Category Archives: Paparazzi

Sundowner

by Matthew Licht

Actors, Fiction, Film, Horror, Media, Paparazzi, Short Story Leave a comment

Disembowelment fantasies had made washed-up actress Vera North a star on the Walk of Gore. 2,273 words. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

Sunset plays gentle with crumbling mansions and women. Bathed in the bloody light of a death-bound day, there was nothing between her front door and the sun except the Pacific. Between her and the sun was me and my chainsaw. She shielded her eyes.

“You won’t need that,” she said. “He already fell down dead.”

“Yeah, but I only got a Ford flatbed, not a semi.”

“I wanted to spare him the indignity of an autopsy.”

“Call another landscaper.”

She thought about it briefly. “You’re late, by the way.” Sunset showed who she was, or used to be: Vera North, straight-to-DVD splatter star supreme. She caught the flicker, and knew she was no longer mortal in my eyes. “Never mind,” she said.

Most past-it movie actresses get screechy when menials presume to knock on their front doors. Vera, who’d died a thousand slow gory excruciating dismemberment deaths for public consumption, was past caring. She asked if I wanted a cocktail.

Drinks clinked on the way out to the backyard, where we viewed the deceased.

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How Does That Make You Feel?
Part Eight

by Michael Barrie

Actors, Fiction, Lawyers, Novella, Paparazzi, TV, TV Talk Shows 1

The L.A. therapist is pursued by his first celebrity sex partner. 3,419 words. Part Seven. Illustration by Thomas Warming

Speed west on the 10 freeway and you fast run out of land. Just in time, you whip through the rightward arc of a tunnel that shoots you out onto Pacific Coast Highway, due north. On your left: blue-green water from here to infinity. On your right: the Santa Monica Mountains, parched and immense. Dead ahead: the promontory of Point Dume. Beat lights and traffic — a long shot, at best, in your soon-to-be late-great Camry — and in twenty minutes you’ll turn onto an asphalt ribbon known as Old Malibu Road. It’s where Dennis Corbin, celebrity therapist, is heading to make a house call. A beach house call. Oh, the travails of a country doctor.

“Dennis?”

“…Sadie?”

“Did I wake you?”

“Don’t worry about it. What’s wrong?”

“So agitated, I’m gonna scream.”

“Tell me what’s going on.”

“Can’t breathe. God, those crashin’ waves. They’re relentless.”

“Where are you?”

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How Does That Make You Feel?
Part Five

by Michael Barrie

Actors, Celebrity Shrinks, Fiction, Film, Novella, Paparazzi, TV Leave a comment

The L.A. psychologist now enjoys the high-profile life as Hollywood’s favorite shrink. 2,893 words. Parts One, Two, Three, Four. Part Six. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

The restaurant on Culver Boulevard is not far from home — at least geographically. I roll up to the “Valet Parking $9” sign behind Myrtle’s black Escalade. On the sidewalk, a clutch of paparazzi stirs like pigeons. Even in a city not obsessed with faces and bodies like Hollywood, this crew would be a grungy lot. Pungent from catnaps in sunbaked Hondas. Fueled by junk food, stale coffee and masturbation.

Myrtle’s driver walks around to the curbside of the SUV. The windows are blacked. He opens the door as if unwrapping a gift. There! A lightning barrage of strobes hits the two women. They step down in an artful maneuver acquired through practice. All body parts move as one, lest a stray nipple or errant snatch adorn the cover of Globe Magazine. Sadie and Myrtle stride through the flash storm in a herky-jerky silent movie. The shutterbugs glide with them. Their sheer number, all grabbing virtually the same image, ensures a small payoff for the effort. They shout provocations.

“Drinking tonight, Sadie?”

“Who are you screwing?”

“Myrtle, let’s see the new tits!”

“Who said? These are the same old tired ones.”

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The Paparazzo

by Strawberry Saroyan

Actors, Authors, Directors, Fiction, Film, Journalists, Media, Paparazzi, Publishing, Short Story Leave a comment

A meditation on what it means to be the lens watching U.S. culture – even if you’re foreign. 1,757 words. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

A movie star had died. It used to be these things were good money, plus a relatively easy “get.” You had 8547D799-C475-4659-B563-17A9A283F8B3to have connections, sure, have been around for a while to make your way into the location, but Mick was an old hand and had been around since, what, 2007? The business was getting tougher.

Mick was from Slovenia. He had the body of a broken pen – slim, slightly twisted and with something coursing through it but it wasn’t always blood. He was a good paparazzo. The language barrier had hurt and helped him. It made him determined to listen, hear even the syllables, keep them straight: aah, eeh, eek, ooh. Also, to keep his receptors out at all times. He hadn’t always liked celebrities but he’d grown to do so, and even when he didn’t like someone — did anyone really enjoy working with Jonah Hill, Robert Downey? — at least he knew all their names. The shooting was a way to be independent at the same time that it paid the rent. If Mick had heard of legend Ron Galella, which he hadn’t, he might have felt a sense of tradition, even artistry. But he didn’t. Still, it wasn’t a bad gig. America was working for him.

The funeral was to take place at Westwood Memorial. He’d heard on E! that it was Hollywood Forever but no, Memorial was the place; his friend Rupert had confirmed it.

Rupert was another pap, and an ally most of the time. Mick himself got the name of the valet there — hey, you had to do leg work — and Mick told Jecky, I will help you if you help me. The words had been wrong, cracked in places of course, but Jecky didn’t care. Jecky would give him the go-ahead for a cool $250. Mick knew it might be a slice of profit but he would just have to up his game.

