DUI Arrest Is Just Another Episode in Paris Hilton’s Life

Paris Hilton’s arrest early Thursday for allegedly driving drunk on the streets of Hollywood in her rare Mercedes was less “Dragnet” and more reality TV.

The entire episode was recorded exhaustively by paparazzi. It included a guest appearance by a star of the HBO television show “Entourage” and culminated with Hilton cheerfully describing the incident on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show.

There was none of the secrecy that surrounded actor-director Mel Gibson’s DUI arrest last month.

The arrest of the socialite-heiress-TV personality was captured by so many photographers and in such detail that some compared the episode to the crush surrounding a Hollywood awards show.

It started when two LAPD motorcycle officers, who were on patrol about 12:30 a.m., saw Hilton’s Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren moving erratically.

They pulled the car over near the intersection of Selma and Wilcox avenues and performed several field sobriety tests before handcuffing and arresting Hilton, authorities said.

“There were a number of entertainment photographers present when Hilton was pulled over, so much so that it became a distraction for the officers and for Hilton,” who was performing field sobriety tests, LAPD Lt. Paul Vernon said.

The surreal quality of the incident continued at the station house, where reporters and photographers created such a ruckus that the watch commander warned that camera flashbulbs could cause accidents on the nearby street.

Inside, police did what they do in most cases, administering a Breathalyzer test to Hilton, which showed that her blood-alcohol level was on the wrong side of California’s legal limit of 0.08%.

Hilton was booked on a misdemeanor charge and then released. She ran the press gauntlet with an entourage that included publicist Elliot Mintz, sister Nicky Hilton and Nicky’s boyfriend, “Entourage” actor Kevin Connolly.

Frank Griffin, whose photography agency Bauer-Griffin has sold many photographs of the socialite but who did not deploy any photographers to the drunk-driving call, said Hilton bore responsibility for the attention.

Although there are many photographers and word travels quickly, he said, Hilton courted publicity.

“She’s made her bed and she’s lying in it,” Griffin said. “She’s chosen that life and it’s very hard to extract yourself from it.... You can’t start an avalanche and then once it’s rolling say you want peace and quiet.”

Griffin said the extensive coverage of Hilton’s arrest underscores how some celebrities are followed 24/7 by paparazzi.

But Harvey Levin, managing editor of TMZ.com, which broke the news of both the Hilton and Gibson arrests, said Hilton was getting more scrutiny because of the Gibson case.

Gibson “got special treatment,” Levin said. “And because of that, police and prosecutors have to go out of their way to show the public they don’t favor celebrities over ordinary people.”

Mintz, who drove his client home in her Mercedes, gave an early morning news conference in front of her home. Pictures of the heiress, clad in black slacks, white blouse and red heels with a matching belt as her hands were cuffed behind her back, quickly surfaced on the Internet.

Hilton called Ryan Seacrest’s morning radio show on KIIS-FM. She said the incident was overblown and denied being a party animal.

“I can’t go out drinking every night,” she said. “I have to get up the next morning for a photo shoot. And if I looked like some of these girls I see ... it wouldn’t be good.”

Hilton said she had had one margarita and had not eaten all day because she had been filming a music video.

Maybe she was speeding, she told Seacrest, but she was “just really hungry” and wanted to have an In-N-Out burger.

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andrew.blankstein@latimes.com