Money Drives Paparazzi to Pursue Till End

There is a certain intimacy that comes to pass between predator and prey. The paparazzi who pursued Princess Diana until the day she died used to boast that she saw more of them than of her own sons.

The lexicon for their job smacked of the familiarity people reserve for old enemies: They “blitzed her” with rapid snapshots, or “whacked her” in a surprise attack, or ganged up to “hose her down.”

“Why don’t you rape someone else?” she shrieked to them once during a supposedly private shopping trip. But they knew she knew better. They had a time-honored deal: They used her, and she used them.

On Sunday, fresh waves of outrage roiled over the possibility that that deal may have contributed, at least in part, to Diana’s death. The tabloid “stalkerazzi,” that increasingly aggressive breed of photographers who pursue celebrities, came under fire, for the umpteenth time in recent years, as a symbol of all that is wrong with our public relationship with the well-known.

Now, in the aftermath of the fatal crash, pointed questions are being raised: Who are these people? And, if the worst is true, how can the bad apples among them live with themselves?

Officials have not yet released the names of the seven photographers detained in Paris in the wake of Diana’s accident. But everyone who is anyone is well-acquainted with the genre: hustlers with bazooka-shaped lenses who will go to any lengths--speedboats, motorbikes, stepladders in the shrubbery, infrared cameras--to show the public a side of celebrity that celebrities don’t want the public to see.

The paparazzi aren’t new. But what is new is the stakes.

Simply put, the job has never paid so well.

Earning Big Money for Celebrity Photos

This month, the Globe shelled out $200,000 for exclusive North American rights to photos of Princess Diana and the companion with whom she died, Dodi Fayed. Photographer Mario Brenna is said to have earned $5 million for the world rights to the first pictures documenting the couple’s romance.

A shot of the widowed Princess Caroline of Monaco with a new boyfriend a few years back netted a comfortable $400,000 for the paparazzo who took it. Last year, a trespasser on the set of “Batman & Robin” was thrown off the lot after security guards found a camera in his sock and a note in his pocket that said, “Batman only--$35,000.”

“Money like that creates an international tabloid feeding frenzy,” acknowledged Steve Coz, editor of the National Enquirer. “Anything can happen when the stalker paparazzi think a photograph can win them the lottery.”

The money stems from the changing economics of the tabloid business and the growing popularity of celebrity news. No longer do tabloids have the market cornered on the exploits of the rich.

In the post-O.J. Simpson era, entire television programs are devoted to entertainment figures. Their lives have become a circulation-building staple of the mainstream media. Consequently, relatively tame photos that were bread and butter to the tabloids 15 years ago now show up in lifestyle sections and slick magazines.

“We’ve got celebrities on the cover of Newsweek, we’ve got celebrities on the cover of Time,” Coz groused.

All this has forced the tabloids to stretch to even greater extremes to protect their market niche, and has provoked increasing concern about censorship and privacy.

But not until Sunday could anyone have predicted such deadly consequences.

Suddenly, Internet Web sites are rife with demands that consumers boycott the tabloids. Talk radio hums with debate over the rights of the press. On ABC-TV’s “This Week,” Los Angeles security expert Gavin de Becker referred to the supermarket tabloids and their photographers as “lice.”

Paparazzi in Defense of Their Profession

Celebrity photographers, meanwhile, charged that they have been unfairly tarred. Several noted that according to officials, the car in which Diana and Fayed were killed apparently had been hurtling along at more than twice the posted speed limit--a fatal choice that the people in the car, and not the media, had made.

“Everybody’s out to blame the photographers,” said Lawrence Schwartzwald, a photographer who covers celebrities and news in New York. “Well, big deal that they were following her car.

“They were following her everywhere. The stupidest thing was this guy going 80 to 100 miles an hour. Maybe Dodi was getting his kicks. Maybe he was saying, ‘Let’s give the paparazzi a run for their money.’ I have a feeling it was probably more of a game than a getaway.”

And in any case, photographers agreed, it isn’t clear whether any photos coming out of the tragedy will be marketable any time soon. Tabloid editors, from London to Lantana, Fla., from Oslo to Hamburg, Germany, rushed to distance themselves from the incident and vowed not to touch such photos.

Nonetheless, here in Los Angeles, eternal headquarters for the stalkers and the stalked, resident celebrities and their protectors nodded I told you so.

Tales of Stars Clashing With Photographers

Despite the fact that the celebrity media in the United States are mild-mannered compared with the all-stops-out European tabloids--and the fact that celebrities routinely leak items about themselves and each other to raise their profiles--the past few years have provided a litany of out-of-control paparazzi anecdotes.

Stories range from the now-almost-ancient Sean Penn incident, in which he punched out a paparazzo, to more recent run-ins, such as the bushwhacking of Arnold Schwarzenegger and his pregnant wife, Maria Shriver, outside their son’s school by two tabloid photographers.

Celebrities complain now that they can’t go to a wedding, a funeral, a beach or, in some cases, the bathroom, without having to worry about the prying eye of the telephoto lens. Paparazzi stake out the homes of famous people and hide in their hedges and trees. They sneak into hospitals in search of sick celebrities and, when they find them, have posed as AIDS patients to wangle salable photographs.

In the Schwarzenegger-Shriver incident, paparazzi on May 1, 1997, allegedly ran the actor off the road onto a curb and then climbed the hood of his car to get a shot through the windshield. (Schwarzenegger foiled them by holding his own camera over his face.)

