Overexposed: The Price of Fame

By Eliot Tiegel

In Overexposed: The Price of Fame, entertainment journalist Eliot Tiegel left no stone unturned in his probing examination of the effects of in-your-face publicity and the growing importance, presence— and profits— of the paparazzi. Over the last several decades, the world has watched the publicity game change drastically, and, as a result, the potential for lives to be ruined has never been greater.

An enlightening exposé , Overexposed closely examines the troubles of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and Nicole Richie from a host of perspectives, including in-depth interviews with major media figures, publicists, and celebrities— from George Clooney to Dr. Phil, infamous paparazzo Ron Galella to LiLo herself. In the end, one question resonates from this powerful analysis of the paparazzi-fueled media frenzy: How much is too much?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phoenix Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781614670445

Book preview

title

Copyright © 2008 Eliot Tiegel & Phoenix Books, Inc.

All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except brief quotations in critical reviews and articles.

The opinions expressed in this book are those of the author of this book and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher or its affiliates.

eBook International Standard Book Number (ISBN): 978-1-61467-044-5

Original Source: Print Edition 2008 (ISBN: 978-1-59777-599-1)

Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data Available

Epub Edition: 1.00 (5/3/2011)

Conversion Services by: Fowler Digital Services

Rendered by: Ray Fowler

Book Design by: Sonia Fiore

Printed in the United States of America

Phoenix Books, Inc.

9465 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 840

Beverly Hills, CA 90212

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: DAMSELS IN DISTRESS AND THE EFFECTS ON THE TABLOID PRESS AND SOCIETY

CHAPTER 1: STARS STRIKE BACK AGAINST THE TABLOIDS

CHAPTER 2: BRITNEY SPEARS SPEARHEADS MEDIA SPOTLIGHT

CHAPTER 3: LINDSAY LOHAN: OUT OF CONTROL, BUT SEEKING TURNAROUND

CHAPTER 4: PARIS HILTON: SOCIALITE'S PUBLICITY KEY TO NOTORIETY

CHAPTER 5: NICOLE RICHIE: FAMOUS FATHER, BABY GIRL, TURNAROUND LIFE?

CHAPTER 6: MILEY CYRUS: DISNEY'S EVOLVING MULTI-MILLION-DOLLAR 'TWEEN SUPERSTAR

CHAPTER 7: TALENT, PR FIRMS FACE MEDIA ONSLAUGHT

CHAPTER 8: PAPARAZZI: INVASIVE PHOTOGRAPHERS AND THEIR WEBSITE CONNECTIONS

CHAPTER 9: MEDIA MATTERS: PRINT AND TV CHASE AFTER THE SAME STORIES

CHAPTER 10: MENTAL HEALTH CONCERN: DO CELEBS' BAD BEHAVIORS IMPACT YOUNG MINDS?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

REFERENCE SOURCES

INTRODUCTION

DAMSELS IN DISTRESS AND THE EFFECTS

ON THE TABLOID PRESS AND SOCIETY

Since the year 2000, like most experienced journalists, I’ve been amazed and distressed by an all-too-imaginable show business phenomenon inflicting four principally troubled, young female celebrities—Britney Spears, age 26 in 2008, Lindsay Lohan, 21, Paris Hilton, 27, Nicole Richie, 26, and the latest addition, Britney’s younger sister Jamie Lynn, already a mother at 17. In the process of their being regularly exposed and exploited in the harsh glare of media madness, every move of these young ladies— their romances, excessive nightclub hopping, partying late into the morning, drinking and doping and consequent checking in and out of rehab, and in a few instances even spending time in jail—have resulted in their being photographed in unflattering, often impaired conditions. Take, for example, Britney and Lindsay, whom we’ve watched grow up-and-into young stars before our very eyes. Britney, age eleven, joined the cast of the Disney Channel’s popular The New Mickey Mouse Club in 1993 as a Mouseketeer, staying with the series until she was thirteen; in 1997 she began her musical career. Lindsay started her professional career as a three-year-old child acting in TV commercials. In 1996, at age ten, she made her TV debut in the drama Another World, and in 1998, made her film debut starring in The Parent Trap, a remake of the original 1961 movie. Nicole, daughter of singer Lionel Richie, has maintained a slightly less public life. However, her battles with anorexia and anxiety over the birth of her first child have been sufficient in warranting articles in the tabloids. Chapters 2 through 5 are devoted to these ladies.

