Paparazzi swarm out east

“Fame is a disease,” said comedian Margaret Cho, and she wasn’t joking. These days it’s a pandemic that afflicts both stars and the star-struck. Take, for instance, the Tiger Woods story.

Newspapers have been feasting on it, and not because he’s got a fun name (“Cagey Tiger,” “Tiger Hides His Tale,” etc.). Also not because it’s high time golf finally generated some shock value. It’s really all about us. Celebrity sells. Sex sells. Scandal sells. So a celebrity sex scandal is catnip on steroids. If people weren’t addicted to it, tabloids wouldn’t be surviving even as legitimate newspapers are folding.

Tiger is big-time catnip, and since there’s a scandal, of course it has a Hamptons connection. His alleged/rumored/staunchly denied mistress, Rachel Uchitel, reportedly has worked as a Hamptons nightclub hostess, “policing the velvet rope,” as the lush expression goes.

The last time Woods was linked to the Hamptons was March 2008, when rumors swirled (from the New York Post) that he had bought a $65 million waterfront home in Southampton. The story was debunked but still managed to live on for a while.

Another case of celebrity psychosis recently hit the East End in the form of “The Romantics,” the “Big Chill”-ish movie being filmed in and around Southold. For those whose People magazine subscriptions have expired, its cast includes Anna Paquin, Elijah Wood, Jeremy Strong, Adam Brody, Josh Duhamel and (cymbal crash, please) Katie Holmes.

It’s the last name that brought the paparazzi out in force, lining the beach to capture the filming of a bayside wedding scene. But since the beach was too low, the canny photogs raided local hardware stores to buy ladders, The Suffolk Times reported.

So showbiz has been good for the local economy. Motels, restaurants and coffee shops have also seen upticks. But since it’s fame we’re speaking of, there must also be a dose of crazy. It was summed up in a Times editorial headlined, “Paparazzi, don’t let the door hit you in the … ,” which culminated by asserting that the photographers’ “intrusive behavior … far outweighs the little good they’ve brought to the local economy.”

The Times itself, however, did photograph Tom Cruise (Katie Holmes’ husband, for those who read books) while jogging, and asked him a question, which he ignored. “And you know what?” said the editorial, “We completely understand.”

Nonetheless, the paper did put a video of the encounter on its Web site, and even the respectful Times was chastised by a reader in an online comment for intrusive behavior. The video is no longer available.

But what’s a newspaper to do? Imagine the debate inside the newsroom. Mega-stars are walking among us. If we ignore them, aren’t we missing a story? But if we cover it, how are we different from the paparazzi?

To get an insider’s thoughts, I called a paparazzo who was here for the big event. “No, I didn’t buy a ladder,” Bobby Bank told me. “I rented a speedboat.” (Coincidentally, he’s no stranger to the North Fork. As a kid he and his father used to go fishing out of Mitchell’s Dock in Greenport.)

Google “bobby bank romantics” and you’ll see a flood of his shots from Southold. A few days after his visit he told me by phone, “I’m just coming back from shooting Barry Manilow, Lance Armstrong and Matt Damon.” Every day, he said, many constellations of stars twinkle around the tri-state area. Bank and his long lenses zoom in on as many as possible, including “The Romantics” in Southold.

The 54-year-old Bank is unapologetic about his profession, and accepts the public’s hunger for what it is. Which means he treats celebrities as a sort of cash crop to be harvested with his camera. “I know the pulse of the city very well,” he said.

I read recently that paparazzi pay has declined from the glory days when a shot of a rampaging Britney Spears brought a reported $300,000. So how much will Bank’s Southold photos yield? He said it depends on how widely they’re purchased through WireImage and Getty Images, which broker his work. But he did assert this: The real money to be would have been a certain picture shot through an unshaded window. The subject: “Katie Holmes naked.”

Long Island Business News / December 10, 2009