Rumors started immediately. They denied them. The rumors persisted. They were in his trailer, her trailer, his home, her home. The press got hold of the rumors, exploited the brother/sister angle, even though they were only pretending to be brother and sister.
They were on the covers of magazines. They were followed. TV shows covered them. They had no privacy, no peace. The film ended he sold his house moved into hers. Paparazzi waited outside for them. Hid in their bushes. Climbed their trees. Followed them everywhere. Waited for them everywhere. They left the country. They followed, waited. They came back. They followed, waited.
A friend had a barbecue for them. It was really a surprise wedding. It got leaked there were helicopters overhead. They couldn’t hear each other saying their vows, her flowers were blown away, they had to go inside.
She got pregnant quickly. The magazines found out they were on the covers again, the worst of them called it incest baby, even though it was no such thing. She went to her doctor’s appointment with bodyguards in a black SUV. He started riding a motorcycle that was fast enough to outrun them. They were scared to leave their house.
She had the baby, a little girl, in a secure wing at a hospital on the edge of Beverly Hills. There were guards at both ends of the hallways, guards outside their door. When they went home three black SUVs
departed from the hospital garage one after another all of them had blackened windows two of them were decoys.
There is a reward for the first picture of their child. They have heard it’s $500,000 but they don’t know for sure. They have been offered a million for a photo shoot they don’t want to do it. They feel like they chose their lives in the public eye their child has not. She is less than a week old. They keep all of their shades drawn, they never leave the house.
He lived in a small town. He was small, frail, weak. He didn’t like school, hated sports. He spent most of his time watching TV. He was fascinated by the people he used to dream of somehow opening the box and stepping into it and becoming one of them. When he was old enough to understand that wasn’t possible he dreamed of what their lives must be like. His mother worked at a Laundromat and his father drank and hit her. He spent a lot of time dreaming.
When he was eighteen he left home. He got on a bus heading west and got off when it stopped going. He found a job at a car wash and started trying to see some of the people he had watched on TV. He walked through Hollywood all he saw were homeless kids and drunks and drug dealers and people dressed in superhero costumes and cops. He walked through Beverly Hills he saw a movie star the host of a talk show. He walked through Santa Monica a movie star and bit player on a sitcom. He was fascinated with them they didn’t seem human to him. He was scared of them. He wanted to be one of them.
He started going to premieres. He tried collecting autographs he got a few. He stood outside of nightclubs got a few more. He bought a star map and tried waiting outside of houses, the star map was wrong no one lived where it said they lived. In most of the places he went, there were men with cameras, they took pictures of the stars, they often followed them. He became friends with a couple of the men, they sold the pictures they took and made a living doing it. He saved up bought a camera. He started hanging around the men and taking pictures with them. They helped him sell a few of his pictures he made enough money to quit his job.
It becomes his life. Searching for celebrities, taking pictures of them. He learns that the other men who do it are divided, more or less, into two groups. One of the groups works with the celebrities, tries to befriend them, if the stars oblige them with pictures they leave them alone. The other group doesn’t give a fuck. They believe the stars, by becoming public figures, are fair game. They go where they go. They take pictures of their spouses, their children. They believe that the price of fame and fortune is a total and complete loss of privacy. If the stars are allowed to make money, they are allowed to make money off of them. He starts in the first camp, he tries to make friends, play nice, give the celebrities some space in exchange for shots. Somewhere he hopes, and believes, that one of them might take a shine to him, become true friends with, take him in and share their life with him, even though his view of their life is an illusion. He’s awkward, the jokes he makes aren’t funny, he’s somewhat pushy. A couple of stars, on different occasions, react badly, yell at him, curse at him, call him names, one of their bodyguards threatens him. He switches camps. He doesn’t give a fuck.
He finds a partner. They agree to share whatever they make, fifty-fifty. When a particular shot of a particular celebrity is desired by a magazine or Web site, they work together to get the shot. They ride a motorcycle one drives the other rides on the back with a camera. They follow celebrities everywhere. They camp out in front of their homes. They go to their weddings, their doctors’ appointments, their lunches, their dinners.
They shoot pictures of them through the windows of their homes, sitting in their backyards, anywhere, everywhere. They don’t give a fuck. The loss of privacy is the price of fame.
There is a bounty for pictures of the kid. The parents are famous, and they choose to be famous, and they make a ton of money making movies, and the kid is an extension of the parents. Fair fucking game. He is sitting in a tree his partner is on the ground beneath him. They take turns in the tree, take turns getting food and supplies, charging the batteries for their camera. There are other photographers in other trees, and in bushes, and on hills, and in cars outside the gate, and in helicopters, but they have the best position. They got here the day the kid was born they figured everyone else would be at the hospital. They will wait until they get the shot. As soon as someone opens a curtain or a door or steps outside. They will fucking be there to get that goddamn shot. It doesn’t matter how long it takes.
Sales are lagging. There haven’t been any arrests or breakups or deaths, nothing great for a cover. The competition has been gaining and they need to break an exclusive. An exclusive on the cover will start moving them off the stands again, will hold off the competition for a few more weeks.
She started as a writer, moved up to contributing editor, became fashion editor, celebrity editor. She became editor-in-chief at a smaller magazine and built up its circulation. She wanted the editor-in-chief job at one of the big ones there were two or three depending on who you talked to and whose circulation numbers you believed. When one of the jobs came up she interviewed there were two other candidates. She made promises neither of them did, said she had raised circulation at her other magazine, she’d do it again. She got the job.
She started strong. She was aggressive and paid well for information and photos. The circulation numbers went up. Her competitors saw what she was doing started doing it themselves. Their circulation numbers went up. It went back and forth, back and forth. She spent more needed bigger numbers spent more.
It’s been slow. She needs a big cover. She knows the couple and offered them $750,000 if they would cooperate. They said no. She offered again this time a million they said no again. She put out the bounty. She knows other magazines also put out the bounty. She raised hers she would go as high as she needed to go. Her husband asked her why she said she needed to get the numbers up. He asked her if she felt bad about doing it to the couple who had always been good to her, had given her interviews and pictures, had been extremely cooperative, and without hesitation, she said no.
He wished he hadn’t said it.
She regrets taking pictures.
He shouldn’t have thrown the punch.
She just couldn’t stop, she tried, tried as hard as she could, she just couldn’t stop.
They shouldn’t have gotten married.
He should have listened when the police told him to calm down.
She wished she had worn panties.
He didn’t really hate blacks.
She shouldn’t have had the last four drinks.
He just couldn’t stop, he tried, tried as hard as he could, he just couldn’t stop.
He wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.
He shouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel.
She shouldn’t have cheated and she regrets it.
He didn’t really hate gays.
He shouldn’t have cheated and he regrets it.
He didn’t know anyone had a video camera.
She just couldn’t stop, she tried, tried as hard as she could, she just couldn’t stop.
He still loved her.
She shouldn’t have trusted him.
He shouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel.
She should have said no.
He regrets it.
She regrets it.
He regrets it.
She regrets it.
He didn’t really hate Jews.
He just couldn’t stop, he tried, tried as hard as he could, he just couldn’t stop.
She didn’t think anyone would care.
He thought it was his house.
They should have never gotten married.
He didn’t know it was loaded.
He should have asked her how old she was.
He shouldn’t have touched the boy that way.
She knows at some point they’re going to find out and she knows that as soon as they do her life as she knows it is absolutely fucking over.
He doesn’t understand why everyone
cares so much, he just wants to work doing something he loves and live his life and be left alone.
One thinks all publicity is good publicity. Another knows better.
Some don’t give a fuck.
Some seek it out.
