At the Academy Awards, celebrities smile as they parade down the red carpet before a phalanx of cameras. Behind the flashbulbs, a delicate new game is under way between the stars and the vast gossip industry of TV shows, magazines and Web sites that feeds upon them.
It has always been a relationship built upon animosity and mutual need. But tensions have grown with the explosion of media running paparazzi photos of stars canoodling or emerging from shops in frumpy track suits.
Now many stars, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Jessica Simpson, are fighting back. They are hiring their own photographers to capture supposedly private rendezvous, tipping off reporters to their whereabouts and developing relationships of mutual back-scratching with editors.
When Paltrow gave birth in 2004, she knew there would be a high bounty on the first photo of her newborn daughter. A staple of the celebrity press, the actress and her husband, Chris Martin, leader of the band Coldplay, decided to take matters into their own hands and tip off a photographer they knew, Steve Sands.The result is the flowering of a genre: fake paparazzi journalism, or the staging of "unstaged" moments. It is an art form that benefits both stars and the press. Stars get to participate in the framing of their image, and magazines appear to give readers a glimpse of the real celebrity untouched by public-relations varnish.
When Paltrow gave birth in 2004, she knew there would be a high bounty on the first photo of her newborn daughter. A staple of the celebrity press, the actress and her husband, Chris Martin, leader of the band Coldplay, decided to take matters into their own hands and tip off a photographer they knew, Steve Sands.
Sands took what appeared to be surprise shots of the two emerging from the hospital in London with the baby and sold them to People for $125,000, according to a person familiar with the arrangement. Larry Hackett, managing editor of People, says he knew that Sands had been tipped off by Paltrow. But he didn't see the need to inform readers about it.
Pictures such as the one of Paltrow help the stars stay in the limelight — but on their terms. "When celebrities do this, it's a way for them to deliver news that they want delivered," says Bonnie Fuller, the editorial director of American Media Inc., which publishes Star and the National Enquirer. By strategically sating the demand for images, stars may be able to tame the paparazzi mob — although in Paltrow's case, photographers continued to stake out her home.
The current strategies hark back to the Hollywood of the 1940s and 1950s, when studios, movie stars and the press worked hand-in-hand to create and maintain screen icons for worshipful fans. Today, the coverage of the stars has exploded. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, circulation of US Weekly stood at an average of 1,662,000 in the six months ending in January of this year, up 12.7 percent from the same period a year earlier. Circulation at Bauer Publishing's InTouch climbed 15.5 percent to 1,178,000, and at Star it rose 12.3 percent to 1,460,000.
The magazines are lucrative. US Weekly sells a million copies a week on the newsstand at $3.49 apiece. The magazine turns an operating profit of $50 million a year, says a person familiar with its accounts. People, which has a circulation of 3.8 million, brings in by far the most revenue and profit of any of the 154 magazines owned by Time Inc., a division of Time Warner Inc.
Network TV programs like Access Hollywood, cable channels like E! Entertainment Television Inc. and Web sites have added to the coverage. All these outlets compete for photos documenting the daily lives of a small cast of celebrities. These stars, in turn, seek to control their images without appearing to, because doing so would ruin their mystique.
Magazines have generally played along. In 2003, Jolie tipped off US Weekly that she would appear in a park one afternoon with her adopted son, Maddox, according to two people familiar with the situation. The actress recently had divorced actor Billy Bob Thornton. These two people say US Weekly knew Jolie had green-lighted the photo, which softened her image by showing her maternal side. The magazine didn't tell readers about it.
Hackett of People says Jolie, who does not have a publicist, is among the most sophisticated manipulators of the press.
Even images that are clearly taken with a star's consent may conceal deeper ties between the star and the media. Simpson, a pop singer, had a close relationship with US Weekly, but it became contentious after the magazine broke the news that she was breaking up with husband Nick Lachey.
Simpson formed a business relationship with OK! USA, a weekly published by London-based Northern & Shell PLC that sometimes pays celebrities for access and lets them approve magazine layouts. The deal with Simpson requires the star to appear in the magazine a certain number of times in exchange for payment, according to the magazine.
In the old studio era, too, celebrities and the press were co-conspirators in crafting storylines that were often distant from reality. A famous instance was Rock Hudson, who despite being secretly gay was publicly married to Phyllis Gates.
People magazine, introduced in 1974, combined celebrity coverage with the journalistic heritage of parent Time Inc. For years People was the only publication of its kind and an essential tool for celebrities. "There was a lot more access then," says Susan Toepfer, a former deputy managing editor at People who is now editor in chief of Quick & Simple. "When I was writing about celebrities in the '70s and '80s, you could spend days with them."
But magazines soon discovered that so-called write-arounds, stories written without the cooperation of the star and using anonymous sources, were more popular.
Celebrities and their handlers began forcing reporters to sign agreements to avoid certain topics or demanding approval over writers and cover layouts.
The arrival of Fuller at US Weekly in 2002 raised the tensions even higher. She pioneered the photography-heavy coverage popular today and paid for paparazzi photos depicting the stars in an unflattering light. A recent example was the image of singer Britney Spears driving down a freeway with her baby in her lap.
The photographers' onslaught has put stars in a tough spot. If they ignore the magazines, they let such pictures define their public image. But sitting down for formulaic interviews and staged shots won't necessarily satisfy the magazines' lust for juicy stories.
The answer is manipulation so subtle it's hard to say if there's any at all. In January, when rumors swirled in the press that Jolie might be pregnant with the child of actor Brad Pitt, Jolie arranged for an employee of the charity Yele Haiti to take a picture of her with her growing belly.
Jolie then let Yele Haiti sell the picture to People, according to Hackett, the magazine's managing editor, and a representative for Pitt. A person familiar with the situation says People paid $400,000 for the picture.
By arranging the Haiti photo, Jolie reaped several benefits. She ensured the picture was flattering. In diverting the money to charity, she put a twist on a tactic used by celebrities in recent years in which they arrange to be paid for wedding or baby photos with the proceeds going to charity.
"I would probably say at least 50 percent of what you see in terms of Hollywood coverage is something that was not necessarily born organically," says Janice Min, editor in chief of US Weekly. "This is how celebrities survive."
Source: azstarnet.com
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