Their stories have become mainstream general-interest news because they are the hot commodity on which a large, loyal segment of the population has fixated. Their collective loose-living, mentally tormented lives have resulted in furious, parasitic coverage of their behavior by the celebrity print, television and Internet media. This media frenzy has been spurred on by the swarming hordes of paparazzi who have pursued these women around the clock, often using ultra-long lenses to zero in on their unwitting subjects. Occasionally referred to as stalkerazzi, the term paparazzi is actually credited to Italy’s renowned director, Federico Fellini, and covers the assault photographers chasing celebrities for a candid photo; literally, it means household pest. Also in the paparazzi’s lens is Miley Cyrus, the fifteen-year-old richer-than-rich actress/singer/money-making member of the Disney Company’s hit TV series Hannah Montana and all that it has swallowed in its wake, including films of her concert appearances and hit albums, for starters. Originally looked upon as a clean-living role model for ’tweens (kids nine to fourteen years old), by 2008 that image is under question, and explored in Chapter 6.

In this country, three iconic figures have generally been credited with drawing attention to the actions of the paparazzi: Ron Galella and Russell Turiak in New York, and Phil Ramey in Los Angeles. Their exploits and/or opinions are pursued in Chapter 8. A growing number of photographers, or shooters as they’re called in TV vernacular, have begun to drive dangerously after their prey, often disregarding public safety and traffic laws along the way. Large checks made out to the photographer scoring the most exclusive snapshot have long over-ridden any sort of human decency. For a lesser amount, they’ll settle for simply surrounding the starlets’ cars or attempting to catch one entering or exiting a nightclub, hotel, or retail store. There is no limit to what the paparazzi will or will not do, it appears. So far, Britney, Lindsay, Nicole, and Paris have escaped any injury—or death—at the hands of these wanton displays of insensitivity.

There has been one tragic, world-shaking death as a result of the paparazzi chasing after an intended subject. Britain’s glamorous Princess Diana, her companion Dodi Fayed, and their driver Henri Paul were all killed in a high-speed crash while being pursued by several paparazzi on motorcycles on August 31, 1997, in Paris. The crash occurred shortly after midnight in a tunnel along the Seine River. French officials said the dark blue Mercedes encapsulating the Princess and her companions was traveling eighty miles per hour when it slammed into a concrete post and then careened into a wall. Diana, though she was revived at the scene by ambulance attendants, died in the hospital at 4 a.m. after doctors worked unsuccessfully on her damaged heart for two hours. Fayed and Paul both died at the scene of the crash. Having divorced just one year earlier from Prince Charles, Diana was thirty-six, Fayed was forty-two, and Paul forty-one. Diana’s bodyguard was seriously injured in the wreck, but miraculously survived.

Safety concerns have begun to emerge for Oscar-winning actor George Clooney, who having been chased by the paparazzi himself, was among the first influential actors to speak out against the dangerous antics of these photographers. His comments appear in Chapter 7, as do those of Lindsay Lohan on other matters. On the political level, two cities, Los Angeles and Malibu, have reacted to the over-zealous, often dangerous behavior of the paparazzi by considering the adoption of public safety laws which will impact photographers’ ability to get too close to celebrities. In February of 2008, the Los Angeles City Council was studying the legality of a personal safety zone between the paparazzi and their celebrity subjects; the council faced opposition from First Amendment proponents. In May of 2008, Malibu vowed to restrict paparazzi movements after the beachfront city was overrun with paparazzi stalking resident celebrities. Both actions are covered in Chapter 8. Meanwhile, a number of media figures have begun criticizing TV for spending so much time on celebrities and their private demons to the detriment of other more important news. The Los Angeles bureau chief at the Associated Press, however, has opted for more coverage of Britney claiming the pop star and her whims are legitimately newsworthy.

