13. Shooting Stars: My Unexpected Life Photographing Hollywood’s Most Famous by Jennifer Buhl
This is not the kind of book I would normally pick up. I’m not super into celeb culture and have never been the kind of person who was into reading things like People and US Weekly and any other magazine or website that deals in the photographs that the paparazzi are selling to. I wound up reading it because Trey Graham, formally of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, was mailing interested people books from his bookshelf in order to help clear it out. This is the book that I wound up with, so I felt like I should read it.
Although it’s not a world I care much about, I must say that Buhl is a decent writer as she had me engaged in reading a book on a subject I’m not really interested in. Buhl spent a little over two years as a paparazza. She recounts her experiences getting involved in it and how the business actually works. She also spends a lot of time justifying the existence of the paparazzi. It all felt a lot like someone making excuses and trying to justify what they’re doing even though they know it’s not right.
She even completely contradicts herself in the book on the matter. She sort of smugly provides a list of things that celebrities can do to keep themselves away from the paparazzi and to have the paparazzi lose interest in them if they really don’t want to be bothered. Then she spends chapters recounting stalking Kate Bosworth and Jennifer Aniston pointing out that they hate paparazzi and do everything they can to avoid them. There is no doubt that some celebrities and pseudo-celebrities want the attention, and I don’t disagree with her on that point. It is very obvious to that there are a lot of people who don’t want the attention or at least not in the way that they’re getting it, and the paparazzi is very intrusive and invasive.
As I mentioned I never really cared that much about celebrity culture and never bought any of those types of magazines or sought out some of the websites that traffic in this kind of stuff. However, I do very much like spoilers and casting info and news about all the television shows I love. Some sites I like to get that information from deal in both kinds of “news” and I would click on headlines in my RSS feed sometimes. Over a year ago I made a personal decision to not give any clicks to those types of photos if I could help it. I will only look at celebrity photos if they’re things they have posted online themselves or when they’re being photographed at an official event where they’re expecting it. After reading this book I feel even better about that decision.
I give this book a 7 out of 10.