The proliferation of new B-list celebs has given a heartening second wind to jaded entertainment editors. B-listers, unlike the big-gun “destination” actors, are always happy to be photographed. They couple and uncouple in sync with the newsstand frequency of each issue. What editor can be bothered any more with arm-wrestling publicists for passé Hollywood royals like Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz? That relationship has no sizzle anyway. At 41 he’s too old (outside the demo, as MTV would say), and she’s dating in a fourth language. You’re better off with whosis and whatshername from the last reality-show finale.
This means that editors of magazines that aspire to make real money no longer have to bother with expensive studio photoshoots where the star gets bossed into a bad mood by some hissing “stylist” and his retinue of spike-haired assistants. (The most preposterous cover credit I ever published at Vanity Fair was a picture of Dustin Hoffman in a black turtleneck sweater with the caption “Styled by Sheva Fruitman”.) Shrinking magazine budgets are less tolerant these days of studio bills for five-star breakfast buffets laid on for stars and their entourages who usually shun the exorbitant croissants in favour of herbal tea.
Something cheerfully democratic and businesslike is happening to celebrity coverage. At a time of excess media, pictures can’t look mediated. The tabloids have always lived on paparazzi pix. But the fabloids — as I like to think of Us Weekly and its imitators — are the pioneers of the choreographed, resourcefully produced paparazzi shot. Celebrity “sightings” are sometimes as arranged as studio shots were before. (It’s the same in politics. Think W landing on the aircraft carrier in perfect evening light.) A publicist calls to tell the magazine’s picture editors that at midnight Star X is going to be making out with Twinkie Y at New York’s hottest nightspot, Bungalow 8. The “snap” of them together — she in the tiny red Gucci thong she’s contracted to promote, he in the sunglasses whose account he is negotiating to land — goes straight to the next fabloid cover, fulfilling all the requirements of product placement.
Tina Brown, Times: Something cheerfully democratic and businesslike is happening to celebrity coverage.
Das ist doch der einzige Vorteil eines integrierten Medienkonzerns: Dass die Pseudoprominenten aus den verschiedenen Subsystemen gegenseitig in ihren Shows und Magazinen auftreten können.
Immerhinque
schaffen sie so einen autarken Medienorganismus.