Paris Hilton became a forerunner in the field of celebrity sex tapes when hers debuted in the media in 2003. Those following included a tape allegedly made in 2007 involving Lauren Conrad, the twenty-two-year-old star of MTV’s hit reality series The Hills and her former boyfriend Jason Wahler. While no one has claimed to have seen the steamy video, it was heavily reported in the tabloid media, both in print and online at PerezHilton.com. Conrad has continued to deny the tape exists. Wahler was quoted in the May 19, 2008 issue of Us, saying he does not have a sex tape of Lauren Conrad and one does not exist. The MTV show’s two other stars, Heidi Montag, twenty-one, and on- and off-screen romantic partner, Spencer Pratt, twenty-four, emerged in 2008 as media darlings because of their on-screen linkage and dynamic, singular public persona. Although not appearing in a sex tape, Vanessa Hudgens, nineteen-year-old star of the Disney TV series High School Musical, caused her own stir when full-frontal nude photos supposedly taken for her boyfriend wound up on the Internet in the fall of 2007. This scandal had virtually no impact on her career (including the filming of High School Musical 3 in 2008), recording of her second pop album, and appearing in various commercial campaigns.

Over the decades, show folk have taken legal action against the supermarket tabloids, as they were originally called and are now referred to as simply the tabs or tabloids. The list of litigants is long and historic, ranging from Rudy Valle and Phil Silvers to more recently Jennifer Lopez and husband Marc Anthony, Scarlett Johansson, and Reese Witherspoon; see Chapter 1. The list does not include the most recent batch of media darlings.

In the United States, an industry of aggressive, celeb-chasing photographers, many from England, has grown into an armada, chasing personalities and snapping the kind of candid or embarrassing photo which media outlets will compete to pay anywhere from four to five figures for, exclusive being the operative word. With the pay frenzy ever-increasing, in late December of 2007, Britney Spears began dating spike-haired, multi-careered, thirty-five-year-old, Afghan-born, British-raised paparazzo Adnan Ghalib (who, at the time, was married but separated from his wife of four years, AzLynn Elizabeth Berry). His competitors sensed that he had the inside advantage with former pop princess Spears and rightly assumed he was keeping his small agency FinalPixx informed as to the couple’s every move. Other, larger, photo agencies have also scrambled to sell their photos to the media, exclusively if possible, for five figure amounts and higher. These agencies include: Phil Ramey, Bauer-Griffin, Splash News, X17, Pacific Coast News, INF, WENN, Flynet, Buzz Photo, Big Picture and JFX Images. Their world is explored in Chapter 8. The subject of the paparazzi and celebrities was, remarkably, the cornerstone of an Atlantic Monthly cover story titled, The Britney Show: Days and Nights with the Paparazzi. While the feature did not sit well with some readers of the 150-year-old highbrow journal of public events, business and culture, its analysis of the Britney/paparazzi phenomenon (March 2007) was designed to help reverse declining advertising and newsstand sales, as noted in Advertising Age.

A growing array of eighteen celeb Websites, with their expansive reach and enticing dirt-dishing, includes the following: the Drudge Report, TMZ.com (for which co-executive producer Harvey Levin spawned the syndicated daily TV series TMZ, which debuted in September of 2007), PerezHilton.com (whose real name is Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr.), X17.com, Hollywood.TV, CelebTV.com, celebritypro.com, celebrities.com, celebrityworld.com, starpulse.com, associatedcontent.com, the smokinggun.com, gawker.com, and defamer.com. Several are profiled in Chapter 8. In addition, the online outlets for a number of TV shows like Entertainment Tonight, The Insider, VH1, E!, and Access Hollywood, plus magazines like People and OK!, have all provided additional information quick as can be.

