Celebrities, just shut up and cash the check
Billie
February 18, 2003
Dear Readers:
I'm considering suing my cousin Annie.
See, she took some photos at my wedding and when your humble Scooper saw the
pics, she was DEVASTATED.
"This is not the vision of bridal loveliness my fans expect!" I raged when I
saw myself looking sleazy and slack jawed, eyes at half-mast, and wedding cake
residue smeared around my mouth. "I look cheap, tacky and LARGE."
"Get over yourself," my producer Ashley snapped. "Photos don't lie." Well, Dear
Readers, I thought that was the end of that. Until that fun couple, Catherine
Zeta-Jones and her semi-elderly hubby Michael Douglas, sued Hello! magazine for
half a million pounds (about $800,000) for running unflattering photos of their
wedding. The pics, Ms. Zeta-Jones complained, left her "devastated" as they
were "unflattering." They looked "sleazy" and "cheap and tacky." She
particularly hated one that made her look "large."
Ashley still thinks I shouldn't sue Annie. (Easy for her to say; she looks good
in the pics.) She says suing would make me look like a vain, greedy nutcase.
"Ha!" I say. "You mean it would make me look like a bonafide celebrity!"
Suing, threatening to sue, and filing complaints with press watchdogs over
unwanted questions or pics or innocuous stories or ones that turn out to be
true is all the rage among celebs these days. To wit:
Jude Law recently filed a complaint with the British press watchdog group ITV
over those persistent reports that his marriage to Sophie Frost was rocky.
Never mind that since then, it's been reported that they've both called in
divorce lawyers.
Our gal Madonna has also filed a complaint with ITV. Seems the
profanity-spewing boob-exposing, water-bottle fellating singer is deeply
wounded by those reports that she's pregnant with her third child.
And, of course, there's Michael Jackson. OK, so interviewer Martin Bashir does
come across as a tad smarmy, but it's hard to feel sorry for someone who
complains that the perfectly innocent fact that he lets little boys sleep in
his bed was taken out of context. Jackson has also filed a complaint with ITV.
However, of all of these privacy-loving celebs, it is the case of Mikey and
Cathy that makes your stunned Scooper pick her jaw up off the floor.
Catherine said she wanted her wedding to be a "homespun and intimate occasion"
-- and that her privacy was violated when Hello! published those offending
photos. And this is where the case confuses to your not-too-swift Scooper. See,
if it was supposed to be so private and intimate, why did the couple sell the
photo rights to OK! magazine for a million pounds? And why did the deal include
syndication rights to 23 mags in 21 countries?
Could it possibly be not an issue of privacy, but of control? And of moolah? It
turns out that OK! not only had to pay for the pics, they had to let Cathy and
Mikey choose the photographer, choose the pictures, and let the couple have
pictures retouched. (Ashley is wrong, pictures sometimes DO lie.) Mikey and
Cathy could even decide which of the guests they didn't want in the pictures.
This was especially important because Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan were among the
300-plus close friends who were invited to this homespun, intimate occasion,
and they were still insisting that their little affair wasn't happening.
So, Dear Readers, while Cathy and Mikey were having OK!'s pics touched and
retouched, Hello! published the sleazy pics and stole OK!'s paid "exclusive."
(This is, by the way, the same OK! that paid a rumored 1 million pounds for
exclusive first pics of the couple's first child.) Cathy and Mikey insist it's
not about the money. It is, they insist, an issue of privacy. "Both myself and
my husband wanted to share the joy but that didn't entail bedroom shots in
Hello!" But it does, apparently, entail bedroom shots in OK! The
bought-and-paid-for photo spread showed the happy couple's wedding night
bedroom, complete with petals strewn from the door to the canopy of the bed.
A Hello! pic that particularly offended Cathy was one that showed Mikey feeding
her wedding cake. "I wouldn't want a picture of my husband shoving food down my
throat to be photographed," she testified. "It looks as though all I did that
day was eat." Apparently, it's OK if everyone thinks that her hubby eats all
day; one of the approved OK! pics showed her feeding him wedding cake.
If Catherine Zeta-Jones is devastated by pics that show her eating wedding cake
with her groom, imagine the carnage that could ensue if she gets her hands on
those wicked folks at PopBitch who dug up this unfortunate portrait of her:
http://www.peternoble.org/zetajones.html
The Scoop shudders at the thought and remains, as always,
Your Faithful Scooper,Jeannette Walls
"STUPIDITY IS NOT A HANDICAP. Park elsewhere!"
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