Want To Be Hounded By The Paparazzi Here’s How
May 7th, 2008, 12:46 am Hobby Shops
Shortly before noon today, a young couple will take a casual stroll through New York’s Central Park talking, in all likelihood, about their upcoming wedding. But they will not be quite alone. Sprinting from bush to tree trunk will be a man with a long-lens camera illicitly recording their every move and smile.
Paparazzi attack? Not quite. The two lovers are not famous models or film stars. They are members of a fast-growing group of Americans who are willing to pay to be treated as if they were.
Entourage-envy may seem odd to the likes of Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan, whose experiences of being stalked have usually been less than happy. But exist it does. Why else would companies be popping up all across the US precisely to offer people the experience of being hounded by snappers?
Among the biggest is Celeb-4-A-Day, a Los Angeles-based company that also works in Austin, Texas, and San Francisco. Poised to expand to the East Coast, it offers a whole gamut of faux-red-carpet services. It can provide one or more suitably invasive photographers as well as a limousine and even burly bodyguards. The pictures you like best are then printed on the cover of a fake gossip magazine.
Who would want such a thing? Plenty of folk, according to the company’s founder, Tania Cowher. “Everyone likes a little bit of attention and to feel special,” she said. “Everyday people should get just as much attention, if not more, than celebrities”. And now they don’t even have to behave badly to get it.
Among her competition is The A-List, an outfit that promises to besiege its clients with four photographers constantly snapping shots and bombarding them with questions. For the charade to work properly, the customers fill out a questionnaire first with details of their lives and hobbies.
Here in New York, Izaz Rony – the man who will be skulking in the Central Park undergrowth this morning – has been advertising the services of his own “MethodIzaz” for six months. For now at least, he seems to have the East Coast market more or less to himself.
But Rony, 23, is not comfortable with the phoney-paparazzo moniker. His customers, he says, are not so concerned with pretending to be famous but are drawn to the idea of being photographed on the sly. Often his clients don’t want to know what he looks like. They give him a time and place to show up and tell him what they will be wearing. What they get for $600 (ï¿¡305) and up are a collection of pictures capturing moments that are real rather than posed. Today’s clients want the Central Park pictures for their wedding album.
“Some people find it difficult to have pictures taken when they are posing,” Rony explained. “This way, they forget what is happening and they really aren’t self-conscious any more.” Ours, he adds, has become a culture of personal bill-boarding. “Everyone I know has a Facebook page or a MySpace profile and they are concerned about the image they project of themselves. This way they have something that is real – it’s the window they open for others to look through. They want to create the lives they want to live.”
A recent client was Kaiama Glover, a 35-year-old college professor, who arranged for Rony to wait as she emerged from a doctor’s office in lower Manhattan. She was pregnant and wanted the experience of bearing the child (since born) recorded. For a few hours, Rony shadowed her as she went to the dry cleaners and ate with a friend at the South Street Seaport. He kept his cover perfectly until the very end when passers-by began asking if Glover was famous.
Tags: britney spears, casual stroll, charade, entourage, envy, everyday people, famous models, gossip magazine, Hobbies, honey, lace, lai, limousine, lindsey lohan, mom, paparazzo, photographer, red carpet services, s central, tree trunk, young coupleRelated posts