Each week, screaming headlines reveal the latest media madness in such general market weeklies as People and Us; in the tabloid celebrity fraternity consisting of National Enquirer, Globe, Star, OK!, Life & Style, In Touch, and Blender; and in the tabloid newspapers, especially in major cities like New York. Even Rolling Stone and USA Today have cashed in on the demolition derby, led principally by Britney. Papers like the Los Angeles Times conservatively cover the celeb crash derby with small- to medium-sized headlines. One important caveat about the stories in these sensationalist magazines: Not everything in them is factually correct. While people in the entertainment media might question what they read in these publications, even stating facts contradictory to what is in print, for those in the general public fixated on the latest celeb soap opera-type misery, the exposé cover headlines are enough to keep them coming back for more dirt—and sadness.

Here are just a few sample headlines which indicate the slant these publications favor:

2007—Spears, Federline in Court Together; Britney’s Secret Pregnancy Who’s the Daddy?; Sound Familiar? Lindsay Lohan Back on Booze; Lindsay Begs for Drugs; Lindsay Desperately Seeking Sugar Daddy; Paris Hilton Leaves Jail; Paris Hilton Describes Jail Time as ‘Traumatic’.

2008—Family Feud Leaves Brit Alone in Hospital, Only Her Dad (and Dr. Phil) are Allowed In; Insane! Inside Britney’s Tragic Freefall Into Madness; The Real Story: Britney’s Mental Illness; The Tragedy of Britney Spears; Spears, Sons Visit for First Time in 2 Months; Britney Looks Pregnant; Father of Britney Spears Retains Control of Her Finances; My New Bikini Body! How Britney Beat Cellulite, 20 LBs in 30 Days & Still Losing, Her Diet and Workout Secrets; Lindsay Moves in with Big-Bucks Gal Pal; Lindsay Lohan Backsliding Into Dark Days; Lindsay Lohan as Marilyn Monroe in ‘The Last Sitting’; Hardest Part of Lindsay’s Booze Battle? Where To Hide It; Pregnant Jamie Lynn First Look!; Britney Tells Jamie Lynn Give Up Your Baby; Britney and Jamie Lynn: Stay Away, Mom; ‘L’ Word Audition? Paris Seems to be Rehearsing with Ladies All Over Town; Benji Finally Tames Paris; It’s a Rebound Romance!; Nicole’s Last-Minute Baby Drama; Nicole Richie Back On Booze; New Anorexia Nightmare for Nicole Richie; Miley Photos: ‘Artsy’ or Embarrassing? The Latter, She Says Now of ‘VF’ Shots.

Generally speaking, there’s not a feel good story among this lot.

Television shows like Entertainment Tonight and its companion The Insider, plus Access Hollywood, Inside Edition, Showbiz Tonight, and TMZ, have carried the latest disasters in an abbreviated fashion compared to the celebrity magazines running cover after cover with lengthy inside features. Several of these TV programs are covered in Chapter 9.

This is the new normal, my wife, Bonnie Tiegel, has admitted. Bonnie is senior producer for ET and The Insider, and understands quite well the impact that landing the hot celebrity story can have—especially during the all-important four sweeps periods when good ratings produce moods of elation and dropped ratings generate uneasiness.

In studying this new crop of troubled young stars, it becomes evident that Britney is undoubtedly the most watched and most reported-on show business personality extant, if you rely on all the media coverage she has engendered (as covered in Chapter 2). Apparently teetering on the edge of sanity, Britney has raised questions anent mental health and proper parenting because of her recklessness with sons Sean Preston and Jayden James, both under the age of three and already familiar subjects of the celebrity photo hounds. Britney’s brief stays in hospital psychiatric wards in Los Angeles in early 2008 prompted Los Angeles Times columnist Patt Morrison to recall the shortcomings in the forty-year-old California law which has made it more difficult to commit people against their will. Among the people quoted by Morrison in her article were Britney’s parents: As parents of an adult child in the throes of a mental health crisis, we were extremely disappointed to learn that, over the recommendation of her treating psychiatrist, our daughter Britney was released from the hospital…. We are deeply concerned about our daughter’s safety and vulnerability, and we believe her life is currently at risk.