Actor George Clooney boycotted the Paramount tabloid television shows “Entertainment Tonight” and “Hard Copy” after the latter aired a videotape of the actor and a woman friend at a restaurant. Clooney said the video was taken by strangers who had staged a fake birthday party at the next table and pretended to videotape it, just to get a shot of him in his private life.

Pat Kingsley, president of PMK Public Relations, which represents clients such as Tom Cruise and Sharon Stone, said she has had hair-raising experiences when riding in the car with celebrity clients at the Cannes Film Festival as paparazzi chased alongside.

“Coming from the Hotel du Cap, it’s a nightmarish 45-minute ride along a small windy road,” she said, “and the motorcyclists are trying to get in front of you. They usually travel with two on a bike--one driving, another taking pictures.”

Italian photographer Tazio Secchiaroli, 72, who was among the earliest ranks of paparazzi in 1950s Rome, said such tactics are a far cry from the days of box cameras and motor scooters.

“It was much slower in our day in the ‘50s. The cameras were slower, as life was,” said Secchiaroli, whose haunt was the Via Veneto in its “La Dolce Vita” heyday when movie stars mingled with out-of-work royals, athletes and jet-setters along the sidewalk cafes in central Rome.

‘We Don’t Give Any Quarter’

Then as today, though, “a paparazzo who doesn’t get the picture doesn’t eat,” he said. And a photographer who wants to eat must be amply armed. One U.S. paparazzo rented a yellow submarine to snap a picture of Di. Another, based in L.A., has his own helicopter.

“We don’t give any quarter because it is our job to follow celebrities wherever they go. We follow them to see where they go, where they sleep, perhaps to snap a picture of them in their swimming pool,” said Massimo Sestini, who photographed Diana and Prince Charles on holiday in Sardinia in 1991.

“Our job is to show people beyond their official roles.”

Typically, a paparazzo will ship his photos to an agent, in London or New York, who then peddles them to magazines and newspapers. And photo editors at the tabloids, for example, have the names and numbers of dozens of photo agencies.

In addition, camera equipment has become so sophisticated that anyone, from a parking attendant to a maitre d’hotel, also can take a publishable shot for big bucks. All they need to do is provoke a celebrity and click the shutter.

Diana, of course, was the greatest source of money for the freelance paparazzi--a situation that sometimes worked to their mutual interest and sometimes placed them at each other’s throats.

The royal rat pack of reporters and photographers was essential to Diana as she toured Britain and the world for good causes. Photo opportunities were carefully structured to demonstrate her concern for people with acquired immune deficiency syndrome, cancer patients and the victims of land mines in war-torn countries.

Indeed, said Les Wilson, former photo editor of a major British tabloid, “staff photographers are well known to the royals. Some of them are on first-name, even Christmas-card, terms with them.”

But, at the same time, the relationship was intrusive and wearying, particularly in the aftermath of her divorce from Charles. Last November, the princess tearfully implored paparazzi to leave her alone. They taped the encounter and sold it to American television.

“The press is savage. It doesn’t forgive anything. They only track the mistakes. Each intention is misread, every gesture criticized,” Diana told the Paris daily Le Monde in an interview published last week, two days before British tabloids published paparazzo photos of the princess raising her leg over Fayed’s shoulders to clamber aboard his jet ski.

So it was no surprise that the paparazzi were waiting for Diana and Fayed at the back door of the Ritz Hotel in Paris early Sunday morning. The couple posed for pictures before getting into the car. Then, to the surprise of photographers, the Mercedes-Benz 600 screeched away at great speed.

“The photographers apparently weren’t chasing so much as trying to catch up,” photo editor Wilson told the BBC.

In the wake of tragedy came fury from Diana’s family and celebrities who also have felt the paparazzo sting. Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti, a friend of Diana’s, called the Italian news agency in Milan in anger.

“It’s time they put a stop to these stakeouts and chases. There should be a law to protect citizens in this area. Usually they put a traffic light at a crossroads after 20 people have been killed. Here we have the death of a symbol for the world . . . a woman full of life,” Pavarotti said.

Tom Cruise’s Own Chase Through Tunnel

American actor Tom Cruise told CNN, “I’ve actually been in that same tunnel being chased by paparazzi. They run lights and they chase you and harass you the whole time.”

Officials at the Screen Actors Guild, which represents actors, said the guild has been trying for two years to forge limits on intrusiveness by the media. But the issue is a difficult one to sell, both here and abroad, pitting as it does the freedom of the press against the individual desires of public figures.

French law, for instance, specifically bans the publication of words or images that intrude into an individual’s private or family life. Britain has no such law.

Last month, when the first hazy photos of Diana embracing Fayed appeared in print, prompting calls for new privacy laws, some Britons pressed for tighter restrictions. But officials said it would unduly inhibit the media.

In the United States, the law is plain: There’s virtually no privacy in public. Paparazzi do not, however, have free rein on U.S. soil. They can’t touch their celebrity subjects or venture uninvited into well-tended villas. They are restricted--as is anyone--by laws forbidding trespass and assault.

Laurie Levenson, the associate dean of the Loyola Law School, observed Sunday: “Everyone is saying we need new laws. Excuse me! Driving over 100 mph is already a violation of the law. Trespass is already a violation of the law. Assaulting people is already a violation of the law.

“I don’t think adding new laws is going to cure the problem. The problem is, it’s very hard to enforce the law.”

Times staff writers Alan Abrahamson, Elaine Dutka, Eleanor Randolph and Mary Williams Walsh and London Bureau researcher Janet Stobart contributed to this dispatch.