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In The Frame

by Laurie Horowitz

Actors, Fiction, Film, Media, Paparazzi, Reality Performers, Reality TV, Short Story, Social Media, TV 21

To what lengths will the wannabe famous go to stay in the celebrity picture? 1,891 words. Illustration by Mark Fearing.

When I spot the paparazzi on Montana Avenue, I get an adrenalin rush. Someone famous is around here. I can smell it. I, myself, have some notoriety, being the only child of Melissa Kane, star of such classics as Moon Over Malibu and Surf Wars.

My mother was famous in the seventies for her beach movies. She met my father, Francis Fanucchi, a mid-level studio executive, when he came to the set of Sand In My Shoes. My mother was blonde and lithe. In contrast, my father was compact, dark, muscular and pugnacious. I am tall like my mother, but I have my father’s coloring. Some say I have his face, but I reject the idea. Still, I have to admit that his robust genes beat out my mother’s more ethereal ones.

I was twenty when they died and they were both forty-two, only six years older than I am now. My father drove their Maserati off a cliff in Big Sur and it was all very dramatic and tragic. Some said it was an accident. Several claimed it was a double-suicide. Others maintained it was something more nefarious. The mystery was the making of the myth. My mother gained stature in death, her fame and celebrity burgeoning until she became a cult hero while my father doesn’t even have an entry on IMDB.

What I have left of them are the happy memories of being caught by the cameras – of Mom and I dressed up for Easter in matching bonnets, of Mom wearing a fat suit as Mrs. Santa and me as an elf. I became addicted to the feeling I got when being photographed.

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Heiress Alert!
Part Two

by Anne Goursaud

Fiction, Hollywood Scandals, Media, Paparazzi, Reality Performers, Reality TV, Short Story, Starlets, TV, TV Writers 1

When the paparazzi princess disobeys the law, her neighbors suffer. 2,170 words. Part One. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

Once news of Venice Hyatt’s arrest hit social media, the paparazzi and TV news vans invaded the streets and crowded the driveways throughout Maureen and Paul’s neighborhood. The gold-diggers had arrived; but instead of picks, rakes, and shovels, they had all sorts of cameras and microphones. Because a picture or a word from the scandalous heiress was worth a fortune on the gossip world market.

A neighbor, Craig, contacted Maureen by phone. He lived up the street from Venice and worked as a nurse at the UCLA hospital. He related how coming home one early morning he had to chase a newsman urinating on his doorstep.

“Now that she has been arrested, the circus will only intensify,” Craig griped. “We need to do something.”

Then came another news break: VENICE HYATT RELEASED FROM JAIL.

What happened was the L.A. County Sheriff ignored the judge’s sentence of 23 days and let the celebutante go free after a mere 72 hours. For an “undisclosed medical condition.” She was to be sent home to serve her sentence while wearing an ankle monitor.

The media as well as trolls on Twitter and Facebook questioned what kind of medical condition it could be since, a few hours before being jailed, Venice was photographed at the MTV Movie Awards. Apparently in perfect health.

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Heiress Alert!
Part One

by Anne Goursaud

Fiction, Hollywood Scandals, Media, Paparazzi, Reality Performers, Reality TV, Short Story, Starlets, TV, TV Writers 1

When a paparazzi princess moves in, there goes the neighborhood. 2,075 words. Part Two. illustration by Thomas Warming.

Maureen and Paul lived a peaceful productive life on a small winding street five minutes above Sunset Boulevard.

Early mornings at their house were particularly glorious: the chirping birds, the chittering squirrels, the basking sun all contributed to the tranquil bucolic mood, as did the magnificent view. But it was especially the quiet street that made Maureen and Paul’s living environment the envy of all their friends. “You can work here! You can create here! You can sleep peacefully here!” they exclaimed again and again.

Maureen and Paul felt privileged. They earned a good living writing for television but were not rich. Paul was toiling on a second-grade broadcast series. After Maureen’s series was canceled, she was finally trying to write that novel she has been talking about since her glory days in the creative writing program at at Columbia University. They’d acquired their house quite a few years back when prices were still affordable. Today only rich people could build or purchase a home there. The location was so desirable that Maureen and Paul’s neighbors were cashing out by selling their homes to the voracious developers, contractors and flippers eager to buy up any and every property.

One day Maureen heard from her friend Rob, a long-time resident like herself, that the house right below her on Trasher Avenue had sold. Rob walked his dog everyday; dog owners love to chat and keep their ears to the ground. So Maureen got all her neighborhood gossip from Rob.

A week later, he delivered a gold nugget.

“Venice Hyatt bought that house below you.”

“The Venice Hyatt?”

“Yes, her.”

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Pauline’s Adventure
On The Silver Screen

by Anne Goursaud

Actors, Background Performers, Directors, Fiction, Paparazzi, Short Story 5

An impoverished and naïve student is tempted by film acting. Will she succeed or fail? 2,434 words. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

Paris – 1966

Pauline was a young girl.

A busy and broke young girl.

Hustling and bustling from class to class, and working at temp jobs to make ends meet.

One day, Dimitry Fedotoff, a friend who worked as a still photographer on movie sets, announced he had a brilliant solution to Pauline’s financial woes. He had just been hired to shoot an American movie about World War II France at the Boulogne Billancourt Studio. He had learned the production was about to cast French prostitutes as extras, loads and loads of them. He thought Pauline had a great chance to be cast.

“You’re a pretty girl. You could play a prostitute,” he said.

“What exactly do you mean?” Pauline answered, slightly hurt that he could so easily imagine her playing a Lady Of The Night.

“You’re sexy — but you know that. Anyway, you could make more money than you’re are at your meaningless office work.”

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