That’s not Paris, that’s my wife!
The red carpet is sometimes the only way to get into the theater for a movie premiere. Faced with this, I walk really quickly with my head down, afraid that if a photographer mistakes me for someone famous, I’ll disastrously start to pose, assuming that he’s taking my picture because my column has suddenly become super popular -- and the whole while I’ll actually just be blocking his view of that guy from “Will & Grace.”
But where I see potential humiliation, others see opportunity. Celebrity magazines and websites are insatiable, so desperate for photos that there’s an emergent class of the un-famous frequently photographed. Paris Hilton started her “career” this way. It’s how Eva Longoria will end hers.
Can just anyone draw the lenses of the paparazzi if they walk down the red carpet slowly with their head held high? I wanted to know. So I persuaded my lovely wife, Cassandra, to walk the carpet at the Pink Party, a huge, star-packed annual fundraiser for breast cancer research that always provides lots of visual fodder for the celeb mags. Cassandra had no interest in doing this, but agreed to participate for the sake of this crucial sociological research. Also, there may have been some talk of needing new shoes.
I called Phoebe Price for advice. While not famous in this country for anything at all, Price has spent the last two years traveling around the world, wearing very expensive, very skimpy outfits to parties at the Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, Cannes and, most likely on off weeks, local quinceaneras.
And it’s worked: Price has appeared in Us, Star, InStyle, In Touch, Life & Style and OK! -- and has been shot by paparazzi eating in public and running on the beach. She is also the obsession of the snarky gossip blog Dlisted. Price is one leaked porn tape away from getting her own reality show.
Price had great suggestions. “Say I find a Dolce & Gabbana dress, and I think it’s really hot and I think someone else might wear it. I’ll wear it so that it might get compared in a magazine.” In fact, Price has a personal shopper at Saks Fifth Avenue who leaks to her what other celebrities are wearing to big events. When I told Cassandra about this, she said, “Do you want to go out and buy me a Dolce & Gabbana dress?”
Becoming a non-famous celebrity, it turns out, is expensive and a lot of work. Walking the red carpet, Price displays an Olivier-like range of emotions. “I always do side angles and over-the-shoulder. I give them 15 to 20 looks,” she said. She critiques every published photo of herself. Most important, she said, one must know oneself. Thoroughly. “You get totally naked and stand in front of your mirror and learn your flaws.”
I immediately suggested the naked mirror thing to Cassandra, but she balked. “If I do that, I’m going to panic and get freaked out and not do this.” I was willing to make that kind of sacrifice, but she still said no.
The night of the Pink Party, Cassandra spent a lot of time choosing the right pink outfit, which the invitation said was absolutely mandatory. But when we arrived, all the high-profile stars were in black. “I could have worn my fabulous dress. This is like my third-rate outfit,” Cassandra said. “I followed the rules. I will never do that again.”
I persuaded a publicist to tell a photographer that Cassandra Barry was about to walk down the carpet. Immediately they started calling to her: “Cassandra, up top!” “Miss Barry, blow us a kiss!” As if she’d done this 100 times, she started striking those Paris-Hilton-style over-the-shoulder poses. She fake-laughed about nothing. She blew a kiss to no one. And then she did something really, really weird. She raised her arm, made one of those devil-horn fists and stuck her tongue out. Apparently, Cassandra’s only access to modern celebrity culture comes from a subscription to Guitar Player magazine.
I feared that Cassandra had had such a good time, she’d keep devil-fisting down red carpets until she became some kind of minor celebrity to geeky teenage boy Metallica fans. But I was wrong.
“I felt like a puppet. You have to fake loving yourself. It’s humiliating,” she said afterward, sitting down in the corner, her heart still beating fast. Those 30 seconds felt like an hour, and she panicked about inventing poses to fulfill her 100-foot obligation. She suddenly understood why Phoebe Price twice exposed her derriere while trying to attract the cameras. “I’m sure after two or three times I would have too.”
I’m installing red carpets in our house immediately.
--
