Paparazzi Rotters - a Christian Bale anecdote

I suppose being a whore is worse.

But I disliked my very brief "career" as a paparazzi photographer.

When I signed with a few photo agencies, and went out on assignments, it was "shooting fish in a barrel" things, mostly. The stars show up, stand in front of a hokey sign for the event they're promoting, and you blind them for a few minutes, snapping pix. You hope ONE of the shots isn't all over-exposed by everyone else's fucking flashes, and that somebody might buy it.

What I did NOT like, was staking out some fucking premiere, and hurrying to get a shot of stars as they went inside (often deliberately fast).

My fellow pap-smears made things more obnoxious by getting in the way (deliberately), or doing the "raised elbow smack you in the head" trick so my shot might be blurry or I wouldn't get it at all.

I hated these photographers almost as much as the stars.

Some were TOTAL assholes (Ron Gallela comes to mind) who would deliberately stalk the stars just to get a reaction.

Now? Now they've upped the ante and the aggression.

Christian Bale mentioned an example of how tough it is to deal with this shit:

Really, it takes a truly obnoxious person to stalk Bale that way, and insult his wife JUST to try and get a good "reaction" photo of him.

Pathetic, isn't it? This guy is a STAR but people still push him around, disrespect him, and make him miserable. Long ago, I decided I wasn't going to be abusive to celebrities out of jealousy or greed (or anything else). The best way of doing that was to not accept paparazzi assignments.

Which is part of why I'm sitting around writing on a free blog. But I prefer it to the alternative, I truly do.

When you see idiot wardrobe malfunction photos, and long-range telephoto shots of some chick topless on her own private property, realize that the jerk who took that image didn't even get much money for it. He's some young creepy loser who does it for pretty much the same reason any stalker acts like a monster. He ain't acting, he IS a monster. Eventually most of these jerks literally grow up, grow tired of running around or sitting and staking out somebody, and find something better to do. Really, most anything is better than being a fucking pap.

Bale's a millionaire, but he earns his money. Not so much by acting, but by not acting up when fuckheads insult his wife.