Teenage Paparrazo

The opening film for the Sidewalk Film Festival was Adrian Grenier's Teenage Paparazzo. First, I absolutely loved this film. It was funny, it was thought provoking, and very raw feeling. This documentary followed the story of Austin, a young boy who was working in the world of the paparazzi. Adrian had noticed Austin before, but thought that he was just a young fan; that was until he was blinded by several flash photos in a row. He quickly latched on to Austin and was fascinated by him. He began thinking about the larger idea of the paparazzi and their seeming obsession with celebrities. In the show Entourage, Adrian plays someone who is very famous and cannot go anywhere without being noticed. From the fame of this show, Adrian began getting the same attention his character does. He wanted to follow Austin in his paparazzi world to try and better understand their point of view. Austin agrees to allow Adrian to follow him, and at one point, Adrian even get behind the camera and took some shots of Brook Shields. By the end of the documentary, Austin decides being a paparazzi is not for him. After having to watch the footage with his mother, they both realized how being out all night and living among the celebrity world had turned Austin into someone he did not want to be.

I do not even know where to start with analyzing this film. It was a loaded piece of work as far as themes and implied meanings. For this blog however, I am choosing the topic that really stuck out to me, and had me thinking when the film was over. In this country in particular, there is a certain fascination with celebrity culture. Watching what these paparazzi go through night after night just to get a picture made me wonder why anyone would EVER want to do that? They get trampled over, yelled at, and sometimes they are physically harmed by celebrities or publicists. Austin would drop whatever he was doing if he got a lead on where a celebrity was headed. I just could not understand what would drive anyone to want to lead a life so close to stardom, yet get no recognition and no glamor. However, I had to stop myself and think. Sure, I am not going out on the streets on New York and LA and scouting out GaGa, but I am willing to spend $4-$7 just to read about her life. At least the paparazzi make money scoping out celebrities!

This film explored the relationship between the celebrity world and the "real" world; these paparazzi do what they do because they are feeding the appetite of people like you and me who cannot help but wonder just what is it like to be famous. Austin's parents were willing to allow him to be on the streets in the middle of the night to get that perfect shot. HE was willing to go. Why? He confesses in the film that he desperately wants to be a part of that world. There is one scene where Austin is outside of a bar that Adrian is about to go into. He gets right up to the front door, almost inside the doorway, but is forced to turn around and sadly walks back to his circle of paparazzi. I think this is often how many people feel about their place in that glamorous world we read about. We are so close to it, we can see it, but we will never really be a part of it.

While this film showed the separation of these two worlds, it also showed a very human and real side of the celebrities. Most of them just want to be respected by the paparazzi. In fact, as many paparazzi stated, the stars need the paps. They want exposure, they get exposure. The way this documentary was done also helped to nurture this side of the celebs to come out. As most documentaries, it cut from scenes to interviews constantly. Some of the stars were filmed in their (or one of their) homes or someplace other than a studio. The raw footage gave a very personal touch to the film.

There were a lot of visual elements that spoke sometimes more than the words. At the beginning of the film, there was a cut to a mural on a wall with several people taking photos. These seemingly still life images would then come to life and look like monsters, obviously portraying the paparazzi. The final ending of the film was expressed in a technique rather than words. Austin tells Adrian that if he really wanted to be his friend, he would turn the cameras off instead of continuing to film. Adrian motions to the cameras and several tiny frames appear and then the screen is blank. Although we do not hear Adrian tell Austin that is what he wants, we can infer from the cut that that is how their story ends.

This film explored both the positive and negative effects the careers of the paprazzi can have on celebrities and on themselves. By the end of the film, I feel that there was a genuine respect between Adrian and the paps. He had tried to understand their world, which for many of them, is all they want. They want to be respected just as the celebrities do. The debate of the private vs public lives of those in Hollywood will probably never be settled, but I think this film did a great job exposing both and letting the viewer draw their own opinions.

Shutter Island

Shutter Island starring Leonardo DiCaprio is a film that explores the idea of a government body or other institution and the power they can have over people. Teddy, an government official, and his partner Chuck are sent to Shutter Island, a prison for mentally ill patients, to investigate the escape of a criminal. A storm prevents Chuck and Teddy from being able to leave the island when they feel it was necessary. The two are forced to remain on the island, which leads to a series of events that further confuses the finale of the movie. The viewer is given hints during the movie that there is something more going on that just an investigation. It is difficult to tell if the people who are running the prison are on the side of the investigators or if there is something more going on.

The director uses scenes that are unclear to the viewer if they are real or not to give clues that the ending may be open ended. Some scenes involve ghost figures, or clips that seem like they cannot be real in the context of what we had just seen before it began. Some scenes, like the one in the prison cell with the man that Teddy apparently knows, are more obvious clues. However, the clips following suck you right back in to what you thought the original plot was. There is another scene with the inmate Rachel. She explains to Teddy what is really happening on the island. Around that same time, we also discover that Teddy's wife had drowned his four children in a lake. At this point, you feel as if you have the movie figured out. However, as the film progresses, the director manages to change your mind over and over.

The lighting in the movie is very dark. This gives the film a very dark and mysterious feel. The storm that traps them on the island is another method the director uses to set the mood and tone for the film.

Along with leaving me utterly confused, this movie really struck me in regards to the way that we as humans are so easily manipulated by authority. In Shutter Island, Teddy is given "headache medicine" that confuses him and allows the prison employees to convince him that what they are telling him is true. While our government is not giving out medicine that manipulates us to do what they want, we do tend to fall in line with whatever they say is correct. This applies not only government, but all of they other "they say" traps we fall into. Anything from dieting to where we live is usually based on what we have been told works and works best. In my opinion, the director of this movie purposely left it open ended, number one for entertainment, but also so that we would dwell on the deeper meaning that he had placed in the film.