For all their headlines, Britney, Lindsay, Paris, Nicole, and Jamie Lynn are not isolated instances of celebs gone wild. The entertainment world is replete with other modern-day personalities whose foibles are spotlighted, as well as a plethora of evergreen entertainers from bygone eras who have had their dark moments harshly revealed. Among the crop of celebs who’ve been in trouble in the recent past are: O.J. Simpson, Robin Williams, Tatum O’Neal, Mel Gibson, Nick Nolte, Kiefer Sutherland, Owen Wilson, Robert Downey, Jr., David Hasselhoff, Bill Murray, Rob Lowe, David Copperfield, Daniel Baldwin, Amy Winehouse, Kirsten Dunst, Michelle Rodriguez, Mackenzie Phillips, Paula Abdul, Eva Mendes, Sean Young, the Olsen twins Mary-Kate and Ashley, Mischa Barton, Wynona Ryder, Courtney Love, Christian Slater, Foxy Brown, Bobby Brown, Whitney Houston, R. (Robert) Kelly, Ozzy Osbourne, Kris Kristofferson, David Crosby, Steven Tyler, and the late River Phoenix, Richard Pryor, Brad Renfro, Heath Ledger, and Anna Nicole Smith.

Through the years, celebs’ private lives have been privy to scrutiny by powerful career-creating or destroying newspaper gossip columnists like Jimmy Fidler and archrival Hollywood divas Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper (all of whom were active from the 1930s through the ’50s), and three New York-based powerful columnists—Walter Winchell, Ed Sullivan and Dorothy Kilgallen. Winchell has been credited with inventing the gossip column in 1920, while he was at the New York Graphic, although soon after he shifted to Hearst’s Daily Mirror, where he wrote six columns per week in a format of short sentences connected by three dots. The column was syndicated to nearly 2,000 newspapers and in the 1930s, he began a Sunday evening radio broadcast. By the 1960s his career had faded, leading to his retirement in 1969 and death in 1972 of prostate cancer; he was seventy-five years old.

Sullivan’s own three-dot-style Broadway column was showcased in the New York Daily News from 1932 to 1974, before he became the host of the CBS-TV popular Sunday variety series, Toast of the Town, in 1948. Toast of the Town would later become The Ed Sullivan Show. Dorothy Kilgallen also wrote an influential hard-hitting column for the Hearst newspaper chain which singed celebs and politicians alike from 1938 to 1965.

From 1952 to 1978, Confidential magazine was the source of smutty stories about film stars and politicians. Despite the successful efforts of film-studio publicity chieftains to keep negative stories out of the fan magazines, as they were called years ago, film stars of the time, along with several jazz artists, who were nevertheless caught in the media’s scrutiny spotlight include: Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, James Dean, Robert Mitchum, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Anita O’Day, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Elvis Presley, and during their Saturday Night Live careers, John Belushi and Chris Farley, among others.

In today’s world, the members of the media devoted to celebrity-chasing have become enablers of bad behavior, since their checkbooks encourage a kind of pack mentality among photographers to capture their subjects’ frivolous lifestyles or awkwardly embarrassing moments. The Internet has motivated people with cell phone cameras to become voyeurs; their often-out-of-focus pictures have wound up on popular social networking Websites like YouTube.com and MySpace.com, with some being sold to the commercial celeb sites as well. Even TMZ.com will run fuzzy photos of celebs, a dramatic change from the days when out-of-focus pictures were rejected in professional journalism circles— except for those capturing historical events where the fuzzy picture was the only picture.

In today’s competitive celebrity chase, anything goes. Celebrity chasing spawned the popular FX network series Dirt, a show which explored the unsavory behavior of fictional tabloid Dirt Now’s top editor, played stoically cold by Courtney Cox, as she ruthlessly dug up celebrities’ deepest darkest secrets. The show folded after two seasons in 2008 because of drooping ratings. VH1 went in a different direction with its eight-part reality series, Celebrity Rehab. Veteran radio/TV advice-giver Dr. Drew Pinsky, a real physician and host of the Westwood One syndicated afternoon radio talk show Dr. Drew Live, along with counselor Bob Forrest, conducted group therapy sessions with participants like Brigitte Nielsen