Present Tense

Britney-hunting

March 26, 2008 @ 12:24 pm | by Shane

Always look forward to getting my copy of The Atlantic Monthly, which I still have a subscription too despite it dropping it’s website paywall. Thanks to the vagaries of the postal system, it’s always a surprise when it lands - two might arrive together, one might land before it’s even been printed, that sort of thing.

Anyway, this month’s issue has a good piece on the paparazzi’s hunting of Britney Spears. It focuses largely on one agency, X17, and the way the business has:

Nearly every famous picture of the world’s most famous imploding pop star—Britney driving with her son on her lap, Britney in rehab, Britney without underwear, Britney shaving her head—was taken by X17’s “shooters,” or “paps,” who work in teams under the direction of X17’s owner, François Navarre, a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, who moved to Los Angeles in 1992 and covered the L.A. riots for Le Monde before embracing his destiny as a freelance celebrity photographer. Navarre operates under his middle name, Regis. He is roundly despised by more traditional Hollywood paparazzi, who accuse him of having destroyed their highly individualistic business by hiring gangs of immigrant kids with digital cameras purchased on credit from Best Buy to do the work of the heroic lone photographers who once lay in wait with telephoto lenses, stalking Jackie O.

Most of X17’s paps, who number between 60 and 70, depending on the day and who quits or gets fired, are paid a stipend of $800 to $3,000 a week plus the occasional four- or low-five-figure bonus in exchange for global rights to their images, which Regis owns lock, stock, and barrel. X17 also pays weekly stipends to a dozen dedicated tipsters and occasional fees to 500 or 600 parking-lot attendants, club kids, and shop girls in and around L.A.

The site also has a separate article in which the guys from X17 give a commentary to some of their pics of various celebs:

I think the one with the best chance to rebound and become interesting for the camera again is Britney. She’s down right now, but that’s because she’s on such hard medication. I’ve never seen her drugged as much as now . She reminds me of my grandmother in France who had Alzheimer’s. She can barely walk. She walked straight into a pole the other day.